Safety = Connection

Have you ever left a meeting thinking, “Why didn’t I just say what I really meant?”

In this episode of Work Besties Who Podcast, Jess and Claude sit down with Jennifer Prendergast to talk about truth-telling at work, psychological safety, trauma-informed leadership, and why so many workplace conversations feel harder than they should.

Jennifer breaks down how nervous system awareness can help us better understand workplace behavior, feedback, defensiveness, over-explaining, shutting down, and the moments when people do not feel safe enough to speak honestly.

This conversation explores why truth-telling is not just about courage, why training does not always create lasting change, and how leaders, teammates, and work besties can create more trust, steadiness, and connection at work.

If you have ever wondered why people get reactive, avoid feedback, or struggle to say what they really mean, this episode will help you look at workplace behavior in a whole new way.

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Work Besties! Theme Song Written by Ralph Lentini @therallyband

Transcript

Why Honesty Feels So Hard

Jess K 0:00

Have you ever left a meeting thinking, why didn't I just say what I really meant?

Claude F 0:04

Or watch a team go through training after training, and somehow nothing actually changes.

Jess K 0:10

Today's episode is about the truth underneath that, because truth telling at work isn't just about courage, it's also about safety.

Claude F 0:17

And when people don't feel safe in their bodies, they usually won't feel safe being honest, receiving feedback, or learning something new, or even trusting their own reactions.

Jess K 0:28

We're joined by Jennifer Prendergast, who helps leaders and organizations bring trauma-informed practices into the workplace in a way that's practical, human, and transformational.

Claude F 0:41

She breaks down what nervous system awareness actually meant at work, why behavior makes more sense when you know what to look for, and why trust and connection may be the most important workplace skills nobody ever taught us.

Jess K 0:56

So if you've ever thought why is everyone so reactive, or why is it so hard to just be real at work? Well, this one is for you. Let's get into it.

Claude F 1:05

Hi, I'm Claude. And I'm Jess. We are corporate employees by day, entrepreneurs by night, and work besties for life.

Jess K 1:14

Join us as we explore how work besties lift each other up, laugh through the chaos, and thrive together in every industry. Work besties.

Jennifer’s Path To This Work

Jess K 1:25

Work besties, welcome back. This month is all about truth-telling at work, the conversations we avoid, the needs we minimize, and what it really takes to be honest in a professional space.

Claude F 1:37

And today we are talking about something underneath all of it: safety.

Jess K 1:42

Welcome, Jennifer. I'm so thrilled to be here. And we're so excited to have you. We'd love it if you started off by speaking about that trauma-informed leadership. And what really brought you into this work personally?

Jennifer P 1:55

Thanks for the question. So this work kind of came to me, I could say a little bit by accident, but I could also say somehow it feels like it was just sort of aligned and meant to be. As I, when I started the expert talk, we had a totally different focus. We definitely wanted to create places where people felt like they belonged, where they could really bring their full selves to the workplace. But it wasn't until I connected with an incredible expert, uh Kim Van Rijn. She's one of our facilitators and trainers that we work with. And we actually connected in the world of neurodiversity. So we had a lot of clients asking us around neurodiversity, looking for awareness and strategies and how to create workplaces that are more neuroinclusive. And we started working together in that regard. And it just happened to turn out that Kim's other area of expertise was all around trauma-informed care and counseling and practice. And as I've continued to grow myself, these elements have been built into the work that we do that has continued to evolve. So really, really sort of came to it by accident, but it also feels like it was aligned at exactly the right time.

Jess K 2:58

Jennifer,

Courage Versus Safety At Work

Jess K 2:59

why is it so hard for people to tell truth at work?

