“This is a safe space” is a phrase heard far and wide across therapy offices, yoga studios, classrooms, workplaces, relationships – pretty much anywhere there are humans. It’s a trendy phrase. Often it is uttered to encourage people to open up in one way or another to a therapist, to an experience or to a class of their peers. People say this with the intention of signaling that they are capable of holding whatever the sharing person needs to express. While seemingly positive and reassuring, what fails to be considered in saying this is the actual experience of the person being asked to share. Only that person can determine if a space is safe. A space isn’t safe just because a someone else says so.

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