Traditional loving kindness meditation asks you to extend love to yourself, then to a difficult person, then to the whole world. For people who put a lot of pressure on themselves, those steps can trigger the exact tension the practice is supposed to relieve.

This version, adapted from Radically Open Dialectical Behavior Therapy (RO-DBT), is designed specifically for threat-sensitive nervous systems. It activates the brain's social safety system without requiring you to do the things that shut it down. The practice follows three steps:

1. warmth from a real memory
   Recall a moment when you genuinely felt love, kindness, or tenderness, and let that feeling build in your chest.

2. Extend warm feelings toward someone you care about
   Hold someone you already have warm feelings for in your mind and silently offer them wishes of ease, contentment, joy, and safety.

3. Extend warm feelings toward a neutral person
   Bring to mind someone you've seen but don't know, and offer them the same wishes.

Use this meditation before social interactions, before somatic tracking for chronic pain, or as a daily practice. Research suggests that the social safety effects can last from twenty minutes to four hours, and that the practice becomes easier and faster with repetition.