Jennifer P 3:02

When we think about truth-telling at work, we often hear it framed as a courage thing, right? A courage issue. But in fact, it really is more about a safety issue. And so I want to start by just laying a little bit of groundwork as to how exactly we're using the word safety because we hear so much about it in like a health and safety context. We certainly hear a lot about psychological safety, which is ultimately what we're creating, but it's also become kind of a buzzword that I think has lost a little bit of its meaning over time. So we could just take a second to lay down what exactly we mean by safety. Inside of each and every one of us, we have a nervous system. And we've heard of the mind-body connection. This is an actual physical setup in our bodies that one of its primary jobs is always scanning for threat. And we talk about threat, we think of big physical threats, but there's also emotional or mental threats that our nervous system is scanning for. So these are threats that might be to our identity, to our sense of self, to our sense of belonging and community and connection with others. It's not just big physical threats that we might think of. In any interaction that we go into, whether it's with a good friend, whether it's a meeting at work with a client, any interaction in our life, there's always more than just me and you in the room. So we've got us, our physical selves, but I'm also bringing in all of my past experiences. I'm bringing in the relationships I've had, any cultural conditioning, expectations that society has put on us, all of this stuff is coming into the room with me. You have your own set of all that stuff coming into the room with you as well. And then we're both bringing in our own nervous systems and all of the patterns and strategies that they have developed over the years to keep us safe. So when I talk about past experiences, I'm thinking if we had someone in our life who maybe got upset when things didn't go their way. And we may have learned from that it's better to soften our message, to maybe leave out some details, not say anything altogether, that may have proven to be safer for us and easier. So we're bringing that lens into conversations. If we had someone who maybe kept us walking on eggshells, we didn't know what was going to set them off. We might preemptively overexplain to try to manage any miscommunication or conflict. Our brains make sense of the world and help us interact with each other through patterns and through predictabilities. All of these past experiences that we've had and that we're bringing in, these have become the blueprint that we bring in with us to every relationship, every reaction by default, even if they don't serve us well. Right. So when I talk about those experiences when we were younger, we still are bringing those patterns with us as defaults into conversations that we're having with other people. So then when we start trying to talk about being on it, why is it so hard to tell the truth? When we start thinking of how much we're bringing in with us and these patterns that we built over time, this is what makes it so hard because we have these defaults. And every time we go into a meeting with each other and I lean on these old strategies and all this stuff is happening under the level of consciousness, it further reinforces to my system, yep, that was safe. That was the right thing to do. I'm going to do that again next time. And so we show up in conversations. And even though we want to tell the truth, we want to be open and we want to feel comfortable. These are these old default patterns. And even if you are both wonderful people and wonderful team members, I might be coming in thinking it's not safe for me to speak up and give my ideas, or it's not safe for me to be honest about a project that's starting to go off the rails. So I'm just going to cleave out those details. And this just happens. And then we often leave a meeting afterwards thinking, why didn't I just say the thing?

Jess K 6:57

This is fascinating to me. You're making me think so differently now about not only how I show up, but how others show up. So knowing that people are coming with these backgrounds or these. There's a lot of people in the room. How do how do we adjust to help them break it? Because to your point, it's subconscious. So it's not like you're going to call to their attention, hey, do you realize you're overexplaining? I don't need you to overexplain. Are there ways we should be as a leader or even as a partner or collaborator with them in a project? Is there a way we can alleviate that or help with those different ways to help break those patterns?

You Can’t Declare A Safe Space

Jennifer P 7:44

So there are and there aren't. I'm gonna I'm gonna kind of lay it out that way. And the rest of our discussion, I know, is gonna build through these concepts throughout our chat today. But to give a bit of a spoiler alert before we get to all the rest of the good stuff, the main strategy that we will always and forever have to connect with other people is the way that we are showing up ourselves. And so it's gonna be us showing up in ways that are predictable, that are consistent, um, and that invite another person's nervous system to feel a bit more settled in our presence. And that's what we're gonna chat more about because we talk about this idea of how do we create safety? How do we, you know, we say this is a safe space, you can share things here. But it's really a misnomer because the safety is a felt sense in each of our individual bodies. And so I can't just say, this is a safe space, you can tell me anything, because your body might be like, yeah, no, that's not true. And so it's going to be repeated instances, repeated acts of safety repeatedly showing up consistently in certain ways. So, what does that being the trauma-informed at work in practice look

