Present Moment Messy Question of the Day: Gatekeepers and Safe Spaces
Gate Keepers keeps us safe.
Before the age of about 7 we don’t have a gatekeeper. Our minds are little sponges soaking up every idea and belief that floats by. We learn directly and indirectly from the people and environment around us. But We don’t have the ability to filter any of those influences or discern good, bad, right or wrong about any of them. But those influences become an integral part of how we view our lives, how we think, and what we believe. Whether you like it or not those early influences become our filter over time. If you listen closely, that influence, that filter starts to sound a lot like the voices of the people who shaped you. Parents, clergy, teachers, family members, friends.
That filter that we see the world through, woven with the voices of our past, serves to keep us safe in whatever experience we know. In effect, it is our own internal safe space. Everyone has one. We maintain it with confirmation bias and identity politics and apparently Facebook Groups.
What happens when something challenges your gatekeeper? What happens when an idea that runs counter to your world view gets into your safe space? Maybe you’ve seen this play out in real life on college campuses and more recently online. Students being accused of “microaggressions” for expressing a different opinion or going against the group. Using incendiary labels like “cult” and “mob” to dehumanize anyone who disagrees with a particular belief system. As we’ve seen, the backlash can be violent.
That violence happens first inside the mind of the individual first. First there’s resistance, not to the different idea itself because who really cares what anyone else thinks about anything. No, the resistance is to the feeling of shame that rises up in every single one of us at the suggestion that we might be wrong. No one likes that. But it’s even more unacceptable if our gatekeepers are wrong. Our gatekeepers are the foundation of our safe view of the world.
If we want to keep our safe view of the world as we know it then too often we need to make anything that falls outside of that wrong. Perhaps that means that anyone who succeeds beyond what we believe is possible is somehow criminal or immoral. It might mean that people who love differently don’t deserve legal recognition. Maybe it means the circumstances of your birth makes you a perpetual victim. Whatever the beliefs we have that make up our safe space it’s our own gatekeeper that keeps us locked in them. When your gatekeeper, the voices from your past, runs amok it can create chaos and self loathing.
Messy question of the day. Whose responsibility is it to keep you safe from challenges to your beliefs? Who is your gatekeeper?
If we truly want to live in a better world. If we want to really live in a world where people are free to live their lives, pursue their happiness and experience success in all it’s many many forms, then maybe the first thing we need to do is unlock the gate to our own personal safe spaces and maybe fire the gatekeeper…
I’m Ericka
I’m a health coach, nutrition specialist, yoga instructor & certified TRE provider. And after 20 yrs of experience in the fitness industry I believe it’s time for a shift in focus. It’s time to move wellness beyond simply what the eyes can see.
I coach warriors.
Guiding outstanding individuals off the battlefield of trauma For lasting resilience to all sources of stress, tension and anxiety. Join me as we explore natural balanced ways to work through the body to re-establish safety in the body and find recovery - for the body, mind & spirit.