TIRCIA · General public
A stabilisation exercise: building your safe place
An inner resource for calming yourself: how to do it, why it helps, and its limits
By Marie-Agnès Thulliez · Author · Publishing Director10-minute read
In psychotherapy, and particularly in trauma-focused approaches such as EMDR, people are often offered an exercise called the “safe place”, or “calm place”. It is a visualisation that helps you return, within a few minutes, to a calmer inner state. Here is how to build it step by step, what it is for, and what is known about its effects.
In brief
- The safe place is a visualisation of a place, real or imaginary, associated with calm and safety.
- It serves as a resource for calming yourself, both in sessions and in everyday life.
- It is very widely used, but has been little evaluated scientifically in its own right; it draws on the well-documented power of mental imagery.
- For some people who have experienced trauma, it can be difficult or even uncomfortable: it is then adapted, ideally with a therapist.
1. What is the safe place for?
In trauma therapies, work on difficult memories begins once the therapist has made sure the person has ways of calming themselves. This stabilisation or preparation stage is part of the recommendations for many patients, especially those who have experienced repeated trauma (Cloitre et al., 2011). This recommendation is, however, debated: a critical analysis of the guidelines on complex PTSD points out that there is no evidence that a prior stabilisation phase is necessary for most patients (De Jongh et al., 2016). To find out more about this debate, see our article Do we really need to stabilise before treating trauma?.
In EMDR, the safe place is one of the first tools offered during the preparation phase (Shapiro, 2018). It allows patients to check that they can bring an emotion down themselves, to end a session in a calm state, and to have a resource between sessions. Many clinicians now speak of a “calm place” rather than a “safe place”, because the idea of safety can be hard to imagine for people who have never felt safe.
2. Why can a simple image be soothing?
Imagining a scene activates responses in the brain and body close to those the real scene would produce. Research on mental imagery shows that it has a stronger emotional impact than verbal thought: picturing a situation in images arouses more emotion than thinking about it in words (Holmes and Mathews, 2010). This is what makes imagery so powerful in anxiety disorders, where people imagine the worst, and it is this same mechanism that the safe place uses in the other direction.
The safe place also engages several senses at once (sight, sounds, smells, sensations on the skin), which deepens the immersion, and links the image to a bodily state of relaxation.
3. Building your safe place, step by step
The exercise takes about ten minutes the first time. Settle in a quiet place, sitting comfortably.
| Step | What you do |
|---|---|
| 1. Choose a place | Think of a place where you feel good, calm, at peace: a real place (a beach, a garden, a room from your childhood) or an imaginary one. Pick a place with no connection to anyone you have a complicated relationship with. |
| 2. See it | Notice the colours, the light, the shapes, what is near and what is far. |
| 3. Hear it | What sounds are there? The wind, water, birds, silence? |
| 4. Feel it | The smells, the temperature, the air on your skin, the ground beneath your feet. |
| 5. Notice the calm in your body | Where do you feel this calm? In your chest, your shoulders, your belly? Take time to notice it. |
| 6. Choose a cue word | A word or short phrase that sums up this place (“the cove”, “peaceful”), so that you can return to it quickly. |
| 7. Come back | Gently open your eyes, look at the room around you, move your hands and feet a little. |
Then practise returning to it within a few breaths using the cue word, first when you are calm, then during small annoyances. As with any learning, repetition is what makes the tool available when you need it.
If the exercise does not work
Sometimes the image does not come, it changes, or an unpleasant memory intrudes. This is common, and entirely understandable, in people who have lived through difficult events.
Stop the exercise, come back to the room and to your breathing. You can try another support: a resource person (real or imaginary) who reassures you, an object, a soothing activity, or an exercise to ground yourself in the present. If the discomfort persists, talk to a therapist about it.
4. What does the research say?
The safe place is one of the most widely used exercises in trauma psychotherapy, but it has been very little evaluated on its own. Its value rests mainly on clinical experience and on the broader evidence on mental imagery and emotion regulation.
Other approaches use very similar exercises. Compassion-focused therapy, developed by Paul Gilbert, invites people to build a “soothing place” and a compassionate image, in order to activate a soothing system that is often underdeveloped in highly self-critical people (Gilbert, 2009). Hypnosis and sophrology also use visualisations of resource places. This convergence between very different approaches suggests that the exercise meets a real clinical need, even though it does not amount to proof of effectiveness.
In EMDR, the safe place belongs to a broader set of resource development and installation techniques. A preliminary paper, based on two clinical cases of patients with complex post-traumatic stress disorder, suggested that these techniques could improve emotional stability before work on traumatic memories (Korn and Leeds, 2002). This effect remains to be evaluated in controlled trials.
One study, however, adds a useful nuance for EMDR practitioners. The installation of resources, such as the safe place, is often combined with eye movements. Yet in students asked to recall positive memories, eye movements reduced the vividness and pleasantness of those memories, just as they do for negative memories (Hornsveld et al., 2011). This finding, consistent with working memory theory, calls for caution: to strengthen a resource, long sets of bilateral stimulation may be unhelpful, or even counterproductive.
