How to Be a Safe Other

When in connection with someone who has lived through trauma, particularly sexual trauma, it can be difficult to know what to do, or how to be. You may not want to say the wrong thing. You may want to be kind without performing kindness, steady without being rigid. This isn’t a manual. It’s a small map. The terrain is human.

While these words are shaped with survivors in mind, most of what follows applies to everyone. We all need safety, attunement, and relational clarity. The difference is: for someone with trauma in their history or nervous system, the stakes are higher. A subtle rupture can register as serious threat. A shift in tone might feel like the ground falling away. This isn’t drama, it’s neurology.

In trauma, neurochemical shifts drive hypervigilance and emotional dysregulation. The amygdala becomes more reactive. Its connection with the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (PFC), the regulator, weakens. Under stress, particularly where there are echoes of past trauma, the brain can default to “danger” before registering the full context. This is not a flaw; it’s a response shaped by survival.

This shift can mean the nervous system becomes attuned to micro-signals: a slight frown, urgency in tone, ambiguous silence. These may activate a threat response. Functional MRI studies confirm weakened connectivity between amygdala and PFC in individuals with PTSD. The white matter tract between these regions often shows reduced integrity. This makes it more likely the amygdala will react before the brain has had time to assess.

But this isn’t fixed. The brain is plastic. With therapy, consistency, co-regulation, and time, regulation can improve. Under stress, reversion is possible, but so is integration.

What Is Trauma? Perspectives from leading practitioners:

• Gabor Maté: Trauma is not what happens to you, but what happens inside you as a result.

• Bessel van der Kolk: Trauma is stored in the body, in movement, posture, breath, reaction.

• Peter Levine: Trauma is undischarged survival energy, stuck in the nervous system, waiting to complete.

Some Things That Help

Go Slow

Slowness regulates the field. It allows the system time to orient. Presence does not rush.

Be Regulated

Safety is not created by the right words, but by the right state. A person who has experienced trauma will read tone, breath, posture, and presence, often before words. Regulation cannot be performed. It must be real.

Threat is detected before it is understood. Small energetic shifts are meaningful. Before offering comfort, check your own state. Ground yourself. Breathe low. Notice if you are trying to fix or manage. Co-regulation is not conceptual, it is physiological.

Don’t Over-Ask or Under-Acknowledge

Not every story needs to be explored. Not every silence needs to be avoided. Let what’s shared be received. Let presence hold.

Consent Everywhere

Consent applies to space, plans, energy, not just sex. Ask before entering. Ask before shifting. Let the other person know what’s next.

Be Consistent

Sudden change, even slight, can register as threat. Consistency supports nervous system safety. If something must shift, name it. Let the system stay with you.

Don’t Personalise Survival Responses

Freeze, fawn, dissociation, shutdown, these are not about you. They are the body protecting itself. Stay near if possible. Stay steady. Don’t punish. Don’t personalise.

Take Responsibility for Your Own Triggers

Everyone brings a nervous system. If you are choosing to be present with someone whose system has known danger, hold awareness of your impact. Containment is not silence, it is maturity.

Ask: “What would help you feel safe right now?”

Ask only if you mean it. Safety is not fixed, it is built in real time. Ask with care. Hear without pressure.

One Final Note

Trauma does not equate to fragility. Those who’ve lived through it are often highly resilient. The goal is not special treatment or perfection. It is relational awareness. Everyone brings something. What matters is what it does in the field.

Trauma-aware connection is not one-way care. Many trauma survivors, especially those who’ve done deep work, are among the most attuned and supportive people in the room. With safety, there is often real capacity for reciprocity, humour, growth.

Slowness, regulation, consistency, clarity, these are not specialist tools. They are fundamentals. But when safety has been breached, the cost of misattunement is higher. And the potential for healing, when clearly met, is greater.

This includes intimacy. Over-caution can disempower, just as overreach can harm. Survivors don’t need avoidance, they need clarity, containment, and mutual empowerment. When the relational container is strong, intimacy becomes a site of reclamation. Not retreat, relationship.

That is where healing lives.