Trauma As A Body Response

Jennifer P 8:55

like? So, when we talk about trauma-informed leadership, we've talked really briefly already a bit about past experiences, right? And I want to also give another definition of what we mean when we talk about trauma before we continue to go further in chatting about this. So we think often of trauma as the really big, bad, scary things that happen to us. And it absolutely can be accidents, illnesses, loss, war, the really, really big stuff. But our understanding of trauma, and this comes quote, comes out of uh Dr. Gabor Mate's work, is that trauma isn't the thing that happened to us. It's the ongoing response in the body as a result of what happened to us. When we think of these behaviors and these patterns, we use the example often of someone who got sent to the principal's office as a kid all the time, perhaps not paying attention, disruptive behavior, go down to the principal's office. And this left this person feeling embarrassed, feeling shamed. And then over time in the principal's office, they learned that if I just don't defend myself and I don't say anything, these visits to the principal's office are going to be shorter. They're not going to call my parents, and everything's just going to be easier. And so then, fast forward 30 years, and now this person is at work and they get a call from their manager saying, Hey, can you pop down to my office for feedback? And right away, their heart starts pounding, their palms start sweating, their throat feels a little bit tight, not even realizing that this could be a reaction coming from all those years ago. But there is a physical thing happening in this person's body. And showing up in a meeting like that is going to look a lot different than when we can show up feeling relaxed and curious about what the feedback is going to be. So when we talk about trauma, it are these, it's these ongoing reactions that we get and that come up for us. And what we understand is that all behavior manifests out of the state that our nervous system is in. So whether it is feeling safe or whether it is not. And so being trauma-informed, then, being a trauma-informed leader, really means recognizing that all of us carry these unseen wounds. Literally every single one of us has something in our background. We bring this stuff with us. And then we work to intentionally create environments and workplaces and interactions, conversations, and systems that feel supportive and that feel safe and that feel empowering for other people. So it doesn't mean that we need to know everyone's background story. In fact, we don't want to know everyone's background story. That's not our business. It means we assume that everybody has one and then we move forward and act with care accordingly.

What Trauma-Informed Leadership Looks Like

Claude F 11:42

People have different trauma that most likely would need to be taken care of differently, no? So, how do you know how to handle and how to communicate those people with all those different trauma that they might have?

Jennifer P 11:55

We talk about the practices of being a trauma-informed leader because our goal is not to fix. We're not asking, what is wrong? What's the problem? How do I, how do I do this? What we do is when I say that we create environments and workplaces that offer that sense of support and of safety and empowerment. So, first, it's understanding the impact of past experiences that we've just briefly touched on, that this shows up in our daily lives and in all of our conversations. It looks like remaining curious. So we understand that reactions that we see, things like defensiveness, anger, blaming, shutting down, maybe micromanaging. These are actually protective responses showing up in daily life. They're not something personal that's against us. And they're signaling, those reactions and behaviors are signaling to us that something in the moment feels overwhelming for that person. It's not that the person is difficult. Something somehow is feeling overwhelming for this person. Number three, we prioritize safety and trust. So we are creating environments, like I said, where people are invited to feel psychologically safe. And we do this through being consistent and clear. We follow through on things that we say we're going to do. So we want to be as predictable as we possibly can. We want to share information when we have it. We want to close loops whenever we can. We want to set healthy boundaries ourselves and respect other people's boundaries. And we're offering choice whenever possible. And then the biggest, I'm saying it last, but the absolute first foremost forever point is that we work constantly on developing our own self-awareness. So we want to show up in a steady state so that we're not escalating tension or reharming other people.

