ABSTRACT
Writers speak of the importance of establishing a ‘sense of safety and stability’ in trauma-informed therapy that includes capacity for affect regulation, a sense of mastery, capacity to cope and strengthened social relationships. Assessing sense of safety is a strength-based approach to any subjective or objective trauma or threat. The concept of sense of safety integrates the science and therapeutic insights from the trauma-informed community with a strengths-based, goal-oriented approach. Sense of safety could therefore be used to help practitioners engage with patients, employees, students and colleagues. Appraising sense of safety and loss of sense of safety may offer a way to notice this gestalt. The concept of sense of safety integrates all the layers of A. H. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and sees them as interdependent rather than a hierarchy. Maslow saw the experience of safety as crossing cultural barriers – as a fundamental need of the whole person.
