One of trauma’s most insidious effects is how radically and completely it can take away someone’s sense of safety.
That’s why it’s crucial to create a safe space when working with patients who have experienced trauma.
But that’s only part of the equation.
According to Peter Levine, PhD, there’s a very important follow-up step – it’s about resourcing patients with techniques they can use to help themselves feel safe – even when you aren’t there.
Peter shows us one way to do it in this short video. Check it out – it’s about 6 1/2 minutes.
What techniques have you found effective in helping patients feel safe? Please share your comments below.
Very helpful, thank you!
Thank you? That’s really helpful. I use the tapping gently all,over sometimes at the end of a traumatic session, especially with children, to bring them back into the here and now and into their bodies. It’s helpful,to,think of if as affirming and recognizing their own boundaries and containment too. Thank you. I will try all of these when it feels appropriate.
Thank you. This film and related comments were helpful. I found one person’s distinguishing between a body-self & a soul-self interesting. There is something in all the remarks about tailoring to the particular client’s needs &, in tandem one would hope, that client’s more fluently tuning into those needs.
We take pts to our yoga studio
Thank you, I will try these techniques out with my clients. Breathing, grounding and naming are the most frequent methods I use. Also some whole body focusing yoga techniques.
I work mostly with Children with a variety of Specific Learning Difficulty, whose trauma is rarely physical mostly as a result of bullying and self criticism resulting from a comparative sense of failure. Interesting I have not used these techniques but will try them. I regularly use listening to low frequency music such as Native American, Buddist chantis, Gregorian chants and The Listening Programme Sensory Integration CD
I completed the Sensorimotor training here in Belfast. I watch and develop my use of the techniques before I teach them to clients. I work with clients who have been traumatised during the conflict in N. Ireland, the ‘troubles’. These are invaluable with these clients. Thank you
These practical and comforting techniques are very much appreciated and I will begin using them immediately….would love to have a toolbox brimming with these kinds of approaches!! Thank you so much Ruth and Peter!
Thanks for always sharing brief and effective methods of grounding. Somatic techniques reminds us of our center, it brings us present and interrupts the narrative. The narrative takes us away from who we are into the created story of who we are. Dr Levine is very wise.
I liked the down to earth examples that may be less challenging to some clients where, say, trust is an issue. For my part, I ask clients to rehearse so that the uncomfortable experiences are articulated – a form of limited graded exposure. This assumes our work will not be re-traumatising and so pre-therapy contracting work is important here.
Through this process, a client may connect an experience and begin to label the associated feeling and/or locate it in a place within the body. Through imaginal work, as well as body work, a client may then find the experience can be contained in ways they discover for themselves and often in ways not expected. This way of working is directly related to the thesis – The Feeling of What Happens as articulated by Damasio.
This can be helpful for clients not practised in bodywork exercises – needing to approach the experiences a little indirectly.
I work with traumatised clients and use Somatic Experiencing. These are very useful, and such simple yet effective tools. When people go into the trauma vortex they literally lose their sense of self and safety, frequently for even the smallest threats, real and perceived. Warm thanks to Ruth and Peter for spreading this knowledge!
I totally believe and think these exercises are helpful since beside the aspect of the “boundaries” the patient is entering a conscientious relation with his body and is becoming aware, also in cases of traumatized clients they are so very often not present entirely, especially within their own body so these exercises help them literally get in touch with their body and also lean self soothing which is very very important for them! thank you so very much for everything you are doing! i think you are doing such a great work by giving us the possibility to watch so many interesting personalities and learn new things! Gabriela, Greece
Thank you for those tips, especially the first two, I will try them out with some of my clients. Another tip I often suggest is , after my client has had a shower, especially in the morning, before work etc , that they consciously feel their bare feet on the floor and contact every part of their body with their towel while drying themselves, to help create a real felt sense of their personal boundary. I got this tip after a Sensotimotor Psychotherapy training with Dan Thomas, an excellent weekend on working on boundaries….
great tip the idea with the towel, thanks will add to my tool box! 🙂
Hi Ruth and Peter,
That was a very helpful 6 1/2 minute video! I am going to share those techniques with my clients. I find the techniques on containing (placing right hand under the arm near the heart and the left hand on the right shoulder) easy enough to impart to my clients. I would imagine them being able to use it even then they are standing in a queue at an atm or in a shop! Thank you so much!
very useful, simple, good. thanks
These are very simple helpful techniques. Thank you.