Claude F 13:50

In that case, you're really in a safety. Otherwise, you can say, Oh, it's safe. You can tell me whatever you want. But then if I go and defensive, the other person is going to say, okay, it's not safe.

Jess K 14:01

Jennifer, it feels to me then a lot of this work is understanding yourself first.

Jennifer P 14:09

Yes.

Jess K 14:10

So knowing that, what are things or ways leaders can help change that in an organization?

Jennifer P 14:19

The first thing so that we can do is start to build that awareness of ourselves.

Reading Your Body’s Stress Signals

Jennifer P 14:25

And we're really gonna start by we're really gonna start by paying attention to the signals that our body is sending to us. So this is a really important piece because so much of what we do at work and what we learn and what we train really exists up in our heads, really on this intellectual kind of a level, right? And up until this work has become available to us, this was sort of what we had. And this is why so much training focuses on mindset, right? Well, it's just a conversation, right? Jess and Cloder are great managers. Why are you so nervous? Just take a breath, right? Take a breath, do some meditating, change your mindset. It's a conversation. It's, you know, we can collaborate, we have the same goal. Pick a pick a thing. This is what so much training has has really focused on is like setting that mindset. But if my heart is pounding and my palms are sweating, I can't do that. That it's it's impossible for me to change my mindset. So dysregulation is where we go. We go to a state of dysregulation when our nervous system feels uncomfortable, feels unsafe, starts in the body. And so it needs to be supported in the body first before we can do anything up in the intellectual part. So sometimes that could be as simple as saying, I'm starting to feel a little stressed with this conversation. Can we take a five-minute pause? Or I need to get a drink. Can we just break for 15 minutes? Or whatever we need. Our body is always going to send us the signals first so that we can start recognizing something is happening here that I need to attend to.

Claude F 15:55

For

Regulating During High-Stakes Moments

Claude F 15:56

me, presentation is a trigger because of trauma from earlier when I was stuck for two hours and being pounded nonstop from my manager, it's not how you see it, et cetera. So I know my trigger, it's presentation. But at this point, what can be done because you're in your trauma, it's time now to do a presentation. You don't have the ability to say, oh, let me get up. I'm going to take five minutes to drink. How do you, in those situations, how do you really like get away that trauma and move forward?

Jennifer P 16:32

There's small things that we can do in the moment and some strategies that we use for regulating in the moment when we can. There are some physical ones we can do. I mean, taking an intentional breaths actually puts some pressure on that nervous system that allows it to kind of calm a little bit. You might see some people do little taps on their collarbones, or we can also tap behind the ears. This sort of taps into right where our vagus nerve runs down. This is the main nerve of this nervous system that we're talking about. We can give ourselves big bear hug. Some of these things aren't always possible to do standing in the front of a room. We can tense up sort of muscles, tense up like one foot and then tense the other foot. And what we're really doing is we are bringing conscious awareness for our body that we are in this room now, we are safe in this place now, we are not back in the principal's office, our parents aren't waiting for us at home because they've gotten another phone call. We are, we are in the room right here and now. And these are sort of things that we can try to do in the moment. But when it comes to overcoming what that is, there's probably going to be some more digging around that you're going to have to do to figure, okay, where exactly is that coming from? Where does the trigger start? Because usually it's not right when you're standing at the front of the room. Definitely you're in full-on, probably heart pounding, flushed face, the whole bit by the time you're at the front of the room. But something may have started two weeks ago when you found out you had to stand at the front of the room, right? Just thinking about it may have given you butterflies in your stomach, maybe makes your hands feel a little bit cold, or practicing it out loud. You find that your voice is kind of trembling. So when we can start tuning into the early signals from our body, we can start trying to do some practices then to support our nervous system to make that easier moving forward. However, it is also going to take digging around, figuring out what is this pattern, perhaps setting really good boundaries in the days leading up to the presentation, um, so that you're feeling well rested, you're hydrated, you're wearing comfortable clothes, not just what looks great, all of these things that support our physical body.

