Seeking safety is an evidence-based therapy that’s used to help clients with their coping skills and to strengthen stabilization, especially for those dealing with the often co-occurring diagnoses of trauma and substance abuse.
Seeking safety treatment helps clients break out of cycles of codependent and damaging behaviors often brought on by co-occurring post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and substance abuse. Seeking safety helps clients get their lives back by providing them with the skills to defeat those vicious cycles and by helping them make healthier choices.
How Does Seeking Safety Work?
The fundamental principles of seeking safety include:
- Safety: The main component of seeking safety is helping clients feel safe in their everyday lives, including in their relationships, thoughts, emotions, and behavioral choices.
- Dual Diagnosis/Integrated Treatment: : Seeking safety simultaneously treats both PTSD and/or trauma symptoms as well as co-occurring drug or alcohol abuse.
- Focus On Ideals: Addiction and trauma can often lead to a sense of self loss. Seeking safety helps clients re-identify with their values and goals and helps them work towards reinstating them.
Our therapists focus on four main content areas with each client including cognitive (understanding of the situation), behavioral (choices), interpersonal (how they communicate with others), and case management (how they work with the therapist). These content areas are explored by helping clients set boundaries in relationships, cope with triggers, stay grounded, protect themselves from emotional pain, be honest with themselves, and learn to ask for help.
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What Is the Evidence Behind Seeking Safety?
Seeking safety was developed in 1992 at Harvard Medical School by Lisa M. Najavits, PhD with a grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Studies conducted by organizations, including the American Psychological Association, have shown that seeking safety is a highly influential treatment for adults suffering from trauma and PTSD as well as substance abuse and addiction.
While seeking safety was initially designed to alleviate the symptoms associated with PTSD and in the treatment of the disorder’s often co-occurring substance abuse, it’s become widely used in recovery plans for a variety of mental health disorders. In general, seeking safety can be used to treat any diagnosis where coping skills and stability need to be improved.
Seeking Safety at Clearview Treatment Programs
When seeking treatment for PTSD, trauma, and/or substance abuse, it’s vital to find a treatment center with trusted, trained, and certified therapists. At Clearview, we have several therapists trained in seeking safety who help clients every day recover from their symptoms and put an end to their damaging behaviors. Through individual and group sessions at our Dual Diagnosis Treatment Center, Women’s Treatment Center, and Outpatient Treatment Center, clients learn healthy ways to feel grounded and cope with difficult situations so they can feel like themselves again.
With over 20 years of proven experience, Clearview can put you or your loved one on the path to recovery.
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