Does Safe and Sound Protocol Work? SSP Review for C-PTSD (And More)

"I was deeply skeptical that SSP could help me. I’ve never been more glad to be wrong."

I’ll admit it: When I'd first heard of Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP), I was… skeptical.

The idea that I could listen to some special music and it would transform my nervous system sounded like wishful thinking, if not outright pseudoscience. This was a very oversimplified understanding of SSP, of course, but if you have similar reservations, I completely get it.

I’ve logged about 13 years of different therapies — including CBT, DBT, ACT, IFS (“parts work”), ERP, somatic experiencing, psychodynamic, narrative, and many more — as well as dozens of psychiatric medications that were limited in their helpfulness.

If “getting better” mostly involved working hard in therapy, taking your meds consistently, and accumulating coping skills and self-insight, I should have been feeling amazing a long time ago.

But despite putting forth such a monumental effort for over a decade, I still wasn’t seeing the meaningful improvements I'd hoped for.

The idea that there was a playlist I could download to address the persistent mental health challenges I’d experienced since childhood seemed laughably simple. There was absolutely no way that some knock-off Taylor Swift cover was going to unscramble my brain.

No way.

And yet, as I write this today, I’m eating my words.

After ten weeks of listening and several months to integrate everything, I am in disbelief over how SSP has not only helped me, but has challenged what I thought I knew about my own neurodivergence and mental health.

Why I Pursued SSP

My main motivation for pursuing the SSP was to address the underlying complex trauma I'd experienced.

More specifically, despite trying countless therapies, medications, and even “natural” remedies, I lived with near-constant anxiety and hypervigilance that I couldn’t shake.

It felt like my brain was constantly shouting “something is wrong, we need to do something!” without being able to pinpoint what was making me feel that way, and without knowing how to respond to that urgency. Eventually, this constant anxiety would give way to despair and deep depression.

A therapist I had a couple years ago probably described it best when she said, “Your tires are constantly spinning out, but you aren’t getting any traction.”

I also had a tendency to intellectualize my feelings, rather than locating and experiencing them in my body, which caused me to stagnate massively in therapy.

Doing cognitive therapies to challenge my thinking only seemed to reinforce this tendency to approach every so-called “negative” emotion as a problem with my cognition.

But despite trying body-based, "bottom up" modalities like somatic experiencing later on, I still felt trapped in my head, and I struggled to make progress.

My care team considered the possibility of exploring EMDR, which is considered a frontline treatment for PTSD. However, there were also valid concerns that I was simply too dysregulated to revisit and retell the traumatic events.

When I heard about SSP through a somatic practitioner that I follow online, my curiosity was immediately sparked.

As a former musician, music was often something I experienced in a more embodied way, and it seemed to amplify my emotions and body sensations. Music felt immersive in a way most other things did not, and I suspected it would be a powerful entry point for me.

How Did I Access the SSP?

Jess Jackson, known as @SoftPathHealing on Instagram, provides SSP through a unique group setting called LAND.

After a discovery call with Jess — which felt so supportive, gentle, and warm — I felt ready to give SSP a try, with the hopes I would see improvements mostly with hypervigilance and anxiety, and greater embodiment.

I signed up for the LAND program, which provides the SSP through the Unyte platform, and embarked on a weeks-long journey into the Safe and Sound Protocol.

What Shifted For Me With SSP

The Major Highlights

🚨 Anxiety

I saw a significant and meaningful change in my anxiety with SSP. I used to experience debilitating daily anxiety as my baseline state. With SSP, my anxiety has shifted from being constant to simply being situational, and I find it much easier to ease my anxiety when it does surface.

We measured this, too. My GAD-7 assessments and State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) prior to the SSP indicated severe anxiety. After the SSP, my average scores rapidly declined, first indicating mild anxiety and then eventually, no anxiety at all. This means I no longer qualify for a diagnosis of an anxiety disorder for the first time in my life.

