The Need for Safety: an ACT Perspective

Our culture is increasingly infused with the language of therapy. Concepts such as boundaries, gaslighting, and trauma have escaped the counseling room and entered everyday discourse, often in ways that are genuinely helpful. While therapeutic language is sometimes misunderstood or overextended, greater awareness of these ideas can help us navigate our relationships, our inner lives, and our suffering.

One striking example of this cultural shift is the idea of safety. Once primarily associated with physical protection, safety now more commonly refers to a subjective sense of emotional comfort. As an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) therapist, I pay close attention to the hidden rules of language—how words and ideas can function in ways that differ substantially from their culturally assumed meanings. Viewed through an ACT lens, even well-intentioned concepts can have unintended consequences, sometimes functioning in ways that undermine their stated purpose. When we promise safety in meetings, classrooms, and therapy rooms without considering how that promise functions for a particular individual, we risk making some people feel less safe rather than more.

We are often offered promises of safety precisely when uncomfortable emotions are expected to arise. A manager opens a meeting by saying she wants everyone to feel safe expressing themselves. A professor issues a trigger warning, implicitly offering safety while suggesting remedies such as leaving the room if students feel unsafe. A therapist assures a client that therapy is, above all, a place to feel safe while discussing painful experiences. As therapeutic ideas have entered mainstream culture, new norms have emerged around interpersonal communication, with safeguarding psychological wellbeing elevated to a central goal.

On one hand, this reflects a long-standing therapeutic insight: attending to the process of communication, not just its content, can improve relationships. On the other hand, it reflects a more contentious assumption—that emotional discomfort is inherently harmful, even when no harm is intended, and should always be prevented. Compounding this is a shift in the meaning of safety itself. Beyond protection from physical harm, a promise of safety increasingly functions as a guarantee of emotional comfort.

In some contexts, a phrase like I want you to feel safe is not intended—or received—as a promise of comfort; it is simply understood that distress is unavoidable. Yet without understanding how the idea of safety functions for a particular person, it is impossible to know whether such a promise from a boss, teacher, or therapist will be helpful or counterproductive. ACT is grounded in a philosophy of science known as functional contextualism, which helps explain why a seemingly compassionate gesture like promising safety can sometimes backfire.

Functional contextualism holds that to understand the meaning or value of any thought, emotion, or behavior, we must examine its function in context. This is especially important when we consider how the hidden, arbitrary rules of language influence our inner lives—often outside of awareness.

Consider the statement: I love my wife, but I can’t stand living with her. The word but literally means “this or that, not both,” and can’t stand implies impossibility. While this man is using common language, he may be unaware of how his phrasing frames his situation as a crisis and constrains his perceived options. If we restate the same experience with functional contextualism in mind, we might say: I love my wife, and I sometimes have the thought “I can’t stand living with her.”

This subtle shift opens new possibilities while more accurately describing reality. The word and allows both love and frustration to coexist. The word but, by contrast, suggests incompatibility and urgency, potentially amplifying distress and pulling the mind toward avoidance or rumination. Noticing how language functions does not eliminate pain, but it can reduce the sense of crisis created by hidden linguistic rules, freeing attention for more workable action. This kind of example is classic in ACT: it illustrates that how language functions in context can matter as much as, or more than, its literal content.

We are naturally inclined to take language literally, and most of the time this works just fine. The thought It might rain; I should take an umbrella is best treated literally. ACT does not advocate abandoning reason or dismissing thoughts wholesale. Instead, it emphasizes flexibility: we can relate to thoughts literally when that is useful, and differently when it is not.

When it comes to therapeutic concepts like emotional safety, we often assume—based on their benevolent tone—that they are universally helpful. But when we examine how a promise of safety actually functions for individuals, that assumption becomes less certain.

How, then, might a promise of safety leave someone feeling less safe?

Imagine a meeting facilitator who says, We’ll be reviewing mistakes that led to the loss of our top client, but it’s important that everyone here feels safe as we discuss this. As tensions rise, some participants feel criticized or unfairly blamed, leading to shame or embarrassment—painful but predictable emotions in a difficult conversation. In addition to this discomfort, something else may occur: these emotions become evidence that the promise of safety has been broken. Feeling unsafe, understood as a violation of an implied guarantee of emotional comfort, becomes a second layer of distress.

A similar dynamic can unfold when a professor issues a trigger warning that implicitly equates emotional discomfort with danger, or when a therapist emphasizes safety in a way that primes clients to interpret painful memories as signs they are unsafe. In such cases, distress may prompt suppression or avoidance rather than contact, curiosity, or growth.

What does it mean, then, when someone who is not physically threatened says they feel unsafe? And how might a promise of safety function in ways that inadvertently amplify distress?

Consider how we define physical safety. If you are not at risk of injury or death, you are physically safe. Even intense pain—at the dentist, in a waxing salon, or under a tattoo needle—is rarely interpreted as a threat to safety. It is uncomfortable, but it does not mean you are unsafe. Emotional safety, by contrast, is often judged by a stricter and more subjective standard: if you feel emotional discomfort, you may conclude that you are unsafe.

This difference matters. Physical safety is largely objective; emotional safety is defined by individual tolerance for distress. When safety functions culturally as a promise of emotional comfort, offering that promise in situations where discomfort is inevitable can paradoxically increase suffering.

Hidden language rules help explain why. One such rule is: If you feel unsafe, you are unsafe. Another is that safety is binary—you are either safe or unsafe, with no middle ground. We rarely hear phrases like safe enough or distressed and safe. When safety has been promised, some people may hit an implicit, language-constructed wall the moment discomfort arises. Through these hidden rules, distress can escalate beyond what the situation itself would otherwise evoke.

None of this means that references to safety are always unhelpful. For some people, such language communicates care, attunement, and goodwill, increasing their willingness to tolerate discomfort and expanding their behavioral options. The key point is not that promising safety is wrong, but that its effects are unpredictable. Without understanding how emotional safety functions for a given individual, we cannot know whether the statement I want you to feel safe will soothe or sensitize.

Promises of emotional safety have become standard in contexts where difficult emotions are likely to arise. While they often appear compassionate, they can function in paradoxical ways. Because of the hidden rules of language—and because words can operate differently depending on context—even a well-meaning promise of safety can leave some people feeling less safe.

To guard against these unintended consequences, it helps to remember that words do not carry fixed effects simply by virtue of their intentions or popularity. Therapeutic concepts such as emotional safety are especially prone to paradox because they are relatively new to the cultural lexicon, widely used, and loosely defined.

As an ACT therapist, I attend closely to the ways language can increase suffering when we treat its literal meaning as the whole story and overlook how it functions in context. Rather than promising safety in your next difficult meeting, class, or therapy session, consider acknowledging that discomfort is likely and that this discomfort may be challenging. And perhaps offer a different message instead: that the capacity to feel and tolerate difficult emotions is not evidence of danger, but a sign of resilience.