Why Safety Drives Performance

Claude F 18:49

Jennifer, what's the simplest way to explain this to someone who hears the phrase and immediately thinks this sounds too soft for business?

Jennifer P 18:58

That's a question that we get a lot, right? So much training that we've done has really focused on strategies and scripts and roadmaps and processes and those sorts of things. And this really feels like what we might have called soft skills at one time. But what we understand now is that the nervous system really is the operating system that everything else that we do builds upon after that. It's not something that we can outrun any of us. We all have one, it all brings all of the stuff along with it and every interaction we have. We don't age out of it, we don't get promoted out of this stuff. It doesn't matter what our title is, what car we drive, none of that matters. This is this is our operating system. What we often ask to people is how is what you're doing now working for you? If we are in a situation where we brought in a lot of training, we've got issues that are not resolving, conflicts that continue to just go no matter how much, how is what you're doing working for you now? Because there is such a big focus, and the way our working world was built, such a big focus has always been put on managing productivity, right? And everything is in the service of managing productivity. But what we understand is that when our focus shifts to creating psychological safety, productivity comes out of that as a byproduct, a natural byproduct. Because when we feel safe to show up at work as who we are, we are able to contribute and to collaborate and to bring forward ideas and to bring up concerns when we don't have that fear that we're going to get reprimanded, shamed, mocked, that sort of a thing. So productivity actually becomes the byproduct of psychological safety in the workplace.

The Missing Base Beneath Training

Jess K 20:42

That tracks completely. So why is it then that so many workplaces are focusing on these training efforts? Because it feels like those might fail to create that lasting change.

Jennifer P 20:54

Yeah. And we say a lot that a lot of training programs that are out there, a lot of folks probably have really good skills. And we really think of this sort of as a three-tiered pyramid, if you can picture that with me. So in the middle and top tiers are really like our core skills, and this is where a lot of training lies. So this is communication, it's active listening, it's giving and receiving feedback, running meetings, all of the training that we typically get in workplaces. And then on our top tier, we've got our high-stakes skills. So this is going to be negotiation, conflict, maybe having conversations with folks about accommodations, return to work, that sort of thing. But there's this whole layer underneath both of those. And that is where all of this nervous system operating sort of lives. And if we don't have a really good understanding of this, nothing else on top of it is going to have a steady base to be resting on. And so we often say to folks, you know, your workplace, you probably don't need to burn everything to the ground, right? Some organizations maybe want to think about that and starting over. But you probably don't need to. You've got great skills, you've got people with great training, but these skills are actually. Going to be able to be effective when we understand that piece underneath, both for the folks that we're working with, but also for ourselves, right? Because I think a lot of times as leaders, we get caught up in thinking, okay, what tools do I need to support this person, to help them grow, to help them perform better. But we're basically starting this work with ourselves and then it ripples out from there.

Seeing Workplace Behavior With New Eyes

Claude F 22:22

How you say that we see ourselves, how does the nervous system awareness help us understand behavior at work differently?

Jennifer P 22:31

What happens is when we get triggered, and triggered is not a bad word. It simply means something has happened that's going to send us into a different place. What happens is our fingers pop up, boom, and we are now operating, we lose access to all of that stuff that happens in our prefrontal cortex. And we have language for this, right? We will say, wow, they flew off the handle, they flipped their lid, they popped off. This language, we know what those things mean when we say them. And so when we are operating from a place with a flipped lid, we are now operating out of memory, past experiences, right? And the patterns that we use to survive and navigate those and from emotion. So this is where we're gonna start seeing emotions in the workplace. We're gonna see behaviors manifesting out of this that might look like micromanaging, gossiping, bullying, passive aggressiveness, checking out, taking constant breaks, people pleasing, overcommitting to work, not getting things done. When we are able to do this work and show up and ourselves and support other people in coming to work with our whole brains put together, this is where all of that training stuff lives. This is where the roadmaps live and the acronyms and the processes and the scripts and the checklists and all of these things that we learn how to run a good meeting, how to have a good feedback conversation, how to do coaching with a with a team member. All of that

Retiring Labels Like “Drama Queen”

Jennifer P 24:03

lives in here.

