The Safe People Principle
Fear-driven decisions break you apart; find the few people you can be honest with.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 85%
Bayer's most personal framework is also his simplest: fear drives decision making, and when fear drives decision making you start doing things that are inauthentic — and you can only do the splits for so long before you start breaking apart. The remedy isn't a community, it's safe people: a couple of individuals you can be yourself with and be honest with, operating from a place of compassion and understanding. He explicitly deflates the community myth — despite all the branding around the gay community as a giant open family, he's never felt part of it, and he thinks community really means a couple of people in our lives, not a hundred. And if you trust nobody, the licensed route works by construction: a therapist can't share what you say without losing their licence.
Origin
Bayer grew up gay in a Catholic high school where he was literally graded on a course about turning a gay person straight and going to hell. He was six-foot-five, captain of the basketball team, took the homecoming queen to the dance, and kept a fake girlfriend who accompanied him to dances. The combination of performing someone he wasn't, trying to please his parents, and drugs and drinking ended in what he calls a car crash — mentally. His first honest moment came arguing with his mother about Long Beach Pride, and he's spent 19 years in the mental health industry since.
Core principles
- 01Fear drives decision making, and fear-driven decisions are inauthentic.
- 02You can only do the splits for so long before you start breaking apart.
- 03The people with the biggest challenge are the ones afraid to tell anyone what they're struggling with.
- 04Community doesn't mean 100 people — it really means a couple of people in our lives.
- 05The branded 'big open family' version of a community is often a facade; what you actually have is what's in your life right now.
- 06If you trust no one, a licensed therapist is safe by construction — they'd lose their licence otherwise.
How to run it
- 1
Name the split
Identify where fear is driving your decisions and forcing you to be inauthentic — hiding who you're dating, who you're attracted to, what you believe, what you're struggling with.
Pro tip This isn't only about sexuality — it applies to anyone in a community where they can't marry outside their culture or religion, or can't be fully honest.
Watch out You can only do the splits for so long before you start breaking apart. The performance has a time limit whether you acknowledge it or not.
- 2
Drop the community requirement
Stop trying to belong to a hundred people. Community really means a couple of people in our lives — the branded version of an open, welcoming community is often a facade.
Pro tip Sometimes we think we're not a part of, when really what we have is already in our life right now.
- 3
Find people operating from compassion
Look specifically for people operating from a place of compassion and understanding — those are the safe people you can be yourself with and be honest with.
- 4
Use the licensed fallback if you trust no one
Go to therapy or get a coach. A therapist is bound by a licence — they can't tell anyone or they lose it. That's a genuinely safe place when you feel like you can't trust anyone.
- 5
Expect the other side to need time
When you tell people what's authentic to you, they may have trouble with it and you end up dealing with their struggles around who you are. That's part of the process, not a verdict on the decision.
In the wild
Driving home from his first ever Pride in Long Beach, with the Goo Goo Dolls' 'Iris' playing — 'I don't want the world to know me' — Bayer arrived to his mother demanding where he'd been. He tried the usual lie about a concert; she pointed out the only thing happening in Long Beach that Sunday was gay pride. He told the truth. She said 'no you're not' three times.
→ It took her a few weeks for the coping to pass, but Bayer calls it the beginning of feeling like he could be honest in his life — the end of years of lying about where he was going.
Bayer says that even today he has never felt part of the gay community despite all the branding around it being a giant open family, and that he has plenty of gay friends but senses a facade in the promised sense of belonging.
→ He reframed belonging downward to what actually exists: a couple of people in your life, not a hundred — which is a target you can actually hit.
Common mistakes
Waiting for a community to accept you
Measuring belonging against a branded hundred-person community sets a bar the community itself may not meet. Community really means a couple of people in our lives.
Keeping the struggle entirely internal
Challenges left to our own thoughts and feelings, never shared, are exactly what keeps people stuck. The people with the biggest challenge are the ones afraid to tell anyone.
Assuming no-trust means no-options
If you can't trust anyone in your life, that doesn't mean there's no safe place — a therapist is bound by a licence they'd lose for disclosing, which makes the safety structural rather than a matter of faith.
Is it for you?
Best for
Anyone hiding a core part of themselves from the people around them: sexuality, who they're dating, their struggles, their choices.
Not ideal for
Situations where disclosure carries genuine physical danger and the priority is safety planning rather than honesty.
From the transcript
“it's this fear like fear drives decision making and when fear drives decision making we start doing things that are inauthentic and then after a…”
“the advice i would give is always to find safe people that you can be yourself with and be honest and you know people that…”
“with therapy they're bound by a license they're not going to share it with anyone they can't tell anyone otherwise they could lose their license…”
“at the end of the day it's like community really means a couple of people in our lives yeah or at least that's how i…”
“the people who have the biggest challenge are people who just won't are afraid to tell other people about their challenges and what they're struggling…”
From the episode
Coach Mike Bayer: One Decision To a Better Life
Coach Mike Bayer