Brilliant! Thank you for sharing!
These are very familiar as I have trained as a somatic psychotherapist. I was interested to know if Peter has had some influence with Gerda Boyeson who worked with the body as a container. These techniques are very similar. Fantastic that the body is now so much more included in the work. I have also trained in a psycho-dynamic model and have worked in a long term model with trauma. Grounding in the relationship and grounding in the body are 2 very important tools in the work.
Thanks Peter, will try these techniques.
Thanks for sharing these body safety techniques. Much appreciated.
Thank you for this! I’m a therapy patient, and been very upset about the London Bridge attacks today, and these techniques helped. The explanation, about having a hole in my boundary/body, was illuminating.
I love to learn and watch these tips Ruth. Thanks so much to you and your collaborators for sharing your knowledge and experience with all!
Very interesting! You literally checking the integrity and cohesion of the boundary.
When a person, client or myself, feels a physical-emotional pain in the chest and belly, it is soothing to hold a pillow tight against the whole front of the body, hugging and being hugged at the same time. Of course, another human being to embrace heart to heart, and not in a hurry, is wonderful too, but for many people, rare.
Thank you for the body techniques. Therapist directed, I have used tapping on myself which feels very loving and comforting. I have also found myself naturally squeezing my shoulders and arms which produces a calming effect but I didn’t know that was a technique! I sort of stumbled on to it. I am definitely going to incorporate all these suggestions into my work with myself and patients. Thank you so much Peter and Ruth for this opportunity to learn from you both. Ruth, I really like these extra lessons brought to our attention by your emails to us. Thank you again.
I did the exercise. what was different was the position of the left hand. it made a difference if it was positioned on my bicep or my shoulder. the shoulder was much more comforting.
This helped so much. Thanks. One of my techniques as a patient is recording my therapy sessions (with the therapist’s permission) and just knowing I can replay the session help me to get reentered at home.
Thank you for even more skills to teach our clients. I also use grounding through present moment five senses a lot. I also have clients put both feet on ground and visualize Earth holding them safely. Sometimes simply teaching a client to look around in all directions and see if there is any danger at the moment.
just a few…
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I have shared similar ideas with my patients but this is very helpful to get the variety of ways to lay hands on.
I also appreciate the “wait until you feel the shift” which to me is perhaps the most important teaching of how to tune into your own body. Thank you so much for sharing this – will start implementing asap.
I find the hand over heart very helpful for many clients, resource I learned at an EMDR training. Thank you for the input on body and boundaries. This gives me a new direction to resource some clients! Great video.
Very nice technique, it felt really good
I really recommend The Roll Model work by Jill Miller.
There is a section in her book about people using the method to work with their own bodies after suffering trauma.
Thank you so much for the excellant techniques, they really help restore a feeling of safety.
I wounder what would you use to help wash or eliminate pictures of trauma that keep coming back and revive the past fear.
I use the tapping and washing techniques.
left domestic violence in november 2015 after an anxiety crisis in march 2015 followed by a double pulmonary embolism in may 2015 where the ex-husband left me alone at emergency and left the family to go (after 5 years of not working, me as the breadwinner of the family) working at 3,000kms from here. I was diagnose on 5/6/15 with major depression and finally I got a huge breakdown at the office on 17/6 (our 20th wedding anniversary 🙁 ! and was sent by my doctor to hospital at severe depression with suicidal ideation. I had lost 13kgs in one month, could sleep 90 min per night. He refused to come back and left the kids 6 weeks alone when he put me in respite house for 2 weeks and 1 month in psy ward. Nothing changed, I hadn’t yet digged enough in myself. Finally I realised who I was in november 2015. I’m the daughter of a mum who committed suicide when I was 3 years of age. Dad has never spoken about her and I found that he’s the reason of her ordeal, I found that I was abused by my own brother when I was 14. I threw litterally up when I realised that. But nothing changed till the moment we got again a fight in front of the kids and I realised how selfish he was in his sentence. I realised in a flash how much I had been controlled and abused by him : he used my inheritance before the mariage, took us from Belgium to Australia, over budgeted a renovation, stopped working pretending he was able to finish by himself, lied to me about payment of school fees etc and etc.
