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Chapter 1: What is the main focus of the episode on workplace mental health?
Welcome to the Resilient Mind Podcast. In this episode, you'll be listening to Is Staying Silent Making You Sick? with Melissa Doman. This episode is also available on video. Watch it on YouTube by clicking the link in the show notes. Enjoy.
And we're not supposed to say this. There are some workplaces where they use resilience training programs really as a cover.
Most heart attacks happen like either Sunday night or Monday morning when people have to go to work.
Emotional suppression is not a healthy facet to add to the process of trying to be resilient. People have this social assumption that being resilient only looks like positivity.
What makes a conversation more productive versus it being risky?
Building pressure and pressure and pressure and pressure. If there's no release valve, you go boom. Leaders naturally enjoy better mental health and less mental illness by virtue of their position.
What does workplace silence around emotional suppression, mental health actually cost us?
It costs trust. It costs psychological safety.
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Chapter 2: How does emotional suppression affect resilience in the workplace?
Struggle and success and effectiveness can all exist in the same body, regardless of job title. Education without action won't create any change.
Today's conversation is about resilience, not just as an individual trait, but as a workplace reality. Because while we talk a lot about performance and productivity, we don't talk enough about mental health of the people behind the titles, the employees and the leaders. What does it really mean to talk about mental health in a way that's skillful, professional and human?
And what happens when the very people responsible for creating psychological safety don't have it themselves? I'm joined by Melissa Doman, organizational psychologist, former clinical therapist, and author of Yes, You Can Talk About Mental Health at Work, and their latest book, Cornered Office, Why We Need to Talk About Leadership, Mental Health.
Hair work breeds the gap between mental health and leadership, challenging the idea that resilience means pushing through in silence. Melissa, welcome to the podcast.
Thank you so much for having me. I've really been looking forward to this conversation. And the way you explained that, I couldn't have said it better myself.
So maybe let's start on a more overview in terms of when we're talking about resilience, especially in the workplace, what are we getting wrong?
I love that question. And I really appreciated how you were talking about not pushing through in silence. And I often find that people forget what the actual definition of resilience is, healthfully bouncing back from adversity. Now, people tend to believe that what resilience looks like is pushing through, making it through.
Oftentimes what people are getting wrong is they're pushing it through and making it through to their own detriment. And I think they're forgetting that they need to pair healthful behaviors with being resilient. So they're not being resilient while actually unintentionally harming themselves.
So I think there is a kind of a misunderstanding of what the term really means, especially because it's become so popular and so widely used in so many well-being programs in the workplace. But the problem is that there are some workplaces, and we're not supposed to say this, where they use resilience training programs really as a cover program.
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Chapter 3: What are the costs of workplace silence regarding mental health?
that being resilient only looks like positivity and that being resilient looks like behaviors and emotions and thoughts that resemble a can-do attitude or a silver lining or some other sort of sometimes unhelpful platitude that doesn't help people.
So they're concerned that they'll be socially judged, they'll be misunderstood, if while they're practicing resilience, that they talk about how hard that is, or how scary it might be, or some other uncomfortable emotion, because people have an incorrect understanding assumption that when you're being resilient, that you have to be solely positive. That's really not the case.
We have a whole host of emotions that we're born with out of the box to let us and other people know what's going on in our environment. If we need help, if we need support, if there's something that is upsetting us, something that we want to be happy about. And we have those feelings for a reason.
And when we're practicing being resilient and pushing our limits, sometimes a lot of different kinds of big feelings will come up, not all of which are positive. So whenever I encounter the situations where people are being emotion shamed for talking about the struggles of being resilient, you know, especially the more negative, you know, negative emotions.
What I tend to say, and I'm more direct than most in case you can't tell, is, well, being resilient can be very difficult and it's natural to have issues. sometimes negative feelings that come up with that. So it's healthy for me to talk about it as opposed to pushing it down. Can you help me understand why you don't agree?
People usually don't have much to say when you invite a conversation like that because it kind of stops them in their tracks and makes them challenge their own thinking, which is also very uncomfortable. So that's usually how I tend to approach that conversation.
And from your work with both employees and leaders, what does workplace silence around emotional suppression, mental health actually cost us?
Oh, it costs trust. It costs psychological safety. It costs being able to have hard conversations, which are where the best learnings lie. And when we have silence around work, conversations around emotional suppression, conversations are not authentic. They are stagnant. They don't have an opportunity to evolve and grow.
And oftentimes people will vote with their feet and they will leave organizations when those conversations are not happening. And it's funny you mentioned that. I was posting on LinkedIn a few days ago that when difficult conversations need to be had, And that may include some emotions that are tough for people to deal with. The question shouldn't be, should we say something?
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Chapter 4: How can leaders create psychological safety for their teams?
And as you're talking, I'm thinking about a study that said something along the lines that most heart attacks happen like either Sunday night or Monday morning when people have to go to work.
It's so sad.
It's so sad. And I'm thinking about a lot of people that are struggling. They don't like their jobs. Yeah. There isn't a lot of psychological safety there. How can they start maybe thinking about disclosure if they might want to say something, but maybe their leadership doesn't have that language yet?
So I have to say a hard truth first.
Mm-hmm.
Some workplaces just don't have the nomenclature. They don't have the knowledge, but they're willing to learn. Other places have no desire to have the nomenclature. We're being honest here. No desire to get the education, the nomenclature to develop the social permission.
