Feeling Safe as a Highly Sensitive Individual

How Do I Sense Safety

Feeling Safe as a Highly Sensitive Individual

By Troy Alan Cox 06/011/2026

Photo credit: Simoneau Photography Sanford Florida

 

How Do I Sense Safety?

Feeling Safe as a Highly Sensitive Individual

By Troy Alan Cox
06/11/2026

Photo credit: Simoneau Photography, Sanford, Florida

Safety vs. Stimulation

Many highly sensitive people, like myself, spend years thinking something is wrong with us. I have heard that if I just learned how to relax, I would be okay. Or if I got drunk, I would relax. Or if I would just “get over it,” which was the most damaging piece of advice a supposed spiritual teacher ever gave me about the depth of suffering after losing our family’s “Golden Child,” my little brother, at the age of twenty.

We are told to try changing our food, read self-help books, exercise, find a hobby, or that we just have not found our people yet. The therapist I was seeing after Todd passed away in a horrible motorcycle wreck on a desolate stretch of highway in Northern California, with no justice for the person who caused the accident, told me that I either needed to take anti-anxiety prescriptions or learn something like meditation.  Thank God I chose meditation.  Diane Ross changed my life, and I still meditate and take classes with her.

As a man, I was told to toughen up, be a man, grow a pair, that it was just teasing like all guys do, and that if I just joined the military, I would not be such a wussy, though it was not said so politely.  I listened. I lifted weights six days a week at the gym. Heavy. I listened to Tony Robbins. I read all the self-help books they had at Spiral Circle in Orlando, back when the original owner, Beverly, would personally walk you to the shelf and let spirit guide her to the right book for what you were looking for. I wore all black and put on my best Terminator persona to keep everything and everyone from hurting me. I had a one-chance-and-you-are-out policy. Why give someone a second chance to hurt you if they did it once? I used the self-help books as a weapon against others to point out what they were lacking in themselves and to make myself feel better.

My job as a host and M.C. on radio and at the Virgin Megastore was perfect for this new tough-guy persona I had worked on because it kept the crowds at arm’s length, and the superficial celebrity personalities did not bother me. When I moved to Los Angeles, I had a great suit of armor I had cultivated, and none of the horrible, unspoken sides of the entertainment industry bothered me. I was proud of my tough-guy persona, and it was really useful in HollyWeird.  The thing that broke me was finding my partner sending explicit messages to other guys on my own computer.

My whole person crumbled in an instant because it was not real. It was a fake personality I had created. Inside, it turned out, was still my overly sensitive heart, and it was shattered by the mistrust. I was so mixed up that I even agreed to pay another month of rent for my ex with money I had collected from selling my artwork.  That is the thing about being highly sensitive. We can fake it until we make it, but we can never change who we are on the inside or how we feel.

I have learned that safety, for me, means I am not overly stimulated.

Safety Is Not Weakness

Usually safety is interpreted as comfort, relaxation, a certain location, or the feeling that if I just find the right person, I will feel safe.  In Yoga Nidra training, which I certified in four times because it was so powerful for me, we learned that the nervous system stays in attack mode when it is constantly stimulated. When the sympathetic nervous system is constantly perceiving stress or perceived threats, it never powers off. Not with a nicely decorated room. Not with drugs or alcohol. Not with finding just the right person.

What I have found, and what I include in my yoga teacher training programs, is that safety comes first, and transformation follows. The human nervous system has to feel safe enough to biologically relax from our constantly assaulted modern-day lives before any type of self-exploration can happen.  How does the mind and nervous system switch off from being under attack from the minute we wake up until we race home at the end of work? Everywhere we go, we are constantly assaulted with sound, sight, transportation challenges, politics, war, artificial lighting, crowds, marketing, and demands.

One example of constant stimulation leading into crisis happened for me in a place that is very common for others, who do not seem bothered by it at all. I was trying to start shopping at a big box chain store outlet. I remember going by myself one time, and the crowds, fluorescent lighting overhead, constant announcements, endless lines of people waiting to get a sample taste of whatever was being hawked in the aisles, and the overwhelming feeling of being lost in a maze resulted in me cowering in the corner of the closed-in vegetable cooler section.

