Being A Safe Space: The Science Of Compassion Webinar Recap
OVERVIEW
What does it mean to be a safe space for someone struggling emotionally after abortion?
For many clients, the question is not spoken out loud. It lives underneath their first conversation, first group session, first text message, or first attempt to speak their truth about what they have been carrying. Before they can fully share, their nervous system is already asking: Is this person safe enough for my secret, my pain, and my truth?
In this webinar, Michele Mazelin, Communications Manager for Support After Abortion, explored the science behind that question. Drawing from neuroscience, polyvagal theory, trauma research, grief support, compassion research, and provider experience, Michele showed abortion healing providers why safety is not only emotional or relational. It is also biological.
The webinar covered the neuroscience of safety, the biology of compassion, practical ways to create a compassionate safe space, how to help clients leave emotionally heavy conversations feeling grounded, and what can get in the way of providers offering that kind of steady presence.
Throughout the training, one message remained central: compassion is not just what a provider says. It is also what a client’s nervous system receives. A provider’s calm, grounded, nonjudgmental presence can become an important part of how a client begins to feel safe enough to speak, grieve, process, and heal.
MARIA’S QUESTION: AM I SAFE HERE?
Michele opened the webinar with a scenario about a woman named Maria. Maria had an abortion eight years ago and had never told anyone — not her husband, whom she met five years ago, and not her best friend. She wanted support, but every time she almost said something, a look, tone, or assumption made her stay quiet.
Now, Maria has taken a vulnerable step. She has walked through a provider’s door, logged into a virtual group, or reached out for care. Michele invited providers to imagine being Maria in that moment while her nervous system is asking one question:
Is this person safe enough for my secret, for my pain, for my truth?
That question framed the entire webinar. Michele explained that the goal of the training was to help providers answer that question with their whole selves — not only with words, but with their biology.
She then invited attendees to name, in one word, what a person struggling emotionally after abortion may most need from the person sitting across from them, talking to them on the phone, texting with them, or meeting with them over Zoom.
The chat responses included words such as acceptance, compassion, empathy, attentive listening, care, space, trust, grace, presence, and understanding.
Michele noted that those responses were not only emotionally meaningful. Science supports them. Compassionate responses help the nervous system sense safety, and that sense of safety is foundational for healing.
THE NEUROSCIENCE OF SAFETY
Michele began the teaching portion by introducing the work of Dr. Stephen Porges, the neuroscientist who developed polyvagal theory. Porges studied why some people feel safe in relationships while others remain guarded, even when no obvious threat is present.
His work helped explain that the nervous system is constantly scanning the environment for signals of safety or danger. This unconscious scanning process, called neuroception, reads faces, voices, body posture, and emotional tone. Before a person has consciously decided what they think, their nervous system is already asking: Am I safe here?
When the nervous system senses safety, the social engagement system can activate. A person may be more able to open up, trust, process, connect, and heal. But when the nervous system senses danger, stress responses activate. A person may become defensive or angry, withdraw, go numb, shut down, or fall silent.
For people struggling after abortion, Michele explained, this matters deeply. Many clients are already carrying shame, grief, secrecy, or fear. Their nervous system may be on high alert for signs that someone is evaluating, judging, or condemning them.
That sensitivity can show up in many ways. A casual comment such as, “I can’t imagine making that choice,” may not be directed at the client or intended as judgment, but the client’s nervous system may still read it as a threat signal. A pregnancy history or intake question may feel exposing. A client may mark “no” on a form when asked if she has had an abortion because she fears being judged, or because having had more than one abortion feels too shameful to disclose.
Michele noted that Support After Abortion offers a sample intake form from a previous webinar, Does Your Intake Form Prompt Truth?, with tips for asking less-triggering pregnancy history questions.
Michele also named shutdown as a nervous system response. Sometimes, when abortion-related emotions feel overwhelming, a person may go flat, numb, disconnected, or emotionally distant. This is often protective. It does not necessarily mean the person does not care or does not want help.
