MC4P ep 13: Part Two of Psychological Safety with Allison Luke

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Hey. Hello. I'm Wren Ribeiro, and I want to connect with you about peace and justice. We are interviewing women who labor for peace as we have forever and always will. Until we all feel peace in our homes, our workplaces, our communities, and especially our bodies and minds.

This initiative is named Mujéres Co-Labor for Peace. It's a show of intimate conversations with justice workers who are healing their self and communities from the effects of misogyny, capitalism and climate change.

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Welcome to the show! My name is Wren Ribeiro and I wish you complete wellness and lasting peace.

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Wren
Mujéres Co-Labor for Peace is a show of intimate conversations about healing from the effects of misogyny, capitalism and climate change. In our last episode, we met Allison Luke and we're back again to have a deeper dive into psychological safety and a lot of tools and nuances of application of how do we create psychological safety when we need it?

How do we know we need it? How do we know we have it? So we're going to talk a little bit about that in this episode. At the moment, our first order of business is to check in with our hearts, take a deep breath, drop in and ask ourselves, how is this beating heart right now?

Allison
You know, good, good, good, good.

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Wren
Yeah, That's awesome. My heart feels it feels almost like it's at rest. I think that's the word. Rest like it's floating. Yeah, it's kind of a fun, fun feeling.

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Wren
Let's get it in. Let's take a deep breath or two of integration and appreciation. Thank you. Thank you. All right, we're back. Alison, do you want to pick up where we left off?

Allison
I know there were a few we wanted to talk about, so let's keep going. Let's pick up where we left off. Thank you for having me back.

And last time I touched on just briefly on the journey that has to happen around getting to psychological safety. So this time, I'm going to start to put a few of the tools, the beginning tools on the table. I just want anyone listening and watching to know this is not a quick journey. Yeah, this is not something you can just and just a few pro tips and suddenly get healed.

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Allison
Like, you know, it's it's a slow journey. You have to stay in the ring. You have to be intentional. You have to believe.

Wren
Yeah. I mean, it feels like the very core difference between capitalism and cooperatives, the business structures that we're part of that are so values forward like so intentional, so long term focused, so holistic, The whole person shows up to work and and I really like that as someone who was a general manager and a worker owner of two different renewable energy cooperatives.

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Wren
I've gotten to understand that in a way that, yeah, if you're not in the cooperative space or the solidarity economy, you might not know. So, yeah, that that it can feel polarized. But there are certainly corporations that are values forward and there are cooperatives that are falling asleep at the wheel. So I'm wondering, like with that that lens that you're talking about of application and tools and you know, being in that long game, what how have you approach the tool delivery or the the framing?

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Allison
Wow. Everything starts with acceptance, which we touched on briefly in the last one, how acceptance is being willing to face the truth of everything about you and everything about your situation, the painful and the not painful and anything that's great and in between. Right. Because any good psychologist or therapist will tell you anything that you're not willing to take custody of.

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Allison
And everything that your'e not willing to accept is everything. You can't fix it. Fix, Right. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. At that point, your only options are denial deflection, you know, maladaptive coping mechanisms, essentially.

How a big part of how we lack behavioral health is that we're not taught to bond in a healthy way.

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Allison
That starts with our family of origin, and that extends to our community origin. The common ways that your bonding or ability to bond gets maladaptive broken detachment attachment is in a nutshell, is someone being emotionally inaccessible in excess, right? It's it's what I'm telling my mother. I was molested by the babysitter son, and I'm crying and she's telling me, stop crying.

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Allison
And if it happens again, I'll do something about it. Right. Detachment. Abandonment. Someone connecting and then leaving. Right. Somebody who's, you know, who's. You know. You know. Great with you. As long as they don't have to sacrifice. And then you hit some sort of crisis, and then they're just gone. Right. Inconsistency. Someone being unstable as a love object.

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Allison
You know, this week they want to love on you and be all up in your face next week. You can't get them to return a phone call or text. Right. And so with this one criticism, unloving attacks upon our needy aspects. This one I want to just touch on a little bit longer. We live in a society today where criticism as a behavioral trait, a character logical trait, is more or less ubiquitous.

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Allison
It's again, more or less more or less ubiquitous, Ubiquitous, Right. Everybody's practicing this, right. And so criticism everybody's practicing criticism of everybody. Everybody everybody's got a critique or criticism about.

