When Safety Breaks and What We Do Next

I’m sharing something raw. Something that happened in the moment and what it revealed.

There was hurt sitting in me.

And as I went into my own Somatic Acupoint Technique (SAT), something unlocked:

“I let go of needing others to understand how much this hurt.”

That didn’t come from the mind.
It came from the body.

But let me take you to the moment.

I opened myself up in a space I believed was safe enough. With someone highly trained, experienced, over 20 years as a psychologist. And I want to say this clearly: I understand we are all human.

But what landed for me was something deeper.

In that moment, my feelings didn’t matter.

Just before the call ended, she said: “I can’t stay on this call for my own confidence.” I remember responding, in shock:
“Is this about what you need, or what I need?”

And then the line went dead.

There are no real words to describe what that does to someone with complex PTSD.

The body doesn’t just “feel hurt.”

It feels unsafe. Exposed. Open with nowhere to go.

It’s not just the moment, it’s everything the moment touches.

And I sat there, not fully understanding what had been triggered in her or even in me.

But I knew one thing.

I had to hold myself.

So that’s what I did.

I created space around it.

Not to avoid it. Not to numb it.
But to sit with it.

And in that space, something shifted.

I didn’t need her to understand my hurt, that was a big one. Because how often do we stay stuck there?

Trying to explain.
Trying to be seen.
Trying to be heard.
Trying to make someone else get it so that we can feel okay.

The old version of me would have written a letter back, trying to prove my point and trying to be validated.

And yes I did write a letter.

But not to her.

Because when we are in this work, when we are holding others safety matters. Not just for us, but for everyone involved.

I can process. I can hold. I can go into the body.

But I am also someone who carries underlying PTSD.

And what this experience showed me, is that when safety breaks in a professional space, it can shake trust deeply. Especially in systems that are funded, trusted, and held as the standard, there was also something else at play.

I have aphantasia, mind blindness.

So being asked to recall things narratively isn’t always accessible for me.

If I had been supported to go into the body, that’s where the work happens.

That’s where the truth lives.

And even now, as I write this, I can feel my body settling more.

Because I stayed.

I leaned into the intensity.

The heat in the body.
The tightness in the throat.
That feeling of becoming small, like you can’t quite say what needs to be said.

Have you felt that?

Where your body is holding so much, but your voice can’t meet it?

So what do we do in moments like this?

We notice.

We get curious about our survival responses.

Do we fight?
Do we shut down?
Do we try to fix it?
Do we chase understanding?

For me this time, I chose something different.

I stayed with myself.

As I sat in what felt unbearable, something else happened.

Memories surfaced.
Patterns revealed themselves.
The same sensations. The same reactions.

This is the work.

Not avoiding.
Not distracting.
Not numbing.

But allowing

Because so much of life offers us ways to escape what we feel and yet when we don’t sit with it, we repeat it over and over again.

This experience, as uncomfortable as it was, has given me deeper insight, more understanding. and more compassion.

For myself.
For her.
For others walking this path.

There are still layers here. There always are.

But today I met one of them.

And that matters.