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Creating A Safe Home Environment Through Intentional Routines In our fast-paced, modern lives, it is easy for our home to become solely a place where we simply sleep, eat, and repeat the cycle. Yet, our home is meant to be a sanctuary- a space where we can decompress, recharge, restore, reflect, reconnect with and nourish ourselves, and feel truly at peace. A powerful way to ensure that our home is truly a sanctuary is to implement intentional routines. When routines are carefully crafted with mindfulness, they not only bring order and structure, but also create a nurturing environment that allows us to feel safe and grounded. Why Intentional Routines Matter in Your Home Routines are often perceived as monotonous or rigid, but when done intentionally, they can bring a sense of calm and clarity. Intentional routines allow us to move through our days with purpose, offering a sense of predictability in an unpredictable world. A well though out routine can give your home the atmosphere of stability and tranquility you need to feel truly at ease. When we engage in intentional routines, we are able to feel more in control of our environment. This control provides a deep sense of security and stability in our lives, which is valuable for those who grew up in unstable, unpredictable, and chaotic home environments. Intentional routines send signals to our mind and body that makes us feel supported, cared for, and safe. Steps to Create Intentional Routines Start With Your Core Needs . The foundation of any routine is understanding your personal needs. Ask yourself, what do you need to feel grounded, safe, and in alignment? Take a moment to reflect what is important to you and consider how you can weave them into your day-to-day activities. Build A Morning Routine To Set The Tone . The morning is the first opportunity to shape your day. Instead of rushing out the door or immediately grabbing your phone, dedicate time to engage in practices that center you. A mindful morning routine might include stretching, journaling, savoring a cup of coffee or tea, going outside and soaking in the sun, or a short walk in your garden. These small rituals can help you start your day from a calm and intentional place, ensuring that the energy you bring to your home is grounded and balanced. Incorporate Acts of Self-Care Into Your Day . Self-care isn't just about bubble baths, face masks, and manicures. Self-care is about creating small, nurturing moments to attend to your mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical needs. This can include taking the time to connect with nature, staying hydrated, practicing gratitude, dancing, journaling, exercising, cooking a meal, regulating your breathing, etc. Intentional self-care routines help reinforce the idea that you deserve to feel well and cared for in your home. Design Your Home With Purpose . A physical environment within your home that promotes a sense of comfort and calm is just as important as the routines within it. Arrange your home in a way that supports your well-being. For example, keep clutter to a minimum to reduce stress and prevent feelings of overwhelm, maximize natural light, add pops of color or use calming colors, create spaces that are functional and adaptable, incorporate green spaces, or create quiet spaces. Incorporating any of these elements in your home environment can help enhance your safety and comfort. The Impact of Intentional Routines on Your Home Environment By implementing intentional routines, you create a home where you feel more than just physically secure; you feel emotionally and mentally safe and supported. These routines become rituals that help create a foundation to build inner strength, offer comfort, help you manage stress, and maintain a supportive atmosphere within your home. Remember, the routines you implement at home become a reflection of your values and needs, therefore, they can help you cultivate a peaceful home environment that helps your personal growth and well-being. Creating a home environment that feels safe isn't about perfection, it is about making space for care, consistency, and balance. -Marialejandra Gutierrez

Your home environment mirrors your emotional and mental state. The Home as a Mirror of The Self The thoughts, uncertainties, worries, trauma wounds, and emotions that you have not addressed, processed, and released, are mirrored in your home environment. When we experience significant mental preoccupation and emotional distress, as learned in previous blog posts, our body begins to feel the effects from the significant accumulation of stress, which can manifest in different ways. Those constant ruminating thoughts that continue to overwhelm your mind and any unprocessed emotions have the ability to make you feel detached from your home environment. Ruminating thoughts can make it difficult to shift our attention to planning, managing, organizing, cleaning, and modifying our home environment. Additionally, emotions that are stuck in our body can make it difficult for us to interact with our home environment. In particular, emotional distress can impact our mood, energy, safety, and comfort levels needed to engage authentically in our home environment. Your current home environment may also be a reflection of your trauma wounds. For example, if you grew up in a chaotic, unstable, unpredictable, or unsafe home, your current home environment may reflect the chaos and instability that