A biopsychosocial safeness model: New directions for psychotherapy research and practice

This article examines the distinction between safety and safeness and argues that safeness reflects a distinct biopsychosocial process with specific evolutionary functions, physiological signatures, and social manifestations. Whereas safety is primarily associated with threat detection and defensive regulation, safeness refers to affiliative states characterized by perceived security, connection, and soothing regulation. Building on attachment theory, social safeness research, emotion regulation models, polyvagal theory, and compassion-based approaches, we propose an integrative developmental framework that articulates the psychological, relational, and physiological processes involved in safeness and their bidirectional interactions. The model clarifies how early attachment experiences, self-compassion, social safeness, and autonomic regulation may mutually influence one another across development and within psychotherapy. Clinical implications are discussed regarding how therapists may cultivate safeness within therapeutic relationships and interventions. Compassion-Focused Therapy is presented as one illustrative example of how safeness can be operationalized in practice, alongside other therapeutic modalities that address relational security and emotion regulation. By distinguishing safeness from defensive safety processes and situating it within a biopsychosocial perspective, this article aims to contribute to a more precise conceptualization of affiliative regulation and to inform future psychotherapy research and clinical practice.