Zero, The Recipe for Anxiety, Fear, Shame and Blame

When one’s language and ideology is zero, no one can ever be good enough. When anything is anchored to perfection (https://www.nicabm.com/program/fb-perfectionism-15/) the by-products are: shame, blame, anxiety, fear and harm.

Perfectionism is a mental health disorder and one that Safety encourages. Similarly, Safety encourages other mental health disorders such as obsession (https://safetyrisk.net/safety-as-a-mental-health-disorder-obsession/).

What a strange industry that loves spruiking the word ‘profession‘ when in reality, it encourages harm through its language and Discourse. What an odd industry that wants to enter the field of psychosocial health (hazards) and yet promotes mental health disorders and psychosocial harm.

Recent discussion on NICABM (https://www.nicabm.com/) used a great infographic to demonstrate the problem of perfectionism. Even when someone reaches 110% it’s never good enough.

This is what you get from an industry that never speak about ‘fallibility’ (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/fallibility-risk-living-uncertainty/ ) but loves to be noisy about ‘professionalism’ (https://safetyrisk.net/the-mis-naming-of-safety-as-a-profession/ ). There can be no professionalism (https://safetyrisk.net/how-not-to-be-professional-in-safety/ ) without an ethic that properly manages the nature of human fallibility. No wonder Safety never wants to speak about it.

When one anchors to zero and its perfection, then: learning, risk and resilience are pushed away (https://safetyrisk.net/why-zero-vision-can-never-tackle-mental-health/ ). You don’t need learning, risk or resilience (https://safetyrisk.net/book-launch-everyday-social-resilience-being-in-risk/) when you live in the delusional world of zero (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/zero-the-great-safety-delusion/).

We observed this recently in Cooper’s blog that was full of all the old safety favourites: control, prediction, linear causality, taming complexity and order. All so neat and tidy and yet no connection to reality. No mention of ‘wicked problems’ or the reality of fallible life and radical uncertainty (https://safetyrisk.net/radical-uncertainty/). All beautifully tidy and neatly in line anchored to the mythical swiss-cheese. What a shame reality is messy, life is unpredictable and there is no perfect world.

Fortunately, when you ditch the nonsense swiss-cheese (https://safetyrisk.net/ditch-the-swiss-cheese-if-you-want-to-understand-causality/) and enter reality, where fallible people and wicked problems are real, there are positive practical SPoR methods (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/spor-and-semiotics/ ) that can help you refocus orientation and disposition to helping and caring for people in tackling risk.

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Dr Rob Long

Expert in Social Psychology, Principal & Trainer at Human Dymensions

Latest posts by Dr Rob Long (see all)

• Hey Safety, What’s Your Worldview? - December 12, 2024
• Tier One Miners, Psychosocial Risk and Zero - December 12, 2024
• More Nonsense from the EHS Insight – Zero Injury Cultures??? - December 8, 2024
• Safety is an Art - December 7, 2024
• When Risk Doesn’t Make Sense - December 7, 2024

PhD., MEd., MOH., BEd., BTh., Dip T., Dip Min., Cert IV TAA, MRMIA Rob is the founder of Human Dymensions and has extensive experience, qualifications and expertise across a range of sectors including government, education, corporate, industry and community sectors over 30 years. Rob has worked at all levels of the education and training sector including serving on various post graduate executive, post graduate supervision, post graduate course design and implementation programs.