A client may be sharing and suddenly say, “I don’t know,” stare at the floor, and seem to emotionally check out. In that moment, Michele explained, the client’s nervous system may have become overwhelmed and moved into shutdown.
Shame can also keep people silent for years. It may say, “If people knew this about me, they would reject me,” or “I’m bad,” or “I don’t deserve help.”
Michele shared the example of a man who had participated in Support After Abortion’s video series project and had worked through self-guided parts of Unraveled Roots and Keys to Hope and Healing. Even though he continued to struggle, when he reached out months later wanting more healing options, he ultimately declined one-on-one or group support because he said telling anyone else felt too embarrassing and shameful.
👉Watch Scott’s video story and read the blog with more about his journey.
For providers, these examples show why safety matters before a client ever begins deeper processing. The client may desperately want healing and still be silenced by shame.
Understanding Trauma
Before continuing, Michele paused to clarify the word trauma, because it appears frequently in the research connected to safety, compassion, and nervous system responses.
People often associate trauma with catastrophic or violent events, and it definitely can include those experiences. Yet Michele recommended the definition from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration: trauma is any experience that overwhelms a person’s ability to cope. That overwhelm may be physical, emotional, spiritual, or relational.
This helps explain why abortion affects people differently. Some people may not experience it as traumatic. For others, it may be traumatic, or it may fall somewhere in between. What a person was carrying at the time, what the experience meant to them, what they had been through previously, what support they had or lacked, and what happened during or afterward can all shape whether the experience becomes overwhelming.
Michele then connected this to the work of psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score. His research helped show that trauma, pain, and overwhelming experiences do not only affect thoughts and memories. They can also affect the body and nervous system.
Building on the previous month’s webinar about abortion grief, Michele returned to the image of an eddy, where grief and pain can get stuck instead of flowing forward and integrating into a person’s life. Sometimes the nervous system can become stuck too, continuing to react as if threat or danger is still happening, even years later. That can show up as stress responses, body tension, breathing patterns, emotional reactions, or feeling constantly on guard.
Co-Regulation: Why the Provider’s Nervous System Matters
One of the most important implications of polyvagal theory, Michele explained, is that human nervous systems do not operate in isolation. They are constantly influenced by the nervous systems around them.
When someone nearby is agitated, anxious, or angry, another person’s nervous system may pick that up as a possible threat signal. They may become tense, unsettled, or on edge without fully knowing why. Michele described this as co-dysregulation.
The reverse is also true. When someone nearby is calm, steady, and genuinely present, another person’s nervous system can read those signals as safety and begin to settle. This is co-regulation.
That has a direct implication for abortion healing providers: a calm, regulated, present nervous system can be one of the first and key interventions offered to a client.
Michele said a provider’s nervous system can communicate what the client’s nervous system is listening for: You are safe here.
This is one reason compassionate, calm, nonjudgmental engagement matters. When a client is in stress response or survival mode, it may be harder for them to process emotions, connect with others, reflect clearly, trust, grieve, or heal. But a provider’s consistent, patient, calm presence can help the client’s nervous system begin to experience safety and connection.
Michele also cautioned that if a person’s lived experience has trained their nervous system to expect danger, it may take time for them to shift out of survival mode. The best practice is to not push and to stay regulated, remain patient, and offer steady presence over time.
She offered everyday examples to make the concept concrete. “Your partner comes home after a blowout argument with their ex. You’re calm, warm, ready to listen. They snap at you anyway. It’s not about you. Their nervous system is still in the fight.” Similarly, a client who pulled back after getting close to something painful may not be resisting support; her nervous system may have sensed danger and hit the brakes.
What Safety Feels Like
Michele invited attendees to think about a time when someone made them feel instantly safe and to consider not only what the person said, but what helped their nervous system feel safe.
