Question about the phrase "feeling unsafe"
Posted by No-Lock6921@reddit | GenX | View on Reddit | 47 comments
Ok so yes this is coming from personal interactions and reading posts. The question isn't around being physically safe in an environment, it's about emotional safety, maybe? Still a bit confusing and sarcastically the world will not give you this. I would like to hear about your experiences, as well as your understanding. It seems to be a bit of a generational gap issue, or thin skinned? Idk.
Royal_Percentage_694@reddit
It almost doesn’t mean anything anymore.
Many people have “unsafe” foods, ffs.
SuburbaniteMermaid@reddit
Are you one of those douchebags who thinks food allergies aren't real?
Royal_Percentage_694@reddit
I’m talking about people who are all “McDonald’s is my safe food”
LayerNo3634@reddit
Retired teacher here. Around a decade ago, some parents decided that any and every negative comment or peer pressure should be labeled as "bullying." They taught there kids to be non-confrontational and "tell a grown up." The term bullying was overused. These parents forgot the story of the boy who cried wolf. These completely sheltered kids, grew up and have no resilience or conflict resolution. Instead of bullying, everything is now "feeling unsafe." The term is overused by a majority of a generation raised by helicopter parents...which is more damaging than the neglect we had.
Unfortunately, most of these parents are Gen X. In an effort to protect your kids from your trauma, you went too far and created worse trauma.
patbagger@reddit
Most people that feel unsafe on an emotional level have never actually been in an unsafe situation in real life, thier reality has been a life of comfort and protection (Sheltered).
I'm truly concerned for these people when things actually become hard, and dangerous.
rundabrun@reddit
You can't possibly know these things about people you don't even know.
patbagger@reddit
Personal observation, it fits a large majority, and I don't give a shit if you disagree.
No_Letterhead6883@reddit
I only used this phrase once (50f). I was alone in my bosses office . He was know in the whole hospital as a hothead. And this guy was HUGE, really muscular. Something I said pissed him off-I was just asking a question and it wasn’t aggressive. He started to get all red in the face and yell at me. He was getting up from his desk, standing, and I got a bit nervous, knowing his history. I really didn’t think he’d harm me, but between the verbal abuse and his huge looming presence I told him “ ya know, I really don’t feel safe in here with you so angry and is alone”. That got his pea brain to realize he’d have to settle down or get hauled into HR. I’m glad I stood up for myself.
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IdyllwildGal@reddit
I think it’s great that the stigma around mental health is going away and people are talking about it more.
But like anything else I think that the pendulum has swung too far. Speaking from my experience with my 17 year old daughter, I think now it’s gotten to the point where kids are getting the message that you’re not “normal” unless there’s something wrong with you. I think the message of “It’s okay to not be okay” is important, but the message getting lost is “It’s okay to be okay.”
My oldest daughter is a store director for a large grocery chain. She’s 28. She gets frustrated with the people who work for her because they tell her things like, “It’s really bad for my mental health when I have to work 5 days in a row” from people who work maybe 25 hours a week.
Professional_Use8237@reddit
I have yet to have a positive experience w this. I’ve only witnessed stonewalling and the inability to resolve workplace conflict in a professional manner because someone felt “unsafe.” Resolving conflict is rarely comfortable, but that doesn’t mean that anyone wants to inflict emotional warfare/trauma.
rosievee@reddit
Younger people are smart enough to realize that systems, people, jobs, family members, and governments that make us feel unsafe and grind our nervous system to dust are not something one should "push through" or "tough out". They're fucking tired of the bullshit world we're handing them and they're not afraid to say so. Unlike our generation, which seems to bear trauma as some self loathing badge of honor, younger people have watched how fucked up that mindset made us and they call it out. We're their parents, after all. If someone tells you they feel unsafe, try listening.
No-Competition-2764@reddit
They cannot change how the world works. It’s inherently unsafe and they’d best learn it or it will deal with them very harshly.
RegularImpressive819@reddit
Agreed. The world is a harsh unforgiving place that is chewing up the weak and emotionally unstable. We are not raising generations of survivors.
No-Competition-2764@reddit
This is correct.
Solid-Wish-1724@reddit
Two things can be true.
Jezikhana@reddit
This is the answer.
If I'd gotten myself out of situations I felt unsafe in or had folks pay attention to younger me feeling unsafe instead of telling me to tough it out I'd be in a far better place in many ways.
To the OP. It's not about being thin skinned, it's about having awareness of your emotions, owning them, and then communicating it. Think of how many misunderstandings you'd have avoided if people communicated such things clearly instead of dancing around it and expecting someone to read their mind.
Personally, I think communicating your boundaries is bloody brilliant.
rosievee@reddit
Well said. Suffering as a badge of honor is a trick designed to keep us compliant from a young age. Imagine seeing a kid brave enough to say, "This hurts, I don't think it should hurt" and telling them they're thin skinned. Meanwhile, standing up for yourself is the hardest thing in the world. Look at a lot of our peers who couldn't do it, and drank or drugged themselves into numbness. That's not tough, that's taking all the pain of the world and deciding to beat yourself with it, and expecting people to be impressed with how hard you hit.
momhh434444@reddit
Well said
VolupVeVa@reddit
I always flick back to an interview I saw with preeminent trauma-informed physician Dr. Gabor Maté. His interviewer talked about her experience being sexually assaulted as a child. He asked if she ever told her parents and she said no, it was too difficult to talk about.
