Safeguarding Yourself
Erica Kesse
Safeguarding Yourself
Safeguard is to protect and honor yourself. You will be aware of your emotions, how others make you feel, and take healthy self-responsible action to soothe yourself.
Toxicity is the quality of being very harmful or unpleasant in a persistent or deceptive way. Our emotions are great indicators of if we are experiencing toxicity. Pay attention to them as our emotions have always been our safeguards. We just seem to ignore, push down, disregard, or reason them away. Honor your emotions and yourself.
Now, 11 practical ways to safeguard yourself:
1. 7 Minute Sunshine tool of discontinuing the interaction after 7 minutes if it does not make you feel warm, connected, and loved.
2. Leave the situation or circumstance at least to reset and understand your emotions
3. Use "I Feel" Statements (I feel __________ (emotion) when you ___________ (behavior). I would like you to ____________ (boundary).
4. Assert and reiterate your boundaries, guidelines to keep you safe
5. Deep breathing
6. Notice if you are feeling your emotions or someone else's emotions
7. 15 minutes of focusing/ being with yourself without doing anything
8. Decide how long you will endure the situation out of obligations, leave as you agreed to yourself, then do something that brings you joy or brings you back to yourself
9. Manage your emotions and let others manage their emotions
10. Be gentle with yourself and your inner child
11. Lean on support system people to help you cope in healthy life-bringing ways
You got this!
