The Wisdom of Your Body: Finding Healing, Wholeness, and Connection through Embodied Living

by Hillary L. McBride

The phrase “return to safety” implies there is safety to return to. But what happens if we never got to return to safety? When hurts occur repeatedly at the hands of those who are supposed to protect us, or when there is no safe place to return to, we call this complex trauma. In complex trauma, unrest might actually feel like the easiest, most comfortable place to us. What should feel safe can feel dangerous, and what should feel dangerous can feel safe. It often means that we never learned it was safe to trust, which leaves us feeling desperately alone inside without knowing how to be connected. And often, if this happened at a young enough age, that overwhelm was managed by a shutdown state of shame, the fundamental sense of being “broken.”