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My name's Carly and this is Toxic Workplace Antidote Edition.
In these antidote episodes, I talk to professionals and thought leaders who are paving the way
for healthier work environments and personal health.
In this episode, I have a returning guest, Alicia Wolf of Goldfinch Wellness.
Alicia was on my first antidote episode where she talked about escaping a toxic workplace.
It continues to be a top episode on this podcast and I highly recommend you listen to it if
you haven't already.
The interview I'm sharing today is incredibly helpful if you feel like you're in a constant
mental battle with your workplace.
There were so many things that Alicia explained in this interview about how we get stuck in
our own narratives that really resonated with me and I know it's going to resonate with
you too.
Alicia is incredible at the work she does as a psychotherapist.
Visit her website at GoldfinchWellness.com and I hope you get some takeaways today from
this interview like I did.
And hopefully we can have Alicia back on another antidote episode.
Enjoy!
Today I'm talking to Alicia Wolf of Goldfinch Wellness.
Alicia is a psychotherapist and coach with a background in Buddhist psychology.
She loves to work with highly anxious, high achievers who want to find a more grounded
and easeful way of moving through their challenges.
She's developed a niche, expertise, and understanding and healing from toxic workplaces using self-regulation,
self-compassion, and the creation of a coherent narrative.
Alicia, thank you so much for coming back.
I love having you as a guest on this show.
Thank you so much for having me.
I'm really excited to be here.
So since we last talked, you've helped a lot of people navigate through a toxic workplace,
helped them gain some incredible insight.
Today we're going to talk about how we build our stories around these toxic workplaces,
how we can get stuck in that narrative, and you're here to help us get unstuck.
Absolutely.
And I have had the good fortune over the past couple of years of working with people in
nonprofits, people working in government.
I've worked with some folks internationally, people in the startup world and in Silicon
Valley, and it's really interesting.
The stories that I hear are pretty consistent.
The challenges are pretty consistent.
And I feel like I've really developed a grasp on some patterns that people can get stuck
in and I've been able to figure out different ways to work through those challenges.
So I am excited to talk about that.
You know, it's similar to this podcast and the guests that I've had on this show.
I always say it's a unique and different story every single time, but the dysfunction, the
patterns of behavior, the way we react to that has a lot of underlying similarities.
So I'm really curious to hear your insight on this as a psychotherapist and how you've
sort of defined what these issues are and how we react to these toxic workplaces.
One of the terms you've coined from your practice is called thought court, which is a very relatable
concept.
I think a lot of us participate in thought court.
I know I do.
So I think this is a good jumping off point.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I also just want to share before jumping into this and add to thinking about the experience
that I've had is I've also had more opportunities to reflect on my own workplace experiences
and I see thought court so much in myself.
So before I even get started, I just want to let everybody out there know that this
is something that I saw in myself and I didn't realize I was doing.
And I really experienced the challenge of how it got me stuck.
And that was a real jumping off point for me to be able to see it in other people.
So I just say that to ensure that everyone knows that I'm right in there with you.
There's no judgment for having any of this come up.
So thought court is essentially when we're spending a lot of time in our head, creating
a narrative that is essentially almost like presenting a case about why this is a bad
workplace and why we are doing the right thing.
But really, it's primarily about why this other person, often our supervisor or a really
challenging person that we're working with, is doing the wrong thing.
Often, just over and over again, people come to me and the majority of the first session
is them telling their story and where they're at.
It feels to me like I'm finally the subjective person that they've been almost rehearsing
this story for of I'm suffering so much, all of this stuff has been really unfair.
And I can feel this desire for me to say to that person, you're right.
Anybody would be crazy to work here.
That person that you're working with sounds completely impossible.
This is the worst case I've ever heard of.
You've got to get out of there tomorrow.
And I resonate with that desire so deeply because I have felt that way, you know, and
I do think that comes from this place of righteous anger, which I do want to spend some more
time talking about.
But I think that what I realized about Thought Court is that it's a place we can get really
stuck for a really long time, because we're kind of living with this desire of like, I
can let go of this when I finally get that feedback.
When some objective person finally says to me, you did everything you could, everyone
else is being totally unreasonable.
And then I would feel permission to leave maybe or permission to do something different.
