Felt-Safety 2:1

Outline
Module 2, Lesson 1: Felt-Safety

Tenet: Regulated, Connected Kids who Feel Safe (and know what to do) Behave Well

1. What Is Felt-Safety?

Origin: Dr. Alan Sroufe

  • Leading attachment researcher; runs the longest-running longitudinal attachment study

  • Study subjects were born in the 1970s (study began prenatally)

  • Introduced the concept ~50 years ago as "felt-security"

Definition

  • A child's subjective experience — different for every child

  • Based on cues from three sources:

    • Their environment

    • Their caregiver

    • Themselves

Key point: Felt-safety is processed by the lower brain (feeling/sensing brain) — not a cognitive process

2. The Questions the Brain Is Asking

Not just "Am I physically safe?" — also:

  • Do you see me?

  • Do you know me?

  • Are you there?

  • Can you help me?

  • Will you be with me?

3. Three Contributors to Felt-Safety

A. Past experience with caregiver — John Bowlby

  • "Father of attachment theory"

  • Children assess caregiver availability based on:

    • What's happening right now, and

    • All past experiences with that caregiver

  • Even babies form memories/expectations about how the world works

B. Caregiver's help with regulation — David Wallin (2013)

  • Author, Attachment in Psychotherapy

  • Felt-safety includes: can the child expect the caregiver to help them feel better?

  • Key question: does the child have a reliable caregiver who helps them "ride the wave" of dysregulation?

C. The child's internal state — Sroufe & Waters (1977)

  • Felt-safety also depends on the child's own internal experience:

    • Mood

    • Physical condition (hungry, tired, sick, stressed)

    • Imaginings

  • Often overlooked/misunderstood piece

  • Takeaway: Felt-safety is not only about the caregiver relationship — much is outside caregiver control

4. 🧠 Neuroception — the Brain's Safety Radar

Origin: Stephen Porges (1990s)

  • Introduced Polyvagal Theory and the concept of neuroception

  • Describes the neural mechanism behind assessing felt-safety

  • Occurs without conscious awareness

Deb Dana's framing: the brain scans for cues of safety/danger from three places —

  1. Inside — the child's internal experience

  2. Outside — the environment

  3. In-between — the relationship, specifically the state of the caregiver's nervous system (their energy)

5. Two Streams Converge: NOW + PAST

  • Stream of the NOW: everything happening in this moment (~11 million bits of data processed, mostly unconscious)

  • Stream of the PAST: all prior experiences

  • These two streams merge → creates each person's unique, subjective sense of safety

  • This isn't a flaw — it's adaptive:

    • Keeps us alive

    • Lets us function without re-experiencing everything as brand new

6. Frequency: How Often Is This Happening?

🧠 Neuroception asks "Safe? Or not safe?" continuously — at least ~4x per second

7. Two Modes

⛓️Connection Mode

  • Triggered when the brain finds more cues of safety than danger

  • Produces connection-based behaviours

  • Not everyone connects the same way or wants the same amount of connection

⛓️‍💥Protection Mode

  • Triggered when the brain finds more cues of danger than safety

  • Produces protection-based behaviours, which can look like:

    • High intensity, not inviting connection

    • Or the opposite: withdrawal of energy, collapse

✨ Reflection Questions:

❤️ There's a difference between being safe and feeling safe. How do some of my child's behaviours make more sense?

🧡 One of the places my child receives cues of safety or danger is from MY nervous system. Now that I understand that, how do some of my child's behaviours make more sense?

💛 Felt-safety is always about the now and the past. What changes if I trust that my child's experience of felt-safety is THEIR truth, even if it's not mine?