Lack of Emotional Safety as a Sign of an Abusive Relationship

Emotional safety is vague when it isn’t there, and it’s ever so palatable when it is. What is being emotionally safe? And how does this serve as an indicator...an internal red flag of a potentially destructive relationship.

What is emotional safety?

Emotionally safe is a feeling that your inner most thoughts, feelings and experience are, and will be, honored as one honors themselves. You need not prove, nor impress; you just simply are. When it is present you feel open, even, at ease, and fluid with the spontaneity of a healthy child.

The absence of being emotionally safe carries an air of guardedness, and an uneven tempo of highs and lows, of opening up (possibly for the wrong reasons) and closing down often without awareness of the tendency to do so.

When emotional safety is there, you know it. When it’s not there, you may not know it until you are a part of what keeps it going.

How might the lack of emotional safety be an indicator of a less than positive relationship?

The lack of emotional safety is one of the primary internal indicators of a potentially abusive relationship. It may be as subtle as not honoring your privacy, your boundaries, your interests, your experience, your feelings, you for who and what you are.

If you are in a relationship in which your emotional safety is not absolutely palatable, be mindful that you may be walking on some potentially dangerous waters. If you are perplexed as to even knowing emotional safety in a relationship as something tangible, then you may want to better understand the red flags of abusive relationships.