Weekly Reflections Through the Six Stages Framework Lens
Dr Shungu Hilda M’gadzah | 25 October 2026
When jumping is no longer as much fun
Last week, I watched a little boy jumping on a trampoline. The Spring of Activation was activated in my weekly reflection.
He was enjoying himself, bouncing up and down, moving freely, seemingly absorbed in the activity.
Then he stopped.
“It’s not as much fun when they’re not here,” he said.
He was referring to his siblings.
I found myself thinking about his words long afterwards.
Nothing about the trampoline had changed. He had not lost his ability to jump. His physical capacity remained the same. Yet something important was missing.
His siblings had brought another dimension to the experience.
Their excitement, laughter, movements and shared enjoyment had amplified his own. Together, they created an energy that was different from anything he generated alone.
And when they were no longer there, the experience changed.
It made me wonder how often this happens in our everyday lives.
How much of what activates us comes from within, and how much comes from the people and environments around us?
And perhaps more importantly, what happens when the energy around us propels us in directions we might not otherwise have chosen?
The spring within us
In recent weeks, I have been exploring the relationship between Emotional Awareness, Emotional Awakening and Activated Inclusion through the Six Stages Framework (SSF).
In my previous reflection, Breaking the Inertia: What Moves Us from Awareness to Action?, I explored the possibility that movement begins internally before it becomes visible.
I have increasingly found myself visualising a spring or trampoline.
A spring can remain compressed while holding potential energy. It can be released suddenly, gradually or repeatedly. The resulting movement depends on the forces acting upon it.
What if something similar happens psychologically?
We can recognise injustice, experience empathy, feel anger or discomfort, and still remain outwardly inactive.
The emotional energy may be present, but something prevents its expression.
Sometimes that something is indifference.
Sometimes it is fear.
Sometimes it is uncertainty, exhaustion or a lack of confidence.
And sometimes, perhaps more often than we recognise, it is our need to belong.
Psychologists Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary explored the need to belong as a fundamental human motivation, highlighting how deeply our social attachments can influence emotions and behaviour.
The important question becomes not simply what activates us, but what holds us still, what releases us, and where that movement takes us.
Empathy: the energy that does not always become action
We frequently encourage empathy in anti-racism, equity and inclusion work.
And rightly so.
Empathy can help us recognise another person’s experiences, connect emotionally with their distress and begin questioning perspectives we have previously taken for granted.
But empathy alone does not necessarily create change.
I am reminded of the frustration sometimes expressed by people who repeatedly receive sympathetic responses to discrimination:
“I don’t need your empathy. I need you to do something.”
There is something psychologically important in that statement.
Empathy can remain latent energy.
Someone may genuinely care about an injustice while feeling unable or unwilling to intervene.
They might fear the consequences of speaking out, question whether their intervention would make a difference, or feel constrained by professional or social expectations.
Then something changes.
Another person speaks up. A colleague offers support. A leader makes it clear that challenging discrimination will not lead to punishment.
The individual’s empathy may not have increased.
What has changed is their perception of what is possible.
This connects with Amy Edmondson’s research on psychological safety and interpersonal risk-taking, which highlights the importance of environments in which people feel able to ask questions, acknowledge concerns and challenge existing practices.
Perhaps the spring was already activated through empathy, but its release depended on a change in perceived safety, support or opportunity.
This raises an important distinction between feeling something and feeling able to act upon it.
When belonging holds us still
Recently, I watched the Australian television drama Last Seen, which explores the story of a young girl abducted at the age of three and raised by another couple.
When she is eventually confronted with her biological family, the situation is not emotionally straightforward.
She has grown up loving the people who raised her.
They are her familiar world. They represent years of memories, routines, attachment and belonging.
Her biological parents, despite their love for her and the terrible loss they have experienced, are strangers to her.
One particularly poignant moment occurs when her biological mother visits the home where her daughter has grown up.
Looking around at the paintings, decorations and evidence of the life her daughter has experienced, she recognises something deeply uncomfortable.
Her daughter appears to have been happy there.
Two seemingly contradictory realities exist together.
The child was abducted. A serious wrong had been committed.
Yet she had also experienced relationships that felt loving and familiar.
Discovering the truth could not instantly erase those emotional attachments.
