Safety Isn’t a Guarantee: What Are We Really Building in Trauma Therapy?
By Ryan Snodgrass, LMFT, LPCC
We talk a lot about safety in therapy- creating safety, feeling safe, or teaching our bodies that danger has passed. And that is important. Safety matters. We all deserve relationships, environments, and experiences where we are protected and cared for. We also deserve to be surrounded by people we trust, and live in an environment that allows us to soften rather remain in anticipation. But there is something complicated about the way we sometimes talk about safety:
Safety is never guaranteed.
There are real things we can do to create greater safety in our lives. We can leave relationships that have harmed us, set boundaries, ask for help, treat ourselves in ways that honor our dignity, and listen to the voice within us that lets us know if something doesn’t feel right. These matter. And these are an important part of healing- creating environments, both physically and relationally, that offer greater care and safety.
Therapy can sometimes blur the line between developing a sense of safety and seeking certainty. Relationships can end. People can disappoint us. Circumstances can change. Bodies can become sick. We can create spaces to heal from loss and hurt, and still find ourselves encountering new pain and grief throughout different seasons of our lives. We aren’t offered certainty.
Safety and certainty aren’t the same thing
The work isn't to guarantee safety or become certain of what the future may hold. It's developing a greater capacity to notice what is happening, access resources and connection, and reconnect with our sense of trust, discernment, intuition, and agency. Even as we make choices to keep ourselves safer, we may find ourselves not wanting to enter a relationship until we're sure it won't end. Or hesitating to make a decision unless we're guaranteed an outcome or assured by someone else that it's the right choice.
It makes sense that we want to know- or at least feel prepared for- what may happen, particularly if we've experienced significant loss or made decisions that brought more pain than peace.
But there is far more we can't predict than we can. The absence of a guarantee doesn't necessarily mean we are unsafe. Sometimes it simply means we are living with the vulnerability of not knowing what comes next.
When safety isn’t guaranteed
I was once leading a trauma program when an earthquake hit. We were less than a mile from the epicenter, and the entire property moved. The sounds were almost deafening. There were several groups happening in different buildings, and each one of us- every client, every therapist, myself included- responded differently.
I went into action. I didn't just want to assess what was happening; I wanted to assure people they were okay. I felt obligated to protect them. I was the Director of the program, and caring for the people in it was quite literally in my job description.
But Caretaker was a role I had taken on long before I had degrees or titles. I learned to take care of others because if they were okay, I thought I could be okay as well. And the responses other people had were familiar, too. Not better. Not worse. Simply protective responses that had served them before, coming back to life when they felt they were needed again.
Our protective responses developed for a reason. Just as my tendency to fix things had helped me find a sense of agency and connection in situations where I otherwise felt powerless, someone else's tendency to shut down may have been the very thing that once helped them persevere. And often, we come to therapy to process the experiences that shaped those responses. We learn to recognize what belongs to the past. We remind ourselves that our circumstances are different now. We tell ourselves we're safe.
So what happens when, in the midst of doing that work, you find yourself in an earthquake?
Maybe safety isn't the only thing we're building
I couldn't guarantee that everyone was safe that day. I wanted to. The caretaker in me certainly wanted to. But even as I began to hope that another wouldn't come, two more did. And I noticed the fear that had been quietly present underneath beginning to surface. I clung closer to people, covered my ears, and felt the pull to both be held and to hold others. What I was developing was flexibility.
We are building flexibility
I didn't need to remain the person who went into action simply because that was how I first responded or how I'd learned to respond. I could protect and be protected. I could care for others and let myself move closer to them. I could feel fear without losing access to the part of me that could respond. The problem wasn’t that I wanted to jump in to help, it was that I often jumped in unaware of the longing to be helped.
We aren't trying to tell our nervous systems to never become afraid or convince ourselves we're safe when that may not be true. We're trying to build more flexibility in how we respond. Sometimes we need to act. Other times, we need to pause. We may need distance or closeness, to rely on ourselves or to lean on others. Flexibility is being able to respond to the experiences, connections, and resources available to us now instead of having to rely solely on older, learned responses.
We are building access
Trauma can narrow what feels available to us. While we may know we have choices, we may not be able to access them in the moment. We might recognize that people want to support us but have difficulty reaching toward them. Or want to set a boundary and yet lose our words when we attempt to say it. We may even feel deeply connected to our anger while beginning to recognize how it has protected us from the grief we've been carrying.
We build access to our voice, our emotional experience, and the other protective responses that may have felt inaccessible before. We build access to more of ourselves.
It is an old response for me to go quickly into action. In many ways, it has served me. In others, it has left me disconnected. I would often put my own fear and needs on pause, as though I would make time for them once I knew everyone else was okay. But minutes turned into weeks, or months, or years.
Healing for me has not only been having more flexibility and choice in how I respond- being able to take action at times or lean on people at others. It has also been developing greater access to my needs and emotions, and the ability to tune into my desire to flee, fight, connect, or collapse. Where I once responded primarily by doing or dissociating, I can now stay more connected to myself while accessing a wider range of experiences and responses.
We are building capacity
There are experiences we cannot protect ourselves from entirely. Grief, disappointment, uncertainty, conflict, change, and loss are not necessarily signs that something has gone wrong. They are also part of being alive. And so part of the work is building our capacity to experience more of what comes with being human.
Capacity doesn't mean learning to tolerate the intolerable or staying in situations that ask us to abandon ourselves. It also doesn't mean that we become unaffected by difficult experiences. It means growing our ability to experience life while remaining connected to ourselves.
It is being able to feel afraid without immediately needing that fear to go away. It is feeling grief while still having access to joy. And it is increasing our ability to move through the natural discomfort and pain associated with being human. Our capacity grows not because these experiences become easy, but because we discover we can remain present for more of them.
And that can often be where our relationship with safety begins to change.
The goal isn’t absolute safety—it’s safe enough
If safety cannot be guaranteed, perhaps absolute safety was never actually the goal. Perhaps we're looking for safe enough. Safe enough to rest while trusting we can mobilize again when we need to. Safe enough to take a risk with the flexibility to respond to the outcome differently than we have before. Safe enough to connect while knowing relationships carry vulnerability. Safe enough to listen to our protective responses without letting every one of them decide what happens next.
Safe enough doesn't mean there is no risk. It means there is enough safety, access, capacity, connection, and choice for us to remain present with what is here.
And that is often what we're really building in trauma therapy. Not certainty. Not a promise that nothing painful will happen or that we won't suddenly find ourselves in an earthquake. We're building greater flexibility in how we respond. More access to ourselves. More capacity for what we feel and experience. More connection to the people and resources around us. More trust in our ability to respond when something changes.
It's regaining enough safety to live without needing guarantees.
About the Author
Ryan Snodgrass, LMFT, LPCC, is the founder of EMBER Therapy & Wellness in Carlsbad, California. She specializes in experiential, relational, and somatic approaches to therapy, integrating Somatic Experiencing®, psychodrama, psychodramatic bodywork, EMDR, and other experiential practices in her work with individuals, couples, and families.