But I think that moment never comes, you know, and it just becomes this cycle of us getting
really stuck in our narrative.
The way that I worked with it was I brought in a lot of my Buddhist psychology work because
Buddhist psychology actually has a really specific way of working with righteous anger.
And I think it felt it felt really helpful.
So I'm also just going to pause there because I just gave you a really long answer.
Yeah.
Well, and like you say, you resonate with it and I resonate also with what you just
explained.
What I think happens is we're looking for validation.
I think a lot of times we go into these toxic workplaces and you'll hear it on the other
episodes on this podcast is you don't necessarily realize or see that somebody is toxic or sociopathic
or narcissistic and you trust them.
But as time goes on, bad things happen and you start to see the cracks.
And it's like a cognitive dissonance where it's like, well, there's no way that this
is actually happening because I thought that it was this way.
I thought it was a different sort of situation.
I know for me, it's like I am in my head as if I have the burden of truth to try to
prove that this thing happened.
These situations are bad.
It isn't right or moral or just.
And that's a good segue into the righteous anger.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I think that your point is so well taken that part of the reason we're retelling the
story is we're trying to make sense of it for ourselves.
And it's like, how could this happen?
How could this person that I trusted or this situation that felt maybe right for me initially,
how could this have sort of gone so wrong?
And so I think that's actually that's a that's a real part of the thought court phenomenon
is like we're kind of trying to figure out what happened.
And we're kind of experimenting on different audiences.
What do you think about this?
How would you react in this situation or that situation?
Righteous anger is very tricky because oftentimes we're right when we have righteous anger,
right?
I do also kind of want to clarify that when I'm saying that people are sort of coming
to me with these narratives and these stories about how they were really wronged.
I agree with them.
The vast majority of the time, like it does sound like it was very unfair and that they
were treated poorly.
All of these things happened that weren't fair for them.
When we feel that we are in the right, we get this sense of like justice behind us,
you know, and it feels not just annoying or frustrating that the situation is like this,
but it feels unjust, which kind of hits us at like a much deeper level.
And it feels like we want it to be rectified.
We want it to be noticed.
We want someone to be held accountable.
Do you find that it can become an obsessive thought to where it's almost harmful to be
that far deep into this justice seeking mentality?
Yes, I do.
And I think that what feels important to name is that the experience of being stuck in this
place is really causing us suffering.
The person who is, you know, experiencing the righteous anger.
That's what I actually feel like it's really important for people to tune into because
sometimes we get so sort of whipped into a frenzy.
We don't even really tune into like, oh my gosh, I am miserable.
I'm so anxious.
I'm not sleeping.
You know, like what's happening for me here.
And we get so sort of distracted by this righteous anger.
And in Buddhist psychology, the sort of unique thing about righteous anger is that it is
this cycle that is really driven by our narrative.
And there's a really tangible relationship between the narrative and our emotional response.
When we're actually just focusing on a feeling, this is my, this is my psychotherapist side
a little bit, but when we're just focusing on a feeling and we're able to drop the narrative,
that feeling A, we can actually go a little bit deeper and feel the feeling a little bit
more, but it also becomes more flexible.
It has sort of the opportunity to evolve and change.
And it's just less stuck.
The relationship with narrative and emotion with righteous anger that our narrative just
pours gasoline on our emotional experience.
So like the more we tell the story, the more pissed off we get.
And then the more pissed off we get, the more we tell the story.
I always like to use the example of if you were in just a perfectly fine mood and I said,
okay, can you sit here for five minutes?
And I just want you to think about the most infuriating coworker you've ever had.
Just sit here and think about him for five minutes and I'll be right back.
Oh yeah.
How are you going to be?
Oh yeah.
Right?
No, it happens talking to my podcast guest when I'm trying to connect.
And it's been five years since my toxic workplace and I'll say a couple things and it'll kind
of light me up and then I'll think of some more things.
And then I get so heated over something that I haven't thought about in a couple of years.
I forgot about it.
Yeah.
But now I'm physically pissed off.
Totally.
It's such a great example and it's like exactly what you said, something that could be years
in the past, but it sort of comes right back.
It's like in a way our body remembers.
Our body remembers like, oh my God, that was so infuriating.
And then you put your body and your nervous system back in that place and all of a sudden
all of these memories start coming back to you.
