Building Relationship Safety

Effective counselling is built upon a foundation of safety, warmth and respect. In a therapeutic relationship, safety means that a client gets to experience ”feeling felt” or deeply understood and accepted at the level of the body’s own intelligence. This allows for habitual defences to relax their hold so that we are more available to new learning.

    This need for safety goes way back. As infants each of us was totally dependent upon the holding environment provided by our families . As Infants we all had needs for safety, shelter, and nourishment, as well as needs for connection, and attment from responsive caregivers. Sometimes those needs were not fully met. Parents may have been busy and pre-occupied. There can be alcohol and abuse. The stress of making ends meet can be the unspoken backdrop of family life. None of this is to blame parents, but to acknowledge the salient fact that as human beings our wounds or hurts come out of a relational context. Either things that should not have happened did (abuse, violence, shaming ), or things that should have happened did not ( support, encouragement, attention ).

It is in supportive relationships that these old scripts can be updated and revised. In counselling, the relational attunement between client and therapist becomes the foundation for change and healing.

“The most powerful thing the therapist does for us is provide a setting, a nourishing womb, in which our lives can unfold. Through the physical setting and, most important, the setting of his own being, he or she creates a place of safety; a trustworthy place where all life is befriended through an affirmation of faith in our wisdom and creativity.”

—Gregory Johanson, Ph.D., Hakomi Institute Co-Founder