Video Course Module 2: Safety, Support, Connection, Containment

Learning Objective for Module 2

My hope is that by listening to the lectures in this module, you will understand why safety, support, connection and containment are important and why your body and system may not be able to relate to, trust, or accept these when they are offered.

Experiential Objective for Module 2

My hope is that through doing the experiential exercises and worksheets in this module:

you will make contact with some sense of safety and support or with the smallest sense of what safety and support might feel like and that it might potentially be possible,
and that you will have some basic tools and practices that you can use to build or expand some sense of relative safety and a connection to your body.

Lecture 2.1: Definitions

Safety, support, connection and containment are all critical needs of any young child even at the best of times. And they are all critical needs for anyone recovering from either shock trauma or developmental trauma. Let me define what I mean by each of these terms and then explain why this combination is so important.

Safety

To learn new skills or patterns or to change existing patterns or beliefs or to recover from a painful experience, we need to have a subjective experience of relative safety. When I am feeling relatively safe:

I know that I will not be physically harmed.
I know that my basic physical needs will be met in a reasonable period of time, or that I will be allowed to meet my own basic physical needs.
I know that I will not be blamed or made responsible for things I haven’t done or things that I’m unable to do.
I know that I will not be grossly mischaracterized nor assigned labels that are hurtful and inaccurate.
I know that demands and expectations will not be placed on me that are unreasonable, unrealistic, or too much.
I know that there is a basic level of permission for me to be myself as I am.

For me to experience relative safety, the person or environment needs to offer all of the above and in addition, I and my body need to be able to believe all of the above. Note that there may still be some parts of me that don’t believe that I won’t be hurt. In that case, I need to trust the environment enough so that I can disidentify from those parts, so that even though there are still feelings in me of lack of safety, there is also a place in me or a way that I do know that I’m safe enough despite those feelings.

Support and Connection

Connection and support are both about not feeling and being alone, and there is some crossover between these two ingredients.

When I am feeling supported:

I know that I am not entirely alone, not entirely without resource.
I know that there is someone or something that has my back, that is allied with me, that is offering encouragement and/or sustenance and/or logistical help.

As with safety, this requires something to be present and it requires that I and my body are able to sense and lean into its presence.

When I am feeling connected:

I am having a direct and current experience that someone or something is aware of me in the moment. They are aware of me, they are paying attention to me, they care about my experience in the moment.

Here also, it’s not enough that someone or something is here and cares. I need to be able to feel or sense that connection in myself, in my body or energy.

Containment

Containment has elements of support, safety, and connection, taken a step further. When I feel contained:

I know that I will not be physically harmed, judged or criticized.
I know that unreasonable demands and expectations will not be placed on me.
I know that there is a basic level of permission for me to be myself as I am.
I know that there is someone or something here that cares about my well-being.
Further:
I know that if I venture into psychological or emotional territory that is uncomfortable and/or if I express my thoughts or feelings, that the support will not be pulled away.
I know that I will not be abandoned or attacked if I feel things or express myself.
I know that the support and connection will persist if and as I explore my inner experiences.
I know that the support and connection will persist if and as I share things – either new things I am discovering or things that I may have been afraid to admit or acknowledge.
When I am feeling uncomfortable or unbearable feelings or thinking unbearable thoughts, I know that not only will I not be judged or abandoned, but that who or whatever is holding containment for me will be with me, holding these uncomfortable things alongside me.

Secure attachment requires all the elements of containment.

The Importance of Safety, Support, Connection and Containment

The importance of safety.

Survival and avoidance of harm is prioritized over learning, integrating or healing. This happens automatically within the body. When the body experiences an immediate threat, new learning or healing simply can’t happen. The attention is on the threat, the system is in a state of high sympathetic activation. This state does support new learning. Our bodies need to have a realistic expectation of relative safety to be able to shift into a state and a focus of attention that allow for growth, learning and healing.

Note that it’s not accurate to say that no learning at all can occur in a state of extreme threat. However, the learning that occurs under threat will be less efficient and more painful than learning within an experience of relative safety.