And so I think that like, again, I want to really be intentional about my distinction
here.
It's like, it's really important to pay attention to the emotion.
It's really important to pay attention to the emotion.
That's like very, very crucial information to understand how you're being affected by
this job.
Actually, what's not as important is the narrative.
We can just get so, so stuck in the narrative.
In some ways, it almost, I know this is going to be hard for people to kind of hear or get
on board with maybe, is it doesn't really matter what the narrative is.
It doesn't really matter exactly what's happening.
What matters is how it's affecting you.
And so if you are feeling, if you're not sleeping, if you're feeling anxious all the time, if
you're miserable, you don't need to prove anything to anybody about the merit of that
feeling or if it's reasonable to feel that feeling or if anybody would feel that feeling.
That's kind of all the information that you need.
Again, we have this sort of fantasy that we're going to be able to hear from another person.
Of course you would feel that way.
Anyone would feel that way.
And in some ways, that's what we're looking for when we're sharing our narrative.
But what I hope people can hear is that your personal experience gives you permission to
do whatever you need to do to take care of yourself.
It doesn't need to come from anywhere else.
Let the validation and let the proof be what your body is telling you.
The lack of sleep, the anxiety attacks, the hair loss.
I've heard it all.
It's awful.
It is a downward spiral to the point where people feel so stuck.
Being unstuck, how do we unwrap our minds around this narrative?
How do you help your clients reel back and unwind from this narrative?
Yeah, it's such a good question.
In some ways it's complicated, in some ways it's kind of simple.
But I think the first thing that I try to do is sort of, it's a little bit difficult
because people are so attached to their narrative.
I can feel how much they want me to talk about their boss or talk about their person and
say, oh my gosh, this person is totally outrageous.
I often do say that because it is true.
The things they're telling me are pretty egregious.
And then I'm like, okay, so that all is important information.
We have it logged.
Let's work on letting that story be there.
It's information that we will hold, but it's not something that we need to retell.
It's not something we need to kind of go back into.
What I really want to focus on is your felt experience of what it feels like to work here
and what story you've created about yourself when you've worked, you know, since you've
worked here and what story you've created about leaving and if you can leave or what
needs to happen to change for you to stay, like all of those things.
That's actually what the healing process looks like or the evolution process or the moving
on process.
And I find that it's really interesting.
People tend to feel reluctant to let go of the narrative.
And it's like, I get it, you know, because also like we need to be witnessed and we need
our experience to be real and to be to be on the record, you know, essentially because
it's caused us so much suffering.
It's like, you know, it's not really the place where we end up ultimately moving forward
from.
The thing that I often say about righteous anger is there's like a seductiveness to
it because it really it just reels you in.
Like there's some things that it's one of those things that it feels almost relieving
in the moment when you're kind of talking about it or you're getting that affirmation
and people are saying that was so awful and I can't believe that happened.
And ultimately, like if we sort of zoom out and create a bird's eye view perspective,
it's not really moving us.
You know, I talked about the parallels between toxic workplaces and toxic relationships in
the last episode.
But like, this reminds me sometimes of when people can't talk, stop talking about like
their ex or something.
You know, it's like they're not ready to move on yet.
And they're like, but wait, but wait, listen to what they did this time and listen to what
they did this time.
And I feel like in so many ways, what we're looking for in that situation is like validation
that we did the right thing, that we shouldn't be with that person because we still, you
know, probably feel a connection to that person in our heart, in our lives.
And we feel like a sense of questioning ourselves about if we made the right decision.
And so it's really a process of almost like convincing ourselves that this is the right
thing and we should stick to this, etc.
And like, it feels like there's a very parallel experience when people are really not ready
to start talking about the moving on process, because maybe they're not really ready to
move on from that yet.
Yeah, I'm sitting here thinking of a previous employer and lately, and I think this is part
of this righteous anger, it like pulls you in, like, I've got to get my fix of what's
going on now.
What stupid things are they doing now that I can be like, ha, see, there you go.
It just proves my point.
It just proves my point over and over and over.
But how long am I going to keep kind of going back and being like, yep, I need more proof.
I don't need any more proof.
I really don't need any more proof.
