Intersection of trauma and wellness in the workplace
This is an article on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in the workplace. It is a First-Person account of navigating the leadership pipeline with a post-traumatic stress diagnosis: quickly climbing the leadership pipeline while slowly crawling into understanding my brain-on-trauma.
As an employee learning to understand my trauma while navigating the workplace, I often felt alone and unable to express what was happening to me. Since 1997, I have worked with organizations committed to refugees, immigrants, veterans, entrepreneurs, women, and children. For me, business ventures have served as a healing agent to counter all the bad I have seen, witnessed and/or experienced into good. It has been incredibly amazing but also incredibly difficult to navigate the leadership pipeline I was quickly climbing while slowly crawling into understanding my brain-on-trauma.
Navigating the workplace and competitive environments posed a myriad of challenges and difficulties relating to cultures at work or school. From person-to-person interactions to interactions within organizational ecosystems, management, and leadership structures, I often felt that while there were diversity, equity, and inclusion practices in place, I longed for a sense of belonging—from a PTSD perspective.
I encountered that sense of belonging with a former manager, Dr. Joseph Radelet, who served as Vice-President at Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, where I served as Associate National Director for its national Latino Community Engagement and Mentoring program. I worked with Joe for three years, and during those days we would spend hours talking about philosophy, compassion, and intentionality. Dr. Radelet loved his family, his Littles (mentees), his work, his peers, and his faith. For me, Joe’s background in education and youth development would prove pivotal to my growth. Joe was the first person to see how adverse childhood experiences (ACE) had affected my life and how my trauma would come out at work.
When I would have a presentation to give or report to do at a staff meeting, Joe would spend time beforehand with me to help me gather my thoughts and speak as concisely as I could. He knew how my recent trauma had shifted my communication. Joe saw my intelligence and what made me unique, which is diversity, and recognized my struggle to deliver at a high-level, which was inclusive in his part to make me feel valued. Yet, when no one seemed to understand me, Joe was my champion through his creation of trust between the two of us where I felt safe to share my voice with him and in the workplace, which is belonging. It was Joe who encouraged me to apply for my doctoral degree and invited me to serve on a Research-to-Practice committee at BBBSA. He championed me in a time when I was genuinely struggling to keep my life together. I believe that without having the words at the time, Joe was a trauma-informed manager who created his own breakthrough human resources policy to deal with me; one that included diversity, inclusion and belonging in the workplace regarding mental health.
Since then, for the last 10 years, I have attempted to carry out Joe’s investment in me—as a person first, employee second—into my leadership style to help create a pathway for supporting my teams and sponsoring their growth by actively fostering a culture of thoughtfulness. Traumatic experiences involve power imbalances: with an action or series of events, one person/group/etc. controls balance of power over another. For me, recognizing power structures has been a continued source of understanding my trauma, my triggers, and my ways to counter microaggressions and control or anger.
I still have my struggles navigating my brain on trauma and am grateful that more is known about the effects of traumatic experiences in our lives. My trauma reminders (or triggers) and flashbacks still happen, and I continue to learn from them as well as to live with them. While being trauma-informed cannot be piecemealed, per se, it does take an intentionality to look at each piece in the puzzle that is a human being. Feeling wholeness or aiming to feel whole is exhausting, and I often feel tired. It sometimes feels or it has felt as if I am starting my day from a deficit. But I also know and feel that I am getting better. My work has been a source of healing. In that spirit, I founded TraumaVenture to bring together a team that dreams of a better world and workplaces along with me.
Neurodiversity is a term relating to overall diversity of thought. Neurodivergent brains are wired differently and by definition tend to think differently. Historically, neurodiversity included individuals with autism, autism spectrum and dyslexia, and now trauma. Psychological wounds like traumatic experiences alter the chemical composition of one’s brain. I needed to share how my brain worked with my team for us to foster a collaborative, supportive environment that is understanding of each other.
As the world continues to change at record speeds, learning to listen in more embodied and holistic ways creates opportunities for collaboration and new possibilities. Resilience is a journey. I dialogue with my team about the pressure to be resilient, and although we know we can conquer anything, we also value the vulnerability it takes to experience our emotions fully. Ultimately, my intention for building a new way forward through our work, is to build a culture of care and well-being for individuals in our organization and the communities we serve.
In one of my darkest hours in my personal life, I had a champion like Joe be a light for me in my work life. Through his care and investment, I was able to deliver on my work, apply for and be admitted into a doctoral program at The University of Pennsylvania, and begin the process of understanding a new phase in my life: navigating the C-Suite as a trauma survivor.
To learn more about creating a sense of trust, belonging and a culture of care in the workplace, please visit:
Harvard Business Review: The Value of Belonging at Work
Forbes: Creating A Workplace Culture of Belonging, Diversity and Inclusivity
In loving memory of Dr. Joseph Radelet and with gratitude to his family.