This Essay is Dangerous
Many myths and misconceptions about psychological and emotional safety exist in the organizational setting. For example, some believe that it is all about being nice. Creating a psychologically safe environment isn’t about being “nice.” In fact, there are many “well-behaved” workplaces that have little psychological safety because there’s no directness or honesty. The enforced politeness causes people to feel silenced.
“Unfortunately, at work, nice is often synonymous with not being candid,” says Amy Edmondson, Harvard Business School professor and author of The Fearless Organization and who originally coined the term “team psychological safety.” As she defines it, psychological safety is a shared belief held by team members that it’s OK to take risks, express their ideas and concerns, speak up with questions, and admit mistakes — all without fear of negative consequences. As Edmondson puts it, “It’s felt permission for candor.”
Yet, she continues, “Too many people think that it’s about feeling comfortable all the time and that you can’t say anything that makes someone else uncomfortable or you’re violating psychological safety,” This simply is not authentic––learning and pointing out mistakes is uncomfortable. Direct feedback is uncomfortable. But without this honesty, projects fail. Companies fail.
“Well…” my friend said, “at least we know we’re safe.”
She was right. While certainly, our situation was vastly uncomfortable, we were not, by any stretch of the imagination, in danger. Often, on backpacking trips into remote wilderness areas, you can encounter any number of genuinely hazardous scenarios––bears, mountain lions, lightning, an unexpected snowstorm, an injury, and yes, no water for miles. In those situations, knowing exactly what you are facing and how to deal with it is essential. It is essential to understand that you are in an actual physical threat that requires specific actions.
It is just as important to know when you are not. To waste necessary energy worrying and complaining about the ‘not dangerous’ situations just because they are super uncomfortable is a bad idea. Making mountains out of molehills when you are out in the wild sets you up to make mistakes, burn precious emotional reserves, and become less present and attentive.
Being out in the wilderness teaches us many lessons and this is undoubtedly one of them: know the difference between safety and real danger; and just because something is uncomfortable, does not mean that it is unsafe.
In our domesticated world, where creature comforts abound, such as air conditioning, instant messaging, fast food, and same-day delivery, we forget this lesson. We become so accustomed to being comfortable that we equate comfort with safety. This is especially true with emotional and psychological comfort; if something is uncomfortable––such as a complicated conversation, a challenge at work, a new and powerful insight, or a necessary change––we can instantly think it is unsafe and choose to avoid it.
Children are rarely taught how to tolerate the discomfort of sadness, rage, and jealousy. And these days, most in America are seldom exposed to the raw unpleasantness of boredom, needing to wait, or the disappointment of not getting what they want when they want it. And so we raise a generation that is downright fearful of triggers, complex emotions, and the messiness of just being alive.
In the wild, confusing comfort with safety is problematic and the consequences of doing so become immediately apparent. But in daily life, when we confuse comfort with safety, the consequences are subtler yet far more corrosive to our social fabric. Our collective addiction to emotional comfort makes us fragile psychologically, and we become unable to bear the slightest unpleasant experience. Hence, we numb, avoid, and repress those things that may threaten our sense of ease in the name of “not feeling safe.” This creates a society that cannot face hard things, that refuses to grow and evolve, and that protects itself from uncomfortable realities such as racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism, ableism, and the multiple other “isms” that affect it.
The beloved comedian, Dave Chappelle’s, Netflix special The Closer demonstrates this fragility perfectly through his expressed desire to turn classes of suppression into a zero-sum game. In the special, he presents the concerns of queer and genderqueer people — especially the linguistic arguments about pronouns, anatomy, and bodily functions that often arise from conversations about trans and nonbinary identity — as a product of progressive hysteria gone mad. But what he’s saying is, “Your teaching me about pronouns makes me feel uncomfortable; therefore it is unsafe. Therefore I need to attack you.” This is all done and celebrated in the guise of humor. Chappell’s rant perpetuates transphobic and anti-scientific views about gender and trans identity. It’s dangerous rhetoric that’s been shown in multiple studies to impact levels of minority violence directly.
