Why Psychological Safety is so Important to Me
I want to share why psychological safety matters so deeply to me, and why I’m so passionate about creating it for others.
During Covid both my children (doing GCSEs and A Levels at the time) underwent extensive private assessments that determined they were both Autistic, with ADHD. After going through the process with them, I decided to have the same assessments myself and guess what? Yep, Autistic with ADHD. My children (now young adults) both went on to have clinical diagnosis of ADHD and one is now medicated, the other one isn’t (that’s another story).
I decided not to pursue the clinical diagnostic route as the assessments had given me a lot of information about how my brain works and that’s what I was interested in. My daughter was off to uni and her diagnosis enabled her to access Disabled Students Allowance. The most useful thing she got was her ‘uni mum’ who she met with virtually every week for an hour, for the whole three years. Her uni mum helped her organise her life as well as her uni work. As her actual mum, this gave me so much comfort. She’d always needed more support than her peers, and knowing she had someone in her corner every week while she was away from home, was huge. And she got a First - a very proud mum (and uni mum) moment!
When we took a step back and looked around our wider family we realised that neurodivergence is prevalent across both mine and my husband’s families. No wonder we all thought everything we did was ‘normal’. Anyone else’s children not able to eat baked beans because the texture was ‘too weird’?
Around the same time, the younger of my two children told us they are trans. There is a huge amount of information now available that shows there is a massive crossover between neurodiversity and the LGBTQIA+ community. When I look at my own interruption of gender I realise it’s never been something that felt particularly relevant to me. The ‘category’ of ‘human’ was always the most important to me. I’ve been fascinated by the human mind for as long as I can remember and started reading complex books on the subject as a teenager.
Also, I didn’t really see particular behaviours as being gendered, such as boys climbing trees and making dens (one of my favourite childhood activities), or that boys and girls had to dress or act in certain ways. Apparently this is quite common in the neurodiverse population – all to do with not conforming to society norms because they just don’t seem important, and we don’t tend to follow the crowd. As a teenage I was a goth – the thought of being like everyone else mortified me! And I liked the music.
Music has been significant in my life, and still is. Me and my husband go to gigs at least once a month and still have fun camping at multiple music festivals each summer. Music bound me and my husband together from the start, and it’s a strong bond we’ve built with our children. Our daughter often still comes to gigs with us, especially if we’re buying her ticket!
Music, and particularly live music, is my version of psychological safety. It’s where I feel free, emotionally grounded, fully immersed in the moment. Amazing!
The chain of events that started in Covid, and that are now part of our every day lives, brought psychological safety to the forefront. Despite having a very demanding career, and not long having started a new job, I realised I needed to provide something new, something different for my children (now young adults) as they, and us as a family, navigated this new ‘normal’ (well, normal for us). I fervently believed it was vital that they didn’t think there was anything ‘wrong’ with them. That this new information didn’t mean they were lacking in some way. We just needed to figure out what we needed to do about the rest of world to make it work for them!
If you put a plant in a dark corner and forget to feed or water it, you don’t assume the plant is the problem. Instead, you move it into the sunshine where you remember to care for it properly. The result? It flourishes. That’s want I wanted for my kids.
I am fiercely protective of my kids and how they put themselves out into the world. I’ve taught them to advocate for themselves. They shouldn’t ever have to apologise for their environment needing to step up to give them what they need to succeed. They are both amazing human beings; kind, creative, intelligent, imaginative, thoughtful and fun to be around. They are flourishing.
And actually that’s what I want for everyone who comes into The Coaching Bubble®. There is absolutely no judgement about who you are, who you identify as, what you believe, what drives you, what’s holding you back or what your dreams and aspirations are. All there is, is curiosity and information. What we do with those together is entirely up to you.
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