Day 1 Session Notes–Healing Toxic Stress

— To say that we as humans, and humans in design field have been through a lot would be an understatement, so let’s talk about it together

— Often workplaces tell us trauma and stress need to be healed individually

  • Today want to talk about ways to heal together
  • Resilience doesn’t come from tolerating and enduring suffering

 

 

 

— So let’s start with a question. What is our job?

  • As designops managers and people professionals

— Our purpose is that our job is for creating the conditions for people to create great work

  • But we idealize the intellect too much

— We forget people are mammals and biological organisms

— Since we are not machines, but organisms, we need certain things and hard-wired into us

— As biological beings we are rather soft and fragile, and bodies get sick, broken and burned out, when our needs are not met

  • You do not have to be good, but need to let body love what it loves

— Whole world witnessed this with Simone Biles suffering burnout at Tokyo Olympics, and stepping away for self-care

— We are biologically wired for one job, and what is that?

— That job is for survival, full-stop, and not deadline or next promotion

  • Biological body are prioritized to choose survival over everything else

— Stress is hard-wired to ensure bodies survival

— But what is stress anyway?

— Physiological response released into body and hearts beat faster and palms sweat to get body ready for perceived threat

  • Since evolutionary stress response is millions of years old, you don’t know manager sending calendar invite with subject line of ‘Let’s Talk’ compared to a lion eating you

— Stress is also emotional response, and linked with fear

  • If we feel stress on daily basis we feel fear on daily basis as well

— How much stress do you feel throughout the day? And how much fear throughout the day?

— Thread put in Slack channel to gauge your stress throughout the day

  • Is it low, medium, high, toxic?

— I re-assessed my life to deal with stress in my own job

  • Folks feel full range of stress levels in chat

— Stress is nervous system going into mobilization, to get into action

— Fear focuses us on next immediate move to survive,

  • Akin to tunnel vision

— Need some stress and fear to get into focused action, but there is an ideal amount of stress for optimal performance

  • Not enough stress, we will feel bored and lethargic
  • Too much stress, it’s hard to turn brain off

— Then there is toxic stress: high-level stress outside your ability to tolerate on a long-term basis

  • Too much, too fast, too long, without healing

— Let’s talk about toxicity

  • A thing that threatens very survival and animal bodies are meant to feel bursts of high-level threat, and then shake it off

— Biologically not wired to sustain high-levels of stress for long time

— Most workplace conditions create toxic stress and we expected to increase performance without end

  • This expectation from workplaces are biologically impossible

— We’ve gotten so acclimated to toxic stress levels, that it feels like a baseline

 

 

— Workplace conditions that trigger stress are called stressors

  • Will walk through examples

— Most common stressors are like an abusive relationship

  • Experiencing contempt, disrespect, low-trust gossip and blame are all examples

— Not just a one-off event, but normal way of interacting with each other day in and out

— Use Slack thread so we can feel we are not alone in experiencing stressors

— I’ve experienced all of these

— There are also operational stressor,

  • Mass layoffs as toxic stressor — as we wonder if we are next, along with grief and coworkers in relationship
  • For next job, see rounds of layoffs a company has had

— Often asked about doing more with less, and increase speed without end

— Favorite is constant states of ambiguity and what is going on

— In 2024, 58% employees reported suffering in life, and work was a big part of it

— 79% of employees experienced stress and worry during a lot of the day

  • Statistic of thinking toxic stress over a long period of time turns into trauma and turn into PTSD

— 19% of workers experiencing trauma will develop PTSD, and workplaces are main sources for PTSD

  • Normalize that most of us have been traumatized by conditions in workplaces with mass layoffs

— While we might believe we have acclimated to stress, the body keeps the score

  • Recommend Bassel Van Der Kolk’s book on this topic

— Here’s how trauma shows up in body:

  • Sleep disturbances and easiest to notices and unable to get asleep or fall asleep
  • Irritability and outbursts of anger
  • Angry conversations with your self
  • Anxiety and panic attacks— lot of anxiety and panic attacks

— Sudden onset of emotion and extreme emotional response to situation

  • Triggered if someone says something in certain tone of voice to trigger emotions

— Depersonalization: Feeling detached or separate from one’s own body and freeze response

— So what is the impact on us individually, teams and organizations?

