Dan Siegel’s Seven Fundamental Needs for Trauma Recovery
Insights from the International Childhood Trauma Conference, Melbourne, August 2025.
When I saw Dr. Dan Siegel take the stage at the 2025 International Childhood Trauma Conference in Melbourne, he spoke not only as a psychiatrist and neuroscientist, but as a bridge-builder, linking the science of the mind with the art of human connection. His keynote, “The Seven Fundamental Needs for Trauma Recovery,” explored decades of research from interpersonal neurobiology into a simple but profound message: healing requires integration.
Siegel suggests that trauma disrupts both our inner experiences and our relationships to recover, we need to support the healing of the mind, brain, and relationships. He explained that these conditions make up the “Seven Essential Mental Needs.”
1. Physiological Safety: The Need to Feel Safe in the Body
Before healing can begin, the nervous system must find refuge from threat. Trauma often traps the body in patterns of hyperarousal (fight/flight) or collapse (freeze). Siegel emphasizes felt safety, not just the absence of danger, but the presence of regulation, predictability, and attuned caregiving. “Safety isn’t an idea,” Siegel reminded the audience. “It’s an embodied experience.” Practices such as mindful breathing, grounding, and co-regulation with safe others help re-establish this foundation.
2. Connection: The Need for Attuned Relationships
Humans need connection. From a young age, our sense of safety and identity develops through caring relationships. Trauma, especially when it happens in relationships, can break trust and leave people feeling alone. Healing involves rebuilding safe connections through steady and compassionate support. In Siegel’s model, relationships are part of our wider nervous system, meaning healing happens not just within us, but through our connections with others.
3. Attunement: The Need to Be Seen, Heard, and Understood
Attunement is deeper than connection, it’s the experience of being truly felt by another. For trauma survivors, this experience can be life changing. It reaffirms the message: “You make sense. You matter.” Clinically, this shows up in empathic listening, reflective dialogue, and the therapist’s ability to mirror emotional states with sensitivity, a core tenet of Siegel’s “mindsight” approach.
4. Resonance: The Need for Emotional Synchrony
Resonance happens when two people are emotionally in tune and empathy flows both ways. Siegel describes this as a brain process that helps us connect with others. This shared sense of presence helps people who have experienced trauma learn that relationships can feel safe again. Practices like mindfulness, compassion meditation, and relationship-based therapies help build this sense of connection and support healing in the brain.
5. Coherence: The Need to Make Sense of Experience
Trauma can break up a person’s sense of story and identity. Coherence develops when we can make sense of our experiences by putting them into words. Siegel explains integration as bringing separate parts together. A clear personal story does not erase pain, but places it within a larger, meaningful picture. When we can name what we have been through, we regain a sense of ownership over our own story.
6. Purpose: The Need for Meaning and Direction
Recovery is stronger when people find a sense of purpose and understand why healing matters to them. Making meaning from difficult experiences can turn suffering into growth. Siegel suggests that the mind naturally moves toward balance and vitality. Through things like helping others, being creative, or building connections, a sense of purpose supports resilience and healing after trauma.
7. Belonging: The Need to Be Part of Something Larger
Siegel describes belonging as an important part of healing. Trauma can make people feel isolated, while belonging helps them reconnect. Supportive communities, such as families, peer groups, or cultural groups help ground recovery in shared human experience. From Siegel’s perspective, belonging completes the healing process by reconnecting the individual with others.
Integration: The Core of Healing
Across all seven needs, the main idea is integration of these needs is essential. When these needs are supported, the mind becomes more flexible, balanced, and steady, what Siegel calls wellbeing. When they aren’t supported, the mind can slip into chaos or rigidity, which often shows up after trauma. So, the seven needs serve as both a clinical tool and a reminder that healing isn’t about fixing something damaged, but about reconnecting parts of us that became disconnected.
Sarah is a proud member of the Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW) and continues to uphold the ethical standards and principles of the profession in her day-to-day practice.
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References
- Siegel, D. J. (2018). Aware: The Science and Practice of Presence. TarcherPerigee.
- Siegel, D. J. (2020). The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are (3rd ed.). Guilford Press.
- Siegel, D. J., & Bryson, T. P. (2020). The Power of Showing Up. Ballantine Books.
- Siegel, D. J. (2012). The Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology. Norton.
- van der Kolk, B. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score. Viking.
- Porges, S. W. (2017). The Pocket Guide to the Polyvagal Theory. Norton.