Safe Place Exercises with Complex Trauma
EMDR for Complex TraumaSetting up a safe, calm place is a standard procedure but working with complex trauma survivors there are a couple of things that are noteworthy in terms of potential challenges that you might face. Complex trauma survivors are likely to experience intrusions into their safe place. As you are cultivating this imagery, all of a sudden you realize that the walls of the safe place have been breached. You realize that the client is hearing an intrusive voice that is somehow making their safe place no longer safe. It's not unusual to get these intrusions and I think you want to probably set up your container before doing safe place so that if you get an intrusion you're able to say to the client can we just take that intrusion and put it in the container.
And then see if we can go back to the safe place. It may or may not be possible to return to the safe place. You may need to shift to a different safe place. But having a container available and ready where you can move the intrusion into the container is very very helpful. At the start of treatment, many complex trauma survivors don't like the word safe. Somehow the word safe is dangerous. It means they're expected to let down their guard, they're able to sit back and they're vulnerable.
And so think about different words that you might use if you get a negative reaction or you anticipate a negative reaction from a client. You can talk about a soothing place, you can talk about a calm place, you can talk about a place that's just for you. You also don't have to talk about a place. You can have the client think about experiences where they have felt comfortable, where they have felt strong. Here we are moving from a more narrow focus on safe place to a more general focus on resource experiences, mastery experiences, empowering experiences that we can utilize to help a client get grounded in the present and access whatever it is that they need to go forward in the treatment.
I would encourage you to steer clear of safe places that are linked to the person's childhood. Certainly to steer clear of any safe places that have anything mildly associated with a perpetrator or with abuse experiences or traumatic experiences. You really don't want to go anywhere near that part of the memory network or you really risk the client sliding into distress rather than staying solidly grounded in a sense of safety. Sometimes a client will say to you, there is no person who is safe.
There is no place that will ever feel safe to me. And you're getting a wall right up front around the idea of establishing a safe place. With cases like this, I would encourage you to immediately move to the realm of imagination, the realm of nature or symbolism. To really move away from the client's actual memory network which is just filled with traumatic experiences so that every way the client turns, they're bumping into something traumatic. They're bumping into traumatic interpersonal relationships. They're bumping into traumatic places.
When you move into the imaginal realm or the realm of nature, you're much more likely to find images or experiences that are pure, that are purely safe, that are purely soothing. The client has an opportunity to create, symbolically create, imaginally create a place or a person or an experience that is untouched, that is clearly different for them in that they can relax and allow themselves to be grounded, to be present, and to not worry about danger.