This made me think about something I explored previously in My Dear White Friend — Letter Seven: What Happens When the Racist Is Someone You Love?.
What happens when the person expressing racist views is someone we love?
A parent. A partner. A lifelong friend. A colleague who has supported us through difficult times.
We may know that their behaviour is wrong.
But knowing does not automatically dissolve affection, loyalty or belonging.
In anti-racism work, we sometimes expect people to recognise racism and immediately reject the person or group involved.
Yet the emotional reality may be much more complicated.
The challenge is not always a lack of moral understanding.
Sometimes it is the anticipated loss of relationships through which people have come to understand themselves.
When being loyal feels like being silent
I am reminded of a conversation about a longstanding friendship group whose members sometimes made racist jokes.
The person describing the group recognised that some of the comments were unacceptable.
Yet the friendships also provided enjoyment, companionship and a familiar social routine.
“They can be really good fun,” she explained, despite the language they sometimes used.
I found myself thinking about the choices we expect people to make.
Must she immediately stop socialising with them?
Does recognising racism require rejecting everyone involved?
Or could she remain connected while beginning to challenge the behaviour, establish boundaries or change the group’s expectations?
There are circumstances in which leaving a harmful environment is necessary.
But not every relationship can be reduced to an all-or-nothing choice.
We can love someone without endorsing everything they believe.
We can maintain loyalty to people while challenging their behaviour.
And sometimes a trusted relationship creates an opportunity for change that an outsider may not have.
However, maintaining relationships cannot become an excuse for allowing others to bear the continuing consequences of racism.
That is where responsibility matters.
Research on social influence and group identity reminds us that the groups with which we identify can influence our attitudes, expectations and responses to others. Group membership is not simply a background characteristic; it may influence what feels acceptable, threatening or possible.
Perhaps one of the most important questions we need to ask is:
Can I challenge the behaviour of my people without feeling that I am betraying them?
What if my profession is my people?
This question also takes me into my own profession of educational psychology.
Over the years, I have written and spoken about racism, equity, professional power and the responsibilities of Educational Psychologists within the systems we serve.
I have sometimes been struck by the silence following contributions about anti-racism, even when some colleagues have subsequently expressed support privately.
There may be many explanations for this difference between private and public engagement. I cannot assume what others are thinking.
But it raises an important psychological question.
What happens when someone challenges a profession to which we feel deeply connected?
For many psychologists, professional identity may be closely associated with being caring, ethical, inclusive and committed to children’s welfare.
Yet acknowledging that our profession may also contribute to exclusion or reinforce unequal systems can be uncomfortable.
Might supporting a critical perspective feel, to some, like questioning the profession itself?
Might professional belonging influence what people feel able to acknowledge or challenge publicly?
And what happens when silence becomes an established professional norm?
I think we need to distinguish between two expressions of loyalty.
There is loyalty that protects a profession from criticism.
And there is loyalty that challenges the profession precisely because we care about its values and responsibilities.
Surely our commitment to educational psychology should include the willingness to examine where our practices, assumptions and professional cultures may be causing harm.
Perhaps the most meaningful loyalty is not unquestioning defence, but accountable commitment.
What risks do we assess before speaking?
Imagine entering a meeting where someone makes a discriminatory comment.
You recognise it.
You feel uncomfortable.
You want to respond.
Yet before you speak, a series of questions may pass through your mind, perhaps within seconds.
What will others think?
Is the person speaking more senior than me?
Will I be perceived as difficult?
Will anyone support me?
Am I expected to agree?
Will challenging this threaten my relationships or professional standing?
And perhaps most revealingly:
If I support this person, am I crossing a line away from my own people?
These questions reflect the rapid social and psychological assessments we may make before acting.
They bring us back to belonging and psychological safety.
The same person may feel confident challenging racism among trusted friends yet remain silent in a professional environment where the consequences feel uncertain.
Their beliefs may not have changed between the two settings.
Their perception of risk has.
This is why we must be cautious about interpreting silence.
Silence can reflect indifference, but it can also conceal empathy, fear, conflict, reflection, exhaustion or considerable internal activation.
Stuckness is not always the absence of energy. Sometimes it is energy without a sufficiently safe or accessible pathway for expression.