— Creates physical and mental health problems, even if we are used to high-stress

  • Hormones, provide wear and tear at body

— Bursts of stress and then shaking it off, and will then have fatigue and digestive issues and stress-related

— Toxic stress also makes us dumb, and prevents us from doing great work and stress and operating IQ drops by half

  • Inability to creative and focus on survival mode

— Toxic stress also creates unhealthy relationship dynamics, active undermining of work, erodes relationships and ability to collaborate effectively

— Finally leads to healthcare costs, incident reports, and lawsuits

— Can create environments to heal from toxic stress and trauma and environments biologically as things much more resilient

— Toxic stress is experiencing too much too fast, too long, without healing

— Healing here means changing conditions and stressors so animal body can heal

  • Workplace trauma can be healed in workplace, so harm can stop
  • Resilience doesn’t come from enduring and tolerating suffering, but healing and changing conditions that cause it

— Culture emerges from…

  • Changing how we operate and relate to each other, as that is only thing in our control
  • Change culture of your team, pod, or squad first

— To create conditions for healing, focus on three things to feel safe with soft animal bodies

  • Context
  • Choice
  • Connection

— This corresponds to biological needs

— Let’s talk about concrete conditions to change in team pod or squad

— Four Things you can do immediately

  • Context: To talk about what, why, how of situation and making sure people are experiencing world in way that meets their expectations
    • Ask why questions around decisions, and why certain ones were made
      • Design teams I have worked with couldn’t explain logic behind certain decisions causing stress, so we worked to grasp the ‘why’
    • If you are a hiring managers, share interview questions ahead of time to create a healthier interview process to take surprise out of conversation

— Other suggestions include

  • Choice: Need for choice and control and making sure people don’t feel trapped, stuck, or voiceless
    • Ask questions like options available to me and alternatives available to me
  • Conducting a meeting audit to make sure meetings are still needed and have clear agenda and are well run, and people needed to be there
    • Gave more choice on meetings to attend
    • The more choice they have the less stress
  • Satisfying a need for connection, by feeling uniquely valued, and follow

— Follow tips on messaging in Slack

  • What do you admire about coworkers and people you work with and environment of healing?
  • Rituals to celebrate people’s unique’s thoughts and contributions— admiration about your colleagues
    • Admiration as antidote for contempt

— Final thoughts, you don’t have to walk 100 miles through the desert to get relief

  • You deserve a safe working environment and support through ups and downs of life
  • Deserve every moment that your opinions and thoughts matter, and that you matter as a person

— If you are still stressed and suffering, and deserve to love soft, animal body and quit that job

— Thank you, you can connect with me LinkedIN

Q&A

  1. Value of balancing a job for income versus healing response?
    1. Having income from job will reduce stress levels, and think of stress as temporary and means to take care of self and family
  2. In what ways can it make sense to take job temporarily?
    1. Yes, but check-in with yourself as to what stress level is
    2. What would be most supportive thing for me?
      1. Less stress about income from part-time job, versus credit card
      2. What will be most supportive thing?
  3. How to advise people from applying to company, if a layoff event might happen again to time?
    1. View position as extremely temporary, and proceed with caution
    2. Go in with eyes open— and be real as possible as to what is going on
      1. You can’t exist in what you wish, but what is
      2. You can project hopes, but address underlying reality
  4. Noteworthy examples of sounding alarm in workplaces with toxic stress?
    1. Talking to other folks about how you are feeling and speak to lived experience, and let people know you can’t get to sleep
    2. Lot of emotional reactions to day-ot-day things and share experiences with each other, and don’t go to executives with claims of toxic organization
      1. Find folk internally and make a shift in squad and make it better for folks