How to feel safe?

CW for this post: autism, possible neglect, being unsafe

It's been a while since I last posted. I still do not have a diagnosis because it's not how my T works, but my trauma therapist is really good and we work really well together.

I said last time that how could I be plural if I had no childhood trauma? Well...it was discovered that I have autism and that I have sensory processing problems that made the environment around me unsafe for me. I was in a dangerous environment my whole life till now and I didn't even know it.
And because my parents (who are good people) did not know I am autistic, they minimized things that were really important for me and denied me sensory input I needed to be safe because it wasn't 'socially appropriate'.

My T told me that the only way I could survive was to cut myself off from everyone and everything. There are only two people I feel safe with, my aunt and uncle, that I actually have a safe attachment with, but they live on the other side of the world. They also do not know I feel this way and I do not have contact with them unless they are here every 2-3 years. The past few days the only thing I've wanted is for my uncle to cuddle me. It feels like a child that wants their father to cuddle them. It's sad.

But the thing that happened recently that haunts me is that a different aunt recognised my autism when I was little and chose not to tell anyone, and deprived me of any support for it. Is this medical neglect? I don't know. But it really triggered someone because I've been feeling extremely lonely and unsafe recently. It made me realise that apart from my aunt and uncle I don't know what it means to be safe and how to do it.
So...how do you do it? What does safety mean for you and how did you learn to feel safe?

Hi and welcome back !

We have DID + suspicion of autism, we're currently doing what we need to do to get a diagnosis (so complicated when you're an adult in our country...). Our parents never suspected anything because dissociation hide a lot of things, and we learned to mask the rest pretty soon.

So yeah, we know well how it can be hard to feel safe. We never felt safe, really truly safe, before meeting our boyfriend. We thought we reached safety in the past, but truth is, it was never true safety. We were always scared of something.

For us, safety means : having people who support you, having your needs met, having the inner resources to protect yourself, and having a place which isn't threatening for you in any way.

On the trauma side, it means we're not scared of violence in any shape, we know we can express ourselves and be heard, we know we can go at our own pace without facing judgment, we know we don't have to pretend to be normal in order to be loved, we know the person will not encourage our inappropriate behaviors when we're triggered.

It's still new to us, but if we feel we can't do something, we can tell our boyfriend and he will not make any comment. Like, when we can't go outside because we're too tired and just a walk at the park nearby would be overstimulating for us, he just says "ok, is there something else you want to do ?". It feels weird to not have someone who will insist until we behave the way they want like my mom do (now we're good at keeping our boundaries with her).

If we have an issue, he will hear us, he will not do the "you have to do what I think it's best to solve your issue, I don't care if you're too tired or not agree" thing my mom loves to do.

When we're triggered, he doesn't let our protectors go into "full angry not rationality" mode or tells us it's stupid to be emotional over this or that. He gently reminds them of the reality of the situation, without denying their feelings. Just "I'm not sure if it's the right solution", "maybe you go a bit far", "don't you think there's something else you can do ?" or reminding us we're adult and not helpless now, we can defend ourselves, and he will help us.

And now, you can add autism to the equation...

With autism and sensory issues, having a place without threat would mean a place without bad sensory trigger. Like, just right now, I live with my mom, and she's playing music loudly on her computer. I have auditory sensibility and I know I'll have to tell her to lower down the volume. She learned to respect that, but a few months ago, she would have complained a lot, saying it's not normal to be that sensitive (*sigh*). A year ago, I wouldn't even have the courage to ask her to lower down the volume. It meant my brain was constantly on the verge of being overwhelmed by the auditory stimuli, and this count as a threat. It's stressful and painful.

Having people who support you can be having people who let you do your stimming. Stimming is something that helps a lot to minimize the stress when the brain is tired and almost overwhelmed. Even non-autistic people do it when they are being overwhelmed - they're just not as easily overwhelmed. For us, being stopped when we stim is somehow physically painful. It's a threat.

Usually we're rocking from left to right when we're tired, not much, but enough to be noticeable if you pay attention. My boyfriend doesn't mind, but I still have a hard time doing it in front of people if there's too many chances they'll notice. Because that's something my mom doesn't like at all, it makes us clearly look autistic, and she still doesn't really accept it. Just yesterday, she noticed we were rocking (she had turned on the TV while commenting everything on it, and we were too tired to express our needs), and said "You're rocking now ?...", with a ton and a look which suggested she found that completely ridiculous. Instant shame, paralyzed by the child alters, dissociation took place because it was too painful to just sit there and endure the auditory stimuli.

We do flapping (we know how to make it barely noticeable) and have echolalia when we're doing grocery shopping and are tired. We also have delayed answers, not much, but a few seconds still. Again, our boyfriend doesn't mind and just wait for us to process his question at our own pace. Our mother wants an answer right now, and having us repeating a bit of her question or sentence drives her crazy. With her, we developed the habit of saying "ok" or "whatever you want" without even trying to process what she asked for in order to avoid all of that.

So yep, we don't feel totally safe on a daily basis because we still live with my mom while we're at the university, and she doesn't respect our needs enough. But we know it will be better when we'll leave. We experienced that when she left for a trip of two weeks, leaving us totally alone at home, and during our holidays with our boyfriend. That's the moment we discovered we're far more functioning than we thought, and also realized some of our needs. We discovered other needs by talking with some of our friends who have autism too and are more aware of theirs, comparing our feelings and experiences on daily life situation, etc.

The general idea is feeling safe when you have autism can be hard if you have people close to you in your life who don't care to adjust themselves to your needs. It's even harder when you've been traumatized, because, like we've experienced, you might don't know what your needs are + they can be really different from the non-autistic people. But that's something you can discover and learn. You're already doing a great job by asking !

Feeling safe is a difficult thing, and from our experience it's a combination of things that you have to do - a large part of it is in your control.
You have to take some control over your environment and set proper boundaries.
These two things are critical in our experiences. If you don't have safety in location, physically where you are, and cannot have healthy boundaries, safety with relationships, you will never have a sense of feeling safe.

How to do this, IDK entirely. We're still struggling with it, too. What's helped us has been routine, setting routines, having safe places, activities that comfort and/or offer a sense of relief or escape.

Find those small things, make small steps towards alleviating the feelings, little escapes. Little steps can build into bigger things.