Of the 8 billion people on this planet, we cannot sit here and say that every company, every team will be open to this conversation because it's just not true. So if someone is concerned about having that conversation in their organization, the first thing I would say is, well, if you're concerned, where does that concern come from?
Is it because it's just unfamiliar and you haven't had the conversation yet? Or is it because you've observed interactions in that company that gives you pause? That's the key difference. Because if the concern is just from not knowing or people are nice, but they maybe don't know what to do, you can solve for that.
If you've seen mental health conversations go very poorly with other people in the company, the company is telling you who they will and will not be and the conversations they will and will not have. So not everybody, though, can afford to go to another job for lots of reasons, whether it's
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Chapter 5: What misconceptions exist about resilience and emotional expression?
But if you can, and a workplace is telling you it is not psychologically safe to have the conversation, don't. And then have the conversation outside of that environment in other places where you can get those needs met. And this is if you can't leave the company. If you can leave the company, There are many organizations that do provide psychological safety to have these conversations.
And I know that because they're my clients.
And so if we shift upwards, one of the things we don't really talk about is the mental health of leaders.
We don't?
Why not as much? I guess when I think of psychological safety, well, you do.
I had to make the joke. I'm sorry.
Okay. I was like, no, I haven't read about it. But not as much, right? It's usually like for the employees. Why do you think that is?
Because history has taught us to do that. That's why.
You know, people look at leaders, regardless of the leadership title or seniority, and they build them up into something as if they're a different species where they don't have the same emotional health needs or they don't feel the same struggles or that they assume that because of the position they're in, that they can withstand more distress.
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Chapter 6: How do societal norms impact conversations about mental health?
about their capacity and letting them know about where they are, to me, that's a lot more constructive long-term as opposed to people having to guess what the person is feeling, having to mentally protect themselves. So they don't get something put towards them at the wrong place or time.
To me, informing people is so much more constructive than trying to hide and having them fill in the blanks and having it destroy the relationship. So it's all about the delivery. And I think there's a lot of missed opportunities. And this is not leaders only. This is people. Yeah.
where we're not taught, many people are not taught to not only talk about their struggles, but to also pair it with what they're going to do. How many people do you meet where you're like, oh, my parents taught me that when I have a big feeling, I named the big feeling. And then I talk about what I'm going to do to manage the big feeling. How many people do that? Like no one.
Right.
So we have we have to learn these skills as an adult. And then if other people don't do it, they may feel confused. They may feel jealous that you know how to do it and they don't. But this is the healthy thing to do to talk about the completely normal emotion and pair it with the action.
So that people don't just think you're venting for the sake of venting without being accountable for managing that experience and the stress footprint it can put on other people.
And I'm just thinking as uncomfortable as opening up can be, not opening up is... can also be exhausting because I'm thinking about my own experience when I won't share what's going on. And now I'm trying to act as if everything is okay to my team. So it's like, okay, these expectations have to manage how they see me still perform really well.
And on top of that, I have to look like I have it all together. And it's just layering another thing I have to try to manage. on top of everything, which I found exhausting from personal experience. But do you think that's also the case that like, maybe it's also adding to distress that leaders might be feeling?
A hundred percent. You know, if we think about the concept of catharsis, the natural releasing of repressed emotions, you know, every human being needs to do that. And the trouble is that when leaders are so busy playing the part of
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Chapter 7: What barriers prevent employees from discussing mental health?
Um, but, uh, so, you know, and I get that. And that's why I also make sure workplaces understand you have to understand laws around mental health, not just, you know, physical health and things like that. Uh, But yeah, it's really not wanting to say the wrong thing and not wanting to open themselves up to liability.
And also my least favorite, the leaders who don't want to talk about it to their employees, the ones who think the workplace is not the setting for that conversation and they don't care and quote, leave your personal life at the door, which I find hilarious because the last time I checked, it's one body and one brain that does life and work. So I just think that is ridiculous. Yeah.
you know, leave your personal life at the door. I'm like, what are you even saying? Like that? Do you want them to give themselves like, like in the film, in the show severance? I'm like, are we acting as if the workplace is, is severance? Is that what's going on here? Yeah. So I'm sorry, I get very passionate.
And then for employees who are resistant to talking about it, the biggest chief complaint I hear is they don't want to be seen the wrong way and they don't want to put their jobs at risk. So and again, I get that because there are many companies who get this wrong or don't have the explicit conversation that it's a safe thing to talk about.
So they get concerned about their literal financial livelihood, that something may happen. They may be passed over for promotion. They may be turned into office gossip. You know, there are lots and lots of reasons. But also, I don't want to discount the fact that outside of work, we also need to think about personal identity.
you know just because we're working on you know the same soil the same company whatever it is it doesn't matter we all carry rules and assumptions and experiences that have conditioned us around whether or not we can talk about mental health at work or outside of work gender if you're religious uh your sexual orientation your family of origin your culture culture of origin your ethnicity
All of these things have messages around emotional health and we carry those things with us. So it doesn't matter that biologically we all have mental health. Our experiences of that are extremely unique and different, regardless of if you're a leader or employee.
If you could share a sentence, a message to every single leader in the world right now, what would you want them to know?
You do have more on your shoulders than other people. It's okay to talk about how hard that is. That's it.
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