Karin Barbito, Healing Support Specialist for Support After Abortion, shared a story from an abortion healing memorial service she once facilitated in a garden. The service included several people, and each participant had an individual moment to honor their child through elements such as planting flowers, reciting poems or scripture, playing a song, or sharing what the experience meant to them.
Karin remembered being fully present with one participant as she shared. Karin did not interrupt. She focused only on her. Afterward, the woman told Karin, “I’ve never felt this way before when I was in a group, but you made me feel like I was the only one here.”
For Karin, that moment showed the power of focused presence.
The chat responses echoed similar themes. Participants named a smile, having someone repeat back what they said, a gentle hug, sitting with them while they processed, hearing “I’m here,” feeling seen in their pain, being called by name, and being allowed to share space.
These responses gave practical language to the science Michele had just described. Safety is often communicated through presence, tone, attention, and small signals that tell someone they are seen, heard, and not alone.
THE BIOLOGY OF COMPASSION
Michele then turned to the biology of compassion. Compassion, she explained, is not only meaningful emotionally. It can have measurable effects on the nervous system and help create the biological conditions where grief and painful emotions can be processed.
She connected this to the previous month’s webinar, Abortion Grief: Moving from Stuck to Healing, where Support After Abortion compared empathy and compassion. Empathy was described as absorbing — “I feel what you feel.” Compassion was described as responding — “I see your pain, I care, and I want to help.”
From a neuroscience perspective, empathy activates parts of the brain connected to pain and distress. That can make empathy feel emotionally heavy and overwhelming. Compassion, by contrast, activates parts of the brain connected to care, bonding, social connection, resilience, positive emotion, and motivation.
Michele also shared research on compassion among healthcare providers. The research found that compassion skills can be taught, including listening well, acknowledging emotions, communicating support, and helping people feel understood.
At the same time, it found that compassion is more than technique. Clients often sense the difference between someone using communication skills and someone who is genuinely present, kind, and emotionally grounded. Nervous systems pick up authenticity, and what providers bring into the room affects how clients experience them.
The research also pointed to the importance of self-awareness, reflection, self-care, and supportive organizations. Compassion is easier to sustain in environments that support providers rather than constantly exhaust them.
The key point was simple and important: compassion is what providers say, and it is also how they show up.
Why Witnessing & Expression Matter
Michele then connected compassion to grief expert David Kessler’s six needs of a grieving person, especially the first two: having pain and grief witnessed, and being able to express what one is feeling.
Michele noted that previous webinars discussed these needs in connection with grief, storytelling, and other aspects of abortion healing. This webinar added the neurobiological layer: being witnessed and being able to express emotion matter physiologically, not only emotionally.
When someone feels genuinely seen, heard, and responded to without judgment and with compassion, their nervous system may begin shifting out of threat protection and toward regulation. That regulation is necessary for healing.
Michele described a study by researcher James Pennebaker, who found that people who expressed previously withheld emotional experiences showed measurable improvements in stress regulation, immune functioning, and psychological well-being.
Polyvagal theory also suggests that speaking and being actively listened to are closely connected to the part of the nervous system associated with safety, connection, and social engagement. In a safe relationship, speaking one’s story can have a regulating effect.
Putting painful experiences into words can help connect emotional and bodily experiences with conscious understanding. This supports a person’s ability to process what happened, understand what they feel, and move toward integration and healing.
This matters because the nervous system shapes much of a person’s experience: how they think, how they feel, how their body reacts, how open or guarded they become, and how easily they connect with others. When the nervous system senses safety, the body can relax, breathing can slow, thinking can become clearer, and talking and listening can become easier.
HOW TO BE A SAFE SPACE: FIVE PRACTICAL STEPS
After laying the scientific foundation, Michele moved into practical application. She named five practices that can help abortion healing providers become compassionate safe spaces: resetting internally, signaling safety, listening and staying present, remaining curious, and guiding re-entry.
Each practice connected back to the research already discussed.
