Safety Built, Not Assumed
Hi! I’m Megan, the newest team member at The Haven Wellness Center, and I wanted to spend some of my first weeks writing to you!
It feels important to start with The Haven’s Core Values. These values guide our care of clients, so I wanted to share how these values impact the therapeutic care that I offer to the Dallas community.
Safety is the first value that I will explore, a key tenet to any successful therapeutic relationship.
The “Right” Environment vs. The Right Feeling
When you walk into a therapy office for the first time, you might feel a lot of different things: anxiety, numbness, excitement, fear, hope, etc. You might also feel a lot of pressure to open up to the therapist right away because of unspoken expectations. The room might have a box of tissues, a comfortable chair, calming music in the waiting room, and the therapist across from you might be oozing, “You are safe here.” The environment might seem completely “right”, but you might experience hesitation or skepticism. This is totally normal and a great place to start in therapy.
My perspective is that safety isn’t something that a therapist can persuade a client to believe or something that can be forced. Instead, safety is a felt experience and something that is created over time. Our nervous system is incredibly smart, and yours has been shaped by what you’ve experienced. If you have spent any length of time navigating uncertainty or unpredictability- whether in your childhood, romantic relationships, health issues, loss and grief, or a high-stress career- you’ve developed plenty of strategies to manage the uncertainty and unpredictability and try to achieve a sense of safety. These are highly adaptive and protective strategies and the work of therapy isn’t to get rid of these strategies, but to learn from them and to work alongside them.
Safety Can Be Co-Created
In therapy, I believe safety is co-created between client and counselor. Building safety starts as you start to notice what is happening internally and between us. Co-creation means that both client and counselor are active participants. Part of my job as a therapist is to notice themes and turn your attention to them. My role is also to show up with the right “ingredients” for building safety and trust, such as consistency, transparency, and witnessing. Your role in this co-creation is to simply show up. We can start with, “I don’t feel safe yet.” Together, we will honor those feelings instead of jumping over them and instead go at the pace of your felt sense of safety.
Some people have the idea that this co-creation should happen fast so that they can get to the “real work” of therapy. But I see co-creation as a major part of the work, especially for clients who had unpredictable or traumatic childhoods, experience a lot of relational anxiety, have substance abuse issues, or have experienced a lot of loss and grief.
As we build the safety within the therapeutic relationship, that experience helps creates the space and conditions to also work on internal safety, or the ability to feel secure within yourself. For those who feel constantly “on edge”, lack self-confidence, or feel like their internal world is confusing and chaotic, therapy that is focused on building safety can be immensely helpful and healing.
You and I can’t assume safety just because you walk into my therapy room, but we can build it gradually brick by brick and respect the time it takes to grow. If any of this resonated with you, and you are ready to start co-creating a sense of safety in your life, reach out today to schedule a free 30-minute consultation. You can email me at megan@thehavenwellnesscenter.com
Megan Hodges is a Licensed Professional Counselor Associate (LPC Associate) in the state of Texas and is supervised by Jonathan Todd, MA, LPC-S. You can learn more about her here.
