Safe Space sets the boundary of your authenticity. It is the personal space within which you can be (with) yourself. And, the sum of all personal spaces that allows each person to be themselves. Safe Space applies to different levels of awareness. Both the levels on the surface and below the surface, the invisible, unspoken, and unconscious.
Although what defines a safe space is different for everyone, the playground is similar. This concerns:
Your personal space
Personal space relates to the space you need to be able to be (with) yourself.
The required space thus depends on your needs. These needs have visible and non-visible components. The visible ones address behavior, skills, and knowledge; where the non-visible components are about characteristics, motives, beliefs, norms, values, and self-image.
The way you view yourself, situations, people, and the world, what you think is right or wrong, is important and not, experiences you have had, … they all affect your visible behavior and actions. They influence your sense of psychological and emotional security and well-being. And, can be reinforcing or blocking.
Therefore, the narratives you tell yourself and define yourself with, affect your personal space. The more you define yourself with them, the more you feed your personal space with these stories.
Holding your personal space
This of course works both ways, reinforcing and blocking. The more you create awareness of your thoughts, feelings, motives, intentions, (core) beliefs, the degree of self-love, self-confidence, connection, and presence, and what gives you fulfillment in life (your drivers), the more you can relax in being you.
The more you become aware of your perceptions and your thought and behavior patterns, the better you know what reinforces or blocks your ability to hold the space you need to stay true to yourself and be with yourself.
Besides, holding your space is about creating enough personal space for you. This making space for yourself enables you to stand for what you need and is important for you, right here, right now. Without losing yourself, giving yourself away, or being sidetracked (from your path).
To this end, it helps to stay in connection with your heart. Otherwise, your mind will take control and rationalize things (away), and disregard what is below the surface, the deeper layers of awareness.
Creating a safe space
Since your beliefs about yourself, situations, people, and the world, what you think is right or wrong, is important and not, (negative or positive) experiences you have had, … since these affect your behavior, they also influence your attitude and reactions to your surroundings. This can be reinforcing or blocking.
Therefore, in interaction, it is important to create space for both the space you need to be (with) yourself and the space the other person needs to be him- or herself. The ability to relax in what is, in what is felt, perceived, and present without labeling it as good or bad and useful or useless, enhances the creation of this space.
When your awareness is free from the hassle of judgment, drama, or some other burdening, it is possible to stay focused on what is immediately experienced. When you can embrace this with mildness rather than the harshness of an opinion, it strengthens the space for the other, as well.
The more you can stay with yourself, the more space you can create for both yourself and others and their needs. The more you can stay focused on what is immediately experienced, the more you reinforce this (safe) space.
If your goal is to feel safe and free, to seek authenticity in your presence, and to allow others to do the same, then you have to move past what is interfering with / blocking you now from creating this.
To do this, you need to orient yourself more to the here-and-now, and to what is immediately experienced. Such is easier from a being that provides clarity of thought (mindfulness), the mildness of an open heart, and receptiveness to what lies below the surface.
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