1. Reset Internally
Before providers can help someone else feel safe, they need to notice their own internal state.
Michele reminded providers that it is difficult to co-regulate someone else from a dysregulated state. A provider may arrive after rushing through traffic, after a heavy emotional session, or with a mind full of unfinished tasks. Whatever the reason, taking even one or two minutes for an internal reset can help.
Michele noted there are many grounding practices providers can use and that the Activity Guide for Facilitators has a section of activities that work for clients and providers. She offered four simple ways providers can reset their nervous systems before a conversation.
First, slow the breath. The practice used at the beginning of the webinar — inhaling for three counts and exhaling for six — uses a longer, slower exhale to cue the nervous system toward regulation.
Second, relax the jaw, forehead, eyes, and shoulders. Softening these areas can help communicate calm and safety to the body.
Third, ground physically. She mentioned one way to do this is by placing both feet flat on the floor and feeling the support underneath. This can help the nervous system reconnect to the present moment.
Fourth, check internal reactions. Providers can ask themselves, “Is there anything from my own story, my views, my thoughts, or my distractions that might show up in this session?” The goal is not judgment, but awareness. Once noticed, those reactions can be intentionally set aside.
Unrecognized stress, assumptions, or emotional activation can unintentionally shape the cues providers communicate to clients.
2. Signal Safety
Michele then named simple ways providers can help communicate safety as they open a conversation or session.
Gentle eye contact can help, especially when it is soft and natural rather than intense or overly focused. An open posture also matters: arms relaxed and uncrossed, body turned toward the other person. A calm, warm tone of voice can help another person’s nervous system settle, while a flat, tense, or sharp tone may activate threat responses. Slower pacing can also matter because rushing can communicate stress, urgency, or discomfort.
These details may seem small, but they are part of what a client’s nervous system reads.
3. Listen and Stay Present
Michele then offered several best practices for receiving what a client shares.
The first is to listen for the emotional heart of what the client has said and mirror it back using the client’s own language. For example, if a client talks for several minutes and mentions that they kept showing up for everyone else but no one noticed, a provider might say:
“You kept showing up even when no one noticed. That’s a lot to carry alone.”
Michele emphasized that this kind of reflection does not over-interpret or label the experience for the client. Instead of saying, “That sounds exhausting and isolating,” the provider leaves space for the client to decide what the experience meant.
The second practice is to hold silence and offer space. Silence can feel uncomfortable, so providers may be tempted to fill it. But silence can give the client’s nervous system time to process.
Michele shared an example from one of her first phone conversations with a man whose abortion experience was recent and raw. During the call, he went quiet for several minutes. Michele wondered whether she should say something, but she remembered Karin’s teaching about holding silence and chose to wait. Eventually, he continued his story. At the end of the conversation, he thanked her for being patient when he needed to pull himself together. Because the conversation was over the phone, Michele could not see that he was emotional or know what he was thinking. But the silence, though awkward for her, was important and meaningful for him.
The third practice is to let the provider’s whole presence communicate, “I’m with you.” People can often sense whether someone is fully present, distracted, or trying to move things along. Subtle posture, attention, gentle nodding, simple encouragers, and reflecting back a meaningful phrase can all communicate presence.
For example, if someone says, “Nobody asks if I’m okay. They just want me to move on,” a provider might simply reflect:
“Nobody asks.”
Then the provider can let that phrase sit for a moment. Specific reflection can help people feel heard without interrupting their process.
Michele encouraged providers to use these tools in moderation so they do not sound scripted or unnatural. They are tools in a toolbox.
The fourth practice is to pay attention to nonverbal cues. Sometimes the nervous system communicates something before words do.
Michele noted providers can dive more deeply into this by revisiting our webinar Reading Client Cues: Building Trust and Connection.
4. Remain Curious
Michele then connected compassion and curiosity through the work of Brené Brown, whose research found that compassion is one of the most powerful antidotes to shame. Michele named curiosity as the gateway to compassion.