Wren
And there's a difference between making an observation that's an epiphany for reflection and growth and making an observation or an attack to minimize or cut down that. Yes, to minimize.

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Allison
And so it's essential when you're making your criticism that you understand the context you're coming from, that you're coming from for yourself, Why am I doing this? And if I'm doing this, do I really want to help this person or the people around at least not go this path? Or is this about me just getting a power urge in the moment?

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Wren
And you know what would be so powerful in those moments when folks are ready to let that out of their mouths? That criticism is a branch, right? Yes. a moment for a breath is going to help the person understand do I have flames in my mouth or are there butterflies coming out of me. I mean, which one is it going to be?

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Wren
And if it's coming from the heart, it's going to be something generative, something joyful, something that's that, you know, there's tough love, certainly, but tough love doesn't have to be, you know, spat at the other person. Exactly. Really, there's tenderness that can you can do tough love with. And so that breath can can really give us that that moment.

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Allison
And all we need is that one moment to be like, let me let let me just, like, de-escalate. Exactly. Exactly. The criticism is also part of why we don't want to be vulnerable, why we don't want to be vulnerable. It's a big part of why we don't want to be vulnerable, because we also don't want to open ourselves to that.

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Wren
Yeah, right. Yeah. So you're abso. Yeah, I get chills just talking with you. You know, these really are our lives. They're. I'm vibrating with you so much because there's, like, so much truth here that. That just those zings of truths just flow right through me. And I hope that you're feeling it, too, because. absolutely. I'm loving this.

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Allison
Really loving this loving this loving this here. And the last one is abuse, which is they define as violations of our souls that destroy our trust, violate soul open, destroy our trust to destroy our ability to trust and be vulnerable. So the main ones are detachment, abandonment, inconsistency, criticism and abuse. Take a moment and reflect on how have you experienced bonding with your father and mother?

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Right.

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Allison
and then take a moment to reflect on how are you doing this with yourself? How are you doing this with the people around you? Yeah. You know, look at the people that you have good relationships with, decent relationships with, even the bad ones, because you may find in digging into some of the bad ones that you think are the other person you may find, I'm actually contributing to the destruction of this relationship here and I need to work on creating I'm a perpetrator.

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Wren
It is so much more painful to be a perpetrator than to be a victim of these things because the victim first, I've you know, you shared something very personal and I had a similar situation. I was stalked and a knife at 2:00 in the morning and then there was a whole set of abuses from the police. Really, really, really bad and it's like as the victim and to be a survivor too, you know, claim that that's a whole big thing. And I, you know, like, I believe you, it's not your fault, you know, that that whole... Well, it's important to trust and believe a woman who who is surviving this this chronic mal adaption of society.

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Wren
But from my perspective, it was easier to forgive and be that victim than to be a perpetrator. I've never done anything of the sort, but I have hurt people and that hurts me more. So that that's like, so if we are looking in the mirror like you're saying, and we're seeing, I am perpetuating this shit that that was modeled for me as a child, it's hard to say I'm going to change that.

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Allison
How do we change that? Yeah. how do we change that? Everything starts with choice free will. Well, right. Everything starts with choice.
We all have expectations and we have the reality of what we what we're getting and what we're doing.

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Allison
You know, primary loss is that the feeling and the thought that sits on the top, right? That's not always the secondary loss. So if you're if you are humiliated, your primary loss is anger. Right. But what if the healing comes in identifying what's what's underneath? Underneath that is when you're humiliated, what you really lose is respect and control.
In this example. Right? So when you identify, okay, I need healing from this loss of respect and control of the situation, then you can start that process. Right? You've got to you've got to dig deeper.

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Allison
I'm going to quote something by Parker Palmer. When he says wholeness does not mean perfection, it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life because criticism is so ubiquitous and as a result, lack of vulnerability is so ubiquitous, everybody is going around. Pretending like brokenness isn't an integral part of life.

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Allison
To be human being is to be broken. Right, right, right. It's it's as you uncover more and more of your brokenness, what am I going to do with this? The beautiful thing about healing is that once you sort of clear the bottleneck, you know, you stop caring so much that you're broken because you're empowered by the fact that you can navigate the whole journey.

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Wren
It's like, once you name something, you've put it out there, especially if you've named it to somebody else and they can hold it with you, especially, you know, ideally that that person that you've named it to is safe. You know?