🌊 Emotional regulation

My relationship to my emotions has changed drastically, and it's hard to capture all of the ways in which it's shifted. These are some common themes I've noticed so far:

• Acceptance: I am able to accept my emotions without judgment, rather than resisting or wrestling with them, and I move through my emotions without feeling flooded or overwhelmed.
• Awareness: I can more accurately name what I’m feeling, and I can often identify what preceded an emotion or may have contributed to it (put another way, the “cause and effect” is much clearer to me).
• Access: My somatic awareness — the ability to tune into the sensations happening in my body as they relate to my emotional state — has strengthened considerably. This has made other therapeutic modalities, like somatic experiencing, much more impactful and accessible to me.
• Self-soothing: I can self-regulate a lot more effectively, too, in part because it’s easier to figure out what I need in response to the feelings I’m having.
• Surrender: I’m also no longer afraid that if I let myself fully feel something, it will flood me or that I’ll “lose control.”

🫂 Felt/embodied safety

It’s one thing to cognitively know you are safe, but I’ve noticed being able to experience safety within my body and self now.

I can locate safety even in triggering situations, and there is a deeper trust in both myself and others. I no longer “know” that I’m okay; in most situations, I believe and feel that I’m okay (or will be).

⚡ “Essence”

I don’t know how exactly to describe this, to be honest. But I have “lightning bolt” moments where I feel directly connected to the essence or center of myself.

It’s a feeling when you know in your bones that you are aligned with your values and deeply connected to who you truly are.

I have never felt more unshakeable and sure of myself; it’s a combination of passion and groundedness that I don’t know that I’ve felt quite like this before going through SSP.

The people close to me have subjectively reported on this, too. I’ve been told by multiple loved ones that I seem “the most myself” that I’ve ever been, and that the “light is back in my eyes.”

🎁 Social receptivity

This was something I didn’t even know could change, and I wasn’t even sure what to call it at first, so this is admittedly a phrase I had to come up with on my own because this is new to me.

I began noticing early on that I reacted to compliments and positive feedback not by deflecting or rejecting, but instead, I could really hear, receive, and integrate what was said to me.

I even experienced certain emotions for the first time, most notably the feeling of being “important” or “valued” in response to supportive feedback I had received. That sense of being precious or having inherent value was something I could finally locate in my body, which was very profound to experience.

🕰️ Trauma integration

My last therapist was shocked when I met with her a few days after an SSP listening session, describing a breakthrough I'd had where it felt like a traumatic experience from my past had “merged” with my current self and timeline, and that I no longer felt like it was playing on loop in the background.

I’ve been doing intensive trauma therapy in the months after SSP, and there is a massive shift in my ability to integrate traumatic experiences.

While their stories are not mine to share, I have heard similar experiences of others who have done the SSP, who noticed that they could imagine their trauma from a different vantage point, or like me, had the experience of timelines seeming to merge.

🧵 Emotional discernment

My ability to “hold” multiple emotions, experiences, or parts of myself at the same time has changed significantly. I am able to take all the emotions and often contradictory beliefs swirling around inside me and line them up side-by-side; I’m able to “hear” each part of me clearly without one overpowering or masking the other.

Put another way, when my emotions and thoughts feel tangled, I’m able to separate and identify the different threads, and communicate to others what is happening for me internally.

Post-SSP, I have been doing a lot of IFS (Internal Family Systems) therapy, which I had attempted without much progress prior to the SSP.

My relationship to this modality is completely different now; I find it to be much more intuitive and impactful.

🥸 Sociability and unmasking

As someone who is autistic, a huge goal of mine has been the process of unmasking.

With SSP and neuro-affirming coaching, I’ve found it much easier to be my authentic self; I also have a noticeably stronger desire to connect with others, whereas my tendency previously was to self-isolate and only communicate with one or two trusted people. My desire to socialize and my comfort around others has definitely shifted.

