Creating psychological safety for ourselves

At Co-Creating Inclusion, one of the questions we constantly ask ourselves, each other, and our clients is - do you have what you need to do your best work?

Psychological safety is a key factor.

This doesn’t mean we can’t do really great work without it - let’s face it, workplaces are typically not psychologically safe for most.

But the cost of doing work without psychological safety is significant, both to employees and the organizations they work for. I often think of the lost untapped potential that impacts us all.

But what can folks do if they identify that they are lacking in psychological safety?

It can be easy to feel that there is nothing we can do about our own lack of safety.

Our experiences of harm make it hard to access our agency in the moment.

But our safety does not exist entirely into the hands of others.

This doesn’t mean that others don’t play a role - they most certainly do.

AND we can play a role too.

We can take steps to create psychological safety for ourselves, even if nothing else changes.

Let me be clear - this is not to say that we are to blame for our own lack of safety.

The point is that connecting to our agency IS a way to create some safety for ourselves.

The first step can be to create a personal safety plan to de-escalate ourselves, soothe our nervous systems and identify our needs.

The we can make decisions about advocating for our needs where we can, and we can decide at least for ourselves what we will do if our needs are not met.

We don’t always have great choices but we do have choices - we can choose to honor our own humanity, to listen to and trust ourselves, to tell ourselves the truth, and to stop gaslighting ourselves and being complicit with our own oppression.

The amazing thing is that when we take control of what we can (rather than trying to control what we can’t) we can move through what is quite often understandable and justified resentment - resentment that nonetheless hurts us more than anyone else.

Banner photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash

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