Part 1: Creating Emotional Safety in Uncertain Times

With so much uncertainty in the world, one of the biggest conversations happening in my coaching community right now is about how to feel safe.

Safe enough to use your voice and be seen as a leader…

Safe enough to leave an unfulfilling corporate job to follow your calling…

Safe enough to set boundaries…

Safe enough to ask for your needs in relationships…

And sadly, feeling safe enough to send your kids to school…

The need for safety and security is primal. That’s why famous psychologist, Abraham Maslow, placed it right behind survival essentials like food, water, and shelter on his famous hierarchy of human needs. Without emotional safety, it can be difficult to open your heart, share your love, and give your gifts to the world.

But if you’re like most people I work with, you might not have been taught how to feel safe within yourself. Many of my clients were conditioned from childhood to seek safety through external power sources.

These are what I call the 3 safety traps of the unfulfilled high performer: 

• Accolades: In this case, the path to love and safety was based on performance. These clients had to be the “Golden Child”—making the honor roll, winning the trophies, and being the best at everything. Anything less than an A+ was met with disapproval from parents, creating an internal monologue of “I’m not enough and must work harder.”

• Self-abandonment: Safety = responsibility. These people were asked to give up being a child to play the role of caretaker to siblings (or in worst case scenarios, be the parent to their parents). Whenever they experienced complex emotions as a child, the response from adults was “But what about ME?” Denying their own emotions and needs to rescue others was how they learned to feel control and safety.

• Acquiesce: These clients had to quietly comply with household rules, no matter how rigid, out of fear of emotional or physical punishment. To stand out and speak up would make them a target, as they were taught “children should be seen, not heard.” They learned safety was the prize you get for not rocking the boat.

These safety traps work in developmental years when a child is powerless to set boundaries or to leave the home.

However, when unaddressed and unhealed, the traps become maladaptive adult coping patterns that lead to overwhelm, resentment, and anxiety in your career and relationships.

If you’re an unhappy high performer, your corporate job may now be the place where you’re available around the clock to take care of problems, often at the expense of yourself and your family (the self-abandonment trap).

When burnout sets in, you may have an impulse to set a boundary with work. But if you also believe your safety is linked to your paycheck and 401K, you’ll collapse on yourself to stay off the radar (the acquiescing trap).

Corporate can also be the high achiever’s outlet to satisfy the accolade trap, where another promotion, pay raise, or president’s club award is your way to feel valued, loved, and safe. However, most people in this cycle climb to the top of every ladder, only to still feel like they haven’t “made it.” In my case, it led to an emotional collapse and the proverbial “midlife crisis.”

I don’t know which of these traps resonate most for you because we haven’t spoken yet.

But I wanted to share an important coaching point about why your job can’t ultimately be your link to safety and security…

Corporate jobs, like anything else external to you (marriage, house, kids, investment portfolios), can be lost.

And if you believe your job is your only link to safety and security, you’ll never truly have either.

The daily overwhelms, exhaustion, and anxiety which result from operating within the safety traps I shared are the literal opposite of having emotional safety.

And that doesn’t even account for the emotional crisis most people face if they’re laid off from that “safe” corporate job during an economic downturn.

Wouldn’t it be nice to stop giving away your power and learn how to create LASTING security and safety within yourself?

Click here for Part 2 of my “Creating Emotional from Within” series, where I’ll share the 4 ingredients to create unshakeable certainty amidst the chaos in the world!