Remaining curious means asking open, non-evaluative questions that help the client explore and make sense of their experience and emotions. This can help the client’s nervous system stay connected and engaged rather than moving into protection or defense.
Michele contrasted evaluative language with curious language. Evaluative language closes safety; curious language opens it.
For example, “Why did you make that decision?” may activate a person’s defenses. Whereas “What was going on for you at the time?” is more neutral and non-threatening.
Similarly, “That must have been so hard” or “lonely,” or “irritating” may assume or interpret the client’s experience. Whereas “Tell me more about what that was like for you” invites reflection.
👉Handout: Language that Opens and Closes Safety
Michele also encouraged providers to follow the client’s language and pacing. If a client is speaking emotionally or vaguely, their nervous system may be on alert. Slowing down rather than pushing for clarity can communicate safety.
Compassionate exploration also helps people put words to experiences they may never have spoken aloud before. That process can reduce shame and help grief or pain feel more manageable and integrated.
Understanding often unfolds gradually. Giving space for discovery, instead of rushing to solutions or conclusions, helps the client’s nervous system stay engaged.
5. Guide Re-Entry
Michele then expanded the fifth practice by focusing on how providers can help clients leave emotionally vulnerable conversations feeling grounded.
When someone shares something vulnerable or emotionally painful, their nervous system may remain activated even after the conversation ends. That is why closing matters. A good closing helps the client transition out of vulnerability with greater steadiness and regulation, rather than feeling abruptly dropped back into daily life.
Michele offered several best practices for helping clients leave feeling grounded.
First, providers can slow the pace and signal when the session is nearing the end. This helps the client prepare for the ending and allows time to address a loose end or unanswered question. Some providers may briefly summarize the main points of the session or ask:
“I see our time is winding down. What would you most like to remember from today?”
or:
“What feels most important?”
Second, providers can help the client check in and reconnect to the present moment before wrapping up. This might include a moment to breathe, sit quietly, or use a grounding exercise.
Third, Michele encouraged providers to end with affirmation or encouragement. Specific positive feedback about what the client did well — such as sharing vulnerably or noticing a new insight — can acknowledge growth and build trust.
She offered this example:
“I know it’s not easy to talk about this. You did it. You have a lot to be proud of.”
Finally, providers can discuss homework, the next session, or next step details. Having material or an activity to continue processing between sessions can be an important part of the healing journey.
Together, these practices create “guided re-entry.” They communicate to the client: you are not being rushed out of this moment. You can leave feeling steadier than when you came in.
Michele also noted that guided re-entry matters for providers. Closing intentionally helps the provider’s nervous system slow down at the end of emotionally heavy conversations and transition more gradually as well.
BARRIERS: WHAT CAN GET IN THE WAY OF BEING A SAFE SPACE?
Michele named several barriers that can get in the way of being a safe space. As she said, “Even deeply compassionate providers encounter barriers. It’s part of being human.” Awareness helps providers stay healthier, steadier, and more effective over time.
One barrier Michele named was vicarious trauma and secondary traumatic stress. When providers sit with painful stories over time, their nervous systems may become activated too. They may notice emotional exhaustion, irritability, numbness, difficulty turning work off, cynicism, or trouble staying present. This can happen gradually enough that providers may not notice until they are already depleted.
Another barrier is unresolved personal experiences. Providers may carry their own grief, regrets, wounds, or unresolved emotions in their nervous systems. That lived experience can deepen compassion and connection, and it can also lead providers to feel emotionally triggered, rush someone toward healing they wish they had, become reactive, or personalize a client’s decisions or emotions.
Michele also named internal tension when a client’s beliefs, views, emotions, or decisions feel very different from the provider’s own framework. That tension may be emotional, moral, spiritual, or ideological, and it can affect how the provider shows up.
