Building Relationship Safety

Effective counselling takes place within a container of safety, warmth and respect. In a therapeutic relationship, safety has a client experiencing what it’s like to be understood and seen at the level of the body’s own intelligence. This allows for habitual defences to relax so that we are more available to new learning.

    This need for safety goes way back to our development. As infants each of us was dependent upon the quality of the holding environment provided by our families . As Infants we all have needs for safety, shelter, and nourishment, as well as needs for connection, and attunement from responsive caregivers. Sometimes those needs are not fully met. Parents may be busy and pre-occupied. There may have been alcohol and abuse. For many the struggle of making ends meet can be the unspoken backdrop of family life, leaving many parents stressed and less able to notice what is happening in the world of their children. None of this is to blame parents, but to acknowledge the salient fact that as human beings our hurts and difficulties come out of a relational context. Either things that should not have happened did like abuse, violence and shaming, or things that should have happened did not like support, encouragement, and attention.

In a supportive therapeutic relationship these old scripts can be updated and revised. 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