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[Liketheducks]

What is safe?   I've been pondering a bit about the sense of home and safety.   I have made a beautiful home.  Pretty things.   But when things are rough, I just want to go to this mystical place of home.  Things aren't rough for me at the moment, but I also crave that "home".

My childhood was never that.   I think I'm craving what I thought things were before I knew better.   

[walking on broken glass]

I know what you mean and it's sad we never really experienced that.
When I was young and wanted to calm myself down and fall asleep, I made myself think of the two weeks of summer holidays I got as a child, when I was shipped to my grandma's. It was in the countryside and I could just go out and play with other kids all day. Not exactly home but that was my happy place for a while.

I think home is now what I made with my partner and our cat.

[NarcKiddo]

I also know what you mean. It seems to me that actual safety, when we have it, feels very alien and strange. Paradoxically it feels so unfamiliar it could even feel dangerous. So it may take some work to appreciate the safety we have rather than craving a mystical safe place.

I've found myself becoming more and more reluctant to seek novelty. Some may think it sad that I don't feel like having adventures and broadening my horizons. Actually I have done a lot of that in my life. I thought at the time I enjoyed it, but the enforced staying at home during Covid was in some ways a blessed relief. My husband and I are now really considering what we want to reintroduce and what we don't. Health issues have got in the way of quite a few things, but I find myself using them now as a convenient excuse not to do things I don't actually want to do.

I've discussed this with my therapist and have come to the conclusion it is because I am - finally - finding safety in my life. With myself, with my husband and in my home. Goodness knows I do not always feel safe but now that I have experienced it, I want to continue feeling safe. In the past I never felt safe anywhere. So I may as well feel unsafe in a fancy hotel or on an adventure holiday because I wouldn't feel safer at home. My husband thought he wanted the adventure and I thought I did, too. Maybe we were just trying to escape feeling unsafe at home, because we couldn't figure out how to fix that feeling.

[Rebel13]

So much brilliance in your reply, NarcKiddo! I also found the pandemic an amazing period of calm and peace in my life, once we all got past the scary initial stages of so many deaths, where no one knew quite what was happening or how we could best protect ourselves. I was able to make changes for myself that I'd worked on for years, just because I didn't have to cope with social anxiety and boundary setting (or letting people trample over them) every day at work.

I also really hear you on repeatedly trying to find the safe place and failing, because the source of the feeling is inside. I have a lovely safe home and a wonderful partner and sometimes I still catch some part of myself in my mind saying "I want to go home." I've never really understood that because I certainly didn't want to go back to my childhood environment! I've been learning to feel safe right now, to acknowledge that, even when I'm wound up, I'm not in the kind of physical peril that would justify the level of fight/flight I'm experiencing. I'm also learning how to be a safe person for myself, not abandoning myself or letting the inner critic go to town on me. It's a long hard road, though, isn't it?

[Liketheducks]

NarcKiddo and Rebel13.....Brilliant responses.   I'll have to explore this more with my therapist too. 

When I'm in a bad place emotionally, I too say to myself "I just want to go home".   Now as an adult, I've created an environment that is monumentally safer than I ever had as a child.   And yet, when I'm down....it is hard to appreciate the safety of my current home.   

[Call Me Cordelia]

Wow, you all, I too will say to myself, even out loud, not deliberately just impulsively, "I want to go home." It's often at the end of a busy day and I might even be in bed but my mind is still buzzing from the day's events. My home is often noisy and busy and I do crave solitude, peace and quiet. Knowing how to feel safe, anywhere, is also something I'm wondering about. I've had little bits of that feeling but it rarely lasts long. Or if I become aware of it it's instantly followed by grief or anxiety.

My FIL also had a bad case of wanderlust. He had a difficult childhood with critical family members, and as an adult he was largely an absent checked-out kind of guy. But he'd been to every continent and was always planning the next big trip.

[SeaBreeze]

In the years before I left ex-uNPDh #2, I spent alot of time, money, and research on furnishings and decor, trying to make my home as physically warm, cozy, and comfy as possible. Hoping to achieve Feng shui, hygge, whatever. It worked to an extent, but it wasn't until I left ex and moved into my own space that I've finally created that sanctuary on an emotional level. And that's made all the difference from my prior efforts.

I tried to discuss that sense of "home" with ex once and he told me that he honestly did not know what I was talking about and did not thing he'd ever experienced it. Very sad for him, and very telling as to what may have been the most core conflict between what he and I tried to build together but ultimately built separately.

I hope you will find that sense of home that you're seeking.