The Energetics of Inner Safety

And how to build solid foundations within yourself

Photo by Zach Reiner on Unsplash

Have you ever felt that no matter how much inner work you do, there’s still a subtle, uneasy feeling around others?

Like a background hum of tension, making it hard to fully relax and be yourself?

You’re not alone. Recently I've been meeting more and more people, clients and friends alike, sharing with me the same story: I don't often feel safe around other people.

The interesting part is that I hear this from people regardless of how much work they’ve done on themselves. It could be people who have spent years meditating, working with plant medicines, or practicing all sorts of other modalities, and yet they still experience this lack of inner safety in relationships.

So if we do all this inner healing work and we still have these problems, what is it that we are not getting?

Let's start with the question why Inner Safety is important.

Why Inner Safety Matters

Why would anyone actually want to feel safe within themselves?

In a way, it's a silly question because the answer seems so obvious. But on the other hand, few people ever stop to contemplate this on a deeper level. What most of us are aware of is that we want to feel confident, empowered, open to others and the world- fully ourselves and alive! (You can add your own list of goodies here).

So what’s in the way of that?

Our thoughts and emotions, of course. The negative stories we tell ourselves—stories that most of the time are so deeply buried in our subconscious that we don’t even recognise them as stories. We mistake them for reality, for facts, for just the way things are. And what does that have to do with inner safety, you ask?

Actually, everything.

The Foundation of Safety: Attunement and Goodwill

You see, any kind of safety, inner or outer, comes primarily from proper attunement—from deeply feeling ourselves and each other. In other words, it comes from intimacy.

Only when I know that you can truly feel my heart do I trust that it is in good hands with you.

Safety also comes from goodwill—that universal code of I wish you no harm (also known as kindness). When these two qualities—attunement and goodwill—are present, we feel safe. Our nervous system relaxes, we open up, and we experience a natural state of ease. We experience what we often refer to as our true selves: who we are in the absence of the contracted state of our mind and being. Who we are without our stories. We experience our essence.

How This Plays Out in Everyday Life

Let’s say kindness is a given—at least externally. The people around us mean us no harm.

And yet, we still feel anxious or nervous about being ourselves around them.

What’s missing, then, is attunement—and with it, intimacy.

Most people don’t know how to be fully present with one another. Why? Because most people are living up in their heads, interpreting the world through the filters of their conditioning, rather than being willing to feel the present moment as it is. If people are disconnected from their bodies—living in their minds rather than inhabiting their physicality—it becomes difficult for others to feel them.

When someone does try to feel them, what they often pick up on is incoherence: a mismatch between what the person says and what their energy transmits. That’s confusing. And the result?

We don’t trust them.

Which means... we don’t feel safe.

This alone is a rabbit hole we could explore endlessly, but for now, let’s turn inward—as there is often not much we can do to change the outside world, especially the people in it. We can, however, shift how we relate to ourselves.

The Two Ways We Respond to Inner Discomfort

We all carry our own stories and face our own challenges in fully inhabiting our bodies. Depending on how much work we’ve done to bring awareness to our inner patterns, we tend to fall into one of two scenarios:

1. We are either completely unaware of our deeper feelings and simply react to them. This means we shut down without even realising it. (That’s just me, we say. I’m an introvert. I don’t like groups.)

Or

2. We are aware of the little voices that whisper sweet poison in our ears: Don’t be too loud. You’re being stupid. Awkward. You shouldn’t… Or we’re aware of uncomfortable physical sensations—our heart racing, sweaty palms, a blocked throat—but we don’t know what to do with them.

This is where kindness comes in.
And many of us have a lot to learn about it.

It’s not enough to simply be aware of what we feel.
We need to come into the right relationship with it.

There is almost always a little voice making our inner reality wrong.

That voice can be so deeply ingrained and insidious…It's like a shadow that no matter how much you try to run away from, it keeps following you around.

You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?

It’s that moment when your legs shake during a public speech, and deep down, you judge and hate yourself for it.

Why do I always feel like this? What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I be normal? Everyone else is having fun, looking confident, totally at ease—and I’m dying inside. I’m such a loser.

The Root of Inner Un-Safety

This question 'what's wrong with me?’ is at the core of our inner un-safety and all the struggles that come with it. For how can we feel safe within ourselves if we are in constant conflict and fighting with ourselves?

And fighting we do.

Every single time we judge the experience we are having as wrong or undesirable, we fight with reality and life itself.

When we fight what is, we weaken our own foundation. And shaky foundations create (inner) un-safety.

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You might have never been fully aware of this. Or maybe it doesn't live in exactly those words within you.

But I’ve worked with enough people to know:

At our core, there is often a suspicion that something is wrong with us. Or there is the constant question of ‘Am I good enough?’

This is known as core unworthiness. Or simply put—shame.

When this goes unexamined, it quietly eats away at us, undermining all our efforts to develop self-confidence, self-trust, and sovereignty—no matter how much inner work we do.

In fact, I believe this is the single most crucial factor driving the healing industry today. The perfect business model.

Because if someone never feels good enough, they can be kept on the merry-go-round of healing forever.

There will always be one more thing to fix.

And as long as we look outside of ourselves we will never be good enough.

Let’s recap what we got so far:

1. The feeling of something is wrong with me—or the compulsion to judge ourselves—comes from deep-seated core unworthiness.

2. We don't like feeling that and this in turn creates inner conflict, because rather than attending to what we feel, we try to fix or heal it.

3. Beneath this need to change ourselves is the belief that we shouldn’t be feeling this way. (Straight away we are in conflict: I shouldn't be feeling like this, but I am feeling like this…when we are in that place, our psyche has no other option but to ask the question: what is wrong with me?)

4. Anything that is in conflict weakens its own foundation. Shaky foundations create (inner) un-safety.

5. The only way out of it is to stop fighting our inner experience and start listening.

Once we deeply attune to our feelings and meet them with kindness—without making them wrong—we build a solid relationship with all parts of ourselves.

And that relationship becomes the foundation of inner safety, no matter the outside circumstance.

In essence we say to ourselves: I got your back kiddo.
I will never abandon you. You are safe with me.

This is just the tip of the iceberg.

Understanding this is one thing, but embodying it—actually feeling safe in your skin, not just intellectually getting it—is another.

On top of that, even though this is the absolute foundation, there are countless nuances like

What do I do when someone is actually truly unsafe?
How do I tell the difference between my own filters and their projections?
How do I hold my centre in the presence of others’ emotions, expectations, or projections?
How do I communicate my boundaries in an efficient way?

This article is too small to capture all of them.

And as all good things in life, the real juice comes with practice.

The Energetics of Inner Safety Online Course

That’s why I’m putting together a four-week workshop called (you guessed it :):
The Energetics of Inner Safety, starting in April.

This is an opportunity to go much deeper—not just to understand inner safety, but to embody it in real, practical ways.

We’ll work with Nervous System Regulation tools from Somatics, HeartIQ circle work, authentic relating practices, and self-inquiry—all designed to help uncover and shift the deep patterns that hold you back.

If you’re tired of feeling like just half the person you know you are deep down, or if this simply resonates with you, check out my website for all the info or send me an email at info@kasiapatzelt.com, and I’ll share the details.

Looking forward to meeting you!

Kasia