Dr. Maté pointed out that the sexual assault was the second trauma in her life. The first was that her parents did not create conditions in which it felt safe for her to come to them for comfort and assistance after the most horrific thing happened to her.
kooshballcalculator@reddit
Wow. Just wow. Never hear it put this way but it’s exactly the scenario that happened to me. Thank you.
VolupVeVa@reddit
Here's an internet hug for you, stranger. 🫂
maelstrom75@reddit
I think it was originally intended to convey a person's fear they are at risk of being emotionally or verbally abused but I think it often gets used as, "I feel like you are about to disagree with me," irrespective of the severity of the disagreement.
Bitter-Assignment464@reddit
Safe spaces words are violence trigger warnings blah blah blah. I have no use for any of it. I speak my mind. If you are offended by what I said and it was unintentional then deal with it. If it’s not ridiculous I have no problem minding my words to be decent. If you are asking me to be unreasonable then it’s better if you didn’t keep my company.
Komaisnotsalty@reddit
I never - ever - feel safe amongst my immediate family. I only get together with them once a year, and only because I tend to indulge my 85 year old mother. For her, I tolerate the despicable human beings that my siblings are. When she dies, I never have to see them again and it will be glorious.
Do they hurt me physically? Hell no.
But they fuck with my mental health and have since the day I was born. They're all Boomers, quite a bit older than me, I don't know them well, and they've never let me forget that I 'interrupted' the family, like somehow it's my fault that my parents had unprotected sex on my dad's birthday in 1971.
When I was younger, I could easily say I don't feel safe around my oldest brother and he has physically harmed me, many times, when I was growing up - to the point where my parents kicked him out of the house when he was 18 and I was 6.
As adults, I don't trust him. He spreads rumours about me, like I'm stealing from our mother because I have access to her accounts (I did not, and I never have had access to her accounts), that I work a job 3 months and then quit so I can get welfare (I've never not worked, and worked 2 jobs for over 20 years) and he's just a horrific person. I'm not one to hate, but for him, I could make an exception.
So safe? No. No I don't feel safe around him. Do I think he'd kill me or something? Nah, but he does plenty enough harm without ever lifting a finger, and my sister and him are best friends. I have a couple of other brothers that more or less stay out of it, but they don't say anything either.
So fuck you with saying 'thin skinned'. People can be as hurt by words and deed as much as being physically harmed.
Helleboredom@reddit
Corporate nonsense makers like Brene Brown peddle the idea of emotional safety in the workplace and convince people they should be able to bring their whole selves to work and feel emotionally safe to share their ideas and opinions and difficulties and personalities. However, in my experience, this concept is just surface level gloss put on top of the same old exploitative nonsense that all capitalist workplaces extract from us. They trick these poor people into feeling “safe” then screw them over, same as it ever was. Can’t fool me though, I know the world is not fair or safe. You have to carve out your own peace and comfort and protect yourself from those who don’t give a shit about you, even if they pretend they do so they can claim it on their LinkedIn.
Olds1967@reddit
Sounds like a scab that needs to be picked.
_blatmaster_@reddit
Grab the book The Coddling of the American Mind by Lukianoff and Haidt.
It describes the recognised change in psychological behaviour of college students entering higher education from about 2013 and their lack of emotional and psychological resilience, the impact it had on college policy, and the changes in rhetoric DSM 5 (IIRC) where the causation for trauma became linked to offence from words for the first time.
Truly tragic IMO to see younger people lacking coping skills due to not having been raised to be resilient and where reliance on digital communication has created a kind of buffer zone around them, so that real interactions are too overwhelming for them.
Another one of my ‘thanks goodness I am gen x’ things for me.
Neat_Ad4712@reddit
Absolutely. The non-existient coping skills in the generations following X have reached epidemic proportions. How would they ever survive in truly unsafe environments; they have only ever known safety, yet feel do challenged by everything and nothing.
blackpony04@reddit
We live in a victim culture, not one that encourages personal responsibility. Life is hard because we are surrounded by imperfect humans, but learning to overcome obstacles thrown at us teaches resilience. Eventually we gotta stop holding their hands and let them learn failure and how to cope with it on their own.
No-Lock6921@reddit (OP)
I absolutely will check them out, I appreciate your reply.
gotchafaint@reddit
It has validity in some circumstances but it has become abused by those wanting to bend others to their will.
IndependentlyGreen@reddit
From a mental health perspective, it means if you're experiencing a mental health crisis or are in distress, do you have someone you can turn to for help to de-escalate? It describes the degree to which someone might feel suicidal. If there's suicide ideation and/or specific plans, that person is unsafe to be left alone.
The definitions of emotions and feelings are better understood than they were in the 80s. Mental health treatment offers way more options than it did years ago.