Jess K 24:03

Jennifer, can you give us a few more real examples of behaviorals, people maybe that we're judging harshly at work that truly are just those elements of not being able to think because they are in that state?

Jennifer P 24:19

Yeah. So I will say that I'm gonna bring it up with the idea that any label we might have on someone, if we start thinking of the labels we have for people at work, these might be good places to start thinking about this in a new way. So we talk about people who are like drama queens, attention seekers, the martyrs, the know-it-alls, all these sorts of labels that we might look at and call difficult, right? And I use that with air quotes at difficult people. Are they actually difficult? Or could there be some kind of behavior manifesting out of some sort of a state here? So when we start looking at these examples and for these examples, the the mindset shift that we want to make is to move from thinking, what's wrong with this person or what's wrong with me to what is happening with this person or what's happening with me right now. So when we look at, say, the drama queen, we hear that all the time. Are they actually a drama queen? Or could they be demonstrating like overwhelm, anxiety? They're really reactive, dramatic as a way to escape or avoid a certain situation. We think of the attention seeker, someone who's showing up with, you know, excessively self-promoting, exaggerated behaviors. Perhaps what's happening, maybe they're doing this to gain validation or reassurance or a sense of safety, right? Within this professional setting, within this team, the know-it-all. They might be showing these really assertive, dominant, or even dismissive type behaviors to protect their ego, avoid feeling vulnerable or to avoid feeling incompetent. Right. So when we start thinking of some of the labels that we have and the assumptions that we have about people and start looking at this in a new way, that through this lens of what might be happening for this person, it really starts to shift things. And that really starts with us. Because again, we do this for ourselves and it ultimately ripples out into how we see everybody else. And I do want to say with that as well, one more thing that learning all of this stuff doesn't mean that we start giving people permission slips to behave badly and to create harm. Because that is a question that we often get. Well, so if everyone has some sort of trauma, does that like, what do I do with that if I don't want to re-trigger someone? It doesn't mean that as grownups, we are all responsible for our own behavior. So this doesn't mean it's a permission slip, but it helps us to approach someone with a bit more curiosity without perhaps taking it as personally and saying, okay, well, obviously President Claude hate me because this is how our meetings always go. Well, maybe they don't hate me. Maybe it's something different, something else is happening here. And so this is why we put the really big focus on how we are showing up in the interaction. Because if I can be as predictably steady as possible and have compassion and have grace and have understanding and have empathy, it then is going to invite that other person's nervous system, hopefully, to think, well, I don't need, I don't need to start escalating this interaction because Jen's not going to get angry with me. She's not going to yell, fire me, report me, write me up, whatever it might be. So this is why we start doing our own work. I would, I would challenge you to take a look at labels that we have on people in our lives, workplaces or otherwise. And so I feel like Yeah, looking through that lens of what might be happening. And I will promise you, the world becomes a much calmer place when we can find that lens because we stop being able, we stop taking so many things personally.

Jess K 27:58

It reminds you that we're all bigger than this one thing. And really what's happening with them is it's not that the people are the problem. It's just something else is going on. That's really powerful. That really sets a different perspective and point of view, not just to your point, in the business environment, but personal environments too. Literally everything.

Jennifer P 28:18

But this is the reason that trust and connection are so foundational and important. Yeah. Things are gonna go a lot differently.

Small Trust Signals That Matter

Jess K 28:28

Jennifer, you do you mind like me stating what some of those small signals are that tell a nervous system you're okay here?