Another barrier is burnout. A provider may keep showing up, use the right words, and apply the right skills, while internally feeling exhausted, disconnected, resentful, or numb. A client’s nervous system can often sense that difference.
Michele also discussed emotional merging or over-identification. This can happen when a client’s story feels deeply personal or familiar. Compassion may slip into feeling responsible for fixing, preventing, or carrying what is not the provider’s to hold.
Michele then invited attendees to name obstacles they had experienced or observed in being a safe space.
While participants added comments to the chat, Kylee Heap, Executive Director of Support After Abortion, shared three reflections. First, she described a previous work environment where productivity was prioritized over people and emotional support. Second, she named the isolation of leadership, especially for those expected to be steady and supportive for others without always having their own space to process stress, grief, or exhaustion. Kylee encouraged leaders to “find your person” and build support because they deserve support too.
Her third reflection was the fear of opening something that a provider may not have the capacity, time, or training to hold in the moment. She said that fear can make a client feel like a “hot potato,” creating tension that gets in the way of being the safe space the provider wants to be.
The chat responses added more examples, including oversharing personal experiences, emotional reactivity, wanting to fix or rescue, moving too quickly into problem-solving, needing a supportive community, and the temptation to compartmentalize instead of fully feeling or staying empathetic.
SELF-COMPASSION FOR PROVIDERS
Michele then focused on the importance of self-compassion for those who walk alongside others in their healing journeys.
She referenced the work of Dr. Kristin Neff, whose research connects self-compassion among providers with lower burnout, lower secondary traumatic stress, stronger coping, and greater long-term capacity for compassion.
Self-compassion can sometimes feel like a luxury or even selfish, but Michele reframed it as necessary, “Caring deeply for others works best when we care for our own nervous systems.”
Strategies for providers include noticing when their own nervous system needs a reset. That may mean taking a few minutes between difficult conversations to breathe, stretch, or step outside. For some providers, it may mean taking a break from direct client care for a period of time.
Michele guided attendees to consider what helps their nervous system settle, such as trusted colleagues, counseling, friends, movement, creative outlets, or time outdoors.
She also urged providers to pay attention to what they carry home by asking themselves:
“What belongs to me and what doesn’t?”
And she encouraged providers to speak to themselves with kindness. For example, instead of, “I should be handling this better,” a provider might try:
“I’m carrying a lot. I’m human, too.”
Attendees shared many ways they care for their own nervous systems after emotionally heavy work, including journaling, talking with friends and colleagues, walking outdoors, spending time with pets, painting, listening to music, spending time with co-leaders, taking time between clients, and grounding.
Angel shared that she likes to get outside, feel the concrete or grass under her feet, and find something beautiful to focus on, such as the sun or wind chimes.
Michele shared that watching Korean dramas is her own go-to way to reset, noting that reading subtitles, watching the characters, and listening takes up her attention and blocks out other distractions.
Together, these examples showed that self-compassion does not have to look the same for every provider. The important thing is to know what helps the provider’s nervous system return to steadiness.
👉Handout: Provider Self-Check for Before and After Sessions
Q&A
Q: How should I handle it when a client shares something really emotional or significant in the very last minutes of a session?
A: Karin said this has happened to her more than once, and she has not always handled it perfectly. Her guidance was to validate the client’s emotions first and acknowledge that what the client shared is significant.
At the same time, if the provider is facilitating a group or session with a clear time boundary, that boundary still matters. Karin emphasized the need to honor the session’s time limit because boundaries are respectful and important.
Her approach would be to validate, end the meeting, and then follow up by email or text with the client and to encourage the person to check in so they can process together more of what came up in that final moment.
Q: As a director of client services, how can I best support advocates who are carrying a full day of heavy client work?
A: Karin said one of the strongest things facilitators and leaders can do is create space for debriefing with someone trusted. When client work gets heavy or something activates a provider emotionally, a trusted debrief can help the provider discern what came up, identify blind spots, and think through what may help.