So time wise, everybody's different, I'm sure, but I'm wondering, the people you talk to,
are they usually in a toxic workplace?
Are they out of a toxic workplace and trying to get over, like getting over their ex kind
of thing?
Yeah.
Are they trying to get out of the situation?
It's interesting.
I've had people really all over the spectrum and I've had, you know, some people that are
in a sort of a very, very niche, very, very specific job and they kind of need this job,
quote unquote, to get to where they want to be or where the next step and they have like
a just a brutal supervisor and they kind of work with me to like get through it.
They're like, look, I'm totally committed to this job.
I need to be here for another 18 months or whatever it is.
And it's like, I need to make that time workable and like survivable for myself.
And then it's like the other end of the spectrum.
I work with some people that have already left their jobs and they're like, God, I just
can't shake it.
It's a little bit like what you were talking about is like, but it's not even necessarily
about like the wanting to reconnect and have that.
I mean, it's like, I'm sort of laughing because this thought that just popped into my mind
was, you know, it's like a trauma bond.
You know, it's like you have this, I mean, it's, this is actually a term in psychology
for like people that have gone through a horrible experience together and they feel closer because
of it.
It's like we survived something together and there isn't, I mean, people use it sort
of like jokingly nowadays about going through less challenging things, but there is something
to it.
And I think in toxic workplaces, unfortunately, that's how we often feel closest to the people
around us is we're venting about the situation because there's also something so validating
about somebody that we trust to say like, yes, me too.
This is also happening for me.
I feel the same way.
And so it's, it's this tricky thing where you do feel connected to the person and you
feel seen and you feel all of those things and also it's not necessarily something that's
going to provide a lot of like, you know, opportunity for the next step.
I think it's just like a place where a lot of people can get stuck.
Yeah.
Oh, absolutely.
And then, you know, when you're bonding with others who are sharing in the trauma, you're
almost kind of locked into that trauma.
If you're not seeking help or seeking a way to get unstuck and, you know, going back to
where you're saying it sort of feels good.
Otherwise you wouldn't be talking about it all the time.
It feels good to get it out and it feels good for other people to validate.
So shifting out of that downward spiral and into a new perspective.
And I think that's where your basis of the Buddhist psychology, because Buddhism is very
focused in like the here and now and being present and not thinking of the past or thinking
of the future.
Let's kind of talk about that because that's kind of like the antidote portion of all of
this.
Yeah, absolutely.
So there's a couple of pieces that feel important and one is very much about like regulating
our nervous system and coming from a regulated nervous system when we're thinking about how
we want to move forward.
And so I actually do a lot of breathing exercises, guided meditation, silent meditation.
I don't necessarily do them in the moment with my clients, but I sort of like assign
them to them.
I have like an email that's like, okay, let's try this and this and this.
And I think that it's surprising to people how much of a difference those kinds of things
can make.
I have a couple of clients that do these breathing exercises now every day in the morning before
they go to work or before they are going to meet with someone who's really hard for them.
It's really in addition to of course, it's helpful to regulate ourselves.
I think that there's something very powerful about feeling a sense of agency and feeling
like I have tools in my toolbox to work with this situation.
I think a lot of the challenge of toxic workplaces is we just feel like there's nothing we can
do.
Like this place is a disaster and there's nothing I can do about it.
Even feeling like I can regulate myself.
There's this term that we use in Buddhist psychology.
I can quote unquote stay in my seat, which is basically like I cannot lose my, can I
say lose my shit?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I have the ability to stay regulated even when someone's infuriating to me.
I think that's actually incredibly empowering experience for somebody.
And so emotion regulation is very much a part of the work that we do.
This is a real cornerstone of my psychotherapy work too because whenever we're thinking about
an intense overwhelming situation, our mind so quickly and our body so quickly goes into
overwhelm and goes into panic mode and we're just not using our sound mind anymore.
And our sound mind is what we need to really think through the situation and think about
what we want to do.
And so I think that a piece of that is these self-regulation strategies and we really need
to come into self-compassion.
And self-compassion, I often get people sort of like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, self-compassion.
I know I've heard a lot about that.
I should do that.
Which to be totally honest, before I really got started in Buddha psychology, it was kind
of how I thought about it too.
I was like, oh yeah, yeah, right.
You're supposed to be nice to yourself.
