Feeling safe at home is important, especially during times of uncertainty and seasonal change. Strengthening our soul connection to our home may not be easy, but can be done. How?
Wherever you are, whoever you are, whatever your views, an uncertain world can impact you, too.
Feeling safe in an unsafe world
Political and social uncertainty can lead to heightened emotions of fear, panic, vulnerability, anger, hatred, hysteria and more. These emotions eat away at our energies and in themselves carry negative energy, which can cause depression and anxiety. Often we are left extra alert and unbalanced.
Feeling safe when seasonal change is happening
Changes in the seasons can also impact us in many ways:
Socially, because of a change in activities.
Relationally, because we may spend more or less time at home with relatives and friends, which can cause friction.
Physically because of a change in diet, room temperature, more flu bugs etc going around, which can impact our general health, weight, skin, digestion and more.
Financially with higher seasonal expenses.
Emotionally, if we are affected by SAD (seasonal affective disorder), seasonal (including summer) depression, conflict in the home, loneliness, boredom, general dissatisfaction.
Feeling safe at home
When the prospect of spending more time at home during the dark and cold season is daunting, it is important to do something about it.
Could this be an opportunity for some positive changes at home?
Depending on your circumstances you may think this is wishful thinking and impossible to achieve. You may not feel well and have financial, physical or emotional challenges in your life. Everything is just too much and too daunting.
Indeed, you may not feel safe or have no positive connection to our own home – the location and environment, the neighbours, the people you live with, loneliness at home, history and memories, or just the feeling of too much or too little space.
Nevertheless, and especially then, is it important for us and our home to feel part of and not separate from a greater context of life: especially the seasons, nature and life around us.
At a time of great vulnerability it may not be easy to step up beyond our fear, grief, frustration and anger:
Our bodies and our homes may not feel safe and welcoming at all.
Not feeling safe at home can unsettle us in our ‘self’ down to ‘the core’, which some call ‘soul’.
We may feel ‘homeless’ in our own home.
We may lose the soul connection to our home and to our self.
At such times we have to make a conscious effort to reclaim our home and our self, in our mind and in our heart.
What can you do to feel safer at home?
We all are connected at any given time to a world and life that is beyond our own immediate circumstances. To connect with that reality can make us feel stronger.
A few rituals and mindful changes in your home may help you reclaim, strengthen and hold onto a connection between yourself and your home.
The following suggestions are just some examples and you may be inspired to come up with your own ideas, that fit in with your mood, reality and lifestyle. Feeling safe at home is individual and unique to you.
Cleanse your home physically. We do spring cleaning and clearing out. Why not do the same to let go of the old and welcome the new season?
Cleanse your home spiritually. This can be done in many ways, depending on your preferences and beliefs with prayer, affirmations, sounds, dance, burning of incense and so much more.
Create a place of light, ideally a light that is left on all day and night (like a battery powered tea light which is safe and comparatively cheap). The light is symbolic of the connection of life between you and your home. The light welcomes you home and stays behind when you leave. It is a predictable constant.
Decorate at least one corner of your home with some seasonal offerings from nature. It does not need to be anything grand or expensive – a cone, a leaf, a branch, a chestnut etc. You can combine this with the light and again reinforce your sense of connection to nature, the seasons, life around and beyond you.
Welcome your self and your troubled soul into your home.
When we feel overwhelmed we need more space and less clutter. @KarinSieger (Click to Tweet!)
Be in tune with the changing seasons.
As you re-tune and recharge your home to the season and make it a welcoming space also pay attention to re-tuning yourself to the season when you are outdoors: noticing the colours, air, smells, temperatures and sounds.
We are absorbing stimuli and energy all of the time, some more or less helpful, some very toxic, some nurturing and healing. By recharging yourself you will automatically recharge the place you live in.
When others are not supportive
Depending on your living arrangements you may feel this all difficult to achieve. Especially, if others frown upon these suggestions.
These homecoming rituals can be discreet, very personal and subtle. Your attitude and open heart matters more than gestures.
To keep feeling safe at home when the world is uncertain, we all need to work on affirming and stabilising who we are.
It may not change the world the way we would like it to be, but it will help us to live more firmly in a changing world.
Originally published on KarinSieger.com.
Karin Sieger is a psychotherapist and writer based in London, UK. Central to her work is the belief that we all have an intuitive wisdom for self development and emotional healing. Making and living in peace with our self is core to living well and coping with personal crises. Karin is particularly interested in anxiety, loss, transitions and the emotional impact of chronic or life-shortening illnesses like cancer, for which she has been treated herself. Karin posts regularly on her website KarinSieger.com. You can sign up for her Newsletter, follow her on Twitter or Facebook.
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