Emotional
Safety Co
I'VE BEEN PAYING ATTENTION TO ROOMS FOR MOST OF MY LIFE.
Long before I had language for any of this, I learned to notice small changes.
A shift in someone's tone.
A pause that lasted a little longer.
What was said.
What wasn't.
Who seemed free to speak.
Who started adjusting.
I grew up in a highly controlling religious environment and left when I was fourteen.
I learned early to pay attention to the room...
and to adjust myself around what I noticed.
I didn't think of that as observation then.
It was simply something I knew how to do.
Years later, I would find myself noticing many of the same things in very different rooms.
And eventually, I began asking why the same person could seem so different depending on the room they were in.
THEN I SPENT DECADES WATCHING PEOPLE IN THE MOMENTS THAT MATTERED MOST.
I went on to become a therapist and spent nearly two decades working in psychiatric emergency services before continuing my work in private practice.
The circumstances were different.
But I kept noticing contradictions.
Someone could be thoughtful and clear in one conversation...
and struggle to reach that same clarity in another.
A person who knew exactly what they wanted to say could lose their words once the conversation began.
Someone could show remarkable perspective in one moment...
and have difficulty reaching it in the next.
I became less interested in explaining those differences quickly.
I wanted to understand how both could be true.
How could the same person have access to something in one moment... and struggle to reach it in another?
That question stayed with me.
EVENTUALLY, THE QUESTION CHANGED.
For a long time, I focused on what people did.
Why didn't they say what they meant?
Why could they handle something in one moment and struggle with it in another?
But the more I observed, the harder it became to treat a single moment as the whole story.
I kept coming back to the same contradiction.
If the clarity was available somewhere else, had it really disappeared?
If the words came back after the conversation, were they ever gone?
Maybe the capacity wasn't the part that changed.
At first, I called what I was seeing Brain Hijack.
That language fit part of the pattern.
But over time, I realized it didn't explain enough.
People weren't only losing access to calm.
They could lose access to curiosity.
Perspective.
Patience.
Good judgment.
Their voice.
So the question changed again.
Not simply:
“What took over?”
But:
“What happened to their access?”
That was the beginning of Access.
THE WORK KEPT EVOLVING.
WHERE THE WORK IS NOW.
Today, I'm a therapist, speaker, and author whose work explores Access across leadership, relationships, and the everyday conversations that shape our lives.
I write about what I observe.
I speak about it.
And I keep paying attention.
My forthcoming book, Becoming Available to Yourself, explores the distinction at the center of this work:
We can have a capacity without having equal access to it in every moment.
It's a distinction that continues to shape how I understand people, relationships, leadership—and the moments when we don't respond the way we expected ourselves to.