How to Build an Emotional Safety Net

How to Build an Emotional Safety Net

This article relates to Prima Facie

Tessa Ensler wants her mother. The heroine of Suzie Miller's Prima Facie is in a panicky mess after a sexual assault, and, like many of us when things go sideways, she wants her mother's arms wrapped around her. She wants her mother's acceptance and kindness. When she confides that she "had a bad experience" and has "been to the police to report it," her mother, referred to in the story simply as Mum, doesn't hesitate. She drops everything to be at Tessa's side.

In moments of trauma, an emotional safety net is critical to recovery. People need people, as the song says. Psychologists agree. Emotional safety comes from being loved. When dealing with stress, grief, and anxiety, we need to reach out to those who love us the most. We need their kindness and compassion. "We human beings are among the most defenseless and vulnerable creatures on the planet," Helene Brenner, Ph.D and Larry Letich, LCSW-C explain in an article for Psychology Today, "We have no claws, no sharp teeth, no quills and we can't even run very fast." Humans have evolved to surround ourselves with others for safety through emotional bonds, so our emotional safety is tied to physical safety. Our emotions keep us alive.

There are physical clues that suggest you feel emotionally safe. Your heart rate and breathing slow. Perspiration triggered by stress abates. Your muscles relax. More positive thoughts than negative circle inside the brain. You can better tolerate physical pain. "Since emotional safety is a feeling, if you have it with someone, you know what it feels like," Brenner and Letich write.

Another piece on Brenner's website advises on how to build an emotional safety net, outlining four critical steps. Find people who are accepting of you. Take risks, become vulnerable. Establish a "bodyguard," someone to protect you. Finally, be both discerning and forgiving.

In Miller's novel, Mum isn't put off by her daughter's trauma. "My mother looks wounded, like she has taken a bullet. I start to shake. Mum notices and puts her hands on me, leading me to the sofa…my mother is filled with a fury but she asks no questions. Her knuckles are pulled tight, white. Would you like me to clean the bathroom love?" Tessa's friend Mia offers some of her trust fund money to help with expenses. While Tessa's brother Johnny wants to fight. He sees it as his job to protect her: "I can't let him get away with this. You're my sister." Tessa, ever the lawyer, responds, "It didn't happen to you, and I am NOT your property to fight for."

Relationships are alliances with kindness going in both directions. Tolerance and acceptance are primary tools for successful relationships and the reasons why people rally around their friends when troubles hit. Clinical psychologist Michael Schreiner talks about the importance of maintaining an emotional safety net for the purpose of being able to take risks and occasionally fail, comparing this to how tightrope walkers can walk so high above the ground because they practice on a rope low to the ground first. "Then they graduate to the real thing, but with a safety net to catch them when they fall. And they do fall many times while honing their skills, it's part of the process."

The emotional safety net isn't the rose but it is the garden, it isn't the process but it is the result, the collection of friends and family that are there when you leap, fall on your face, sustain damage. While they may not be able to prevent injury, they can mitigate it, repair your confidence, love you through the hurt, and remind you why you are so special.

Take Adam, for example, a fellow barrister Tess considers a confidant. Amidst her work-life turmoil, he sends her a simple text that sweetly reads, "I am so proud to be your friend."

Filed under Medicine, Science and Tech

This "beyond the book article" relates to Prima Facie. It originally ran in February 2024 and has been updated for the January 2025 paperback edition. Go to magazine.