Reclaim Your Power Through Healing At Work

Susan Schmitt Winchester, a C-Suite HR leader and the author of Healing at Work, believes one of the best places to unlearn and recover from the harmful effects of difficult experiences from our past is the workplace. Susan acknowledges that this is the last place many of us think of when it comes to working on our psychological stuff, but she points out that unlike our families, there’s choice on both sides when it comes to work: we choose our place of employment, and our employer chooses us. And let’s face it, as most of us spend the majority of our waking hours at work, our unresolved issues and old wounds are bound to show up there. All of our old triggers from the past, Susan said, “may be sneaking into our workplaces every day and causing havoc.”?Listen to our interview.

Susan calls this “living the unconscious, wounded career path.” Often, people assume they don’t have issues from the past to deal with because they don’t have a history of trauma or ACEs -- adverse childhood experiences. But, she notes, most of us are wounded in some way—which is to say we’ve all experienced dysfunction in our early lives. For example, people who lived with an overly critical parent, Susan said, or a parent who was overbearing or unpredictable, experience some of the same limiting beliefs and adverse effects as those with a history of trauma.?

In search of a term broad enough to encompass this group of adults, Susan and her collaborator Martha Finney came up with adult survivors of a damaged past, or ASDPs. In the term itself, though, are important clues to how we can heal—and even find hard-won advantages from our old wounds.?

As adults, Susan says, our choices are no longer dictated by parents or other caretakers, and on a deeper, psychological level, we no longer have to be reacting to the impact of past adversities. “We don’t have to be prisoners to the past,” she said. “‘Survivor’ is, I think, a hopeful word of resilience that whatever dysfunctional dynamic you experienced when you were younger is also a great gift in teaching the ability to manage difficult situations.” The opportunity for ASDPs, she said, is to realize that we don’t have to live with whatever heavy burden our past experiences left us. “Damaged,” Susan is fond of saying, “isn’t doomed.”?

If the first step is to recognize that gaining new insight and understanding of our past will make us happier in the present, the second is to realize that we have the power and the agency to do so. But then, how do we actually engage in the work of healing at our workplace? One of the most effective ways to heal and to become a more effective leader is to pay attention to what triggers us at work. “What I’ve noticed about myself and others,” Susan says, “is that when someone has a reaction to something that’s occurred in the workplace, and it seems to be a much stronger reaction than the facts of the situation would suggest...that’s a clue that the person may be having a response that is fueled from something that happened in their past.”?

When you find yourself reacting in such a way, Susan advises asking yourself, “Am I sure?” For example: Am I sure my boss is angry with me? Am I sure my colleague’s silence means they disapprove of my work? Am I sure I need to recheck my work ten more times? Answering this question often reveals that our triggered reactions are out of proportion to the event—a sign that old hurts and unresolved issues are influencing our present behavior.?

Susan’s Rapid Power Reclaim Method?

Susan Schmitt Winchester developed a three-step strategy she calls the “rapid power reclaim method” for times when you're feeling extremely anxious and overwhelmed at work. We’ll use a classic tough moment—receiving negative feedback—as an example. Here’s how to keep yourself from “spiraling down on that unconscious wounded career path,” as Susan said, and stop yourself from overreacting.?

I love Susan’s tool to get out of an anxious moment - let me know what you think!

Morra