The Safety Illusion
May 21, 2025One of the most persistent patterns I encounter in my transformational coaching work is what I call "the safety illusion" – the belief that safety exists outside ourselves and that external circumstances must be controlled to feel secure.
This illusion manifests as:
- Hyper vigilance about what others might think of you
- Fear of social judgment and rejection
- Desperate attempts to control external outcomes
- A belief that you need protection from outside threats
- Exhausting yourself trying to anticipate problems before they arise
As one client powerfully expressed: "I feel like I give so much of myself to make my external environment safe. But at the end of the day, it's not."
This week, I want to explore how this pattern keeps us trapped in a cycle of fear and how we can begin to create true safety from within.
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The Paradox of External Safety
The paradox of seeking safety externally is that it creates the very lack of safety it's trying to solve. When we focus our energy outward – scanning for threats, trying to control outcomes, worrying about others' perceptions – we deplete our internal resources and actually become more vulnerable.
A client described this brilliantly: "There's so much energy going out... I'll burn outdoing the simplest of tasks. It doesn't matter what it is. It's the perpetual commitment to surviving the external reality."
This external focus creates a self-reinforcing loop:
- You perceive threats in your environment
- You mobilise energy to protect yourself from these threats
- This depletes your internal resources, making you feel more vulnerable
- Feeling vulnerable, you perceive even more threats
- The cycle continues, intensifying with each iteration
The Two Sides of the Program
What makes this pattern so persistent is that it operates as a two-sided program in our consciousness:
Side One: "There's no one here to protect me."
Side Two: "There is something out there I need protection from."
These two beliefs reinforce each other, creating a closed system that's difficult to break. As long as you believe there are external threats, you'll feel the need for protection. As long as you feel unprotected, you'll perceive threats everywhere.
The truth that liberates us is recognising that both sides of this program are illusions.
Breaking the Program
To disrupt this pattern, we need to challenge both sides simultaneously:
- Challenge the belief that you need protection: The only true pain that is ever existing is within you. Experiences come and go, moments come and go, words come and go. But the everlasting pain is within you—that's yours.
- Challenge the belief in external threats: There's nothing out there that can hurt you. The person that hurts you most time and time again is you. You're the one you need protection from. No one else.
As I told a client recently: "Your consciousness is invested in a fear state of reality. The underpinning program is that there is an external threat and I need to be protected from it. But what it's doing is bypassing the real threat, which is the ongoing creation of this program in your reality."
This Week's Practice:
The Reality Inventory
When you feel yourself spiralling into fear about external threats, try this practice:
- Pause and breathe: Take three deep breaths to centre yourself
- Scan your surroundings: What do you actually see, hear, and feel in this moment?
- Ask yourself these questions:
- Is my body physically safe right now?
- Is anyone actually saying or doing anything harmful to me?
- What proof do I have that I'm in danger?
- What am I making this situation mean about me?
- Affirm what's true: "In this moment, I am safe. There is nothing out here that can hurt me."
This practice isn't about denying real physical dangers when they exist. Rather, it's about distinguishing between actual threats and the imagined ones created by our programming.
As one client realised: "I may find that when I take that pause and create space, this amazing thing happens where I actually see the truth of reality unfolding before me, and that's where I can actually witness fully and completely how safe this dimension is."
Beyond the Identity Program
The hardest part of this work is recognising how deeply our sense of identity is tied to the safety illusion. When we challenge these patterns, it can feel like a death—because it is. It's the death of a version of ourselves that has been running on autopilot.
This doesn't mean everything in your life changes overnight. Your circumstances may remain the same. What changes is your relationship to them. Instead of feeling at the mercy of external reality, you begin to witness it with clarity and meet it with your full presence.
This is the journey of becoming conscious—not gaining control over the external world, but recognising that true safety has always been available from within.
"The true lack of safety is that our energy is external—it's not meant to be like that, but we've never been taught how to internalise our energy and create safety internally and then move from there."
Allura Halliwell