The Spiritual Industrial Complex (by this I mean the realm of quick-fix gurus and pop-psycho pundits) also plays into this desire for comfort by promising an inner state of calm in the face of all disruption. Anything that makes us ‘not calm’ becomes the spiritual enemy. Misinterpretations and distortions of deep and powerful spiritual concepts have us waging inner wars with anything that makes us uncomfortable. We try to rise above the raw and messy side of our humanness before we have fully faced it. This is called ‘spiritual bypassing’ and helps us avoid the growing pains of becoming a better human. We also demand others spiritually bypass, with advice such as, “Well, that was in the past, let it go” or “It was God’s will.”
This leads to a conceptual, one-sided kind of spirituality where one pole of life is elevated at the expense of its opposite: Absolute truth is favored over relative truth, the impersonal over the personal, emptiness over form, transcendence over embodiment, connection over separation, and detachment over feeling.
Even meditation can be used as a kind of avoidance and used in the service of sealing ourselves off from vulnerable, wounded, unresolved places. While learning how to regulate our nervous system through meditation and other spiritual methodologies is useful, it is not the same as being truly and courageously present in the face of all experiences––pleasant and unpleasant. That is the true sense of enlightenment that the Buddha and others espoused and requires a ferocity of heart that does not confuse comfort with safety.
In the organizational setting, many myths and misconceptions abound about psychological and emotional safety. “Too many people think that it’s about feeling comfortable all the time and that you can’t say anything that makes someone else uncomfortable or you’re violating psychological safety,” says Amy Edmondson, Harvard Business School professor and author of The Fearless Organization and who originally coined the term “team psychological safety”. As she defines it, psychological safety is a shared belief held by members of a team that it’s OK to take risks, to express their ideas and concerns, to speak up with questions, and to admit mistakes — all without fear of negative consequences. As Edmondson puts it, “it’s felt permission for candor.”
Yet, she continues, “Too many people think that it’s about feeling comfortable all the time and that you can’t say anything that makes someone else uncomfortable or you’re violating psychological safety,” This simply is not true––learning and pointing out mistakes is uncomfortable. Direct feedback is uncomfortable. But without this candor, projects fail. Companies fail.
These examples demonstrate that confusing comfort with safety is, in fact, dangerous. It is a threat to our personal growth, our social evolution, and our organizational longevity and success. Our insistence on comfort is undermining us. Something needs to change. We have the opportunity to change ourselves and thereby change this systemically. We can challenge ourselves to embrace fear, pain, risk, and unpleasantness and dismiss the narrative that this discomfort is somehow dangerous and unsafe for us.
It may be useful to understand a little brain science here to assist us. Our most primitive part of the brain, the amygdala, is in charge of telling us what is safe and what is not. If something is unsafe, it will ignite us into a fight, flight, freezing, or appeasing. For six million years, it has worked for us very well, keeping us safe from saber-toothed tigers and ill-intentioned used car salesmen.
But it also isn’t perfect. The amygdala will light up for any reason that feels, seems, or is imagined to be a threat. It will react to stern, but necessary, feedback in the same way as if someone had a gun pointed at you. It doesn’t know the difference. When we are faced with the unknown, or feel something unpleasant and uncomfortable, it will say, “Danger, danger! Get away! Numb it out! Attack it!” This is why, thankfully, we have all the other evolved brain matter to help us to discern.
Those other parts of the brain help you to pause. You can take a breath, and ask yourself: is this really unsafe? Or am I being asked to deepen, to expand, to grow, or to transform? If your answer is the latter, then slow down, and warmly acquaint yourself with the sensation of discomfort. Just be with it, with no agenda to change it.
Chances are, you’ll notice that while it may be unpleasant, it is certainly not dangerous. Chances are, you’ll settle into a courageousness willing to sit in the discomfort and discover what is being asked of you in the moment. Perhaps it is:
some feedback you need to hear
a risk you need to take
a necessary, yet difficult conversation you need to have
a relationship you need to let go of
a learning to help you grow
We can do better, and the great news is that we can do better together. Collectively, we can become allies for one another to make discomfort safe. There is enough capacity in all of us to make this happen. Like most learning, it’s easier when we do it together. Parents can help their children to be steadfast in the face of boredom and hard emotions. Managers and leaders can invite candor in the workplace and normalize discomfort. Partners can take risks together. In becoming more robust together, we not only build our capacity for braving discomfort, but also deepen and strengthen our relationships.
Kelly Wendorf is an executive coach, spiritual mentor, facilitator, horse-woman, writer, poet, mother of two astonishing people, and courageous life explorer.To inquire about coaching, spiritual mentoring, or private retreats with Kelly, email her.