Whether it's a physical or mental space, discover your own personal sanctuary and take a moment to retreat
In 2021, researchers from the University of Oxford had a breakthrough. The culmination of 15 years of research and clinical practice, they trialed a new way of treating patients with psychosis: The Feeling Safe Programme. Working on the basis that fear can exacerbate persecutory delusions and lead to behaviour that isolates and ostracises people, the programme helps people develop new memories of safety – and it works. The trial found that the Feeling Safe Programme was the most effective treatment for persecutory delusions, rising above other treatments, such as befriending and CBT.
And it makes sense. The desire to feel safe and sheltered has been around since the first caveman headed into the rocks, and today that right to shelter is set in stone under Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
For many, ‘shelter’ is more than just four walls, and the places that give us that sense of safety don’t just protect us from the elements, they take us away from everyday stresses, pressures to perform, angst, noise, and daily demands. More than just a shelter, spaces become a ‘sanctuary’.
Our own personal sanctuaries will look and feel completely different, they might be within four walls, or they might have none at all. But for all their many shapes and sizes, they each have one thing in common, and that’s the way they make us feel.
Higher ground
“I am a big fan of treehouses, from the most basic attempts by the youngest of hands to the full-on, flashy, luxury kind,” Chloe Barry, an art psychotherapist and nature-inspired therapist, shares as she reflects on the sanctuary she had as a child. “Even though the treehouse of my youth was very basic, it was my refuge, a little place accommodated by nature that held me protectively within its branches.”
Chloe’s treehouse was essentially a few planks of woods nestled between two conifer trees in the back garden of her family home, yet it still felt incredibly significant – crucially, she says, because the climb up the tree was a little too awkward for ‘big people’.
“The treehouse offered me the ultimate sanctuary, which was an opportunity to be alone without feeling alone,” Chloe says. “I feel like a treehouse is perfectly poised to hold this ambiguous need of mine in balance, as it feels like you enter another world where the human humdrum is quietened, yet the sounds of nature are there for you.”
These days, Chloe has taken what she learnt about environments that feel safe and welcoming, and created the Treehouse Art Studio – a beautiful treehouse, built by her husband, designed to host art therapy sessions. As she sees it, the space is a vital part of what makes those sessions so impactful.
“In some ways, simply moving from ground level to treetop level has a subtle psychological impact, in that it implies a shift toward new ways of understanding ourselves,” she says. “It also helps that the treehouse art studio is nestled between a lovely sweet chestnut tree on one side and an oak tree on the other, while other trees nearby all add to that sense of retreating into nature.”
Chloe