The Neurobiology of Feeling Safe

When we feel safe, we risk vulnerability. We are brave about showing up authentically. We stay connected to those around us and we have flexibility in our responses.

Often our clients are able to experience a sense of safety in the therapy room, but how do we help them develop a greater sense of feeling safe outside of our offices?

Our clients have often intuited this connection between needing more safety and having better boundaries. They ask us to look at "having better boundaries" and we often think about this as a moment to teach them how to say “no,” and how to set limits with others.

But this is a very limited understanding of boundary work.

Fundamentally, boundaries are what help us and our clients feel safe…and from safety, we can fully engage in relationships with a sense of self-worth and confidence.

The brain is actively processing boundaries on many different levels simultaneously: Our sense of safety comes first from our autonomic nervous system, which scans our body over 200 times a minute, for signs of physical danger. Equally important are our sense of psychological safety in relationships, our sense of being OK with ourselves, and our sense of living our lives in integrity with our values.

Each of these senses of safety is monitored and protected by specific neural patterns that we call boundaries.

In each session, we will go in-depth into the different neural network patterns that the brain uses to process boundaries. We can then utilize that knowledge to design practices that work with each type of neural network, so we can offer clients tools to take home and use to permanently change their brains.

It’s one thing for a client to feel safe while they are in session with you….but with a clear understanding of boundaries, we can help our clients build safety for themselves and feel clear, respected, and empowered even when they aren’t in the therapy room.

Working with boundaries in this way has an exponential effect: clients begin to shift their relationships with themselves and others...which ends up shifting their family system, as well as their social and professional

environments. Ultimately, it ends up shifting all the systems they touch and creating positive social change.