Creating safe spaces starts at home

If the COVID-19 pandemic taught us anything, it's how important our home environment and social relationships are, and how susceptible we are to the unhealthful effects of stress.

As we strive to create more healthful, welcoming, and inclusive work, education, and community spaces to reduce stress for all, let us not forget the importance of home spaces as well. The safest space we need is where we spend most of our time, to receive the physical, social, emotional, and nutritional elements we need to survive and thrive, that for most of us is wherever we call home.

Do you feel safe at home?

Do you feel your home is a safe space for your family, parents, children, friends, or other loved ones as well?

If so, what makes it feel safe? If not, what makes it feel unsafe?

Understanding the influences and effects of stress is really the cornerstone to managing your health, well-being, and sense of safety, that is the aim of Mental Fitness practices.

The neurochemistry of stress and safety

The neurochemical reality is that an unsafe feeling fuels our unconscious stress response (with elevated levels of cortisol) that fuels our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that contribute to a variety of physical, mental, emotional, and behavioral health outcomes.

The other neurochemical reality is that our unconscious stress response can be triggered by influences of which we are not even aware.

While it is important to cultivate safe communal spaces outside of our home, it is also important to realize those spaces are luxuries that can quickly close their doors and disappear. This is why the priority should always be cultivating safety where we call home.

Here are just a few criteria that contribute to a sense of safety at home (whether yours or someone else's):

  • Food and financial security to ensure shelter and enough to eat

  • Having a safe and calm space to sleep

  • Feeling loved, protected, and understood without fear of attack, shame, or judgment

  • Having a consistent source of love, comfort, and compassion (i.e., a parent, family member, friend, or animal)

  • Feeling able to be open and honest about your thoughts and feelings

  • Access to a means of communication (i.e., phone, computer, Internet, etc.)

  • Access to healthcare and support services if needed

  • Friendship and support from other neighbors and community members

Understanding home dynamics

While not all families have all of these essential elements, it is essential that we understand how to promote safety at home. Efforts to relieve stress and danger by providing safety elsewhere without taking the home influences into consideration are only temporary fixes, that treat the symptom (the effects of stress) rather than the disease (the source of stress).

We must understand the nature and influences of home environments to ensure proper care. Without understanding the variables involved at home that contribute to stress, we may unintentionally add more stress and tension to the situation by placing even greater pressure and expectation on those who are already struggling.

The permanent fix is ensuring safety and security to lower stress at home, in the ways that people need, that also requires greater access and education to ensure proper physical, mental, social, emotional, behavioral, and nutritional care.

Scott Mikesh