I’ve been struggling to write this month’s blog.

Not because I don’t know what to say.
But because the world has been loud in ways that are hard to metabolise.

War. Escalation. Destruction. The same patterns of power playing out again. People with power making decisions that harm everything around them. Humans. Land. Resources. Entire futures. And doing so with a level of impunity that is both familiar and still, somehow, shocking.

And alongside that, the same language we’ve always heard. Calls for restraint. For balance. For calm. For measured responses.

It made me pause.

Because I realised something.

We talk a lot about psychological safety. In our organisations, in our teams, in our communities. We design workshops around it. We measure it. We aspire to it.

But watching what is happening in the world right now, I keep coming back to one question.

Safety for whom?

We talk about safety as if it’s something we can own and distribute. We declare, “This is a safe space”, as if saying it makes it so, when in reality it is shaped by power, risk, and consequence.

And those things are not distributed equally.

Some people move through spaces knowing they can speak without consequence. Others are constantly aware that what they say, how they say it, or even whether they say anything at all, carries risk.

You cannot create safety in a space where consequences remain unequal.

And yet, we keep trying. We should, right? But in that trying, there’s a hidden risk that is often overlooked. It takes us back to the same question.

Safety for whom?

In my recent coaching conversations, both one to one and in groups, I’ve been sitting with a tension that keeps coming up. The difference between safety, discomfort, and unfamiliarity.

And how often we collapse them into one. That’s why we must keep returning to that question.

Safety for whom?

Not all discomfort is harm, but we often treat it as if it is, especially when it belongs to those with power.

A difficult conversation becomes “this doesn’t feel safe”. Being challenged becomes something that needs to be softened. Perspectives that disrupt what we know are quickly reframed, diluted, or redirected.

And just like that, the room reorganises itself, and power reasserts itself.

Not around truth. Not around justice. But around restoring comfort, for those who hold power.

When discomfort is centred over harm, power quietly stays where it is.

Discomfort is not a signal that something is wrong or unsafe. It’s a signal that something important is happening. A signal that power and privilege are being challenged. Often, this is the edge of transformation.

Unfamiliarity is something else entirely.

It is the feeling of stepping into something outside what we know. It can bring anxiety. It can feel destabilising. But it is not, in itself, unsafe.

Unfamiliarity is often the edge of learning.

But when unfamiliarity is treated as a problem, growth becomes optional and comfort becomes the priority.

Again, the room shifts.

Language is softened. Edges are smoothed. The things that needed to be said are left unsaid, not because they were harmful, but because they were unfamiliar.

Meanwhile, those who live with actual risk are still being asked to show up. To be open. To be generous. To be “safe”.

So we end up in a strange dynamic.

Some people are protected from discomfort.
Others are exposed to harm.

And we call that psychological safety.

Whose discomfort gets attended to first tells you everything you need to know about how power is moving in the room.

We are often quicker to soothe discomfort, to appease, and to explain unfamiliarity than to address harm.

As facilitators, leaders, and people who hold space in different ways, this matters.

Holding a space is not about keeping everyone comfortable, it is about being honest about what is at stake for different people in the room.

It means noticing who has voice and who carries risk. Who feels able to speak freely and who is calculating the cost of every word. It means resisting the urge to smooth things over too quickly when discomfort arises, and instead asking what that discomfort is pointing to.

Because safety without power awareness becomes performance.

If we are serious about building spaces that are genuinely safe, not just on paper, not just in language, then we have to move beyond declarations.

Safety is not something we can manufacture or assign to a space. It is relational. It lives in the quality of connection between people, in how power is held, shared, and made accountable, and in whether risk and consequence are acknowledged rather than ignored.

As Gabor Maté reminds us, “Safety is not the absence of threat, it is the presence of connection.”

And connection without power awareness is fragile.
Connection that does not account for power is not safety, it is proximity.

Safety is not something we announce at the beginning of a session.

It is something we build through power, accountability, and consequence.

And that requires us to sit with discomfort. To recognise unfamiliarity. And to stay present when things feel harder than we would like.

So the next time safety is named in a room, it might be worth pausing.

Whose safety are we talking about.
And who is still being asked to be brave.

This is the third blog in my Power Awareness series.

More to come in April.

© Reem Assil 2026, All rights reserved

Photo by Andrea De Santis on Unsplash