Jin (pseudonym) sits across me looking forlorn and teary. She is overwhelmed by work and personal stress, exhausted from insomnia, loss of motivation, and thoughts of suicide. She sighs in resignation: “No one understands what I am going through. My family tells me that I’m weak-willed, silly, and imagined my depression. In church, friends comment that I lack faith in God … that I must pray and read the Bible more. Everyone tells me what is wrong with me and what I should do ….”
This, sadly, is the experience of many who seek counselling for mental health issues. Well-meaning family members and friends, in the hope of motivating the person to pull themselves together, unwittingly engage in unsafe behaviors like cajoling, nagging, patronizing, threatening, or guilt-tripping. An important study from 1991 by B. A. van der Kolk, J. C. Perry, and J. Herman show that predictors of adult mental health issues include childhood emotional neglect and having no safe other to turn to. The lack of psychological safety in adulthood aggravates loneliness and alienation when support is most needed.
Research by neuroscientists like Dan Siegal and Ruth Lanius shed light on how mind issues are inseparable from the brain-body matrix. Persistent external stressors overwhelm internal coping resources, resulting in disorder of neuro-circuitry and impairment of biological, physiological, cognitive, and emotional functions. Innate safety-seeking defences would be activated for survival. These God-given fight-flight-freeze defences are exhibited in acting out, withdrawal, or shutting down, with changes in mood, emotion, cognition, and personality. Any unsafe responses from others would signal threat, triggering defensive reactions that impact interpersonal relationships.
The vulnerable person needs relationships with safe people. Psychological safety is the basis of trust. It is an interpersonal experience founded in love, respect, and protection that is encapsulated in 1 Corinthians 13.
Psychologically SAFE people are characterized by their:
Sensibility
This is the ability to perceive, understand, and respond to complex issues with discernment. This is attained by prayerful and attentive listening, observing, and questioning, without presumption and haste (James 1:19). Sensibility safeguards the person’s interest by observing boundaries and keeping confidentiality. Respect is the basis of non-intrusive care.
Authenticity
This is relating from an inner core transformed by the truth of God. Authentic people are aware of their own brokenness, and able to bear with the brokenness of another. They neither avoid addressing the painful realities of life, nor the need to ‘accessorize’ suffering. This allows the person to be real and tell their story without censure, embarrassment, or denial.
Feelings
These are an integral aspect of our thought, motivational and relational life—the emotional self. They serve as signals of safety or threat to our well-being. Vulnerability is prolonged experiencing of painful feelings, such as shame, guilt, hurt, and sadness, but being afraid that one will be judged for having them. When overwhelmed with feelings, rational thinking is usually compromised. To understand a person’s struggles, we are to connect at the heart level by noticing, sensing, and acknowledging their feelings.
Empathy
This is the capacity to ‘enter into the skin’, and it privileges the unique experiences of the person. It is the shared human experience of suffering by stepping into their inner world, sensing their emotions, and imagining living in that state. Empathy is best described in Romans 12:15–16, and epitomizes bearing one another’s burdens.
For Discussion
- If you are having a similar experience as Jin, with whom can you have psychological safety?
- How psychologically safe are you for someone like Jin?