The importance of connection and support.

By nature, humans are social animals. We are designed to learn from others and relate to others on a regular basis. When we find ourselves facing needs or challenges, early in the process we would/could/should be asking and checking, “Who or what is available to help me with this?” (Support) or “Who or what is available to be with me as I work my way through this?” (Connection) There are two ways or reasons that this reaching out matters.

Firstly, if we have support from outside ourselves, we don’t have to come up with every thought, action and decision on our own. Another person might have useful perspective or input that significantly augments and improves whatever we would have done alone.

Secondly, when there is connection or support, the presence of that relationship actually shifts the internal state of our own nervous systems in a way that enables us to have more creativity and insight, so that the actions and choices that come from inside ourselves are more effective.

And of course, even when we are not facing particular challenges, being connected and/or supported has the same positive effects on the chemical and nervous system state of our bodies, which has a whole range of useful consequences.

And also of course, the connection and support have to be safe enough for any of this to be helpful. If there is connection that feels unsafe or unreliable, or if there is support that comes with demands and conditions which don’t allow us space to be ourselves, that doesn’t work well, doesn’t support our bodies and cognition to work well, and may be worse than being alone with whatever we are facing.

The importance of containment

The presence of containment means that the degree of safety that is there when I am not moving remains when I am moving. I can move around without getting hurt.

The net around a trampoline provides containment, so that if the jumper loses their balance and falls, they will not fall onto the ground, but onto the bumpers at the edge of the trampoline, or back onto the trampoline itself.

Relational and emotional containment means that if the person feels extremely angry or scared or alone or dissociated, they will not find themself abandoned or attacked. They will still have the connection and support that was there before these intense emotions were felt or expressed.

The healing of developmental trauma and the healing of relational/attachment trauma always eventually involve feeling emotions that are intense and uncomfortable.

When we experienced relational trauma and/or early trauma, that experience was overwhelming and painful. The experience of the emotions in our bodies was too much. So we created ways to reduce or hide emotions, feelings, needs, wants, and memories. In essence, we created a container for those difficult feelings within our own system. That containment that we each created within our body system allows us to live and function, not optimally, sometimes not even adequately, but better than if we were fully exposed to all that we are hiding. We are each – mostly unconsciously – containing a lot of painful material.

Through our healing journeys, we want to shift from containing painful emotion by suppressing and hiding it to containing that same painful emotion by holding it and allowing it to be felt and expressed and processed in a slow enough, safe enough way. That means that the containment we are currently holding needs to shift and that ultimately something else needs to be constructed in its place.

So the healing of developmental trauma – at its essence – is all about replacing containment that has unpleasant consequences with more effective containment that allows more space for us to feel and be. Given that this is the nature of developmental trauma healing, external containment is an absolutely essential element for that healing to occur. Through experiencing effective external containment, we can then gradually recreate our internal containment with whole new ways of feeling, being, and holding.

Worksheet Practice 2.1: Identifying Resources

January 4 11.45 am

A printable copy of this worksheet can be found here: [create PDF and add hotlink]

Resource Inventory – Identifying resources you didn’t realize were there

List 10 to 100 resources in your life.

Resources can be people, animals, plants, places, objects, activities, memories, beliefs, practices, energies, beings, or anything else that is or has been or might be helpful to you.

Resources can be from the past, present, future, imagination or possibility.

You might use the following questions as prompts to help you think of resources for you.

Who or what brings me joy?
Who or what helps keep me safe?
Who or what understands me?
Who or what tends to calm me when I see them/it or are in their/its presence?
Who or what tends to cause me to feel more alive or more like myself?
What do I enjoy in nature (from vast to tiny)?
What sounds are pleasing or comforting to me?
What smells are pleasing or comforting to me?
What activities are regulating or enlivening or organizing for me?
What do I enjoy seeing?
What have I done recently that felt good or was nice?

Working with Resources: Safety, Support, Connection, Containment.