Okay, got it.
Check.
But there's actually something so much deeper, which is really about trusting yourself and
having compassion for the situation that you're in and listening to yourself and listening
to your body and trusting that.
And that's all a part of self-compassion.
You were talking about the importance of the here and now in Buddhism and the way that
they actually talk about it is there's actually no such thing as the past or the future.
The past is a memory, the future is a projection.
The only thing that's real is right now.
And so if we hold that as a lens that we want to work with, then all the stories that we
have about our experience at work, they're not going to inform our next step because
the way that they talk about it is like actually all of the present and all of the future are
encompassed in the present moment.
Everything that we need is right here.
And so if you are talking about your boss and you can barely get through a sentence
without your voice shaking or without feeling overwhelmed, infuriated, all of those things,
then in so many ways that is the past in the present.
And that's all the information we need right there is that this in the present moment is
how you're experiencing this relationship.
And that's the thing that we can focus on.
Well, it gives so much power to the person experiencing it, especially if you're still
in that toxic workplace where maybe your emotions have been running high for X amount of days,
months, years, whatever.
And to finally sort of take a step back and be in the moment and use that lens, it's almost
like an instant calm, even if it's just a smidgen more calm than you were before.
It gives you that sort of leg up or power over whatever toxicity has been kind of running
your life.
And you start to respond different.
Maybe you start to, you know, it's easier to set boundaries now because you're not so
wrapped up.
I think that's really what listeners or people in a toxic workplace need right now is even
just a small shift.
And the shift, it sounds like, starts with just calming yourself down and letting go
of the narrative and just focusing on these feelings.
Yeah, absolutely.
I'm thinking of a client that I worked with who was so triggered by his boss.
And to be fair, it sounded like his boss was just like so unreasonable and really patronizing
and micromanaging, like all the stuff that we hate about, you know, like, you know, difficult
challenging bosses.
And he said, you know, every time I got an email from him, I would just, I would have
to get up and like pace for like 20 minutes because it was always so aggressive and it
was so accusatory or whatever it might be.
And you know, after we worked together for a little while, he got to the point where
he had a little bit more of awareness of so much of what he was reading in those emails
was the narrative superimposed on the email.
You know, it was like the narrative that he had about the relationship that he was superimposing
on the email.
Be fair, it wasn't the friendliest email in the first place.
That's true.
And that's fair.
And also, it was so much weightier and so much more loaded and complicated because of
this narrative, he was kind of superimposing on it.
We did a lot of self-regulation stuff.
And towards the end of the time when we were working together, he got to the point where
like let's pretend his boss's name was Steve.
He would be like, Oh, that's Steve being Steve, you know, and it's sort of this sense of like
accepting that this person is not going to change very much, you know, they might change
a little bit, they're not going to change very much.
And when we can sort of observe their behavior rather than internalize their behavior, we
can relate to it so differently.
Now I'm not saying that everyone's going to like be this picture perfect, mindful, compassionate
person that's going to be like, Oh, that's Steve being Steve, everyone they're like talk
down to or something.
And what I like to say is that it's a headspace that we can cultivate and it's a headspace
that we can get into more frequently than not, or more frequently than we used to.
Some days that headspace is not accessible to us and we're going to get totally triggered.
Yes, but it's really different when you get triggered once a week or once every two weeks
rather than like, actually every time you get an email from your boss, which is four
times a day.
So, yeah, let's talk about the role of radical self acceptance.
What is radical self acceptance?
What does that mean?
So what I mean by that, the way that I talk about it, especially in my psychotherapy work
is like, it's our makeup.
And what I mean by that is how we are made up as a person, which is a combination of
our family and our experiences and our biology and our genetics and our traumas and all of
those things.
The result is us and we are our makeup.
Whatever our makeup is, we work better in some environments than other environments.
I think such a challenge that many of my clients have is that they sort of come to me and say,
but if I was different, I might be able to do better at this job.
I might be able to compartmentalize what my boss says better.
I might be able to work long hours and not feel resentful.
I might be able to be different.
So like maybe I'm the problem.
If I were better at fill in the blank, I wouldn't be so miserable.
