The Safety Ladder

Our clients come to us for help with issues of different levels of importance and intensity.

For some of our clients, because of their life experiences, many of these issues could be very intense.

You might start collecting a list of issues to work with and rate them in order of importance to the client, after all you want to be able to help them on what is important to them. Understandably, some clients can be determined to get the worst thing resolved as quickly as possible.

However, in our enthusiasm to help, we may be tempted to go after the ‘high value’ targets to get the best and quickest results for our client, but there may be problems with this approach:

for some issues tapping can be an intense process for both the client and the practitioner.
if the client has a narrow ‘window of tolerance’*, this kind of processing can be quite dysregulating, both during the session and after it.
If a client has a history of trauma (which you may not know about in early sessions) their important issues may have more complexity and intensity than you, or they, are aware of.
if you make too big a change all at once, a vulnerable client may struggle to integrate that change into their life.

For all these reasons, it is probably better if you don’t jump in at the deep end if you are working with a vulnerable client.

One way of guarding against that possibility is to use the ‘Safety Ladder’, by having the client sort their issues / memories / symptoms in order of safety as well as order of importance.

The Safety Ladder

Start by explaining to the client why you want to focus on safety, by letting them know that processing some feelings and memories with tapping is usually quite gentle, but sometimes it can be intense and that you want to make it as safe and as comfortable as possible for them to do the work they need to do.

For each of the issues / memories / problems that the client has identified:

Ask them which of these would be the safest to work with. (If the client is struggling to answer the question, say: “Ask your body, not your mind”).
When they have identified that safest issue, ask them: “Which is the next safest issue?”
Repeat this process until you have all the issues / memories / problems sorted in order of safety.

Start work with the safest issue on this list.

If it seems as though the issue they have chosen might still be intense, get confirmation that it is safe to proceed by saying to your client: “Ask your body, not your mind: is it safe to work with this issue / memory today?”

If it is not safe to proceed, explore what is needed to make it safe and work on that.

Once the safest issue has been resolved, move to the next safest issue and process that.

Work your way up the list of issues in order of safety.

Advantages of this approach

There are several advantages that come from working this way:

It makes it clear to the client that their safety is one of your priorities. Clients often have an unexpressed fear that once they start tapping the flood gates are going to open and they will be overwhelmed. By acknowledging this fear openly and having a plan to reduce it, this can be reassuring and build deeper rapport: making it even safer to proceed.
By working on the safest issue first:
- It will be easier for the client and the practitioner to do the processing.
- You are more likely to succeed, which will give the client genuine confidence in you and the process.
- There may be a ‘generalisation effect’ which will indirectly soften the other issues further up the list.
- Each successful processing will (slightly) widen the client’s window of tolerance, giving them more processing capacity to work with the more difficult material further down the list.
- All this will make it easier to tackle the next safest issue.
By working this way you can help your client process difficult issues and get greater confidence in yourself and their abilities to cope with difficult issues.

* Window of tolerance refers to how well we are able to contain our emotions, the narrower the window the less we can bear before being overwhelmed or dissociating. See The Road Of Fire And Ice article for more information

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