Linguistic Behaviours From Lack Of Psychological Safety

These behaviours manifest when people feel unsafe. When someone observes these behaviours, it causes the observer to also feel that same unsafety.

  1. Don’t critique: in the long run, doing this causes you to feel that things are boring / stagnant and that the system is not moving. When avoiding critique, the feeling that nothing moves (which comes from you intrapersonally) gets projected onto the system.

    This comes from the mental script when in survival of not wanting to appear negative and a fear that others think you act with ill intent.

  2. Don’t show weakness: causes you to feel misunderstood in the long run. If there is pain that is not known to the system, this is a natural outcome.

    This comes from the mental script of not wanting to show weakness to be seen as contributing. “Since everyone else also experiences pain, suck it up”.

  3. Don’t offer ideas: causes you to feel insignificant in the long run. Every idea that comes in can be disruptive and break the status quo.

    This is based on the fear of disrupting the system, “don’t want to be the one that shakes things up” and appear disruptive.

  4. Don’t ask questions: causes feelings of helplessness / being unable to affect change in the long run. Knowledge is the beginning of power. Without knowledge, you cannot affect change.

    This comes from the mental script of “Other people think I should have known. Asking questions means I haven’t been paying enough attention and therefore, I appear ignorant or uncaring”. E.g, hearing that someone had a Miscarriage but not wanting to ask about how that person is.

    Not asking questions here is different from not wanting to show weakness (that I did not know).

Preserving Trust

Humans have a primal fear of not being trusted.

Each of these behaviours is an attempt at wanting to stay in Trust with others.

  1. Don’t criticize: an attempt to maintain trust by sincerity.
  2. Don’t show weakness: an attempt at preserving trust by competence.
  3. Don’t offer ideas: an attempt to preserve trust by staying reliable.
  4. Don’t ask questions: an attempt to preserve care.

I personally don’t quite understand the last point about preserving care as well as the others.

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