Feeling safe in precarious work

Abstract

In certain professions, members are routinely exposed to situations where their life or the life of someone else is on the line. Workers in these professions are exposed to traumatic situations over the course of a career and are likely to experience certain feelings such as sadness, emotional pain, and fear in response to these traumatic events. Through two inductive qualitative studies, this dissertation builds theory around how individuals involved in life-and-death work (police officers), process the emotions that are elicited by traumatic events without violating the emotional norms of their profession that encourage suppression. These two studies show how individuals create a trusted group of “safe others” with whom they experience a psychological sense of community. Together, community members imbue certain physical spaces with meaning (“safe places”). When safe others come together in safe places, community holding spaces are created which enable the enactment of safe emotional processing.