Allison
Exactly. It takes time to learn to identify safe people, especially when you when you come from a background where all you know was unsafe.

00;13;26;16 - 00;14;01;17
Allison
People, you know, safe. Safe is a foreign concept. Yeah, it's building, learning to cultivate your ability for yourself and the people around you. The four main needs of human soul, significance, acceptance, security and belonging. Right. Significance is essentially the need to be acknowledged, recognized to have your uniqueness and importance valued. Right. Well, you don't get that in your own story.

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Allison
You have to cultivate that in yourself. Right. Acceptance is embracing every facet of yourself, not just the estimable parts. Right, right, Right. And how do you start to cultivate acceptance? Right. This is an answer that seems counterintuitive, right?

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Allison
Because we want that acceptance from others. If we don't accept ourselves first, we don't attract that acceptance rate. It means of letting you build acceptance that acceptance from others you build as yourself. You build it to be learning to be present. This is tricky, right? Presence. Again, we live in a society that defines living through escapism and being entertained at every moment, whether it's social media, whether it's hung out with your friends, whether it's doing, doing, doing, doing, doing, doing, doing, doing right presence is, you know, sitting with those negative hurts, thoughts, feelings, attitudes.

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Unknown
It's journaling, it's meditation. It's, you know, starting to ask yourself, what's really wrong with the situation? What am I feeling? You know, becoming aware of your negative thoughts and feelings and the negative feelings and thoughts that accompany them, giving attention to the reality of your whole situation. Again, mindfulness, being mindful of your feelings and your surroundings and then starting to replace those negative thoughts with positive ones.

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Unknown
You know, asking yourself what's really warm with the situation, what I don't like about it and you know, how can I start to change it? We've already started just by stepping into presents with it. Right. I'd like to ask you, you've got a few more to to go through that guide, but I wanted to ask you about self centering.

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Wren
Because that ties back to the last episode of Narcissism and when we think about someone who's self-centered, we think, yeah, they're all about themselves. They're not about anybody else or not able to read the room, understand cues, appreciate and empathize with other people's position or needs in a moment, but doesn't self centering also mean like being self aware and being able to advocate for one's self? So like how how do we discern this or balance?

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Allison
Self-centeredness is a great question. There's a distinction between being self-centered, self-absorbed and self aware. You're right. And again, empathy is not something you can produce, you can give to others. If you're not practicing with yourself. Right. When you're dealing with someone who's a narcissist, whether that's from a behavioral aspect or whether that's on a clinical aspect or behavioral behaviorally.

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Allison
Because in our very hyper individualistic society, we've all observed a trait or two of behavior here or there that's narcissistic. Your job is to identify where that's playing out in your life. Yeah, right. And and how and, and start the healing process with it.

00;17;38;26 - 00;18;07;23
Allison
If you cannot give yourself healthy boundaries and self-love and practice significance and acceptance with your self, there are times when you know, giving to others, even if it's the right thing to do, may you may say, if I do that, I'm on the cusp of being burnt out. And so I have to care for myself and trust that God, the Father is going to open a way for this person to get what they need from someone else.

00;18;07;29 - 00;18;28;12
Wren
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You don't have to control everything. We don't have to control.

Allison
One of the things Crispin talks about in her book, Why I'm Not a Feminist, The Communist Manifesto, one of the latter chapters. It's a fantastic way to get your hands on it is how safety has become a word for a euphemism for control. I could not agree more.

I could not agree more. Psychological safety does not mean you're unsafe. This does not mean everything that I don't like or don't approve. Right, right, right, right. I'm going to separate those.

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And another thing that we that we do a lot of
in our in our hyper individualistic society is provisional acceptance, which is acceptance.
It's conditional acceptance.

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Allison
Right. And also practice it with yourself. Where am I practicing provisional acceptance, You know, do I love myself when I'm not bloated as a woman? And when I you know, when I'm bloated, I you know, where you at to see provisional acceptance, you know,

Wren
and celebrate when you catch yourself right. And celebrate when you catch yourself.

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Allison
I have a friend who we were talking the other day about how we can be so hard on ourselves. God, It's like... are programed in like women are hard on themselves.

Wren
Well, maybe it's because we we are holding so much that we don't get credit for. We don't people don't see how much we're holding. And at a point we start to feel like we can't hold it all anymore.

