In answering an email this afternoon I kept thinking this may be blog worthy content. :)
"While some providers may not feel this way, I actually find more complex people to be easier to work with SSP.
Most often people who are acutely sensitive and/or have very severe concerns, their nervous system will tell me (or them) very quickly what they need in terms of pacing.
These are the people who feel every nuance so that, for me, makes SSP life easier as a provider, as the ideal approach to SSP is to titrate delivery to the specific nervous system.
SSP is not as simple as just having people listen to 5 hours of music.
It is not (ideally) about delivering SSP on a specific schedule or timeline, which is something that many providers do not fully understand.
Most people with severe and complex concerns I find do best - having bigger and more dramatic improvements and also a far more gentle process - when they go through SSP at a slower pace than what many others do quite well with.
What is slow can vary quite a bit from one person to the next. Some more sensitive people it may take 3-4 months to complete one round of SSP Core.
For other more sensitive people, it may take several months or over a year.
Occasionally I may have someone who takes much longer than that.
Sometimes I have been surprised with SSP pacing, in either direction: I have had people I would have thought would need a very slow and gradual process do just fine listening to SSP at a relatively decent pace. And, I have had people who I would have thought might be able to go through SSP quite quickly, need a much slower pace than I would have expected.
If someone goes through SSP too quickly and then keeps pushing through when their nervous system is saying that it's too much, things can become incredibly uncomfortable quite quickly: it can be like lighting a match to gasoline.
Alternatively for some people when they go too quickly with SSP they actually don't become visibly dysregulated. It can simply look as though nothing is happening at all. No dysregulation appears during the process, but they also don't notice improvements.
I have found that a great deal of the time when someone is not responding at a fairly fast rate of listening, if they repeat SSP going more slowly, they may have a much better response.
Sometimes when I have a client who IS showing improvements during the SSP process but they have been milder than I would prefer, I will ask them to do an experiment and slow down their pace - cutting it in half, even.
Often then we see improvements begin to appear. :)
This is why the choice of provider with SSP is so important as is staying in touch with your provider and following their advice carefully - as long as doing so is going well. Unfortunately there are many providers who truly do not understand how to offer SSP safely to more complex people. Unyte-iLs is working hard on this, as am I, through my advanced training for SSP providers.
With anyone at various points of the SSP process there may be periods of trial and error as we learn what is the "just right" increment of listening with SSP.
This pattern is also likely to keep changing throughout the process, especially when moving from one hour of filtered music to the next.
In my work providing SSP, I go through a process of sensing out what will be right using my vast clinical experience with SSP, together with intuition. Additionally I make a point of teaching people to recognize for themselves how much SSP listening their physiology wants on a given day or IF listening at all that day is likely to be right or not.
Generally speaking, I have clients start SSP listening more slowly. "More slowly" is most often measured in minutes but sometimes it may be measured in seconds - even just a few seconds. It all depends what their physiology and/or clinical presentation is telling me.
If doing so is indicated by their response and what their physiology is telling us, I may then have them gradually increase the pace of SSP listening.
I find that this provides a much more enjoyable AND more effective process of SSP than does starting with longer amounts and then course correcting when that becomes too rough.
It is important for both SSP providers and clients to know that there can be a delay before dysregulation appears and that dysregulation can quickly become cumulative.
It is useful to also be aware that a slower SSP process does not typically mean that will take longer for improvements to appear.
Increasingly I find that the vast majority of my SSP clients notice some improvements appearing very quickly. This is quite often right from a very first listening session, and sometimes even when that listening session is just 2-5 seconds long.
It is pretty wild to witness but I - and some providers who have trained with me, including my associates are seeing the same thing.
Microdosing SSP is something I only just discovered in July 2023 when I was contacted by someone who explained she was referred to me specifically by Dr. Stephen Porges- founder of polyvagal theory and creator of SSP - due to the severity of her son's concerns.
Due to a variety of factors, most importantly that there was absolutely no room to risk turning up the dial on the level of day to day intensity that he was experiencing, even for a moment - I started him with a first listening session that was only 6 seconds long.
This approach was unprecedented in my own practice specifically and I am pretty sure with SSP generally.
I had told his mom that I did not expect anything to happen but that we would slowly increase from there.
To my surprise the teen actually did become very mildly dysregulated for 2-3 hours after listening.
I am very often doing SSP with the people who previously were believed to simply be unable to do SSP because it would typically get too rough for them.
From the moment I first arrived to SSP in May of 2019, I had intuitively felt that almost anyone can do SSP without it becoming rough as long as we figure out what their specific nervous system needs.
However, when I heard from his mom that even just 6 seconds was slightly dysregulating for him, I wondered if I had finally found someone who truly was unable to do SSP.
However, a few hours later I heard from his mom again - she let me know he was very uncharacteristically calm. :)
The next day, he listened to another 6 seconds of SSP. After that session there was no dysregulation at all, and he had a very vivid improvement.
One of the great many severe concerns the teen experiences is misophonia.
On day two of SSP having listened to a total of 12 seconds, his Mom was able to speak to him out loud for the first time in over two years, without triggering him.
When I recently presented an advanced SSP training to SSP providers, teaching some of the ways that I offer SSP to more complex people, I had over 7 pages of slides with his staggering list of improvements, even though, he was only about 40-ish minutes into the first hour (out of five hours) of SSP Core (about 13% of the music).
His improvements would be incredibly impressive had they come at the end of the five hours of music.
Just one example on the very long list of improvements is that in spite of having chool trauma, pathological demand avoidance (PDA) and dyslexia so severe prior to SSP that it was a battle for him to simply sign his name to a greeting card: just three weeks and a total of only four minutes into SSP Core, he started to write not just a book but a trilogy.
The last word count I heard was that his trilogy was over 160,000 words so far - he has set a goal of one million words. This is in addition to a great deal of other writing and personal projects he has accomplished.
There have been MANY other improvements for him as well, including having gone from daily rage attacks and meltdowns prior to SSP, to not having had one since August of 2023. <knock on wood>
We still have a long way to go, but it is very clear that his continued improvement with Safe & Sound Protocol (SSP) is inevitable."
I have since Microdosed SSP with a number of other people and have continued to see similar remarkable shifts appearing immediately. I expect that Microdosing SSP is likely to only be necessary on certain hours rather than for the entire process.
Most often more complex people need to start SSP more slowly and then can speed up the process on the later hours However, I do have one client currently who was able to listen to hours 1-4 at a comparatively fast pace (a few to several minutes at a time), until she reached hour 5. Hour 5 was immediately so rough for her even when we dropped down as low as 10 seconds of listening at a time, that she became too afraid to continue.
However, listening to hour 5 just 2-5 seconds at a time has created astonishing improvements for her that are continuing to unfold.
This client started hour 5 of SSP Core September 2023 and she is still only 15 minutes into that hour, 8 months later. Just today I received an email from her with more wonderful improvements she is newly recognizing the past few days.
Are you looking for an SSP Provider? I have a wonderful team of associates who are extremely skilled all on their own but also have trained with me and have rapid access to my expertise through consultation as needed.
I also when possible am happy to suggest other SSP Yoda Informed providers who have completely my Advanced SSP training.
Are you a provider looking for advanced SSP training and/or SSP consultation? Please visit my services for SSP providers page.