It's important to find a middle path here because part of radical self acceptance is
actually accepting that there are things about us that we want to change, that we want to
evolve, that we want to spend our time and energy and say, hey, this is like really,
really important to me and this is something I want to prioritize and something on a shift
in my experience of the world and how other people experience me.
And also, if we can just accept that we are made up the way we are and we react to the
work environment that we are in, the way we react to it, then we give ourselves permission
to make decisions based on our own experience rather than just getting stuck in, well, but
maybe I should be different.
You know?
Yeah.
Like, you know, based on my internal wiring, how can I apply that to the situation?
It might not be how this person is over here.
It doesn't take away the fact that what you're experiencing is wrong.
Going back to the righteous anger, you're right to be upset about something.
You know, what they did was not correct.
But to compare yourself or to wonder, is it me?
Is it them?
Am I the problem?
Like you say, if I was more outgoing or if I was more introverted, it could be anything.
In my own experience in life, and as I get older, I start realizing every single person
is comparing themselves to everybody else.
There is no perfect formula.
Even the people running these places, nobody has the secret sauce or the special formula.
So you can only take what you know, what you have, your special gifts, and apply it to
the situation the best you can because that's all you have.
That's exactly, exactly right.
And you know, I think we talked about this more in our last episode that we did together,
but like this idea that like your wisdom, which is uniquely a result of your makeup
and how you show up, is this gift that you have to offer the world.
And you don't want to be stuck in a place where that gift is not accessible to you or
other people.
And you know, what I often think about is people, you know, will say, well, if I was
different, maybe I'd be able to handle this job better or something.
And I'm like, yeah, I mean, that might be true.
Maybe if you compartmentalized your emotions more, or if you were more passive, maybe you
would be experienced this job differently.
But that doesn't mean it's better or worse.
It's just different, you know.
And I think for a lot of people, they wouldn't want to be different in those particular ways
that would potentially make them a better fit at this job.
And so I think that, you know, this radical self acceptance idea is really being able
to say, okay, who I am with the makeup that I have right now, how is this job affecting
me?
And what do I want to do about that?
This is really the cornerstone, I think, of self compassion is really starting with accepting
that this is how we're made up.
The term we use in bit of psychology is making friends with your makeup.
So it's just being able to be like friendly with our own selves and our tendencies, and
even the things that are hard for us, you know, like, it took me a long time to really
be friendly with the fact that I will share righteous anger is a very big thing for me.
Like righteous anger shows up in my life a lot.
And it shows up very differently than it used to.
It's evolved a lot.
But it's kind of part of my makeup.
Like it's just kind of a part of what I'm here with.
And I think there's wisdom and information in that.
And also, I'm able to relate to it without harsh self judgment.
I'm just like, yeah, yeah, it's kind of like part of the package that I come with.
And I'm able to actually like relate to it differently, and able to like know that about
myself, work on that about myself, be able to call myself out in relationships when I'm
like, oh, my gosh, I'm doing this thing.
As we say, in Buddhist psychology is part of my path, which is like learning to work
with this thing about myself.
If we can have that kind of relationship with the things that are challenging for us, rather
than this, what's wrong with me, what other people be better, all of that, like that's
really this radical self acceptance.
And I think it really allows us to even handedly think about how we're being affected by the
job and if we're in the right place and empowers us to say when we're not.
Yeah.
And the word that is really ringing in my ear is evolving, right?
We're all here really to evolve.
We go through these experiences to highlight these things about us that we need to evolve.
And if we're not evolving, then, you know, really what are we doing?
At the end of every story on the podcast, we always end with, you know, what are your
words of wisdom?
Where are you now?
How do you do things differently?
And everybody always has like so much profound insight and they, you know, they see things
differently because they've evolved.
So you know, these toxic workplaces are are are awful situations to go through.
But if we didn't go through them, we wouldn't be evolving.
So you know, asking yourself, how have I evolved?
And it doesn't just take a couple months, like one, two, three, I'm, I'm all like, it
takes decades, right?
Like as I'm approaching my 40s, I'm like starting to realize like, oh, my makeup, the way that
I am and in the industry that I'm in, it's a very rigid technical industry and I'm a
very non-rigid, unorganized type of person.
But since I've been pushing through this for over 10 years now, I'm starting to evolve
and understand like, okay, I might not gravitate to that naturally, but then I can use my my
other traits that maybe five years ago I thought were hurdles or things that set me back.
