Distress Tolerance in Practice: The Safe Place

United States Department of Homeland Security

“The safe place” is a guided visualization.
In this exercise, the therapist asks the client to visualize a place that feels as close to idyllic as possible: calm, safe, secure, relaxing, and so forth.
This place can be real or imaginary. It can be a place that the client has actually visited, or would love to visit.
The key to this exercise is to help the client connect to each of the five senses, their internal felt sense, the emotion associated with that felt sense, and especially where they physically feel that emotion in their body.
Once a client can access that part of their body where they sense their safe place, they now have a powerful resource that they can carry with them at all times.