|
|
|
|
Psychological Safety Psychological safety refers to the ability to be safe with oneself, to rely on one’s own ability to self-protect against any destructive impulses coming from within oneself or deriving from other people and to keep oneself out of harm’s way. Psychological safety is the ability to be able to direct one’s attention and focus, to know oneself, to feel effective in the world, to be able to exercise self-control and self-discipline, to have a sense of internal authority that is fair and non-abusive, to be able to express one’s sense of humor, creativity and spirituality. Trauma robs victims of their sense of personal integrity and childhood trauma prevents the development of a clear and integrated sense of self. The ability to self-protect is one of the most shattering losses that occur as a result of traumatic experience and it manifests as an inability to protect one’s boundaries from the trespass of other people. Another loss is a sense of self-efficacy, the basic sense of experiencing oneself as having the ability to relate to the world on one’s own terms without abusing power and without being abused by it. A sense of personal safety is achieved as the injured individual learns how to be effective in protecting themselves from violations of their personal and psychological space. An environment seeking to ensure psychological safety must gain a healthy respect for the various ways in which behavior that is clearly maladaptive and labeled as symptomatic in the present served a useful, even life-saving adaptive purpose in the past. Normalizing what has been seen by the rest of the patient’s world as abnormal, even “crazy” behavior helps reduce the shame associated with a psychiatric diagnosis and helps to motivate the person towards the possibility of change, of substituting relationships for the problematic behaviors including substance abuse. People who have been subjected to systematic and repetitive childhood abuse have been exposed to a form of “brainwashing” within their families. As a result, they suffer from massive cognitive confusion. A treatment environment that promotes psychological safety will provide opportunities for psychoeducation, demystifying what have previously been inaccessible psychological concepts, and making reading materials and other media available for teaching, discussion and understanding. Treatment thus becomes an intensive educational experience. The development of a healthy sense of self is contingent upon the development of safe attachment relationships and in the context of familial abuse, there are severe disruptions in normal attachment behavior. A treatment environment must therefore provide opportunities and models for safe attachment and the opportunity for patients to experientially learn how their relationships become sabotaged as a result of the profound tendency to reenact in the present, relational patterns from the past. Trauma creates existential dilemmas that are overwhelming and incomprehensible. We are a meaning-making animal. To achieve psychological safety, we must make sense out of what has happened to us or our reality is not bearable.
|
|
Send mail to
webmaster@SanctuaryWeb.com with
questions or comments about this web site.
|
