Beatha Coaching

In this post I am going to explore workplace trauma, and the effect that not having our stories heard can have. Trauma is a common word these days, in part due to the efforts of online psychoeducators to destigmatise normal mental health challenges from public and private shame. But the overuse of trauma as a term can devalue and confuse it, so let’s start with a definition. In this blog trauma will be used to mean the longer term (rather than immediate) effects on our minds and bodies of undergoing experiences that we interpret as traumatic. It is a set of stored responses that happen reflexively when we are triggered in a way that reminds the brain of the original experience/s. Trauma is an adaptive, protective response that itself creates further discomfort and dis-ease. Whilst a stress response and a trauma response may manifest in similar ways (a racing heart, sweating, feeling sick, hot flushes, a surge of emotion, the urge to fight or flee, dissociation and confusion), the cause of a stress response will be easy to identify and clear in the moment, whereas trauma can (re)emerge at unpredictable times and it may need some work to identify the trigger and what past experience has been accessed by the brain.

As this definition demonstrates, trauma is a highly complex topic and I want to be very careful to avoid over-simplifying it here. The danger in using ‘trauma’ as part of our common lexicon is that we now attach it to any stress or discomfort, inadvertently devaluing the deeply distressing experiences of those living with c-ptsd and other trauma-related conditions. At the same time, greater awareness of trauma is important if we are to see real transformation in social systems and workplace practices that are inherently traumatising. I have written in a previous post about the ways in which Higher Education can be traumatic to work in, and these embedded inequalities are reflective of wider systems that allow their proliferation and acceptance. Labelling practices like casualised labour, non-transparent hiring, and the implications of assessment models like REF and TEF as potentially traumatising is important. Within this discussion, though, there is also the more often overlooked issue of individual response and resource. The ways in which different people are impacted by the same inequalities will vary enormously, and another risk in over-using therapy speak in a casual way is that we preach generalities and lose the most valuable tool we have for preventing or limiting workplace trauma, the human-to-human interface of recognising and empathising with other people’s stories

As an historian, I have been conscious since I was a student of the ways in which stories deemed unimportant or inconvenient for the grand narratives of the past can become lost or be overlooked. When we talk about ‘slavery’ we continue to practice the inherent racism of enslavement by grouping all enslaved individuals into a single, conceptual mass. When we explore the major crises of the modern age we pick individuals that stand out because of their exemplary or tragic contributions (Oppenheimer, anyone…) and focus on them to the exclusion of the mundane and everyday. In my own research, I have looked at the ways in which representation of marginalised groups in memorial spaces sees them reduced to passive, voiceless ‘victims’ that serve the narratives of the majority. Too often we go looking for the symbolic figures that will reinforce our arguments and ways of seeing the world, rejecting or selectively misinterpreting those lives we come across that make us uncomfortable. Or we flatten distinctives and create generalised ideas out of real people whose lives and characters were never less than complicated.

Ueno Chizuko calls this process of silencing or speaking for others, ‘a second violence’. I think Ueno’s words are a highly effective way of conceptualising trauma itself – it is above all the relational aspect of an experience that influences the extent to which someone has to endure long-lasting symptoms of distress and dysregulation. As I highlighted in my previous post, the limbic system, our emotional core, forms before our rational, executive functions in the PFC, and remains foundational to how we see and respond to the world. When our sense of relational or social safety is disturbed, we tend to respond reflexively utilising a range of protective responses learned early in life. The same is true of trauma: what deeply embeds trauma in our nervous system is the feeling of being alone, abused, or misunderstood by others at a time when we most need safe, attuned attachment. As infants we need to know that our caregivers will respond if we are wet, cold, or hungry; as adults we similarly need to know that we are secure in our primary social relationships in order to feel safe and to be resilient in the face of challenges. If we experience traumatising incidents and receive love, support, and acceptance, our long-term struggles are likely to be less than if our pain is compounded by rejection, fear, or absence of support.

Toxic workplace culture is a problem in itself, but it becomes traumatising when accompanied by a lack of support and recognition, or by a culture of denial. This denial includes those well meaning but generalised discourses that flatten experience and reduce space for individual voices. It is the absence of care and concern at a human level, of empathy beyond paying lip-service to the commonly recognised failings of our dominant culture, that really generates trauma. When senior, tenured academics stand on a picket line to campaign for better pay and conditions, but continue to openly describe teaching-focused positions as second rate; when they talk about casualisation, but don’t know the names and research specialisms of temporary colleagues; when they see workloading that adversely effects the research time of junior colleagues who are female, poc, or from non-elite educational backgrounds, and recommend using evenings and weekends to write – these are all acts of a ‘second violence’ that turns a system impacting everyone into a trauma specifically affecting more vulnerable individuals.

Trauma occurs when we feel profoundly alone and frightened in the world, when our brain identifies risk to our wellbeing without support and protection. It is then that we develop the adaptive protective responses recognisable in trauma sufferers that are designed to keep us safe in the absence of social security. Fawning, a nervous system state in which we adapt our self-presentation to ‘please and appease’ those around us, is a common variant of a social trauma response. If you have ever caught yourself changing the way you speak, censoring the opinions you share, or not holding personal boundaries, you could be using a fawn response to adapt to your social environment. In academia this can look like practicing overwork and presenteeism, being performatively hypercritical, and feeling highly socially anxious around colleagues. If you recognise this, you might like to ask yourself how safe you feel in the social environment of academia. Are you known, supported, and valued for your contribution; or do you regularly experience the second violence of having your challenges in the sector invalidated, overlooked, or paid lip-service without genuine support put in place?

If you would like support and to find a community in academia as a resource against the isolating effects of systemic denial, I have a range of options for community connection and input:

Autumn Coaching Programme starts Monday 25th September & runs to early January with weekly writing space, monthly group sessions, and four 1-2-1 coaching calls

Fawn and People Pleasing Workshop on Monday 12th September, 7.30-9pm BST

Join the membership and be part of a monthly community coaching call

Or reach out to me directly and let’s explore whether 1-2-1 coaching could be a good fit for you: