There are times when we sense something’s wrong, but we can’t quite put our finger on it.  It may be an uneasy feeling in a relationship or in a certain environment.  It feels like something’s amiss even though it’s not being acknowledged.  Certain people are more sensitive to picking up these vibes than others and some emotions, themselves, can be indicators that something’s not okay.  These individuals or experiences can be thought of  as an “emotional canary in the coalmine.”  And just as they were for miners in the 20th century, they can be lifesavers if we use them to detect what can be harmful if not dealt with.

Because carbon monoxide is clear and odorless, miners needed a method of detecting a leak before it killed them. In 1896, after an explosion in Wales at the Tylorstown Colliery, John Scott Haldane proposed using “sentinel species,” animals more sensitive to poisonous gases than humans, down in the mines to warn of potential harm.   How did canaries get the honor?  Because not only are they small and portable, but they breathe a lot!  In order to fly at significant altitude, canaries take oxygen in their inhale and their exhale. As a result of their breathing anatomy, toxins found in the air circulate in their bodies much sooner than other small beings.  A canary falling off of its perch gave the miners the most amount of time to evacuate long before it would be harmful to the men.

Because of this predictive success, a canary in the coalmine became a metaphor referring to anything or anyone who is first affected by a change, especially if something is potentially toxic.  An “emotional canary in the coalmine” refers to a person within a family, relationship or organization who is highly sensitive to emotional toxicity, acting as a warning sign of impending dysfunction, stress, or danger, before others notice it.  The person’s distress (anxiety, outburst, withdrawal) signals that the environment (relationship, group culture) is unsafe.

Emotional canaries are often the “sensitive one” – a child in a family or a co-worker in a work setting – that feels and reacts to underlying tension, dishonesty or instability before others do.  Often this individual is labeled as “the problem,” as others blame them for being “too dramatic” or “too reactive,” when in fact they are responding to underlying tensions, hypocrisy, or potential danger around them.  People tend to develop this heightened awareness as a survival mechanism in a chaotic family environment. They are the truth tellers in a family or community who play an important role in bringing to the surface buried situations that need to be addressed.

Certain emotions can also be canaries within us.  Anger, in particular, is often a signal that a boundary has been crossed or that a situation is unfair.  Even when we can’t logically explain it, we feel irritated and may need to step back to trace the source of the perceived injustice.  Anxiety is another common emotional canary.  It lets us know when something is unpredictable or unsafe.  For example,  a work environment can be stressful in ways that cause burn out or high turnover.  The employees feel anxious from managing a toxic unsupportive culture.  

An important thing to remember is that the canary isn’t the cause of the problem, they are the first to be affected by it. When we can learn to trust their signals, canaries offer an enormous benefit to maintaining healthy relationships. As canaries, if we can regulate our emotional reactions and use them to give us information, rather than getting lost in the drama or upset, we can use our sensitivity for protection.  Instead of trying to toughen up the canary, the focus can be shifted to fixing the leak in the mine.  We need to resist the urge to scapegoat our canaries and, instead, nurture their abilities.  If we take care of them, they can be lifesavers.

Evidently, once the coal miners learned to trust their feathered gas detectors, they became quite attached to them.  I found an article from a miner museum describing special cages built to allow the trapped canary to breathe outside air through a vent.  Once the canary fell, presumably due to poisoning, a miner would seal the cage and open a valve to let oxygen flow from a little tank on top of the cage while the workers evacuated.  Once electronic gas detectors became available, many of the miners continued to use the canaries until they were barred from doing so by regulations.  They preferred the sweet songs of the canary to the electronic chirps of the digital readers.  And I would imagine while deep in a mineshaft, it felt safer not to have to worry about a canary’s battery running low!