Do you feel stuck in your healing journey? Do you continue to experience triggers, even though you are working hard in your recovery journey?

The safe and sound protocol is a tool that the clinicians at Relationship Enrichment Center incorporate into our client’s treatment plans when appropriate.

In the first phase of our treatment model, our clinicians support our clients in creating safety for themselves in their own bodies as well as in their environment and in their relationships. Oftentimes, people are coming into therapy and they do not have a felt sense of safety in their bodies; this might be because of a recent event they experienced or it may even be because they haven’t ever had a felt sense of safety. Before doing any kind of trauma healing, it is very important for one’s nervous system to experience what it feels like to be safe. Without this sense of safety, trying to heal trauma can actually create more distress for a person.

The safe and sound protocol is a tool that was developed by Dr. Stephen Porges, who also developed the Polyvagal Theory. This theory helps us understand how our nervous system shifts between stress responses: if the nervous system detects something in our environment as being threatening or dangerous to our safety, it is going to shift out of the “rest and digest” state and into sympathetic activation (fight or flight) or dorsal vagal activation (fawn or freeze). What can often happen when we experience trauma, is our nervous system gets confused and begins to detect or code stimuli in our environment as being dangerous, but these stimuli aren’t actually dangerous. The nervous system loses its ability to accurately discern between what is dangerous and what is not.

How does SSP help?

The safe and sound protocol helps to re-calibrate the nervous system. Through specially filtered music, the SSP sends cues of safety to your nervous system, building the foundation for awareness, embodiment and resilience. The high and low frequencies of the music are removed and the client is only hearing the middle range frequencies. To the body, the high frequencies would be interpreted as being similar to that of a siren or an angry person yelling and the low frequencies would be interpreted as similar to an animal growling or thunder rumbling. When we take away these frequencies, the nervous system is able to relax into the soothing frequencies.

There are many behavior challenges that can result from one’s nervous system being tuned to feel unsafe. In relationships, this might show up as being defensive, avoidant, dissociated, controlling, feeling the need to be right, difficulty being vulnerable with others, using numbing and medicating behaviors, and many others. Because these behaviors are rooted in the nervous system feeling unsafe, a client will experience a decrease in the frequency and intensity of these behaviors when completing the SSP.

The safe and sound protocol is effective in supporting the management of symptoms related to anxiety, depression, PTSD, ADHD, substance use disorders, personality disorders, autism spectrum disorder, sensory processing disorder, and more.

To get started with the Safe and Sound Protocol, you can click the “start today” button below or call our intake coordinator at 704-804-0810.

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