I think there were plenty in our generation who needed help as kids, but mental health stigma made it next to impossible to talk about it. It doesn't mean they were crazy or belonged in the nut house, but they experienced some level of trauma that a therapist could've helped them avoid falling off the deep end.
gumby_twain@reddit
Shhh, Gen X doesn’t talk about mental health. We just dissociate deeper into the abyss.
Jk, you’re 100% right. Only in my old age do I realize how traumatized I am. I spent the better part of my last therapy session arguing with my therapist that I can’t get a colonoscopy because I don’t have a ride. She says I do, I just won’t ask them. I don’t see the difference. I unironically argued that for 35 minutes. And I still say I’m right.
Obviously I am mentally ill. I can step outside myself and see it. But I’m still incapable of asking for significant favors. I’d rather die of cancer than ask for a ride. I mean, even if I found out I have cancer, then what? I’m still dead because I have no help or support and sick and dying is no time to make myself a burden.
temerairevm@reddit
Curious if you are male or female? I’m female and while I see your point from a Gen X perspective it’s also a phrase that I immediately intuitively understood. Women have been categorizing people and places and situations as safe vs unsafe since the beginning of time. We also have ways that we (often subtly) communicate it to other women.
It’s not always an outright rejection thing either. Maybe the younger generations are more likely to do that while we’ll wade in and just try to be aware or prepared.
No-Lock6921@reddit (OP)
I am Woman, and i am not referring to a place or a person. More so when there is a disagreement or when someone shares their feelings, the younger person feels unsafe.
Prestigious-Cap-78@reddit
I think it's what we used to experience before our friends, family, and even employer would say "GTFO".
No-Lock6921@reddit (OP)
LMFAO
MidwestAbe@reddit
It's overused as is: I'm depressed or I have been bullied or I have no safe spaces to go.
It's a shame because those things are very real - but people love to diagnose themselves with all sorts of malidies and conditions and present their current situation as a result of external or other forces that absolves them of owning problems or otherwise taking responsibility for things.
It's a shame because it takes the power away from those words when used in a clinical or more meaningful situation. And every generation does it. Boomers to Gen Alpha.
I wish people would stop with saying those types of things (outside of a clinical setting it degrades the meaning of those words) - but addressing it to a particular group of people could be seen as a micro-aggression.
True_Coast1062@reddit
Maybe a generation gap issue. Maybe not thin-skinned. But the confusion makes sense. When I was small, there wasn’t an expression for what I felt. Now that there is, I have no idea what I’m blathering about, but it sounds right? Yet, having said that, why do I feel embarrassed around my Gen X friends? 🤔🤷♀️
No-Lock6921@reddit (OP)
OK this was helpful thank you!
HortenseDaigle@reddit
Feeling unsafe emotionally comes in degrees and of course is subjective. We didn't use this term in our youth but that doesn't we didn't feel it. I learned by age 7 that I couldn't trust my parents with my feelings and fears. But I still felt like being close to family was normal and expected. So I just compartmentalized my feelings and regulated how I shared with my parents. Didn't talk about it with them.
I think that's how our generation handled things when we felt unsafe. we grew up fast and then spent our adulthood trying to be kids again.
BlueButtons07@reddit
This is my take, I'm not sure if it helps answer your question. I was born in 77...most of my life, til I was in my 30's I continued familial and social relationships, even though they were not healthy/safe for my emotional health.
Not that I was taught, but maybe just the circumstances of my life, I never felt like I should "rock the boat" and speak my mind, and I never wanted people to think ill of me. My reasoning for this mindset is a story of its own....however....
It wasn't until I became a mom, and realized these relationships weren't healthy/safe for my daughter to be around, so certain people no longer have access to me and my family. I wished it was a lesson I took to heart earlier in life, but I'm happy my daughter has learned that she doesn't have to stay in relationships or circumstances that make her feel unsafe.
jt2ou@reddit
Unlike some poster who say, “we made this world and gave it to them”, I say some of us have been fucked along with the rest of the world, and some of us didn’t have kids and aren’t responsible for those kids thinking that the world is safe. The world is not safe. Some of these kids are going to have a huge wake up moment at some point in the future.
SuburbaniteMermaid@reddit
Thin-skinned is an insult tossed at bullied people by others who refuse to acknowledge that bullying is a problem.
Just because we dealt with a lot of crap growing up doesn't mean we need to be assholes to hurting people.
My parents used to tell me I just needed to get a thicker skin. Then as an adult my dad was super shocked to hear I was suicidal in junior high. First of all, I was right in from of his face and second, he has made it clear he has no sympathy with my suffering so why the fuck would I tell him? So he could tell me it was my fault again?
I do think some anti-bullying stuff has gone a bit far and we need to rebalance, but we shouldn't get rid of it entirely. Those of us who were emotionally tortured everyday, and sometimes physically attacked, just for going to school aren't going to jump on your tough-guy bandwagon.
anotherNotMeAccount@reddit
Good to see the schooling failed the older folks too.
You need to provide context buddy. Link where you are seeing it used in a way that you don't understand. Provide us with a concrete example and we can explain the the idea behind it.
OldBanjoFrog@reddit
I’m just reacting to a world that has gone insane. My adrenal glands have worked overtime, and I am frazzled.