Jennifer P 28:36

Absolutely. So predictability and follow through, huge, right? We already talked about the patterns in the brain. So if we can start getting patterns that Jen's always gonna show up in this certain way, that's gonna be a really big one. Small, small things that we can do, quote unquote small, because we say the small things really are the everything when it comes to building that sense of safety and trust. Using the pronouns that people prefer to use, learning how to pronounce someone's name properly and pronouncing it properly, thanking someone when they raise something difficult, right? If someone brings forth a piece of feedback or maybe a critique or a concern they have, thanking them for bringing that up. So they know I'm not being shamed, I'm not being judged for this. Offering choice, respecting boundaries. So it's not always we can't offer choice about everything all the time, but could we say, would you rather chat Tuesday morning at 10 or would Wednesday work better for you? Even small areas where we can offer choice to people, that goes a really long way. Acknowledging when we cause harm, because we're all gonna get dysregulated. If anyone figures out how to stay regulated all the time, please call me. We will make trillions. It doesn't happen. We're human, right? We miss the signals from our own body sometimes. And so we might be snappy with someone. We might say something that doesn't land the way that we had intended for it to land. So acknowledging that that happened, but then the second piece of that, just acknowledging it is not enough and apologizing for it, it's then taking steps to avoid repeating it. So if I said something really snappy, if I was hangry, we have this word. We know what hangry means, right? I'm so hungry that I'm angry.

The Best Work Bestie Response

Claude F 30:17

So obviously we are work besties, right? So let's try to relate to work besties. Like if someone is realizing that I'm more activated at work than I thought, what would be a simple work bestie conversation that they could have?

Jennifer P 30:35

So I would say the best conversation we can have with someone, and we we talk a lot about this idea of just witnessing other people, holding space for other people, because we're not trying to fix the magic words that have yet to steer me wrong when someone is saying, This is how I feel, this is what's going on at work in my life, whatever it is, is to say, that sounds really hard. And it sounds so simple, and we say it tongue in cheek. It's that simple, but it's also that hard because we were not typically brought up to feel comfortable with other people's big emotions. And so a lot of times we are going to reach for platitudes, right? We're gonna say, be the bigger person. We're gonna say things like, um, you know, everything happens for a reason, or you'll figure it out, or trust the process, or whatever. Yeah, or even try to fix it. Or try to fix it because we feel, and I there's an expression that I use for those types of things. I call them verbal Kleenex because when someone's upset and we're our instinct is to hand them a Kleenex, right? We've been taught that that's supportive, but the signal that it actually gives is dry your eyes, don't let the tears fall, pull it together. And we don't intend for it to be that, but that is often how it lands. And so I learned this back in a group therapy I was in like 20 years ago. It was there was a box of Kleenex on the floor. And the rule was you never hand someone the Kleenex. They know where it is, they can reach for it if they need it. And I started calling these sorts of things, these platitudes, verbal Kleenex because we say them. And if we really feel into ourselves, before we say those words, we're often going to find discomfort in ourselves because we're not used to being with other people's big emotions. It doesn't feel comfortable. So we want to say something to smooth it out to help them feel better. It's it's it's so easy to just say, that sounds really hard, but it's also really hard. A few other things that that I say might be, you know, that's that sounds like a lot you're carrying. I've said a bunch of times to to friends, that's a whole lot of life coming at you right now. And these are the types of expressions that can indicate to someone else they don't want to fix me, they don't want me to be quiet, they're just here. I'm not alone in this. And it doesn't mean I'm gonna jump in and fix and, you know, come into their work and talk to their boss for them. It just means I'm here and I hear you and I see you. And that sounds really hard.

Jess K 32:58

Jennifer, from your perspective,

Venting Versus Telling The Truth

Jess K 33:00

what is the difference between someone who's just venting versus actually telling a truth?

