"Emotional Safety"

Truth is the primary unit of analysis for the Spirit of Sense of Community. This raises two issues. First, membership opens doors. The status of member brings with it the right to be in the group. Second, can the community provide the acceptance, empathy, and support for members to speak their truth and be themselves? “The Truth” in sense of community is analogous to materials in the construction of a building or to an electric spark in the flow of electricity. Without Truth there can be no sense of community. What we mean by “The Truth” is a person’s statement about his or her own internal experience. No one knows better than the speaker how the speaker feels. He or she is the final authority about his or her emotions. If community members are willing to look inside themselves and honestly represent their feelings to others, then they are speaking “The Truth” as they know it. If they say, “this is my opinion,” or “I feel sad,” or “my left ankle hurts,”—who can argue with them? That must be “The Truth.”

The first task of a community is to make it safe to tell “The Truth.” That requires community empathy, understanding, and caring. There are three steps to creating such a sense of intimacy. The first step require the member’s courage to tell his or her intensely personal truth. The second and third steps involve the community. Can the community accept this truth safely? Can members of the community respond with courage equal to the self disclosing member’s courage and develop a circle of truth tellers and empathy givers?

Intimacy occurs along a range. At one end, is the most personal, which is telling a person or a group how one feels at the time about that person or group. This takes personal emotional courage and also incurs psychological risk. At the other end of the continuum, intimacy entails speaking about what one thinks about people, events, or things from another place and time.

McMillan and Chavis (1985) cited several studies to demonstrate that members are attracted to a community in direct relation to their emotional sense of it. Recent studies continue to confirm this point. Generally, these studies asked participants, “Do you disclose more when you feel safe?” The answer has overwhelmingly been “yes.”