When I found out everything (and later more when I realised that our arrival in Australia was a pure escape from the Belgian fiscal administration)
Yes it took me a lot of courage to get out since he became not only emotional, economical, socially (isolation) but physically abusive at the end. Police was involved several times and he turned my two kids (18 and 15) against me (my daughter taking me by the throat when refused internet telling me “mum you would be better to commit the same as your mum so that we will get rid of you, my son bashing the front door while I put its stuff out while abusing me and removed by the police to avoid that his next tantrum will finish on my face.
Only now after 18 months the kids have realised the dynamics.
Finally with naturopathy (I found that yellow and orange are my colours) and lots of courage. At the beginnig of the depression one day I wasn’t able to move in the middle of the city, unable to put one foot in front of another one. In the city here the trams are yellow. By focusing on the color of the tram I was able to move to the tram station and coming back home.
I really like the concept of “all feelings contained in the body”. I used this concept when sent for the 5th time at hospital at risk of suicide. The mental nurse send me on the big lawn outside and asked me to come back after 1/2h telling him about what I had seen, felt, heard, smelt. The return to basic feelings, enjoying the fresh cutted lawn, listening to the birds, enjoying been touched by the wind etc.., all the feelings have helped to enjoy again life.
Be sure that I’m completely fine now. Lost my job in the ordeal/turmoil but started new studies and got my certificate last month and starting a new job next week
a story of courage and strength and sense making chages. Thanks for charing. Annette
Phew!!! You have been through so much! I am glad you are still with us to share your enormous struggle
thru Hell into the light. Congrats on getting the new job too. You are an inspiration.
I use ice blocks in the hands and recently at a trauma retreat in the southern highlands in NSW a client started to disregulate so asked for some ice. I was handed a bag of frozen corn which worked perfectly well.
Also getting the client to draw an infinity sign in the air in front of their face can help to integrate left and right hemispheres and calms them down.
Thanks for these tips they are great.
The more tools in the tool box the better.
I FORGOT ABOUT THIS ONE…THANKS!!!
These are excellent techniques using touch to calm the nervous system and add to the personal tool box to help clients settle ourside the therapist’s office. Teaching clients tools that they can rely on to help themselves is empowering and comforting in building post trauma growth. Thank you, Dr. Levine!
Its always helpful to learn more tips on how to help traumatized patients, amd giving them tools they can use on their own is wonderful. Planting little seeds of hope can be empowering.
Peter was one of the very first people to deal with trauma in a truly healing way. It took years for the field of psychotherapy to catch up…as it is in the process of doing. So first Kudos to Peter. The techniques demonstrated here are valuable for anyone in a community setting. I collect and share/teach trauma healing techniques with community members and ask them to pass them on to family and neighbors when appropriate. My hope is that techniques like these will be naturally available To families.
I invite psychotherapists to submit techniques to our website. We make techniques available to people internationally.
One of my favorite techniques for children is blowing bubbles. The inhale us fast and the bubble blowing extends the exhale. The short inhalation and extended exhalation if done regularly will strengthen the parasympathetic nervous system where production of calming hormones is stimulated. For more please see and perhaps contribute.
Many energy practitioners will recognize the head/heart/belly holds as a chakra balance. To bring a traumatized or dissociated person even deeper into their bodies, you could add a fourth hand position–to the lower abdomen. This will bring in the first and second chakras and amplify the sense of a deeper grounding, and hence, safety. Try it and see.
I have used similar techniques because I believe that awareness of the body, the external physical body’s ability to calm the spirit/psyche leads to relaxation, drawing us away from overconcentration on fearful thought processes.