Weather, climate and collective energy
The trampoline observation also reminded me of something we used to discuss when I first started teaching.
On particularly windy days, it often seemed that children’s behaviour became more excitable or unsettled.
Rainy days could bring their own difficulties, particularly when children had fewer opportunities to play outdoors.
It was almost as though the energy of the environment was being reflected in the classroom.
Of course, we cannot assume that wind directly causes challenging behaviour. Physical conditions, restricted movement, sensory experiences, adult responses and peer interactions may all contribute.
But those memories remind me that we do not respond only to what is happening emotionally within us.
We respond to the physical and social environments we occupy.
And our responses influence those environments in return.
One child’s excitement can affect another. One person’s hostility can encourage others. One colleague’s courage can make speaking out feel possible.
The energy of the group may amplify or inhibit what individuals would otherwise do.
This connects directly with my earlier reflection, Human Environments: The Climates We Create (WR016).
Weather is what I bring today. Climate is what people have come to expect from me over time.
We bring our individual States into environments that already have established climates.
Sometimes those climates encourage us to grow.
Sometimes they encourage us to retreat.
Sometimes they amplify behaviour that takes us towards hostility and exclusion.
And sometimes they create the conditions in which empathy can become meaningful action.
Emotional regulation: sometimes we need to change the environment
This brings me to another important consideration.
We often think of emotional regulation as something that happens entirely within us.
We calm ourselves, manage our thoughts, control our responses or try to remain composed.
But sometimes effective emotional regulation involves changing the environment.
It may mean stepping away from a WhatsApp group that repeatedly reinforces hostility.
It may mean reducing contact with people whose behaviour encourages resentment or exclusion.
It may mean seeking relationships where difficult conversations can occur without humiliation or rejection.
And sometimes it may mean finding a new community in which we can experience belonging without compromising our values.
Psychologist James Gross’s process model of emotion regulation provides a useful connection here, including the ways people may regulate emotions by selecting or modifying the situations they enter, not simply by managing their emotional responses afterwards.
Importantly, emotional regulation does not simply happen after activation.
It can occur before, during and after emotional awareness, awakening and action.
Nor is it automatically positive.
We can regulate ourselves to remain reflective and act constructively. But we can also regulate discomfort by minimising injustice, avoiding challenge or remaining within familiar beliefs.
This is why emotional regulation must be understood in relation to the purpose it serves and the environment in which it occurs.
I have also wondered whether we need the emotional equivalent of ear defenders.
We recognise that excessive noise can overwhelm someone’s sensory system. We provide quieter spaces, adaptations and opportunities for relief.
But what do we provide when someone experiences repeated emotional overload through exclusion, racism or marginalisation?
How do we reduce exposure to those experiences?
And why do we so often expect people to become better at coping with exclusion rather than changing the environments that produce it?
Individual coping matters.
But helping people survive harmful climates is not the same as creating climates in which they can thrive.
The Six Stages Framework: activation can take us in either direction
All of this brings us back to the Six Stages Framework.
The SSF continuum, ranging from –6 to +6, helps us explore patterns of awareness, attitudes, beliefs, behaviour and possibilities for change.
But activation is not always a movement towards inclusion.
The emotional energy generated by belonging may encourage someone to challenge discrimination, support another person or advocate for systemic change.
That same need for belonging may encourage someone to join an exclusionary group, defend racist behaviour or participate in increasingly hostile collective action.
Someone may feel accepted, valued and emotionally secure within a group whose behaviour is harmful to others.
Belonging is therefore not automatically inclusive.
And emotional activation is not automatically evidence of growth.
The critical distinction is between activation itself and the direction in which that activation takes us.
This is where our developing understanding of Stages, States and Environments becomes important.
Our Stage may reflect relatively established patterns in how we understand and respond to difference.
Our State can influence what we feel capable of doing at a particular moment.
Our Environment can amplify, inhibit or redirect our responses.
These processes interact continuously.
Movement may occur before someone has consciously reconsidered their beliefs. It may be temporary, hesitant or contradictory.
Someone may act courageously in one situation and withdraw in another.
A single action does not necessarily represent lasting movement along the SSF continuum.
