What if the reason you still feel anxious around people, even those you trust, has nothing to do with how “confident” you are, and everything to do with whether your body feels safe?In therapy rooms, we often speak about the importance of safety. We reassure clients: 'You’re safe here', or 'This is a confidential space'
When I speak about felt safety, I’m talking about something deeper, more embodied. It’s not just about safety being available, it’s about whether your nervous system believes it and here’s the truth: we can’t heal shame without felt safety.
Most of us know, on some level, when we are no longer in danger. We get out of the relationship, we leave the toxic job, we grow up and move away from the home where the damage happened. But knowing we’re safe doesn’t mean we feel safe.
Shame wires us to stay alert. If you’ve grown up in an environment where love was conditional, emotions were punished, or silence was survival, your nervous system likely adapted to stay small, compliant, pleasing, invisible.
This is not a failure of character; it’s a deeply intelligent survival strategy.But here’s where it gets tangled. Shame internalises the belief that you were the problem and when you carry that belief into adulthood, even the most well-meaning relationships can feel threatening. You could be sitting across from the kindest therapist in the world, and still your stomach clenches, your chest tightens, and your brain tells you to say, “I’m fine.”
Shame is not just an emotion, it’s a relational trauma, the embodied memory of not being seen, not being safe, not being wanted. It disconnects us from our sense of identity and replaces it with self-surveillance and internal blame.
Think of it like this. If fear says, something bad might happen, shame says, something bad is happening because of who I am.
When that belief gets embedded early, your nervous system becomes conditioned to expect threat, even in spaces that should feel healing. This is why trauma survivors often find it hard to relax. Even when nothing is “wrong” their bodies haven’t learned what it feels like to be held without judgement, or worse, they’ve learned that vulnerability comes at a cost.
Felt safety isn’t just about external conditions. It’s an internal state of being. When we feel safe, we:
It’s the moment a client realises they don’t have to smile while talking about their pain.
It’s when someone says, “I don’t know what I feel,” and we don’t rush to fill the silence.
It’s when your body stops bracing for disappointment.Felt safety is the foundation that makes healing shame possible. Without it, every therapeutic insight stays in the head, never quite landing in the heart or the body.
Many of those I work with arrive in therapy worn out by unidentified and unhealed shame. They’re the reliable ones - the peacemakers - the ones who overfunction while quietly eroding inside.
Shame lives in the body. You might know you're not to blame for what happened, but still carry a deep, quiet sense that something’s wrong with you. That’s not because you’re broken, it’s because cognitive understanding alone isn’t enough to shift what your nervous system still believes.
That’s why it’s so important to bring the body into the healing process. When you begin to notice what safety actually feels like, in your breath, your chest, your gut, you’re not just managing symptoms, you’re gently rewiring old beliefs that told you you had to earn love, stay small, or keep performing to belong.
This is the difference between coping and true integration, this is where lasting change begins.
This is where felt safety becomes revolutionary.
When we start to feel safe in our "no", when we experience someone witnessing our need or boundary without shame, something shifts. A new internal map begins to form, this is map built on authenti self-honour.
Within my Honour Framework, I describe authentic self- honour as the antidote to toxic, unhealed or unwitnessed shame experiences. While shame isolates, dishonours, and distorts, honour restores, reconnects, and reclaims.
Living in authentic self-honour means:
It’s not about ego or perfection. It’s about self-recognition. Seeing yourself with compassion and dignity, even when you're still healing, especially then.
Authentic self-honour allows us to show up messy and human without fear of being discarded and that is what helps our nervous system feel safe enough to soften.
Let me offer you a fictionalised composite story based on real therapeutic dynamics.
Maria came to therapy after years of high achievement. She was a perfectionist, a people-pleaser, and visibly successful, but she never felt relaxed. Her body was always tense, her smile always ready.
In the third session, she began speaking about her childhood, how her mum would withdraw affection when Maria cried or got something wrong. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” she said suddenly, pulling back. “It’s not a big deal.”
I didn’t challenge her logic. I didn’t ask her to go deeper. I just said, “I want you to know you don’t have to make it smaller for me to stay with you.”
She burst into tears. Not just because of the words, but because, for the first time in a long time, her body felt safe enough to let them come.
Shame doesn’t just live in the mind, its also carried in the body. That’s why even when you know something isn’t your fault, you might still feel a deep, nagging sense that something is wrong with you. Cognitive insight helps, but it isn’t always enough.
Healing shame means bringing the body into the conversation and paying attention to how safety feels in the body is a vital part of that process. When you begin to notice and trust those signals, you’re not just calming symptoms, you’re gradually reshaping the beliefs that were built around pain.
This is what makes healing sustainable and it goes beyond surface-level coping and allows for genuine, lasting healing.
Felt safety is also about reclaiming space in the world, in your home, your workplace, your relationships, and your body. Many people raised in emotionally neglectful or abusive environments internalise the belief that their presence is too much, too loud, or too needy, so they shrink, apologise, smile, adapt.
Living in authentic self-honour invites a different posture. One where you no longer need to diminish yourself to be accepted and where your worth isn’t negotiated.
This reclamation is not loud or performative, often, it begins with something small:
That is authentic self-honour in action and when you live from this place, your body begins to learn: I am safe to be who I am.
If you’re reading this and wondering where to start, begin here:
Healing from shame isn’t about becoming perfect. It’s about becoming whole. Felt safety isn’t something you earn once you’re “better” it’s what makes healing possible in the first place.
Without it, we stay trapped in cycles of survival, with it, we access the courage to reclaim identity, worth, and voice.
You deserve to feel safe, to rest, to breathe and to be seen. Not just in your head, but in your body, your relationships, and your everyday life.
This is the slow, courageous work of shame recovery. And it begins with authentic self-honour.
By Kay Parkinson
Therapist | Founder of Place to Talk Therapies and creator of The Honour Framework™
Working with individuals to heal shame, rebuild identity, and reclaim their worth through the power of authentic honour.
