Dr. Nerina Ramlakhan

Finding Inner Safety


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work of Stephen Porges and read his book The Polyvagal Theory, several pennies dropped, and my own life changed. Something settled in me, maybe my own nervous system settled as I discovered missing links. I fell in love with Stephen Porges’ work, but his book might not be accessible to all.

      From a Polyvagal perspective, a focus on autonomic balance obfuscates the importance of the phylogenetically-ordered response hierarchy of how the autonomic nervous system reacts to challenges.

      But the world still wasn't quite ready.

      In February 2020, I sat with the commissioning editor for one of the biggest publishing houses in the world talking about this book. ‘It'll be a hard sell for our sales team. People won't know what “feeling safe” means’, she said.

      Three weeks later we hit the pandemic. Suddenly, everyone is not feeling safe. Everyone is rushing out bulk-buying toilet paper, rice, and pasta, and wearing masks. The urban hunter-gatherer was well and truly in survival mode.

       It is time to reset the nervous system if we're going to thrive.

      Life keeps giving me opportunities to talk to people about feeling safe. Recently, in the magical setting of Ashridge Business School in the UK, I spoke to an international group of leaders about the nervous system and feeling safe. One of them, a successful businessman who leads a large international team in a well-known accountancy firm, came up to me afterwards and said that he hadn't realized that what he'd been feeling for years was ‘unsafe’ and that my words had been a ‘wake-up’ for him.

      When you've grown up feeling fear every day of your life, the sensation of fear becomes normal. You habituate to it. In fact, it wasn't until I was 31 years old and a therapist in the psychiatric unit I'd just been admitted to asked me ‘How are you feeling?’ that I realized that I'd been afraid most of my life – not excited (what I'd told myself).

      What was I afraid of? At the time I didn't know. All I know is that there was a bad feeling stuck in my body and I perpetually felt unsafe. Often it served me well – it drove me to run fast and I did – completing seven marathons and over 40 triathlons. Feeling unsafe drove me to achieve, to get stuff done, to win, to be the best. But I was afraid most of the time. My moods oscillated between high energy, verging on hyperactive, in which I was the life and soul of the party and then withdrawn, depressed, and exhausted – very few people saw me in this state but I was known for cancelling social engagements at short notice. Both states derive from living in the wrong part of the nervous system, from running on fear.

       There are only two emotions: love and fear. All positive emotions come from love, all negative emotions from fear. From love flows happiness, contentment, peace and joy. From fear comes anger, hate, anxiety, and guilt. It's true that there are only two primary emotions, love and fear. But it's more accurate to say that there is only love or fear, for we cannot feel these two emotions together, at exactly the same time. They are opposites. If we're in fear, we are not in a place of love. When we are in a place of love, we cannot be in a place of fear.

      When we feel unsafe, everything comes from FEAR. When we feel safe, everything stems from LOVE. So, we're either running away from life or running towards it. What are you doing? Do you know?

      At the point of my ‘breakdown’ (for simplicity's sake, I'm going to call it that for now) I was running away from life not towards it. And fast.

      There are several reasons why, up to this point, I was programmed to run on fear, for example, I have a high ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) score. Throughout my childhood I witnessed and experienced first-hand my father's rages. I watched and heard him beat my mother – sometimes in front of us, sometimes behind closed doors.

       My first suicide attempt was when I was 17 years old. I attempted suicide another two times before my mid-30s.

       I suffered from eating disorders until the age of 34.

       I have been arrested for shoplifting. Charges were dropped when kind police officers realized I was mentally unstable.

       Weeks later I had a breakdown. I was 31 and spent a month in a psychiatric clinic where, years later, I was headhunted to work for more than a decade.

       My beloved sister who had, for most of my childhood, been my primary caregiver, died suddenly and traumatically in 2002.

       Two marriages ended. The second one suddenly and traumatically.

       In the past, I have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and complex post-traumatic stress disorder.

      I share my story not so that you can say ‘poor Nerina’. It is among my highest values to be authentic, real, and honest. I want you to know that I know how it feels to feel so profoundly unsafe that I don't want to go on anymore. When we hit rock bottom, one of the most common feelings is feeling so alone, as if no one else could possibly understand. Often this is also tinged with shame and guilt – ‘I shouldn't be feeling like this’. Or even ‘Have I brought this on myself? Is this what I deserve?’

      I want you to know that you are not alone and that I do understand.

      I do not consider myself to be a survivor but a thriver. I now run towards life – not away from it. Love sponsors my choices. I no longer want to leave this world, as I once did.

       I have found safety in this world, in spite of the world.

      Mostly, I share my story in the hope that it might inspire you to keep going and trust that if you are prepared to do the work, something will happen to you – you too will discover a deep inner safety even in the face of adversity – and in spite of the world.