While none of us are perfectly safe relationally speaking, this list is very helpful for everyone who wishes to become a safer individual in relationships. In addition to developing the ability to recognize these things in ourselves and working to change, this list can also help us to identify the unsafe people in our lives.

Learning to identify and disconnect from the behaviors and traits that promote relational dysfunction is key to living a productive and fulfilling life. If you have someone in your life who qualifies for 5 or more of these traits consistently, it may be a good idea to reconsider how you interact with that relationship. Counseling can help you learn to interact differently with co-dependet or unhealthy individuals. Establishing solid boundaries with unsafe people can be life changing, but difficult.

In extreme cases where the person may have more than half of these traits, it may be time to consider walking away from the relationship for a season until the person has the courage to work on the issues and becomes a safer person. Either way, I generally recommend that my clients read Dr. Cloud’s book Safe People, and sincerely believe every person can benefit from learning to recognize these traits both in ourselves and others. We all want to be people with whom others consistently feel safe.

  1. Unsafe people think they have it all together instead of admitting weakness.
  2. Unsafe people are religious instead of spiritual. (Legalism)
  3. Unsafe people defend themselves when confronted instead of being open to feedback and understanding their own faults and mistakes.
  4. Unsafe people are self-righteous or falsely humble instead of being genuinely humble.
  5. Unsafe people rarely apologize and own their actions, but when they do, the apology is not followed by a change in behavior.
  6. Unsafe people go to great lengths to avoid looking at (much less working on) their problems.
  7. Unsafe people demand trust instead of understanding trust is earned.
  8. Unsafe people do not admit fault and will make statements such as “I am sorry you feel that way” or any other form of an apology that does not contain confession of their fault.
  9. Unsafe people blame others and work hard to assign blame to their situations instead of owning their responsibilities in the matter.
  10. Unsafe people lie and manipulate. They aren’t honest about a myriad of things.
  11. Unsafe people are stagnant and show little to no signs of growth.
  12. Unsafe people avoid closeness instead of connecting.
  13. Unsafe people are only concerned about the “I” rather than the “we.” Even when expressing empathy they will say things like, “I feel so bad about your loss.” As opposed to “You must be in so much pain after your loss.”
  14. Unsafe people resist the freedom associated with healthy boundaries instead of encouraging it. They have an unhealthy relationship with your “no” responses and often violate boundaries.
  15. Unsafe people only flatter and never confront, or only confront and never flatter. The balance between the two is non existent in unsafe people.
  16. Unsafe people condemn us instead of covering our faults with grace or forgiveness. They will say things aloud like, “Oh, you forgot to pick up your son?” or “You didn’t know that?” Often repeated more than once to exploit weakness.
  17. Unsafe people stay in parent/child roles instead of relating as equals. They often want to parent you or revert to childlike states in unhealthy extremes. Everyone has this trait to a certain degree, but unsafe people polarize in this department.
  18. Unsafe people are unstable over time. A season of instability is normal, but when a person seems to have chronic instability, that is a red flag.
  19. Unsafe people influence us negatively. We often leave interactions with them feeling bad, but unsure why. They bring out the worst in us instead of promoting and inspiring our good qualities.
  20. Unsafe people talk about others negatively when they are not around. We can be sure that we aren’t so special that we are excluded from their gossip. When a person assassinates another person’s character, name-calls or shares private information about others, this is a sign of relational manipulation common in unsafe people.

To this list I might add…

  1. Unsafe people tend to disagree with much of what is said. I call them “habitual contrarians” because they are habitually contrary. We all enjoy being around agreeable people. Its not to say that we all have to agree 100% of the time, but people who voice disagreement habitually make it difficult to feel safe and difficult to have a conversation of substance.
  2. Unsafe people have no idea how to validate feelings, experiences and pain that they don’t feel themselves. For example, “You are so emotional.” “Its not that big of a deal, get over it.” or “Stop crying.”
  3. Unsafe people have poor communication habits. This can be a wide range of things, but generally speaking, unsafe people communicate poorly.
  4. Unsafe people make lots of assumptions that typically lead to them being offended. It is very difficult to defend ourselves against assumptions that unsafe people dream up out of thin air. It is a good idea not to try.

To reiterate, this list is hopefully to help us become safer people. As we read it, we can all identify areas we can work on to better ourselves, but we should temper this with grace and compassion for the things that shaped us. No one is perfect, but everyone can work on imperfections.