How do we talk about “safety” in our work?
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I have been thinking about “safety” lately.* I love the polyvagal theory because it places feelings solidly within the ranges of our physiological felt sense, aka interoception. Many people experience the range of their emotions as physiological sensations (or symptoms depending on perspective/severity). The polyvagal theory offers us a map to help our people interpret what the body is expressing. However, most articulations of the theory use the word “safety” in a way I find troubling.
“Safety” is at the core of Porges articulation of the theory, the first chapter of The Pocket Guide to the Polyvagal Theory is entitled “The Neurobiology of Feeling Safe”. In the glossary, safety is defined like this: “the model emphasizes that safety is defined by feeling safe [emphasis mine] and not by the removal of threat”. The text then defines what it means to feel safe. It is a long and somewhat cumbersome definition that, to my reading, veers further and further away from the fact of violence in our world. This much ado about safety has removed potentialities of harm from the definition. It feels weird to me, it activates my neuroception, to use a PVT term, because safety actually means the absence of harm/threat, not something else.
Safety is a contested topic in the U.S. Historically it has been weaponized and continues to be in the current social, cultural, and political climate. We live in a time when threats are real and actively perpetuated towards both the individual and at specific groups based on socially constructed identities. People are not safe - this is true at a very fundamental level. So, how do we talk about safety as abstracted from threat when real threat is so prominent? How do we discuss safety without context when those with power invoke a lack of safety to justify violence and oppression? I think most of us are familiar with people, especially white folks, transposing their discomfort as a lack of safety in some settings. I believe this is made possible partly due to the emphasis on safety within the PVT. It has brought the term, and its varying uses, into the popular lexicon in ways that I think can be damaging.
Sarah Schulman in her book Conflict is Not Abuse writes, “The question ‘Are you unsafe or uncomfortable?’ was very inspiring. Does the person feel unsafe when they are not actually unsafe, but rather because the other party, with whom they are in Conflict, is bringing up issues about their life that are troublesome and therefore initially feel overwhelming and difficult to face.” Schulman ends the paragraph with this interrogation: “Which kind of safety are we endorsing here? Is it the safety from psychological ‘power over’ and actual harm? Or is it the safety from being made to feel uncomfortable by accurate information that challenges one’s self perception?”
If you were asked, how would you define safety? I have given this question a lot of thought and have not found a straightforward answer. The dictionary definition of safe as, “free from harm or risk: unhurt”. What constitutes harm? Who decides? My guess is that you have infused the word safety with your own meanings. How you think about safety is likely integrated with your socially constructed identities and personal experience. You may be encountering your own definition as you read this. Add into the complexity that we all have blind spots in our conceptions of ourselves and our identities within all the circles of our relatedness. How might these notions play into this leveraging of safety if it is emphasized outside of the context of actual threat/harm? These are important questions to ask of a theory that is intended to be used to help folks interpret their physiological responses to their relational environment.
I have had the opportunity to have engaging and wide ranging conversations on the topic of safety with colleagues, students, and patients specifically within the neurophysiological theory context of the PVT. When I propose the topic, inevitably folks perk up and step towards the topic.
When I discuss this with colleagues familiar with the PVT, they ask, “What do you use instead?” I have also given a lot of thought to this because I use the theory daily in the clinic and think it is important background information in our classes. I even use aspects of it when constructing course curriculum. I love the theory yet am troubled by this foundational tenet – so much so that I don’t replace the word. I let safety stand for what it means: the actual presence of real, tangible threat and harm. I try to orient my work towards an individual's felt-sense, towards unpacking that felt-sense tangibly by supporting them in tracking sensation. This can allow folks the space to explore how tolerable the sensation might or might not be and give them the opportunity to name what feeling states they might associate with the sensation.
When we are given the opportunity to explore and unpack our felt sense in response to challenges to our system two things happen. One, we expand our ability to tolerate uncomfortable sensations. Two, we are creating our own lexicon of feeling from our internal physiological sensations. Many of us have tight junctions between internal physiological sensation and behavioral/emotional reactivity. The more literate of our own feeling states we are supported in becoming, the more we can contribute to decreasing actual harm in our social worlds. The PVT is a useful tool and this is part of what I am working through in order to feel more comfortable using it in the varying settings I do.
* I’m grateful to Kheoshi Owens and Dr. Bex Groebner for enlivening and illuminating conversations on the topic of safety. Each in their own way helped me interrogate my perspective on the topic.