This finding stands alongside others: as early as 2001, another Dutch team had observed that positive memories became less positive after eye movements (van den Hout et al., 2001). Hellen Hornsveld and her colleagues recommend suspending the use of eye movements in the safe place and in Resource Development and Installation until their added value has been demonstrated (Hornsveld et al., 2012). For the details of this debate, see our article Resource Development and Installation (RDI).
For practitioners
- Use short, slow sets of bilateral stimulation, or none at all, when installing the calm place.
- Check that the image remains pleasant at every step, and stop at the slightest negative intrusion.
- Let the work move forward even if the exercise does not succeed: other resources exist.
- Suggest practice between sessions so that the tool becomes genuinely available.
5. An example
Take the example of Léa, 27, who seeks help after a road accident. On her first attempt, she chooses her childhood bedroom, but the image quickly becomes uncomfortable. Her therapist stops her and suggests looking elsewhere. Léa then thinks of a bench beneath a lime tree, in her grandmother’s village, where she used to read in summer. She describes the shade, the rustle of the leaves, the scent of the lime blossom. She chooses the word “lime tree”. In the following weeks, she uses it on the bus when fear rises, and manages to bring her anxiety down within a few minutes.
The safe place is part of a broader toolkit, presented in our article Four simple tools to calm your mind when everything speeds up.
6. For therapists: the resource place in session
The steps in part 3 also apply in session. This part simply sets out what the therapist adds when guiding the exercise during the preparation phase; it complements clinical training.
What the therapist adds
- The word: let the patient choose the one that suits them. For some traumatised people, “safe” is out of reach; “calm”, “peaceful” or “pleasant” are more accessible.
- Anchoring: if you use bilateral stimulation, keep the sets short and slow. Eye movements also weaken positive memories (Hornsveld et al., 2011); long sets risk dampening the resource instead of strengthening it.
- Autonomy: ask the patient to find their place again on their own, from the cue word, without guidance.
- The test: invite them to briefly bring to mind a mild, recent disturbance, then return to their place, and observe together what changes.
Points to watch
- Contaminated place: if a painful memory, a person or an unpleasant sensation intrudes, stop. Rather than trying to “repair” the place, choose another one, or another resource.
- Complex trauma and dissociation: keep the exercise short and flexible. The therapist regularly checks orientation to the present, the level of arousal and the patient’s ability to come back to the here and now.
- A difficulty is information: a resource place that is hard to build tells you about the patient’s current capacity for regulation, and guides the rest of the preparation.
Frequently asked questions
Does the place have to be real?
No. It can be real, imaginary, or a mixture of both. What matters is that it is associated with a feeling of calm, and that it carries no link to a person or memory you feel ambivalent about.
Can I practise on my own?
Yes, most people can practise alone without difficulty. If the exercise stirs up painful memories, it is better to work on it with a therapist.
Does this replace therapy?
No. It is a regulation tool, useful as a complement. On its own, it does not treat trauma or an anxiety disorder.
In one sentence
The safe place is an inner resource that you build, then practise, so that you can calm yourself when emotion rises.
Simple and, in most cases, risk-free, it adapts to each person; when it does not work, other resources exist.
References
- Cloitre, M., Courtois, C. A., Charuvastra, A., Carapezza, R., Stolbach, B. C., & Green, B. L. (2011). Treatment of complex PTSD: Results of the ISTSS expert clinician survey on best practices. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 24(6), 615-627.
- De Jongh, A., Resick, P. A., Zoellner, L. A., et al. (2016). Critical analysis of the current treatment guidelines for complex PTSD in adults. Depression and Anxiety, 33(5), 359-369. Link
- Gilbert, P. (2009). Introducing compassion-focused therapy. Advances in Psychiatric Treatment, 15(3), 199-208.
- Holmes, E. A., & Mathews, A. (2010). Mental imagery in emotion and emotional disorders. Clinical Psychology Review, 30(3), 349-362.
- Hornsveld, H. K., de Jongh, A., & ten Broeke, E. (2012). Stop the use of eye movements in resource development and installation, until their additional value has been proven: A rejoinder to Leeds and Korn (2012). Journal of EMDR Practice and Research, 6(4), 174-178. Link
- Hornsveld, H. K., Houtveen, J. H., Vroomen, M., et al. (2011). Evaluating the effect of eye movements on positive memories such as those used in resource development and installation. Journal of EMDR Practice and Research, 5(4), 146-155.
- Korn, D. L., & Leeds, A. M. (2002). Preliminary evidence of efficacy for EMDR resource development and installation in the stabilization phase of treatment of complex posttraumatic stress disorder. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 58(12), 1465-1487.
- Shapiro, F. (2018). Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Therapy: Basic Principles, Protocols, and Procedures (3rd ed.). New York: Guilford Press.
- van den Hout, M., Muris, P., Salemink, E., & Kindt, M. (2001). Autobiographical memories become less vivid and emotional after eye movements. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 40(2), 121-130. Link
This article offers general guidance, up to date at the date of publication. It is no substitute for the advice of a doctor, who alone can make a diagnosis, or for support from a psychologist or psychotherapist.