👂🏻 Body cues

Put another way, what I'm speaking about here is interoception. Since undergoing SSP, I am more “fluent” in the language of my body; I am noticing a larger range of cues, like a desire for playfulness, a need for rest and clarity on what types of rest I need, the need to use the restroom (which used to take much longer to observe), and much more clarity around food cravings.

I am also more likely to notice pain or discomfort, and have greater awareness of where specific emotions are located in my body, what sensations I’m experiencing, and what those feelings might be “asking” for.

🤝 Rejection sensitivity/relational trust

I am noticeably less reactive to perceived or anticipated rejection from others, and in general, I don’t speculate as much on whether or not someone is rejecting me or unhappy with me.

I am less concerned about losing or damaging relationships, as I trust that those relationships can withstand things like conflict and hurt. I trust and expect others to tell me when I have misstepped, instead of trying to “mind read” or anticipate if someone is upset with me.

In other words, rupture in a relationship no longer feels like a threat, so I no longer fear it and compulsively avoid it (by people-pleasing).

🗣️ Boundaries/people-pleasing

Many folks have reported meaningful changes in their ability to set boundaries, and to communicate calmly and assertively about what they need and expect from their loved ones. Many of the resources I have reviewed about the SSP are consistent with this claim.

I can confirm that this shifted for me in a big way. In the course of the SSP, I fired my therapist (and found one who was far better equipped to support me), set boundaries in several of my close relationships, and ended relationships with several people who were harmful to me.

It’s difficult to explain why, but I gained a lot of clarity and confidence throughout SSP, became much less tolerant of self-betrayal, and I have become a much stronger enforcer of my boundaries and advocate for my needs.

As someone who has struggled greatly with my fawn trauma response, this kind of progress is very significant to me.

🌵 ‘Painful’ boredom (ADHD)

If you don’t have ADHD, you might not understand what I mean when I describe boredom as being “painful.”

While a non-ADHD person might engage in something tedious and find it annoying, someone with ADHD might find the boredom from that same task to be excruciating and intolerable.

In the past, I found boredom to be a very distressing experience, and it could send me into a frenzy as I tried anything and everything I could to avoid the feeling. I chose a cactus emoji here because, for me, boredom often felt so prickly and sharp that it was impossible to hold.

This resulted in me actually dreading my evenings after work, and even finding my weekends to be quite stressful.

When faced with free time that I needed to fill, I became so overwhelmed by my choices, stuck from a lack of motivation, and distressed from the surge of boredom that comes with inactivity. My anxiety would quickly spike, and I would eventually shut down, keeping me stuck in a feedback loop of overwhelm, urgency, and paralysis.

As you can probably imagine, this also made it impossible to relax and practice self-care during my downtime.

And while I can’t pinpoint when this shifted, at some point during the SSP, my evenings ceased being painful, and I found myself wishing my weekends were longer because I was starting to enjoy them again.

In short, I no longer panic in response to boredom. My unscientific speculation here is that perhaps the reason boredom is painful for so many ADHDers is that boredom itself is provoking a threat response? Regardless of why, it seems that this boredom/anxiety feedback loop has finally been disrupted for me.

⚓ Anger

Toward the end of the SSP, I noticed a big shift in my ability to feel, access, and express anger.

In particular, righteous anger came through very strongly in reaction to past situations which felt unjust, unfair, or unacceptable. It was first and foremost a body-based experience, but rather than it feeling overpowering, I experienced it more as an anchor than a runaway train.

I think this is the difference between "shame rage," which many trauma survivors experience as part of self-blame, and more protective anger, which many of us experience as a cue to set boundaries and be assertive.

While that initial surge of anger toward my past has settled a bit, I still experience a fierce amount of self-compassion and protectiveness when I do get angry.

This is new, in that anger and self-compassion previously did not coexist for me — in fact, my anger in the past was often paired with self-judgment, defensiveness, and resistance.