Coming out of caves and building bridges
I have often used the metaphor of caves to explore how familiar beliefs, assumptions and environments can become places of certainty.
In My Dear White Friend — Letter Six: The States We Believe We Would Never Inhabit, I explored how our environments can reinforce the beliefs and assumptions we may otherwise believe ourselves capable of questioning.
But perhaps we need to recognise that caves are not always experienced as uncomfortable.
Sometimes they are full of people we love.
Sometimes they provide friendship, approval, identity and belonging.
Sometimes the cave feels safer than the world outside it.
This may help explain why simply presenting evidence or challenging someone’s beliefs is not always sufficient to support movement.
Leaving familiar ways of thinking may involve the possible loss of relationships and identity.
I explored a related question in Belonging, Fitting In and the Psychological Cost of Assimilation: what are we sometimes required to give up in order to belong?
And perhaps this is where Building Bridges of Empathy becomes especially important.
A bridge can offer connection beyond the boundaries of an existing group.
It can make alternative relationships possible.
It can help someone discover that questioning the beliefs of their community does not necessarily mean being left entirely alone.
But the responsibility cannot simply be placed on marginalised people to build bridges towards those who harm them.
Those with greater power and influence must also take responsibility for creating safer conditions for change.
Towards Activated Inclusion
I am increasingly thinking about Activated Inclusion not simply as the moment someone feels strongly enough to act, but as the process through which awareness, understanding, empathy and responsibility become translated into meaningful inclusive behaviour.
It may begin with a conversation.
A question.
A boundary.
A challenge to a familiar assumption.
An expression of public support where previously there was silence.
Or a decision to change the environment that continues to reinforce harmful behaviour.
Not every action needs to be dramatic.
Sometimes the most important movement is the first visible sign that someone is willing to act differently.
But we must also examine what makes that movement possible.
What is holding the spring down?
What might release it?
Who is standing alongside us?
What do we fear losing?
And in which direction will the released energy take us?
Perhaps the little boy on the trampoline was reminding me of something fundamental about human behaviour.
We do not move through life independently of those around us.
The people with whom we belong can encourage us to jump higher, remain where we are, or move in directions we might never have considered alone.
Sometimes the difference between remaining still and moving towards inclusion is not a change in what we know or believe, but a change in who stands alongside us and what becomes possible in their presence.
And perhaps one of the responsibilities of inclusive leadership is to become that person who helps make courageous movement possible.
This week’s cave reflection
Consider a group to which you belong: your family, friendship circle, workplace, profession or online community.
Are there beliefs or behaviours within that group that you recognise as harmful but find difficult to challenge?
What keeps you from responding?
Is it uncertainty, fear, loyalty, indifference, exhaustion or the possible loss of belonging?
And what might help you act differently without necessarily abandoning the relationships that matter to you?
Reflective question
When you recognise something is wrong but remain still, what is holding your spring down—and what would need to change for you to move towards inclusion?
Through the Six Stages Framework, we are invited not only to examine where we stand, but also to understand what activates us, what inhibits us, and how the environments we create influence the direction of our movement.
Further reading and research
Six Stages Framework publications
- WR017: Breaking the Inertia — What Moves Us from Awareness to Action?
- WR016: Human Environments — The Climates We Create
- My Dear White Friend — Letter Seven: What Happens When the Racist Is Someone You Love?
- Belonging, Fitting In and the Psychological Cost of Assimilation
Psychological research
- Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117(3), 497–529.
- Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383.
- Gross, J. J. (1998). The emerging field of emotion regulation: An integrative review. Review of General Psychology, 2(3), 271–299.
- Spears, R. (2021). Social influence and group identity. Annual Review of Psychology, 72, 367–390.
This reflection explores developing concepts within the Six Stages Framework, informed by psychological research, professional experience and reflective inquiry. The Spring of Activation is a conceptual metaphor rather than a separately validated psychological model.
© 2026 Dr Shungu Hilda M’gadzah | Six Stages Framework | Inclusion Psychologists Ltd
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The themes explored in this reflection — belonging, emotional awareness, psychological safety, human environments and our responses to difference — are also explored in my new book, Understanding Human Behaviour in a Complex World: Applying the Six Stages Framework to Navigate Difference, Challenge and Change.
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