And I see them now as things that can move me forward.
But it took a lot of going through the the wringer at work and getting negative feedback
on certain things that made me question myself, made me question am I cut out to do this sort
of work.
And I think not giving up and letting go of that, of the narrative from past employers
that I felt like I had to prove myself.
When I let that go, I started realizing like, I don't need to constantly prove myself.
I just need to show up and be my best and use these traits that come naturally to lift
me up and help others.
But then also, I've kind of developed and evolved like the side of me that I thought
wasn't really there, if that makes any sense.
I feel like I'm rambling.
No, I think you're making a really good point, which is that like, I would say that that's
your wisdom, you know, those, those, as you were sort of saying, your your qualities that
make you who you are, and also are like, maybe sort of rare in the line of business where
you work.
And it's like, in many ways, that's probably why they're so needed, is that there is like
a desire for that wisdom in the space.
And you, when you're able to embody your wisdom and feel that sense of like, trust and confidence
in it, then when you feel your own wisdom, other people can feel it too.
To your point about what people can learn from these experiences, I mean, I think they're
tremendously helpful for us.
And I, sometimes I call things that people are going through FOGs, which stands for fucking
opportunities for growth.
It's like when we're going through something that's hard and difficult, and we're really
challenging ourselves to show up and do do this hard stuff, like rarely in the moment,
are we like, this is a great time.
I'm enjoying, I'm enjoying myself, right?
It's these things we kind of look back on and we're able to say, Oh my gosh, like, look
at how I showed up in that really challenging situation.
I didn't know I had that in me.
And like I did.
And that was that was really cool to learn about myself.
And whatever people are going through right now, I have so much compassion for the fact
that they're in it, because it's really, really brutal.
And also, I feel so confident that it will be part of their wisdom and part of their
makeup as they move throughout our life.
Because I think that's what happens for us in these challenging experiences that really
force us to lean into like, who are we?
How do how do we want to deal with these kinds of things?
Yeah, no doubt about it.
It's pushing you to the next level if you allow it.
If you allow yourself not to be reduced by the situation, not to be, you know, sucked
into a narrative for years and years and years.
And I get it because I've been there, I've still kind of fall into that from time to
time.
It's just natural, you know, we're humans.
So do you do do goal setting and all of that sort of like, how do you help people take
like the baby steps to the big steps to the big shifts?
Yeah, I think I mentioned this on the last podcast, but I think it's worth repeating.
It's something that I do with almost all of my clients, which is I ask them to keep a
couple sentence journal daily about their experiences at work.
But I asked them to do it about their feelings and not the narrative.
Right?
So like, so tempting to be like, you will not believe what my boss did today.
But it's actually so much more informative to say like, I felt really confident today,
or I felt totally un-listened to I felt totally dismissed.
I felt disrespected, whatever it might be.
Because that again, like that's the information that we really want to hold on to is like,
how is this affecting you?
And I think it feels very different when we look back on a journal rather than saying,
this person did this again, this person did that again.
But being like, oh my gosh, every day last week, I said that I felt terrible in some
way, you know, at my job, like that is critical information.
And I think that when we get really lost in the narrative, sometimes sort of forcing ourselves
to write down the actual feeling and reflect on that can help shift us out of the narrative.
The work of dropping the narrative, it sounds so simple.
Like I remember when someone told me about it the first time, like drop the narrative
focus on feeling that's kind of like the short, short hand.
And I was like, okay, yeah, that sounds good.
And like, I was like, oh my gosh, I'm so attached to this narrative.
I'm so attached to this story.
It's really, really hard for me to let it go.
And so I think that just awareness and seeing yourself do the thought court thing.
One thing that I realized at one point in my life was this is what I was doing all the
time when I was in the shower.
Like this was how I was spending all of my showers was in thought court.
It was just happening almost on a subconscious level.
And then once I really took this first step of like mindful awareness of my thoughts and
sort of bringing them into my conscious awareness, I was like, whoa, I am ruining all my showers.
But like, also I'm just like getting stuck in this loop in a way that I don't even realize.
And I encourage people to try to at least notice and name when they're in thought court
or when they're experiencing righteous anger.
Or something as simple as saying, wow, I feel very angry right now.
