The Pressure to Speak, the Right to Wait

We live in a time of strong opinions and urgent calls to action. The pace is fast. The stakes feel high. And the invitation to respond publicly, quickly, and with certainty is relentless. But in this climate, where does our relationship with not knowing go?

In a culture that prizes certainty, our professional and group lives are shaped by the same pressures: the pull to know, to define, to align. These forces can eclipse our capacity for genuine dialogue.

In group life, especially in clinical and organisational settings, the capacity to speak from difference is not a luxury. Within the NHS, multi-disciplinary teams (MDTs) are intentionally staffed to bring together differing professional worldviews: psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses, social workers, occupational therapists, and more. Difference isn’t incidental; it’s foundational.

Yet the pressure to perform clarity can eclipse the slow, necessary work of unfolding. Listening matters, but so does protecting the space where speech can emerge.

I’ve been thinking again about The Little Mermaid. Not the Disney version, but Andersen’s original tale. It is a story of longing, sacrifice, and the painful cost of crossing worlds. The young mermaid gives up her voice (her song is her sovereignty) for a fantasy of belonging. The cost is high. She walks in constant pain, as if on a knife’s edge, silently hoping that proximity will be enough. It isn’t. In the original, not only does the prince marry someone else, but she is also left to merge with the sea, becoming the foam on the waves.

Her story echoes in our teams. In supervision, in reflective practice, in the quiet corners of organisational life. How many forfeit voice for access? How many walk on knife edges, hoping others will read between the lines? Reflections become veiled communications. Silence becomes protest. Tone is policed to balance the risk of disturbance with the fear of being caught out as not agreeing.

Andersen’s mermaid is not alone. Snow White had a related problem: she can never quite stop talking. She sings to anyone or anything that will listen. Her insistent naivete, her refusal to see risk, leaves her unconscious in a glass box. Each heroine, in her own way, decides too soon, speaks too freely, or not at all. Their stories are cautionary tales about care without discernment—and the psychic cost of silence.

But there are other endings.

Sometimes the mermaid gets the prince. Sometimes Snow White wakes with a kiss. And sometimes, in older versions, she wakes not from love but from accident. In one Italian variant, The Young Slave, the heroine is revived not by affection but because a servant jostles the glass coffin and dislodges the poisoned comb. No romance. No rescue. Just a moment of chance and a return to life.

These variations matter. They remind us that transformation doesn’t always follow the expected arc. That revival can come through accident, protest, rage, or rest. That growing up is not a single path, but a series of revisions.

We are entitled to speak or not speak. Others are entitled to their reactions. We don’t get to control both. And in group life, this truth is often where the real work begins.

Not every transformation comes from changing other people’s minds. Some arrive slowly—through trial and error, through the quiet work of growing up. Learning about ourselves and the world takes time. Some lessons take longer than others.

This too is sovereignty.

So what does this mean for team dynamics?

It means noticing the little mermaid in ourselves: the parts that have already given up so much to be here. It means making space for the parts that need to reclaim autonomy and say no. It means asking whether we, too, have sung into poisoned spaces, hoping to be heard, or handed out apples in fear of what unfiltered difference might disrupt.

But more than that, it means protecting the spaces where speech can happen. Not just inviting voice, but safeguarding the conditions that make voice possible. In clinical culture, we speak often of reflective practice and supervision—but how well are these spaces protected?

Do they allow for protest, conflict, and the messy work of growth? Or do they reward silence, naivety, and stuckness?

There is a tension here. Between speaking and not speaking. Between the call to act and the need to feel. Between the pressure to be clear and the slow, often painful work of becoming.

Activism, for all its necessity, rarely leaves space for unfolding. It demands clarity, urgency, visibility. But sovereignty doesn’t always arrive in slogans or declarations. Sometimes it comes through silence, through retreat, through the metabolising of experience before it becomes speech.

And this process looks different for everyone.

For some, sovereignty is found in protest. For others, in refusal. For many, it’s found in the quiet right to change our minds. To grow up. To grow out of old allegiances. To speak differently than we did before.

There’s a fantasy that people know what they think before they speak. But often, we only discover what we feel by hearing ourselves say it. Speech is not just expression - it’s exploration. And we can disagree with ourselves regularly. This isn’t inconsistency. It’s growing up.

In both fairy tales and professional life, we encounter the same dilemma: the tension between belonging and truth, between saying what can be tolerated and saying what is true.

We need spaces that hold not just difference, but development. Spaces that don’t punish ambiguity or demand premature clarity. Spaces where we can speak, not speak, and still be held in relationship.

Fairy tales remind us that transformation is rarely tidy. The little mermaid walks on knives. Snow White sleeps. And sometimes, she wakes not from love, but from accident—a jostled coffin, a dislodged comb. No romance. No rescue. Just a moment of chance and a return to life.

These are the questions we continue to explore together in reflective community. Should you wish for more support and space to think through the dilemmas of leadership in complex institutional life, do consider joining the Quarterly Group for Psychologists in Leadership on Tuesday, 6th January 2026. It offers a reflective forum for those navigating the symbolic, ethical, and relational dimensions of professional practice. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1753346970989?aff=oddtdtcreator 

Or attend an in-person event: The Death Mother and the Singing Bone A reflective practice day for mental health professionals exploring organisational neglect, buried truths & imaginative repair. 19 May 2026 | Birmingham https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-death-mother-and-the-singing-bone-a-day-of-reflective-group-practice-tickets-969341274847?utm-campaign=social&utm-content=attendeeshare&utm-medium=discovery&utm-term=listing&utm-source=cp&aff=ebdsshcopyurl