That may include brief breaks, stepping outside, getting water or coffee, breathing, or talking things through with someone during the day. Karin emphasized that the need will be individual; it will not look the same for everyone.
Michele added that directors can support advocates by scheduling sessions with some kind of break in between whenever possible, so providers have time for self-regulation. She also named the value of an open-door policy, where team members know they can call or talk with someone after a heavy conversation.
Kylee added the importance of celebrating small wins. In work that can feel heavy, noticing milestones and impact helps balance the emotional weight and reminds teams that their work matters.
Michele also noted that team debriefs and discussions can help providers learn compassionate language and skills from one another over time, as they hear how colleagues process and respond to difficult client situations.
Q: What if the trigger is not me, but the environment I work in and the pace I’m expected to keep?
A: Michele acknowledged that the webinar had already touched on some of this, especially around workload and scheduling. She added that environmental factors can matter too. Noise, interruptions, hearing other people through walls, harsh lighting, or a fast pace can affect the provider and the client.
When the environment itself contributes to dysregulation, small adjustments may help. Michele suggested softer lighting, calming music, peaceful artwork, or other small changes that can make the physical space feel more like a safe zone.
Q: Is there any difference in men’s nervous system responses and regulation?
A: Nyles Pinckney, Men’s Healing Coordinator for Support After Abortion, said that for many men, emotional reactions may be shaped by what they were taught growing up. Some men may respond with anger because anger can feel more familiar or acceptable than other emotions.
For facilitators and providers, this means anger may not be the full story. Nyles encouraged providers not to assume a man’s anger is directed at them. There may be something deeper that he is not yet comfortable naming or discussing.
Q: What if a client’s beliefs, reactions, or decisions bring up strong emotions in me as the provider?
A: Karin said the central question is how well the provider can regulate their response.
Karin suggested taking a deep breath and getting yourself together quickly, then validating what the client shared, “I appreciate you sharing that with us.”
She noted that providers may not be able to name what triggered them right away, but encouraged them to acknowledge it to themselves and explore what’s underneath — because when you become aware of it, “you can hit the pause button and then respond rather than react.”
Michele added that a physical grounding practice may help. She mentioned pressing the skin between the thumb and forefinger or pressing fingernails into the palm as a way to reconnect with the body and return to the present moment.
Karin agreed and noted that pressure points can help move the provider out of fight-or-flight mode. And she noted that providers can use their hands to discreetly regulate themselves, rather than something obvious like squeezing the bridge of your nose.
FINAL TAKEAWAY
This webinar showed that being a safe space is not only about saying the right words. It is about becoming the kind of steady, compassionate presence a client’s nervous system can recognize as safe.
For people carrying grief, shame, secrecy, or heavy emotions after abortion, safety is often the first threshold of healing. Before a client can share their story, express emotion, or begin to process what happened, their nervous system may be scanning for signs of judgment, threat, rejection, or care.
Michele reminded providers that compassion has biology behind it. Calm presence, warm tone, patient silence, curious language, and grounded closing practices can all help create the conditions where a client feels safe enough to speak and steady enough to continue healing.
The webinar also showed providers how they are part of that biology. Their nervous systems matter too. Being a safe space, is both a client-care practice and a provider-care practice. It asks providers to listen deeply, regulate honestly, respond with compassion, and care for the nervous system of the person doing the caring.
When providers do that, compassion becomes more than kindness. It becomes a signal of safety — one that can help clients move out of silence, shame, and survival, and toward connection, expression, and healing.
© Support After Abortion
LINKS
Click here to watch the video of this webinar.
Click to access the handout: Handout: Language that Opens and Closes Safety
Click to access the handout: Handout: Provider Self-Check for Before and After Sessions
Click here to register for the next Abortion Healing Provider webinar.
Click here to access Support After Abortion’s Resource Library.
Click here to explore Support After Abortion’s services, resources, and training for Abortion Healing Providers.
© Support After Abortion