Creating Psychological Safety

Tony Humphreys

• Publisher: Panoma Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781784524654
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Interpersonal Relations in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Be Fearless, Stay SafePsychological safety is the degree of fearlessness to give conscious and open expression to who we truly are. The lack of psychological safety (fearfulness) between individuals in the places people live, learn, play, work and pray leads to the immensity of human potential being unconsciously employed protectively rather than proactively.Psychological safety is a deeply personal issue. The level of felt psychological safety that an individual brings to their relationship with another determines the quality of the interaction between individuals. Key people in authority need and deserve the psychological safety opportunities to examine their own current level of psychological safety so that they can fearlessly inspire their charges to move from fearfulness to fearlessness.The author hopes that the reader will experience the psychological safety to create fearless and inclusive relationships in all their life settings. The pathways to psychological safety are outlined throughout the book with special attention given to parents, teachers, managers and leaders, who are the architects of the relationships they create with significant others – be those of an unconscious psychological safeguarding or conscious psychological safety nature.

Chapter One:

Radiant Mind

Toddlers mesmerise me with their ‘radiant mind’ manifesting in excitement, ‘wow’ responses, endless energy, eagerness to explore and not being fazed by failure or success – the pursuit is reward enough. When children’s radiant minds are accompanied and not interrupted by the unconsciously formed fears, doubts, insecurities, depression, impatience, irritability, perfectionism, projections and introjections of the significant adults in their lives – ‘feeble mentality’ – they continue to shine and conscious genius thrives. Where interruptions occur radiance wisely creates safeguarding fear and now goes into unconscious survival mode, but nonetheless brilliantly. As mentioned in the introduction, Freud missed the reality that the ‘feeble mentality’ of adults is created wonderfully by radiant mind to offset or reduce the threats they experienced as children. It is in this sense that human suffering is generational and not genetic; it is also a path into what lies hidden of our radiant nature.

The early relationships then that most influence how children will manifest their genius are clearly those in the home, community and school. The nature of these adult-child relationships can be unconsciously or consciously driven and can vary from being terrifying to being loving and inspirational. Later on, when children progress into sports organisations, peer relationships, second-level and third-level educational institutions and workplaces, they will bring either their unconsciously devised psychological safeguarding protectors or conscious psychological safety expressions of their radiant mind. The hope is that there will be adults who are operating consciously who will detect those young people who are suffering and ingeniously surviving and create the psychological safety holding for them so that the possibility of a shift from unconscious psychological safeguarding to conscious psychological safety can occur.

It is how people relate to each other that matters most – parent to child, husband to wife, child to child, teacher to student, peer to peer, doctor to patient, care professional to client and employer to employee. Where the pairing is two adults it is a two-way relationship street. Where it is a child or teenager it is the adult who is largely in the driving seat and young people wisely conform or rebel when the relationship proves to be threatening in nature; they create an internal psychological safeguarding in response to the threats experienced.

As Freud’s observations quoted above highlight clearly, the precarious home, school and community relationships that many children encounter are the sources of their unconscious ways of reducing/minimising the threats experienced. Of course, parents and teachers have their stories of their experiences in their homes or origin and schools attended and, unconsciously and ingeniously, carry their psychologically created fears and terrors from those years into adulthood. When they have not been fortunate to experience psychological safety outside their home – most particularly, in schools, in community and workplace – they unconsciously and cleverly maintain the amazing protectors they created when they were children. When adult, their children, their partners, work colleagues and relatives will encounter these solutions to suffering, and when there is psychological safety holding and compassion present will, unconsciously, creatively counter with protectors of their own. The latter outcome will continue to cascade down through the generations until the emergence of psychological safety. No one wants to stay hiding behind the psychological safeguarding walls they ingeniously built in order to survive. However, trust builds slowly when the most important people in your life, sadly for you and for them, were not in a conscious place to wonder at and accompany your unique presence and genius in this world. Nonetheless, I believe, we constantly stay alert to signs of psychological safety.

I will describe in the following chapters what unsafe relationships look like in the various holding worlds we occupy throughout our lives. I will also describe the ultimate psychological safety environment where you will meet the stranger who was yourself, inhabit the I-land that is you and consciously create boundaries as opposed to protectors that uphold your presence and your own values and beliefs in the face of any unconscious attempts by others to invade your I-land. You can only provide psychological safety holding for others when you possess such a safety holding of yourself. Indeed, you can only offer the other the possibility of creating a conscious psychological safety holding to the level of holding you possess in yourself. This is true for all adults no matter what their roles in life are. In the spirit of John Welwood (2000):

“Not knowing in our blood and bones that we are truly loved and loveable wisely leads us to hide our capacity to give and receive love. This is the core trauma that generates intrapersonal and interpersonal conflict.”

It is individuals who principally create relationships and the key psychological safety for others is how you internally relate to yourself:

• Unconditional love of Self

• Belief in Self

• Interest in Self

• Inhabiting your own individuality

• Following your own inner course

• Creating endless opportunities

• Encouragement – giving heart to Self

• Proactive – clear boundaries and independence

• Embracing failures as opportunities

• Responding to success as a stepping stone to further progression

• Separateness from others

• Being at one with Self (al-one-ness)

• No measure of your worth – immeasurable

• Lived experience as the key informant

• Identifying your own passions

• Patient

• Conscious

• Honest

When the above profile is consciously and actively present, then how you are with yourself you will automatically be that way with another and whoever. It reminds me of several individuals who sought help from me, and who, subsequently, in a planned attempt to take their own lives, found their suicide plan interrupted by the felt experience: “Tony loves me… and yes, I can see it in his eyes.”

The relationship that needs most attention is the relationship with Self. In my work with individuals and groups I express my own conviction that when you experience the psychological safety to relate consciously with yourself and make that relationship a priority, then you will relate to others in similar ways. Far from being a selfish ambition, the conscious relationship with Self is profoundly unselfish, as you take total responsibility for your own wellbeing and in living your own individual life. There is no unconscious agenda to look to others to save or rescue you, or, indeed, for you to mend the lives of others. In occupying the I-land of your own life, you model, support and create the psychological safety opportunities for others to consciously inhabit their own individuality and live their own unique lives – step by step. Patience is a conscious requirement and echoed ...