I had to call a friend to talk me out of the store.  I never went to another one until my dad moved in with me, twenty or thirty years after that first experience. We went once and never went back, even though we had paid for the premium membership.  To other people, this is just going to get some groceries.  To me, it was sensory warfare.

The Architecture of Safety

Our nervous systems need specific de-stimulating architecture in order to feel safe enough to step back from defending us and switch into letting us actually relax. When relaxation happens, the parasympathetic nervous system, or the relaxation side, signals to the brain that we are okay. There is currently no perceived threat to worry about.

This cannot happen while driving a car. Driving is a constant threat-management task. A vehicle used inappropriately is considered a weapon for a reason. We cannot fully relax while we are at work because we are in survival mode, highly stimulated, just like foraging for food. Our eyes are widened, our minds are focused, and we are doing our work in order to make money to give us shelter.

We cannot feel safe while running errands from store to store, all illuminated with fluorescent lighting, overhead music, other people in the way of what we want, and marketing telling us things that we do not know whether we should believe or not.

Unfortunately, most of us cannot even feel safe at home. The constant stimulation never ceases. Spouses and children are there to point out all their problems and what they perceive as problems with us. Most modern homes have TV or music on 24/7. Countless people have told me they cannot sleep unless the TV is on. This is a practice almost guaranteed to keep the nervous system stimulated rather than deeply settled. In today’s world, with mass shootings and politicians who cannot be trusted, even our own neighborhoods, cities, and states do not always feel safe.

What do you consider safety?

As a highly sensitive person, I have found I can facilitate a sense of safety in others through language, cues, prompts, lighting or no lighting, nondescript and non-vocal gentle instrumental background music, or no music at all. Silence can also be perceived as a threat to some, so even silence must be considered carefully.

Non-judgment matters. Being in an environment where everybody is treated as equal matters. Keeping the focus on the individual and their needs, rather than competition, matters. Sometimes, safety is not even found in a group setting.

When I instruct those who want to become teachers, I encourage them to change the lighting throughout the class. Perhaps they start with no lighting or soft, indirect lighting that mimics natural shadows, then slowly increase the lighting during the class before slowly dimming the lighting near the end. Music that is nondescript and non-associative can help avoid bringing up lyrics or memories from particular times in one’s life, allowing the mind to feel safe enough to focus on the task at hand.

In the last post, I discussed scent stimulation at length. Some scents are marketed for safety and relaxation, such as lavender. However, that same scent could be a trigger for another person’s nervous system. Closing the eyes turns off the optic system, which is one of the biggest drains on the nervous system. Conversely, some people have been taught not to close their eyes while they are awake. I have even had someone tell me their preacher said that when you close your eyes while you are awake, the devil can slip in.  No judgment. Just a different nervous system.

There is current and modern research on neurodivergent environments and architecture. How does a person feel safe enough to relax, and can that be facilitated through environment?

During the caretaking years with my father, the house slowly transformed from an everyday house into a womb of safety for my father’s nervous system. The dementia brain slowly loses the neural connections linking thought to reason. It is constantly assaulted with the side effects of the disease, such as hallucinations. Some of what my father described seeing was frightening even to me.

I began to research what the dementia brain needs in order to relax and feel safe. Most of the information kept pointing me back to the senses.  What are they seeing around them? Is it familiar, even if the mind cannot remember why?  Are they covered in synthetic materials, or are soft, plush, cotton-based, organic materials available to calm the nervous system through touch and feeling?

What sounds are they being subjected to? The news is one of the worst things for the dementia brain, even though my dad felt comforted by it because it had been his habit before dementia to watch the news every night. Instead, I had soft ocean waves playing on the white noise machine, and I hung gentle tinkle-bell wind chimes near the air conditioning vent to create a constant soothing sound.

What tastes bring comfort to the brain? Healthy fats, familiar fruits, and things the brain associates with health and nourishment, not junk food or the poison we are told is modern food.  There is no cure-all, and there will never be a perfectly safe space for everybody’s nervous system. It takes trial, error, and experimentation to find exactly what helps you feel safe.

When you look around your current environment, what could you change that would give you enough of a sense of safety that your nervous system might step back from sympathetic defense into parasympathetic relaxation?

“By helping your students feel safe in your class, they can relax and have a deeper experience.”

— Troy Alan Cox, Beginner Yoga Teacher Manual