The Ground Beneath Us

One of the most important books ever introduced to me was The Fearless Organization by Amy C. Edmondson. The book centers on a deceptively simple idea: that psychological safety is essential to team and organizational performance. When people feel safe to speak up, ask questions, admit mistakes, and offer ideas without fear of punishment or humiliation, everything improves—trust, creativity, decision-making, outcomes.

Psychological safety, in that context, is not about comfort or lowering standards. It’s about creating conditions where humans can function at their best. Where energy isn’t diverted into self-protection. Where people don’t waste cognitive and emotional resources scanning for threat, managing perception, or staying silent to avoid consequences. In environments grounded in safety, people contribute more fully—not because they are pushed, but because they are free.

That framework made complete sense to me in professional settings. I could see it clearly in teams, leadership, and culture. I understood why it mattered at work.

What never occurred to me—consciously, at least—was that this idea of psychological safety isn’t just an organizational concept.

It’s a human one.

The foundation of any healthy relationship is consistent psychological safety. Not occasional reassurance. Not chemistry. Not intensity. Not physical presence or relational milestones by themselves, but the steady energy that runs beneath them. Over time, that sense of safety builds trust—and without trust, every foundation is inherently unstable. You can stand on it for a while, but you’re always compensating. Adjusting. Bracing.

I didn’t start thinking about psychological safety outside the workplace until I experienced what it feels like to truly not have it in an intimate relationship. Not in a dramatic or explosive way, but in the quiet, cumulative ways that change how you move through connection.

When that ground of trust is inconsistent—present in moments, absent in others—the impact can be even more destabilizing.

For some people, those intermittent periods of safety create hope. And hope can trigger overcompensation.

You work harder.

You try to fix.

You explain more clearly.

You anticipate better.

You believe—often unconsciously—that if you are vigilant enough, kind enough, reasonable enough, assertive enough, you can stabilize the connection. That by managing yourself, you can manage the relationship. That by predicting the behavior of another, you can prevent harm.

But this doesn’t build safety.

It compensates for the absence of it.

Hypervigilance becomes a substitute for trust. Effort replaces consistency. Control attempts to stand in for reliability.

When safety is absent in intimacy, the body adapts long before the mind names it.

You listen for subtext instead of words.

You track tone, timing, shifts in energy.

You start asking questions—not out of curiosity, but out of self-protection. You replay conversations. You wonder what you did wrong, what you missed, what you should have done differently. You compare yourself to past relationships, to imagined alternatives, to those who came before you—studying their outcomes as if understanding them might protect you—and to versions of yourself that might be easier to love.

Only in reflection did I recognize what that comparison really was.

It wasn’t intuition.

It wasn’t insight.

It was the absence of psychological safety, expressing itself through vigilance.

Insecurity doesn’t arrive as drama.

It arrives as monitoring—

a constant checking that never quite resolves.

You begin managing yourself—your needs, your emotions, your expectations—so the relationship doesn’t destabilize. You make yourself smaller, clearer, more reasonable. You explain gently. You wait. You doubt your instincts. You override what your body is telling you because nothing is overtly “wrong.”

But something is off.

Just as in unsafe workplaces, energy is diverted. Not into creativity or intimacy, but into vigilance. Into staying acceptable. Into maintaining connection by avoiding disruption.

Attention, when driven by anxiety rather than trust, becomes another form of vigilance.

A lack of safety doesn’t always look like fear.

Often, it looks like restraint.

And when safety exists, it doesn’t announce itself either. It reveals itself in what disappears.

The constant self-checking quiets.

The urge to compare fades.

The need to decode evaporates.

You don’t have to brace before you speak. You don’t have to rehearse honesty or anticipate fallout. You can bring uncertainty, emotion, difference, and desire without fearing it will be used against you later.

This is where the parallel becomes impossible to ignore.

Just as teams perform better when people feel safe to contribute, humans connect more deeply when they feel safe to be real. Intimacy requires the same conditions as innovation: trust, consistency, and freedom from punishment for telling the truth.

Without psychological safety, relationships can still exist. Attachment can still form. Even love can still be present. But the foundation remains shaky—held together by effort rather than trust.

With safety, something else becomes possible.

Desire becomes calmer.

Intimacy becomes steadier.

Choice becomes clearer.

Not because everything is perfect, but because the nervous system is no longer in charge of defense.

Psychological safety, it turns out, isn’t a “nice to have.”

It’s the condition that determines whether trust can take root at all.

At work.

In love.

In life.

Once you understand this, it becomes difficult to ignore.

I’ve learned that I require it in order to stay.