In 1993, the British Journal of Clinical Psychology published my paper titled ‘Defence and safety: Their function in social behaviour and psychopathology’. The paper highlights that to understand people's sensitivity to threat, we also need to understand their ability to identify what is safe. This paper offers an update on these concepts, highlighting distinctions that were implicit but not clearly defined at the time. Hence, the paper seeks to clarify distinctions between: (i) threat detection and response, (ii) safety and safety seeking, (iii) safeness and (iv) their social and non-social functions and forms. Threat detection and response are to prevent or minimize harm (e.g., run from a predator or fire). Safety checking relates to monitoring for the absence and avoidance of threat, while safety seeking links to the destination of the defensive behaviour (e.g., running home). Safety seeking also relates to maintaining vigilance to the appearance of potential harms and doing things believed to avoid harm. Threat-defending and safety checking and seeking are regulated primarily through evolved threat processing systems that monitor the nature, presence, controllability and/or absence of threat (e.g., amygdala and sympathetic nervous system). Safeness uses different monitoring systems via different psychophysiological systems (e.g., prefrontal cortex, parasympathetic system) for the presence of internal and external resources that support threat-coping, risk-taking, resource exploration. Creating brain states that recruit safeness processing can impact how standard evidence-based therapies (e.g., exposure, distress tolerance and reappraisal) are experienced and produce long-term change.

中文翻译：

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威胁、安全、安全和社会保障 30 年：心理健康和福祉的基本维度和区别


1993 年，《英国临床心理学杂志》发表了我的论文，题为“防御和安全：它们在社会行为和精神病理学中的功能”。本文强调，要了解人们对威胁的敏感性，我们还需要了解他们识别安全事物的能力。本文对这些概念进行了更新，强调了当时隐含但未明确定义的区别。因此，本文试图澄清以下两者之间的区别：（i） 威胁检测和响应，（ii） 安全和安全寻求，（iii） 安全以及 （iv） 它们的社会和非社会功能及形式。威胁检测和响应是为了防止或尽量减少伤害（例如，逃离捕食者或火灾）。安全检查涉及监测是否存在和避免威胁，而安全寻求与防御行为（例如，跑回家）的目的地有关。寻求安全还涉及对潜在伤害的出现保持警惕，并采取被认为可以避免伤害的事情。威胁防御和安全检查和寻找主要通过进化的威胁处理系统进行监管，这些系统监控威胁的性质、存在、可控性和/或不存在威胁（例如，杏仁核和交感神经系统）。安全性通过不同的心理生理系统（例如，前额叶皮层、副交感神经系统）使用不同的监控系统来监控支持威胁应对、冒险、资源探索的内部和外部资源的存在。创建招募安全处理的大脑状态可以影响标准循证疗法（例如，暴露、痛苦容忍度和重新评估）的体验方式并产生长期变化。