Jennifer P 33:06

Venting often happens when we are in that state of dysregulation. Our lid is flipped and we just need to kind of get it out. And oftentimes, when we get it out, it might be verbally, it might be crying, some people go for a run, whatever it is, because again, dysregulation starts in the body. So even venting something out is a physical way of releasing some of this discomfort feeling. Oftentimes I will say, and my my friends and I, we are all pretty good at this, I might get a text from a friend saying, Do you have 10 minutes I just need to vent? And it's like, cool, she's not looking for solutions, just looking to get it out. And an expression I heard not that long ago that I just absolutely loved when we talk about um just being a witness, being a witness to what someone is going through, is this idea that sometimes we can be so still ourselves that we become a mirror for the other person. And so sometimes just venting it out and getting the, oh, my boss never listens to me. I can't stand it, they don't trust me. All my ideas get interrupted. Or once that is out, that discharge has happened, it can be like, okay, well, maybe they don't always disregard what I say. And I guess I did show up hangry to the meeting, so I can see why it went this way. There are healthy ways to be able to vent, and it's not at the person in the moment. Perhaps it is to a really good friend. Perhaps it's someone we work with coming in and saying, Can I vent to you for five minutes about this meeting I was just in? And again, when we can look at it from this idea of like what's happening instead of what's wrong with you, you now coming into my office and saying, Oh my God, these meetings are always terrible. I hate them, I hate this project, I hate everything, I'm gonna quit my job. I'm gonna think, okay, she's dysregulated right now. Something's happening here. Clearly, you're not gonna quit your job, you're not gonna do all of that stuff. I can come in with that sense and say, that sounds really hard. And you'd be like, Yeah, these meetings are rough. Say, yeah, that sounds like it. And that is often in support.

Claude F 35:06

So, in a way, healthy venting will help you to regulate back. To regulate

Resources And Summer Camp Invite

Claude F 35:14

yourself.

Jess K 35:14

So, if someone listening today wants to create more truth and safety in their workplace, where do they start?

Jennifer P 35:22

There are some great books that we recommend whenever we do trainings. Those ones are What Happened to You by Dr. Bruce Perry and Oprah, actually. When the Body Says No is another fascinating read by Dr. Gabor Mate. And that one really talks about the connection between stress and disease in the body, repressing emotions, not processing things in a way that's healthy and what that can lead to physically. We certainly have resources on our website. We have our blog, we have online courses where we uh self-directed online courses where we talk about a lot of this stuff. And uh you can learn more about this in depth. And this summer, starting July 8th, we are actually running an eight-week program. We call it Summer Camp, and it's eight different training sessions. This is all based on our in-person work that we do online once a week for 90 minutes, all different topics. Uh, we will have other ones on giving feedback, setting boundaries, collaborative communication, and a bunch of other topics as well.

Claude F 36:19

If you know, some of our listener listeners are interested in what do they need to do?

Jennifer P 36:24

So you're gonna visit us at www.theexperttalk.com to ease two tees slash summer camp. And you'll be able to find information on all the different sessions there. You can register right there. If you want to register a larger group from your team or your organization, you can certainly reach out to me through the website and uh we can get that set up for you as well.

Closing Takeaways And Share Prompt

Jess K 36:46

Thank you, Jennifer. This this conversation really reminds me that truth telling at work isn't just about being brave enough to speak up. It's also about having that environment that really makes honesty and safety possible. So if this resonated with you, work besties, just as much as it has with us, please share it amongst our community, specifically to your work bestie, and make sure you guys are communicating and talking. Use each other to understand when you're flipping your lid or not. Because first place we tend to truth is really with someone that we trust. Right. That makes you feel safe. Bridge your work bestie. Bridge Jennifer and her website for this. Thank you again, Jennifer. Thank you. And to all the work besties out there, supporting each other. Thanks so much. Remember, whether you're swapping snacks in the break room, rescuing each other from endless meetings, or just sending that perfectly timed meme. Having a work bestie is like having your own personal hype squad.

Claude F 37:44

So keep lifting each other up, laughing through the chaos, and of course, thriving. Until next time, stay positive, stay productive, and don't forget to keep supporting each other. Work bestie!