00;19;41;28 - 00;20;06;17
Wren
And where do we put it all down? Right. So we're talking about that challenge and the littlest things, the littlest moments when we say, I have held enough for today, celebrate. And it doesn't have to be like, I'm going to spend money. A celebration could be I'm going to drink some coconut water or I'm good or something.

00;20;06;18 - 00;20;34;06
Allison
Yes, yes, that's something. I'm going to go for a walk or take a dance class at the community center that I love and I haven't done it for. I'm going to dance. But so what? You know, whatever. It's free. It's right here. It's on the love, you know what I mean? Yeah, it doesn't. You're absolutely right. We're also taught that again, in the way that we subconsciously define in today's society, living with entertainment and escapism.

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Wren
You know, a celebration has to be this thing. It doesn't it doesn't have to be this thing. It can be, you know, a couple of your favorite t you know, I you know, a date with you of a date with yourself. A date. A date with you're a date with yourself. You know? Yeah. You know, it starts there.

00;20;56;19 - 00;21;17;04
Allison
It starts with learning to be present. When you start to unpack those things in yourself, your own issues with acceptance, provisional acceptance, security, acceptance, significant belonging. You're going to cultivate the tools to start to see that and start to look around. You know, your children, your partner, you know, you'll start to see where you're doing it. We are not going anywhere.

00;21;17;04 - 00;21;45;07
Allison
You have to have patience with yourself. We also live in a society where everything's got to happen instantly. You know, healing wholeness is a slow journey. You didn't get broken overnight. Yes, you've been broken for most of your life. So when you start this journey, it's not going to get fixed in two years. And that's okay. But you will make progress.

00;21;45;10 - 00;22;05;28
Allison
The goal is the progress. I tell, I tell it tell believers all the time. God isn't looking for perfection. He's looking for you to be willing to work with you in perfection. And if you can work with that, he'll work with that with you. Right? Right, right. Well, it takes the people that I have in my inner circle.

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Allison
And this took a long journey to get to a place where I have in an inner circle of healthy people are the people who can own their imperfection and work on these things. I love that you you are talking about the the healthy circle, that the people you've chosen to be close to you.

Wren
And it's not at the expense, it's not excluding others I'm assuming.

00;22;31;24 - 00;22;59;00
Allison
Right.

Wren
Like it's a choice for nourishment and yes that those boundaries and when another person who's maybe not in the circle anymore comes and says, I really miss you, and here's some reflection that I've done about ways that I could be a better person with you. You're in the circle again, right? It's like you're safe. You're safe now. You're in. I'm with you. I love you. Right?

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Allison
You you have to. You have to allow the grace for people to change. But one thing I've learned the hard way is that you also have to. I've had people come to me in the past and say, like, I was destructive with you in this way.

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Allison
And I let them in. And then only to find out that they are reflection. Didn't have any roots. Yeah. So I've learned, I've learned the hard way that in situations like that, especially when you're dealing with somebody who's done a lot of carnage in your life, psychologically, emotionally, maybe physically, you that reintegration process, you have to it you have to sort of yellow light that lets them let some time pass, let let a conflict to appear, you know, give it some time to see how much work has been done.

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Allison
Right. You know. Right. So baby steps start here for you. Throw open the door. Whereas in the end, that's somebody who's had who's who you've had a relationship with for a long time or a decent amount of time, at least two or three years or more. Right. And so and so, you know, you need it's different if you're getting to know somebody and, you know, you guys have only been friends or whatever for six months, you know what I mean?

00;24;23;02 - 00;24;42;15
Allison
And they mess up when they come back and say, hey, you know, I'm here, it's different, it's fresh. So you can still open that door and let them back in and give them time to, you know, when you've been dealing with abuse, that trauma, like it's just over and over and over, that takes that that reintegration process has got to be slow.

00;24;42;15 - 00;25;06;01
Wren
Yeah, exactly. It is so different. Like, I make the distinction between dynamic trauma, which is the that comes and goes. It's it's like I can deal with it because it is new to you. And, you know, I I'm going to tell you that hurt and well that's dynamic that just kind of goes but static trauma is like all the time.

00;25;06;06 - 00;25;38;12
Allison
Yes, absolutely. Great description.

Wren
Dynamic traumas are so much harder to heal because they're like in the bones, they're in the behaviors. So that's that's where the boundaries really need to be stronger.

