Does this sound familiar; life is ticking along nicely and something happens, or someone says something, and it takes your feet out from under you?
I’m not talking about those big life events that would floor anyone, but a little thing that feels much bigger than it is and leaves you feeling exposed and vulnerable. Maybe a personal setback, a missed opportunity, a comment from a colleague that for some reason really hits hard?
When we have an experience like this we can feel threatened. We might want to hide away or, the other extreme, we hit back harder, and our response seems out of proportion to the provocation!
Relationships Are Gold When It Comes To Personal Development
If something touches on a pain point from our past we react instinctively, falling back on old, familiar coping mechanisms. Trouble is, these reactions often do more harm than good. We can alienate friends, miss out on promotions, or find ourselves stuck in repetitive arguments.
We can be very good at hiding the motives for our behaviours – even from ourselves. Sometimes they are so much a part of us we don’t even notice them anymore, but we notice the fallout in our relationships, and we want that to change.
Relationships can be challenging for just this reason, they hold a mirror up to us and it is hard to ignore what we see!
Coaching psychology offers a pathway to understanding these patterns. By shining a light on our inner world, we can see where more constructive ways of managing situations could help. We explore those behaviours, to unravel why they evolved, what old problem we were trying to solve.
Psychological Safety
The strong reactions or behaviours are often in response to something that has impacted our psychological safety.
Feeling psychologically safe means trusting that you won't be punished for speaking your mind or making mistakes. It's about believing you're valued and supported. When we don’t feel safe we censor ourselves, we don’t put our ideas and wishes forward. This is why feeling heard and supported is so crucial to our personal and professional growth.
If we are confident we will be supported if we make a mistake, we are more willing to take chances, try new things and voice our ideas. In the workplace, promoting psychological safety translates to increased trust, creativity, productivity, and job satisfaction. It is defined as;
"The belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes.. " (Edmondson, 1999)
But what if our environments are supportive but we still don’t feel safe? In some areas of our lives, not feeling psychologically safe comes from within.
Our Past Impacts Our Present
Past experiences influence our baseline sense of safety. If we have experienced bullying or grew up in an unsupportive home, or if we felt unseen or undervalued at school or work, these all impact how we feel about ourselves in relationships with others.
The good news is we needn’t be stuck with our difficult beginnings. Our psychological safety net is something we can work on, develop and rebuild.
Remember, your responses in some situations are simply habits, and habits are things that can be changed. When we start to recognise our default patterns we have the opportunity to step in and make new choices, we can develop new strategies. We can become more resilient to the knocks we receive and we have better boundaries to filter other people comments and recognise that they are simply opinions and not accept them as fact.
How To Build Your Personal Safety System
Think of your life as a pie with segments for the different areas such as work, family, partner, friends, home, fun, hobbies and community.
How you are doing in each area? You may feel strong and confident in some and weaker in others. What can you do to repair and re-enforce your less robust sections so you can develop a safety system that fully supports you? Can you put the skills and behaviours you have in one area to use in other areas?
Some places, people or situations might be more difficult for you. Notice what they remind you of, how do they make you feel? Building this awareness can help us address the challenges.
With this map of your safety system you start to recognise how certain situations make you feel and respond. How your thoughts, feelings and physical sensations are impacted and then a habitual behaviour is triggered.
You might hunch your shoulders and make yourself physically small when you don’t feel safe or you might pace the room, on edge. And what does being comfortable feel like for you? Do your shoulders drop, do you find you are better at decisions?
As you notice the negative thoughts, feelings and sensations what could you do to make yourself feel safer? Do you need to be in less crowded area, do you need reassurance from a friend or maybe, with awareness, you find you are able to give yourself that reassurance?
Ultimately, psychological safety calls for self-compassion and courage. It's about daring to be vulnerable because you know you will catch yourself if you fall. By investing time in building your inner safety net, you're laying the groundwork for a life where you are able to take the risks to grow and develop.
References
Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative science quarterly, 44(2), 350-383.
