Confession of an Executive Psychologist: what I need to allow myself before I name an emotion.

My client had been carrying something for almost a year. We talked about it in the very first session, and since then it had accompanied us — hidden beneath other stories. Once in a while it would surface, only to be pressed back down just as quickly. There was a lot of discomfort and shame involved. I could tell.

During our last session together, I invited him to finally bring it. He did.

Every time he touched the subject, the discomfort was visible. Not dramatic. Just — present. A tightening. A looking away. The kind of unease that fills a room without anyone saying anything.

We went through the whole story. I asked questions — not just about the facts, but about what happened inside him. How he perceived the others. What shifted in the relationships. He asked me questions too. How I read the situation. How I would have handled it. Where I saw leadership responsibility that was not taken. I answered. The real work.

And I said nothing about what I was seeing.

Not because I didn't see it. I saw it from the beginning. I could have said it right away: this is really tough on you. But I didn't.

I waited because I wasn't ready yet. I needed more of his story — not to understand the situation, but to be able to hold what was underneath it. There's a difference between observing someone's discomfort and actually receiving it. To receive it, your own system has to be quiet first. Not detached. Quiet.

That took time. And information. And something that's harder to name: a moment where I could feel that I was settled enough to stay with whatever he was carrying — without flinching, without fixing, without looking away.

I needed to be sure I wasn't contaminated by his discomfort — but able to contain it. For me, that only works when I have enough information and enough time to slow down together. Both of us, in the same room, at the same pace.

Only then could I receive it. Only then could I name it.

Stephen Porges spent decades studying what happens between two nervous systems in a room. His research shows that a regulated nervous system in one person creates the physiological conditions for regulation in another. Not as metaphor. As biology.

What I've learned — and keep relearning — is that this works in reverse too. If I'm not regulated, I can't offer it. I can name the emotion, technically. But it won't land the same way. Because naming without presence is just observation. And people feel the difference.

As he was leaving, he turned around.

Thank you for naming that. It all feels a little less heavy now.

As a leader, he needed a way forward — a clearer head for if it ever happens again. He needed my read on the situation. But as a human, he needed something simpler: someone who had collected enough of his story — and enough of themselves — to say out loud what was happening in his body. And mean it.

Most leaders I work with have never had that. Someone in the room who is settled enough to actually receive them. Who waits. And then says: I see what this is costing you.

That's not a skill you learn in a course.

It's a capacity you build — in yourself, first.

Confession of a Executive Psychologist: all emotions allowed, just not at work. Or are they?

There's a quote I love from Dr. Becky Kennedy (clinical child psychologist and author of Good Enough Now),

All emotions are allowed. Not all behaviours are allowed.

I know it. I use it. My daughter is four. When she's furious — and she gets furious — I tell her: you're allowed to be angry. You're not allowed to hit me. When she falls apart — and she does — I tell her: you're allowed to be sad. But crying so loud the neighbours can hear you isn't necessary.

She's four. She's learning what to do with what she feels.

And then I go to work. And I sit across from leaders — 45, 52, 58 years old — who never got that message.

Emotions are having a moment in my field. Psychological safety. Emotional intelligence. Vulnerability as leadership. The language is finally there.

And still — every week — I watch leaders struggle. Not because they don't believe in it. Because no one ever taught them what to actually do when an emotion shows up.

Someone cries in a meeting. The room goes stiff. Someone names their fear. It gets optimism-ed away. Someone is visibly angry. It gets labeled "difficult."

No one said emotions weren't welcome. But everyone felt which ones were.

So I want to ask the honest question. Are all emotions actually allowed at work?

Not as expression. I don't think so. Context matters. Power matters. Stakes are real.

But all emotions need to be allowed in you. As information. As signal. As data about what's actually happening — in the room, in the relationship, in yourself.

Because the emotions you don't let in don't disappear. They escape. In you. And in your people.

The sudden outburst in the meeting that surprises everyone — including the person having it. The colleagues who disappear to the hallway to say what they couldn't say to you. The tension that lives in a team for months with no name.

That's not dysfunction. That's emotions that had nowhere to go.

You are in the front row. You see it before anyone else does. But only if you've learned to recognize it — in yourself first.

The executive who hasn't allowed his own fear doesn't see it in his team. He talks it away. The one who has never sat with her own grief tells others to move on. The one whose anger is always managed before it's even felt labels yours as a problem.

You can't hold in others what you've never allowed in yourself.

All emotions allowed at work? Maybe not as expression. But as information — in you — always.

Your team already knows not to hit. But if they can't bring it to you — they'll take it to the hallway. That's not emotional safety. That's suppression with better manners.

I tell my four-year-old: you're allowed to be angry. You're not allowed to hit me.

She's four. She's learning.

I wonder if anyone ever told you the same.

Confession of an Executive Psychologist: We've been using psychological safety wrong.

For 15 years, every team mandate I received said some version of the same thing.

Help us perform better.

Better output. Faster decisions. Less friction. Higher scores on the trust index.

I was good at that.

And then, slowly — over years, not overnight — I started asking a different question.

What if performance isn't the point?

A team focused only on its output will optimize everything in service of that output. Including its honesty. Including its conflict. Including its humanity.

What if the real question is: can we be better?

Better at saying the true thing when it costs something. Better at sitting in discomfort without reaching for a framework. Better at being human with each other — not as a strategy for collaboration, but as the thing itself.

And if psychological safety is a condition for humanness — not a tool for output — then you can't build it with a survey. You build it by going first. Which means starting with the leader.

So now I work differently.

I start with the leader. Not the team.

I look for what makes them a difficult collaborator. The pattern they can't see. The moment they stop being present and start managing the room. The place where their professional competence and their human development have completely lost touch with each other.

We work there first.

Because I've stopped believing a team can become more human than its leader is willing to be.

Only then — when something has shifted there — do I go into the team. Not to measure trust. Not to score psychological safety. To work on what's actually in the room.

I no longer work for politeness. I work for clarity. I don't bandage conflict. I go through it.

It's a harder sell than a team effectiveness program.

But it's the only thing that actually works.

And here's what I've come to believe: this isn't a detour from effectiveness. It's the only road to work that actually matters. Teams that learn to be human with each other don't just perform better. They do work worth doing. Work that carries meaning — for the people in the room, for the organizations they're part of, for something larger than the next quarterly target.

That's what I'm working toward now. In every room I enter.

At least in the teams I work with most — teams with a leader at the front of the room.

Recently, I've been working with something different, in a privat setting. A leaderless team. And I'll be honest: it's another story altogether. There's no one to start with. No one to go first on behalf of everyone else. The first step there isn't building trust or mapping conflict — it's something more fundamental. Unlearning the assumption that someone is supposed to be in charge. That's a different kind of work. I'm still figuring it out.

What are you optimizing your team for — that might be costing it something more important?