This paper sets out to achieve two objectives. First, in thinking about social defences against anxiety we have perhaps paid insufficient attention to the nature of social as opposed to individual anxieties, and here sociological concepts may prove a valuable addition to our socio-analytic perspective. Second, while the psychoanalytic concepts of projection and even enactment have been deployed in the psychoanalytic study of groups the concept of somatisation/embodiment has had little application. Using an example of the evolution of child protection policy and practice in the UK I endeavour to illustrate how sometimes social anxieties, lacking containment, become embodied in the rules, systems, and procedures of public organisations where they form a kind of “thick skin”.