Whereas my anger used to have a distinctly shameful flavor, my anger now comes from a place of deep care. This kind of anger has a “flow” to it that didn’t exist before.

❤️‍🩹 Distress tolerance

I have a much, much higher tolerance for uncomfortable or painful emotions and experiences.

I’ve noticed this most clearly in my ability to separate the emotion of fear from the experience of worry. I used to think that fear and worry always occurred together, but I’ve noticed that while I still experience things that are scary or uncomfortable, I don’t experience worry very often, because I trust that I can withstand the discomfort and that the distressing experience will not last.

“I will be okay no matter what” is now a trusted feeling in my body, shifting both my distress tolerance and overall resilience.

🥑 Anorexia

When I finished the SSP, I was still struggling with restrictive behaviors. While I had noticeably less fear around trying new foods, less guilt/shame associated with specific foods, and less fixation overall around body size and shape, I was still having a hard time being consistent with eating.

I went back to the same treatment center after completing SSP, and as their team would attest, I came back a “different person.”

My therapist there has even described the SSP as a “miracle” (her words, not mine!), and we watched over the course of 12 weeks as I learned to cook, expanded the variety of foods I ate and prepared, and began to relate to food as something truly joyful.

I was previously too afraid to even go into my kitchen, turn on the oven, or touch certain foods. I now cook and confidently prepare food for myself every single day, am exploring new recipes independently (for fun!), and I am the most consistent I have ever been with my meal plan since starting treatment back in 2019.

By every measure, my eating disorder is in remission now.

There is a documented case study of a young client who saw major improvements in their restrictive eating disorder, especially around food preparation and feeling safe in one’s body, and that case study is eerily similar to what my treatment team saw with my own experience post-SSP.

In other words? SSP on its own did not magically lift me out of my restrictive eating, but it allowed me to become more regulated and internally safe, so that I could engage in the exposure work that happens in other forms of treatment, making it far more impactful than it had been the first time around.

🍟 ARFID

Prior to the SSP, my food decisions were largely motivated by what foods felt predictable in taste, reliable in texture, and “safe” in that I had eaten that specific brand or dish many times before (commonly known as ARFID). The sensory experience of food needed to be consistent.

However, shortly after starting the SSP, I found myself drawn to trying new, more flavorful foods and craving more variety.

I wanted my food to be more “interesting,” and things like chick’n nuggets, for example — which I used to favor because every bite was identical and familiar — became boring to me very quickly.

Meals where I could combine different foods and experiment with the kind of “bite” I created became much more appealing, whereas previously that would’ve stressed me out.

Some in the field believe that ARFID is, in part, a nervous system condition, in that the brain interprets certain tastes, smells, and textures as dangerous. It makes sense, then, that an intervention like the SSP might shift some of the body’s threat response to food.

I’m hopeful that this has opened up new and exciting possibilities for my relationship to food and eating.

🌧️ Depression/suicidal ideation

While my depression was improving some prior to SSP — as reflected in my PHQ-9 scores when I was admitted to ED treatment — it was still classified as moderate when I began SSP.

Today, I no longer qualify for a depression diagnosis at all, haven’t for several months, and do not experience suicidal ideation of any kind.

Having spent most of my life grappling with severe and recurrent depression, including repeated inpatient hospitalizations, I don’t really have words to convey how meaningful this change is to me.

🏃🏻 Demand avoidance (PDA)

My demand avoidance used to be so debilitating, even going from sitting to standing (like leaving the dinner table) used to feel activating and dysregulating, because the expectation that I stand up was being processed in my brain and body as a demand.

It feels surreal to write this, but… I’m not sure that I actually struggle with demand avoidance now?

I certainly procrastinate on tasks that aren’t interesting to me, but I don’t find demands to be dysregulating, and I don’t experience as much resistance when something encroaches on my autonomy. In this way, it feels like my ADHD is the same, but my "pathological" demand avoidance isn't.