you grew up with. You may have normalized growing up in these conditions and may be unaware that you are recreating similar patterns in your current home environment. Take a moment to reflect on the following questions: Does your home or a space in your home feel overwhelming? Are you having trouble figuring out how to make your home or a particular space in your home make sense? Are you struggling with keeping your home organized? Are you finding it difficult to feel at home in your own home? Do feel unsafe or uncomfortable in your home? Does your home or a space in your home create a lot of stress for you? If you answered yes, to any of these questions there may be a deeper layer to explore that will help you gain insight into how your internal state is disrupting how feel in, interact with and engage in your home environment.  If you answered yes to any of these questions, there may be a deeper layer to explore that will help you gain insight into how your internal state is disrupting how feel in, interact with, and engage in your home environment.  Creating a supportive home environment goes beyond decor and furniture, it is also a process of inner growth and healing. Read about what my client had to say about their experience with our home wellness refresh service. Client Testimonial “Working one on one with Maria was such a beautiful and eye-opening experience. My bedroom was a relic, an homage to my post college life. After the pandemic, like many others, I found myself feeling stuck and wondering about my life and what I wanted to achieve. My bedroom felt stuck and in need of some change, just as I felt I needed. Speaking with Maria was calming and reliable as she was very attentive to what I was looking for. Our design meetings felt like mini therapy sessions where I could speak my mind on the changes I was looking for. Now I have a new fresh space that aligns with the fresh start that I was seeking in my life.”   -Marialejandra Gutierrez disclaimer: This blog post does not replace therapy. This is an educational resource.

What is your home environment communicating to your nervous system? Brief Overview: The Nervous System at Work As human beings, we depend on our nervous system for cues of safety. Your nervous system is the main regulatory, monitoring, and communicating system in your body. Through its receptors, which are connected to the central nervous system and function as devices to receive and release signals to facilitate communication between the brain and different parts of the body, our nervous system remains connected with our environment, both internal and external. Although there are various types of receptors throughout our body, our sensory receptors are primarily responsible for responding to different stimuli in our environment. A stimulus is any agent, event, or situation, both internal or external, that elicits a response from an organism (American Psychological Association, 2023). When stimuli activate sensory receptors, our sensory receptors create electrical signals that carry information about the stimulus to be processed by the nervous system and then transmitted to the brain, two processes known as reception and transduction. These signals to the brain can produce sensations, thoughts, and activate memory and motor functions. At this stage, the process that begins to operate is our interpretation of the sensory signals which can function at a conscious level (perception) or at an unconscious level (neuroception). “Our brain’s ability to sense and interpret signals from the environment is essential in controlling how our bodies and emotions react and shape our overall feelings of safety and well-being.” – Dr. Stephen Porges Our interpretation of sensory signals can trigger physiological responses that prepare the body for action. If interpreted as safe, our parasympathetic nervous system operates to make us feel calm and connected. If interpreted as unsafe, our sympathetic nervous system activates the fight-or-flight or freeze response in order to defend from potential danger or dissociate from one’s overwhelming thoughts or feelings. Neuroception, Trauma, and the Home Environment As stated above, neuroception is an automatic process within our nervous system that allows us to interpret or evaluate sensory signals without awareness. For individuals who have experienced trauma, neuroception can become altered or dysregulated. Trauma disrupts safety by shifting the traumatized individual’s autonomic nervous system into a state of defense. This piece of information is important to be aware of and understand particularly when looking to create a supportive home environment. Individuals who have experienced trauma can develop heightened sensitivity which can lead to hypervigilance and heightened responses to perceived danger. For individuals with heightened sensitivity, it can become difficulty to relax and feel safe. For this reason, it is important to understand which design elements to incorporate that foster a sense of tranquility, predictability, and safety in order help restore and heal one’s nervous system. If one continues to incorporate environmental elements that activate defense responses, our home environment may never feel safe for our nervous system. However, if there is congruence between our nervous system and our  home environment it will help cultivate a neuroception of safety. -Marialejandra Gutierrez disclaimer: This blog post does not replace therapy. This is an educational resource.