Complete the following sentence at least once each for Safety, Support, Connection, Containment, and as many times as you like. You could complete this for all 4 elements with the same resource or use a different resource each time.

There is some [Safety, Support, Connection, Containment] in [____________(a resource from your list)] because________________________________.

Complete the sentence.

Read the sentence (aloud or silently).

Take a few metaphorical steps back and see yourself and the content of your sentence, as best you can.

Notice whatever there is to notice in your body, your energy, and the space in and around you in the moment.

If you like, you can write some notes about your experience in the moment.

Audio Practice 2.2: Noticing non-human relative safety and support.

Explanation of Audio Practice 2.2: Noticing non-human relative safety and support

Safety, support, and safe and supportive connection are critical and foundational elements for developmental trauma healing. Some degree of relative safety is a necessary condition for starting to undo the trauma patterns that are embedded in our bodies and nervous systems.

This can become quite tricky for people whose experience is that they don’t have any safety or support. In this case, we want to be gentle and clever detectives, looking for and inviting the awareness of any versions or flavors of support, safety and connection that actually do exist but that go unnoticed, that maybe cognitively don’t look like what we think of as safety.

These elements of unnoticed support could be resources like the Earth underneath us holding us up, the air that we breathe, the breath itself, our lungs, our hearts that beat, any Nature we can see or think of, or any spiritual beliefs or practices, art, music, or anything that evokes pleasantness or even neutrality in our experience.

Living in a chronically unsafe and unsupported environment absolutely makes developmental trauma healing more challenging. There are very real signals of threat and danger that cannot simply be ignored. The balance we are looking for is to allow a right-sized level of awareness to real threat while at the same time inviting and allowing our bodies to receive the very real support that does exist, wherever we find it. Letting ourselves feel and notice existing support provides a more solid base within us from which to navigate the real threats and challenges.

When we have early and significant relational and attachment wounds, looking for a relative sense of safety in relation to another human may not work. Sometimes for some of us, all humans are so fundamentally dangerous that our systems don’t know how to experience any human as friendly and supportive. If so, that’s ok, we can relate to non-human support initially, then move to fictional and imagined humans, and work toward the eventual possibility of experiencing some live present humans as supportive and safe. We can take as much time as we need at each stage of this journey.

Recording of Practice 1.4: Noticing non-human relative safety and support

Click here to listen to the practice (not there yet, link is to a different practice)

(record and add hotlink)

Transcript of Practice 1.4: Noticing non-human relative safety and support

This is Resilient Rosalie with a practice on connecting to relative safety and support that is not from other humans.

I am going to invite you to bring your attention to a series of places or ideas. We are hoping that with some of these placements of attention, your body or energy will have some resonance of relative safety or support. Another way to put this is that we are hoping for an easing in the degree or intensity of threat that your body is perceiving. There are different ways this could feel or show up in you. It might feel like warmth or a bit of spaciousness. It might feel like some settling or grounding in your energy. It might feel like a softening of tension or a lessening of hyper alertness.

A relative increase in perceived safety or a relative reduction in perceived threat can feel quite different from one person to another or from one hour to another in the same person. So, as we go through this practice, I invite you, as you can, to gently notice how things seem in your experience in the moment, and how things might change and shift through the practice. Please don’t work hard at this. Don’t work hard at either the invitations in the practice nor in the noticing. Whatever happens and whatever you experience is ok. And you might resonate with some parts and not relate to others. That’s ok too. Let’s go ahead.

Let’s start by pausing and noticing your breath. For a moment, as you are able, let go of whatever your mind and attention might be doing, and just bring your attention to your breath. Just for some moments here. Noticing your breathing. In and out.

And now noticing the weight of your body and how your body is being held up by whatever is under you. Noticing the points of contact. Feeling whatever is holding you up. And under that, feeling or sensing or imagining the Earth. The Earth holding up whatever is holding that which is under you. And zooming out, seeing yourself from a distance, seeing yourself sitting, standing, lying, wherever you are, being held by something, and then that something is ultimately being held by the Earth. And just checking to see in you, in your experience, if there is any sense of being held, any sense of being held up.