The implications of this are interesting to think about. It could be that my demand avoidance was more rooted in my C-PTSD, and that’s why it’s shifted. It could reinforce the hypothesis that PDA is a nervous system disability. As someone who is autistic and has a trauma history, it’s always been something of a “chicken and egg” situation for me.

🌿 Substance use (ADHD)

I have compulsively self-medicated during different times in my life; I have had periods of dependency and periods of sobriety, especially with alcohol and cannabis, and while I don't identify as having struggled with chemical-based addiction, process addiction is something I relate to.

I became "accidentally" sober during the SSP. While I didn't plan for sobriety, it just... happened. And it's stuck, too — whereas staying sober from cannabis in particular used to feel challenging, reaching for it now doesn't occur to me anymore.

I imagine that no longer feeling a desperate, clawing need to change my state of being or "escape" the constant anxiety has made cannabis irrelevant to me. I also feel more empowered in general to respond thoughtfully rather than being in a state of reactivity.

I feel a much greater degree of self-control in this respect, which honestly feels freeing. I hope it becomes an area of further exploration for those who are studying the impact of the SSP on substance use.

🌻 Joy/excitement

I became so happy during and after SSP that, for a while, I was convinced something must actually be wrong.

My interest in the things that I love came online (in a very autistic, monotropic way), my childlike enthusiasm and curiosity came roaring back, and there was a buoyancy that I’d never experienced before.

I don’t have much of a desire to speculate about why this happened. I’m just so glad that it did.

🔂 Trauma triggers (PTSD)

Not only am I triggered less often, but maybe more importantly, when I encounter something triggering, I’ve noticed that my body is allowing me to process the experience.

Just a few weeks ago, I told my therapist that I had been physically shaking for a few hours and couldn’t stop, ever since I’d taken a big step in confronting someone who had harmed me.

But I was confused, I explained, because I didn’t feel emotionally dysregulated, deeply upset, or like I’d gone “offline.” I just couldn’t stop trembling.

My therapist pointed out that perhaps this was my body’s attempt at moving through the emotion, and by trying to suppress it, I was interrupting that process. Maybe I wasn’t “triggered” and stuck there, so much as I was moving through a trigger.

After having me engage in some gentle somatic exercises, I was able to stop trembling and felt incredibly calm after shaking things off. I have countless examples like these since the SSP. This signifies a huge shift in how I process triggering experiences.

What may have changed or didn’t change at all

💊 Possible change: Medication reliance

While it’s impossible to know for sure if a medication had become ineffective, was never effective, or if the SSP rendered that medication unnecessary, it's worth noting that my medications have now meaningfully shifted post-SSP.

With clinical supervision, I went from taking 4+ medications daily before the SSP (including an antidepressant, mood stabilizer, and antipsychotic, largely for depressive symptoms and anxiety) to only taking Ritalin for ADHD as-needed.

Despite dropping several significant medications from my regimen, which you might expect to result in lower mood or increased anxiety, all the clinical markers related to my mental health have kept on improving.

While there's no shame in needing medication, I've been surprised to see how medications I've relied on for over a decade were no longer necessary after the SSP.

🪫 Possible change: Burnout and fatigue

Here’s what I know to be true: Since undergoing the SSP, it is much easier to get out of bed in the morning.

I have more energy and excitability, and I can really sink my teeth into tasks that are interesting to me and deeply enjoy doing so. I feel the presence of a “spark” that had been missing for a very long time.

This uptick in energy and vitality is especially interesting to me, as I am sleeping less than I was before (I’m averaging 7.5 hours now, whereas before I was sleeping 9+ hours each night).

However, I would still label this a “possible change” rather than a definitive one. One of the medications I tapered off of during SSP, Oxcarbazepine, has sedation and fatigue as known side effects.

It’s entirely possible that I am less sedated, and therefore the uptick in energy is a result of stopping a medication that was inducing fatigue. These are side effects that usually subside within a few weeks of starting the medication, but again, we can’t know for certain.