Allison
That's a fantastic description of them of of static versus dynamic trauma. Absolutely. That's absolutely a great description. I've never heard that. Thank you for that.

00;25;38;12 - 00;26;05;17
Wren
It's so true. Well, let's take a deep breath of just appreciation. There is you know, it takes one to know one. That's why we die by why we're vibrating here. well, I'm being like, I want to give you another couple of minutes to just close with some of them. The tools that you wanted to share.

00;26;05;18 - 00;26;44;29
Allison
Sadly, I'll touch on this one more, some more tools to throw out their dysfunctional patterns in relationship that people do with you and that you also do with other people. Dismissive. When you are dismissive, you doubt the validity of your of your or another person's emotional needs. Right. And as a result, you or that person will experience self doubt while at the same time an intense longing for love and validation.

00;26;45;01 - 00;27;16;18
Allison
So identify the dismissiveness in your life. Yeah, right. controlling this, naming it ironically enough. Right? Sometimes all we need to do is name it. So that means anything? It's it. Yes. Yes. Controlling. Believe it or not, when you're dealing with somebody who is controlling or is controlling you, controlling is another form of being dismissive.

WRen
and controlling is dismissiveness through micromanagement.

00;27;16;21 - 00;27;48;24
Allison
Right. It also that doubts or just destroys the validity. The validity of the other person's perspective feelings

Wren
Minimizing

Allison
Minimizing and being unavailable, you know, where are you being unavailable? Where are the people around you in your inner circle being unavailable, emotionally unavailable, people who withdraw or with or with love?

Wren
Where and how are you not showing up for me, calling that behavior in and holding love for yourself and other people not showing up for you.

00;27;48;26 - 00;28;25;16
Allison
Right, right. And enmeshed it. This is a tricky one because enmeshment, if you're not careful, will mask itself as love. Enmeshment is is when the boundary between your identity and another person's becomes fuzed.

Wren
Sounds like codependency. Yes. So there's so many books on codependency so If it's up for you right now in your life, read something about that and bring that that story that that perspective to to your your loved ones to have these conversations.

00;28;25;22 - 00;28;43;13
Allison
please. Absolutely. I've seen situations where mothers enmeshed their identity into their daughter. So it's like your daughter. Your daughter is in their own person. She has to think many pursue the same things. It's you're like a mini me. Yeah. And where things are this is your life. You could do this with your son. You know what I mean?

00;28;43;13 - 00;29;23;21
Allison
Like, combative. Combative is somebody who's hyper hypercritical or jealous, competitive with the people in their life. Right? Right. And lastly, unreliable. And that one kind of kind of speaks for itself. You know, somebody who's unreliable, whether that's emotionally or on a resource perspective, you know, you're always there for them. Again, you hit hardship or crisis. You need them to just back which what they say in baseball come up and, you know, pinch hit, you know, help with something.

00;29;23;23 - 00;29;59;01
Wren
And it takes the smallest little bit of of love to call that in that behavior in because the person again, that person who's unreliable is the perpetrator. They're letting everybody down and it hurts them so much. So when we name that and with love and say, I see you and yeah, I want you to be more reliable, you're not reliable, How can you be more reliable? Because I love you anyway.

00;29;59;02 - 00;30;17;27
Allison
Yes that's the right approach, that's the right approach to say, I have I have somebody in my inner circle who I'm dealing with that now and, you know, meditating on how to have that conversation with this person to say, Hey, I see that and I'm not judging this brokenness.

00;30;17;27 - 00;30;41;23
Wren
To be on the wholeness journey Yes. Wow. Allison Luke, maybe someday, maybe someday we'll have a conference that we can co-facilitate. I just, like, put that out there. I had a dream about it, but I thank you so much for joining today. I thank all the listeners and viewers for joining. I'm Wren Ribeiro, and I thank you.

00;30;41;23 - 00;30;51;27
Allison
And to all the the breathing, the heart centered growth and healing in life and life. Amen. Amen.

00;30;51;27 - 00;31;14;23
Wren
This initiative is named Mujéres Co-Labor for Peace. It's a show of intimate conversations with justice workers who are healing their self and communities from the effects of misogyny, capitalism and climate change. This initiative is supported by Inner Fortune, the full life self coaching journal that is now digital.

00;31;14;25 - 00;31;24;12
Wren
Join us for peace and thank you for your heart.