And now shifting your attention to what is around you. If you are inside, being aware of the roof and walls that keep out the severe weather. Electric lights, indoor plumbing, anything soft to sit on or lie on. If you are outside, noticing whatever seems solid or helpful or friendly. This could be trees or other plants or animals. It could be structures that increase your safety or comfort. Or there might not be anything that you can notice that seems helpful.

Maybe again zooming out and seeing yourself from a distance, being where you are in this environment. And noticing, from that vantage point, anything that’s here and that that helps to make it so that you are not entirely at the mercy of everything. Anything that helps or mitigates or buffers or nourishes or holds space. And just allowing that noticing, slowing down for a moment with anything about your environment that is supportive.

And let’s connect with the natural world. Oceans, rivers, mountains, plains, the big sky, streams, hills, meadows, clouds. The physical forms of Nature, large and small. Pebbles, raindrops. Maybe thinking of elements of the natural world that are near to you or that are special to you, from your past or present. Elements of nature or places in nature that have been supportive to you. Pick one place and see yourself there. Just pausing there in this place. Feeling the solidity, steadiness, constancy of Nature. And zooming out, observing yourself from a distance as you sit or stand or dance at this place in Nature that you might feel connected to. And noticing whatever feels good or ok or neutral in you while you observe yourself in that place.

OK, we are going to continue, and we are going to check in with plants and animals and spiritual energies. But before we go there, I want to invite you to just gently scan and check out your body or your energy or how it is for you in this moment. And notice anything that feels calmer or more solid or more spacious or in any way feels a bit better than when we started a few minutes ago. And if nothing feels at all better or everything feels worse, you might want to stop here as this might not be a helpful practice for you for right now. And if there’s anything that does feel better in any way, just pause there, let’s make some space for that. Letting what feels good or ok or not too bad take up a bit more space in our awareness. And just pausing here, being with what feels ok or not too bad, and maybe again noticing your breath as it goes in and out.

And we are going to say hello to the plant kingdom. Trees, flowers, grasses, fruits, vegetables, bushes, seaweed, cotton, bamboo. Plants support us in a lot of ways. Noticing the plants you feel connected to right now, from your past, present or future. A tree you have climbed or that gave you shade. A garden you have grown, or a single flower in a pot. The vegetables in your dinner. A forest. Just scanning about to see what plant or plants you are drawn to and seeing yourself with the plants. Whatever that looks like. And once again, zooming out to notice yourself from a distance with this plant or plants. How is it to be with this plant or these plants? And how is it to see yourself there? And again, noticing whatever feels ok or good or neutral in you, right here and right now.

And now onto animals. Noticing any animals that you become aware of that were good to connect with. Perhaps neighbors in your garden or in the woods. Squirrels, crows, deer, songbirds. rabbits, foxes. Perhaps pets, household members from your own home or from homes you have visited. Again, this can be from the past, present or future. Letting yourself breathe with the thoughts and images of an animal or animals who have been precious to you. Just taking some time to invite your body to connect and relate to any animals who have been friends or beloveds. And noticing how that is, how that feels, what is good or ok in you in this moment.

Many of us also consume animals for food. Some of us might not want to really remember and know that these were living creatures before they became dinner, but of course they were. We are sustained by our food, and if you eat animals, I invite you to pause in appreciation and consideration of those animals who live and die and nourish our bodies. Not necessarily diving in deep, but just connecting here, remembering the resource of these beings. Appreciating them. However that works for you. And again, noticing what is ok or good, in and around you, right now.

And now I invite you to let yourself be aware of your spiritual beliefs, your spiritual practices, and any beings, entities, or energies that provide connection and support to you. Just slowing down and making space for whatever exists for you here. Sensing any presence, compassion, forgiveness, and understanding for you that is held in the space of spirituality or faith. Pausing here and noticing any shifts in your body and energy, anything that feels easeful or ok or maybe spacious.

Lecture 4: Safety