I feel a ton of righteous anger or, oh, I noticed that I'm in thought court.
Can I come back to the present moment?
And can I pay attention to how I'm feeling right now?
And every time you do that, it's like an exercise rep.
You're really strengthening the muscle of your mind to be able to have that awareness
of our thoughts.
This is really kind of the basis of the way we work with our mind in meditation too, is
having this awareness of our thoughts and being able to observe our thoughts rather
than get pulled into the tornado of them without our consent.
Yeah.
Well, and it's helpful to give these sort of terms and definitions because I've never
even thought of it in this way, of this thought court.
I'm so intrigued with it because I'm like, gosh, when I was in a toxic workplace, I think
every day was just like a thought court session.
I'm going into court for the whole day.
I'm spending my day as my own attorney in court, always looking for a gotcha kind of
receipts and things to add to my side of the-
The case.
Yeah.
My defense case.
It was right up until I left.
It was like every day I was looking for evidence and debriefing at the end of the day of what
I had found.
If you wake up, get in the shower, and you're already preparing for court, it makes so much
sense.
You should get the rights to that coin that term before somebody else takes it.
Well, to give credit, and I can't because of confidentiality, the first person who used
word thought court was one of my clients.
Oh, interesting.
She was like, it's like I'm in thought court.
I was like, in the minute she said it, I was like, that's it.
That's it.
That's the word that I've been looking for for this phenomenon.
I think it really resonates.
Once we start talking about it, almost everybody that I work with is like, oh, I know about
that.
Yes.
Yeah.
Because in your head, things just go so fast and you don't really take the time to think
like, how am I spending my thoughts and my time on a daily basis and how is that adding
to my situation?
I want to talk about the work you offer to clients.
I think last time we talked, you were putting together a package.
Yes.
What are you offering now?
I offer a Navigating Toxic Work Places package.
It's a succession package and there's information on my website about it.
There's an outline of the way that we generally do the work on my website, but it's really
so individualized and our first session is really about people talking about what their
goals are and a little bit about their story.
The work, it's really interesting.
Part of the reason I was inspired to make a package was because a lot of the people
that I worked with in coaching around toxic workplaces before I had a formal package,
the work went a lot faster than maybe both of us even thought it would because they were
so stuck when they first came in.
I think that using some of the stuff that we've talked about today, I think people that
are ready, they're really hungry for this kind of intervention or this kind of work
that really has to do with building a sense of a tool set for working with regulating
ourselves, and working with challenging situations, and also really thinking about how is my relationship
to my thoughts, my relationship to my job, how I hold this narrative in my mind, how
is that contributing to my experience, which is already really hard because these workplaces
are really hard to work in.
So I offer a six-session package.
I have worked with some people that just want an ongoing coaching relationship.
So for everybody, I meet with people one-on-one for 50 minutes every other week.
We have these sessions, and I also offer unlimited email support.
Thus far, people have been very responsible with that, so I haven't had to take it back.
But it's so interesting, though, because I think that a lot of people that come to me,
they're so thoughtful about other people's time, about being fair to people.
All these things are really important to them.
But sometimes it helps often prep for our sessions, and people are like, oh, something
happened this week.
I want to give you a little bit of background via email so we can just jump right in when
we start our session on Thursday or whatever.
And so that's been really helpful, and the work just happens really fast.
And I think people come, and they're very motivated, and they're very receptive.
And so yeah, that's the package.
And then there's the ongoing coaching arrangement.
Everything that I have right now is one-on-one.
I've toyed with the idea of trying to do groups and stuff, but I just also, and that is something
that I do hope for one day.
But also right now, I have two young kids and a lot of other things going on.
And I really think about, I'm always doing the work of trying to sort of divest myself
from this go, go, go culture, which is constantly sucking us in, and we are actively sort of
pushing against it.
Right, but we want to feed into it too.
Yeah, it's so tough.
Oh my gosh, absolutely.
No, I completely, I get it.
Because you want to be a mom, and you want to be fully present for your kids, and then
you know, but the career and all of that.
But thank you so much for coming on the show.
It's such a pleasure to have you as always, and I hope that we can do this again soon.
Thank you.
I would love to, and I always enjoy chatting with you.
So thanks so much for having me.