That being said, it also makes sense that I would feel less exhausted. If my nervous system isn’t in hyperdrive and I’m not constantly anxious and activated, I would expect to feel less tired. So in my unscientific speculation, it’s very possible that SSP had at least some influence here.

🤹 Little change: Focus (ADHD)

There are two case studies that suggest that the SSP is helpful in emotional regulation for kids with ADHD, which is consistent with my experience!

I have not observed a meaningful difference in my ability to regulate attention, however. My hyperfocus is more intense, in that activities I’m very interested in can suck me in for hours at a time. But my ability to concentrate on uninteresting things, or to shift out of hyperfocus of my own accord, is as abysmal as ever.

And that’s okay! SSP should not necessarily be used to “cure” neurodivergence, and taking Ritalin has been a great support in this regard.

But it’s worth noting, especially for those who still believe that ADHD is only caused by trauma, that even with multiple trauma and nervous system interventions, my ADHD is as ADHD as ever.

🧠 Unknown: OCD

Some long-time readers of mine will be aware that I've struggled with existential OCD; I also have a history of experiencing different subtypes of harm OCD and sexual/gender OCD.

However, prior to the SSP, I wasn’t experiencing many noticeable obsessions or compulsions, and I was in a period of relative remission. As such, I’m not yet confident in saying whether or not SSP has impacted my OCD, or what the OCD was connected to in the constellation of things I've struggled with.

The Biggest Shift: I’m Not Who I Thought I Was

Since undergoing this process, I have been in a state of total disbelief.

As I reflect on the experience, I find myself thinking, “How is this possible?”

You could not have convinced me, prior to experiencing it myself, that someone like me — with debilitating, severe, lifelong clinical anxiety and depression — could listen to a five-hour playlist and no longer qualify for a diagnosis of either afterward.

In fact, the most remarkable change of all with the SSP is that this entire notion of “someone like me” has lost all meaning.

Because I thought I knew, the same way that I know I’m right-handed, that anxiety is just woven into the fabric of who I am.

If something that I thought was so fundamental to my being isn’t actually a fixed and true part of me, there is a strong possibility that many of the stories I’ve told myself about myself over the years aren’t true, either.

Of course, there is the wonderful essence of me that is only brighter now: my sense of humor, my playfulness and mischief, my curiosity, my kind heart, my affinity for deep thinking and creativity. I can appreciate that essence more than I ever have before, and find a new kind of joy in sharing it with others, without so much insecurity and inhibition.

But there’s so much that I attributed to my “inherent nature” and personality — or even my neurotype — that has been flipped completely upside down or called into question.

The most amazing part of SSP, for me, is that all of the fundamental assumptions I had about myself have been destabilized. It’s opened up endless possibilities for who I could become, because I no longer take any story I had about myself for granted.

I thought I was an anxious, pessimistic, neurotic person with zero chill before this. Nowadays, I would describe myself as energetic, optimistic, and even relaxed (me of a year ago would do a spit take at the idea of being “relaxed”).

In liberating myself from all assumptions of who I’m supposed to be, it’s like I’ve been given a new lease on life. I get to start over, knowing that the “unchangeable” has changed, which means anything could be possible for me.

And I’ve never been more excited to find out who I’ll become.

Would I Recommend SSP to Others?

I’m sure by this point you know the answer to this: Yes, absolutely, with discernment.

It's worth considering if, like me, you've done a lot of cognitive therapy to no avail ("I know this, but I don't feel it"), and struggle to access your body for modalities that are more somatic ("what I'm working on in therapy isn't sinking in").

While I fully support folks exploring the SSP, there are some very important caveats I'd include, which you can find in this blog post about what to know before trying the SSP.

How do I find an SSP practitioner?

At this time, the most direct way to find a practitioner for the Safe and Sound Protocol is to be matched with one by Unyte, the company that distributes the playlist, through this form.