What is a 'safe place' in Emotional Logic terms?

The central and vital feature of Emotional Chaos Theory, the one that moves on from understanding chaos in physical systems to understanding chaos in inter-personal systems, is the notion of a 'safe place'. A cloud has no need of a safe place (as far as we know!), but chaos theory can predict when it might burst into rain - can describe its 'bifurcation point'. A human being bursting into tears is participating in a far more subtle system.

In Emotional Logic terms, a safe place is more than just a hide-away from danger or risk. The Emotional Logic toolkit - such as the Activity Pack or the CD Home Study Programme - is a set of resources to map the emotional terrain out of which your responses in difficult situations emerge. The purpose of a safe place is to give yourself some time and mental space to do that mapping. Your safe place is not a bomb shelter; it's your war office; it's your planning department.

When life is getting stressed, many people will go to bed as a safe place. There's nothing wrong with that! All we suggest is that you take your CD set, or your Activity Pack, to bed with you, and you turn that place of rest into a place of gentle learning.

Human beings, ALL human beings, need safe places out of which to emerge and turn life's chaos into creative order. There are three sorts of safe place: a physical place; a state of mind; and, for some people, a trusted relationship. As a general rule, people know that if they can get to their safe place quickly they will be better able to assess their resources to handle this next situation.

We would add that, with effective mapping of your emotional terrain, you will be able to handle the situation with less distress and more choices of influence.

More about why that is so later...

Re-humanising organisations to reduce emotional chaos

Part of the beauty of Emotional Logic is that it can get inside the patterns of relationships that have been established among families, or staff, and with ‘clients’ or recipients of a service, and then map the values that need to be Bargained during change, or Accepted as lost. Its strategy can re-humanise organisations by thus introducing a factor for morale into the equation for change. Picturing in card and tick patterns how connection (love) between people has been frustrated into grief can ‘put a handle’ on this intangible feature of organisations, and of families. The insight and understanding so pictured is the ‘x factor’ needed to re-humanise choices where individuals and communities interface.

A tick-pattern on an Emotional Logic Loss Reaction Worksheet is immeasurable, but very influential. To reflect on it creates sufficient time for insight at this depth to influence the personal connections, decisions and action planning that continuously re-make an organisation.

Then people feel heard.

If people do not feel heard, emotional chaos starts bubbling.

Getting on the move

Chaos gets organised by responding to feedback. That is why the Emotional Logic toolkit contains card-sorting and worksheets designed to see emotional patterns. There is no other method around like it.

The feedback can happen even without words. Handling the cards gives you a sense of influence over your inner emotional world, and engagement with it. You are no longer a victim of your emotions, but you gain the power of choice over which ones you'll stay with, and which one's you'll move on from.

[Background info! Emotions are processed in the core of the brain, activated from memories and the sense inputs that arrive from the back half of the brain. Action planning is organised in the front part of the brain. Organising muscle actions there feeds-back to also organise your emotions! SO... when you handle cards on which the names of emotions are written, you sort them into a pattern that feels right for this or that situation, and you are actually handling your inner emotional states. Yes, you do learn to experience your emotions in a safe way that YOU CAN INFLUENCE. That's worth learning!]