As a both patient and a clinician, I have found framing to be important in dealing with recovery. An example:
I experienced horrific nightmares, but viewed them as data processing after my dissociated self reconnected to itself; huge amounts of data were put into my in tray, but my processing self had taken some leave, so when my processing self returned, there was an intense period of data processing from that over filled in tray.
I share this view with patients. That the nightmare stage is reconnecting, that the nightmare content is data processing, that once the data is processed the nightmares become less intense/vivid/disturbing/frequent. I find in my patients that with this view, retraumatisation from nightmares seems less; they’re not stuck fearing the nightmares. In some patients, the nightmares become a positive event “ah! I must be getting better, I am reconnecting”.
I am not sure how this framing works. It might be that, as a patient, I witnessed the process? It might be the power of suggestion? It might be a message of hope at a time of despair? It might be an instrument to help patients disengage from the cycle of retraumatisation?
I’d like to know, if anyone can say, how this view works (I’m a general practitioner, not a psycotherapist).
This is a wonderful reframing idea. I was thinking, the term “data processing” would be especially helpful for the younger generation that grew up with computers. They get the concept. Thank you for sharing. I am going to try this reframing when the opportunity presents itself with a patient.
I love your take on this very difficult and often very disruptive after effect of trauma. I usually suggest that it’s the psyche trying to make sense of what happened, but I think I’ll try your re framing idea now as well… thank you!
Thank you Peter and Ruth for sharing this. Will certainly use it with clients to establish their own sense of safety.
I use body focus, such as control breathing, using the five senses, self compassion meditation, hands over the heart etc. But this looks very do-able and will fit in well with self soothing.
Never can get too many techniques to contain a client. Love all you spoke of and the comments below. I use the forehead one with other hand behind the neck which I learned to help children who were nauseated, I use that one even now just for calming. Love the butterfly technique and also use the same as a yoga exercise–stretching our arms and bring them in hugging the shoulders and then alternate hands. Only one I had trouble with is under the arm but will consider it. It brings back many clients who are hypervigilant when it comes to the breast area and even though it is you doing the protection, when I tried it is made me uncomfortable. But then this can be used should it tap any discomfort. Just giving my clients exercises to try, I learn a lot about what they seem to be drawn to. For example, in the comments below, the tree standing is one many really gravitate to and I remind them to feel the ground at the base of the tree and feel their feet fully grounded to the earth as well. They love to pick a tree they can use, I also use the imagery to help them determine what kind of tree they might see themselves as to help heal through their tree metaphor. Thanks for the topic. I have been researching many in past years and find it is good to have many for you or the clients to pick that best suits them.
I really appreciate Dr. Levine’s simple techniques that I will offer in the trauma-informed yoga class for at risk teens at the 360 Youth Diversion Program. Thank you. Betsy
Great clip.
I will definitely experiment with this concept.
I have found getting people to talk of the traumatic incident in the third person (that is, as an absetver) is very useful.
Thanks for demonstrating these techniques to help restore a sense of containment. I plan to apply them as indicated.
Thank you Ruth for sharing this powerful intervention by Peter Levine. I will apply these simple yet powerful tools on myself for the time being. The recent terrorist attacks where one very close family member did not survive have left me as well as my children and all family members with a hole in our soul. QiGong helps me a lot to feel my body/my container just as Peters’ excercises will do. It’s good to be reminded of what’s available because once one is so much “in it” , in the trauma it’s so easy to loose oneself. Until today I’m easily triggered by certain conversations, so I only can try not to forget to apply these simple techniques and observe the changes.
Thank you. Will certainly try theses techniques with patients I work with.
The body-holds that Peter used are part of the understanding of Jin Shin Jyutsu self help. There are books out on this and I have been using this on clients for almost 40 years. The clients can easily learn many hand holds to sooth and restore harmony to their body.
This was an excellent resource. Thanks. Love the hand exercises from my music therapy days.
I work with students in an elementary school here in BC Canada and often have several students suffering and struggling with anxiety on a regular basis. I’m going to see if they’ll be willing to try these things and see what happens.
I’m also going to try it on myself on a regular basis and see the effects.
Thank you so much for sharing this info.
Years ago after a car accident and still feeling the experience in my body it was helpful reading your book, Waking the Tiger….I think that was the title.