Season 3 Episode 5: Trauma-Informed Collaboration & Workplace Liberation
Lucia Die Gil, Heather Archer, Melinda Varfi, and Angie Luo discuss how trauma impacts our ability to bring our whole selves to work and what business leaders can do to reduce harm and retraumatization in the workplace.
How do the systems we’ve built around productivity harm and retraumatize us? What is trauma-informed collaboration and what does inner and collective healing have to do with workplace liberation?
Lucia Die Gil and Melinda Varfi are part of Greaterthan, a community for practitioners, coaches, network weavers, product builders, experimenters, space holders, and alchemists that has been exploring decentralized organizing for a decade and supports others on their journey, from developing open source tools and products, to conducting research and running experiments. Lucia and Melinda facilitate a 10-week course called Trauma Informed Collaboration: Foundations that interlaces recent scientific research on trauma with embodied practices and collective intelligence/wisdom, to give participants awareness to recognize trauma responses in others and in oneself; and how to apply it to work situations.
Heather Archer is a certified wellness coach with specialties in sound healing, reiki, yoga, and hypnotherapy. Author of the Grind Culture Detox and founder of Thriving with Heather, she creates transformational learning experiences for liberation and thriving at work.
In this episode, Lucia and Melinda define trauma and how it shows up in the workplace. Toward the end, we are joined by Heather, our surprise guest!
Topics covered during the episode include:
Lucia and Melinda’s journeys from Catholicism to the ways of life that created wholeness and connection with Spirit
Greaterthan and their approach to trauma in the workplace
Our “aha!” moments in the workplace realizing our own trauma triggers
A practice of Orientation and Resourcing from Somatic Experiencing to reduce harm and retraumatization in the workplace
Heather’s sabbatical to reimagine what work-life liberation looks like
A definition of Grind Culture as an addiction to productivity
How jobs that are callings make it easier to get caught up in Grind Culture
Why leaders need to model healing and undoing the trauma of overworking
A glimpse into the connection between trauma, perfectionism, and overwork
Generative boundaries at the individual and collective levels that address our codependent tendencies
Scheduling micro-breaks
Lucia, Melinda, and Heather’s vision for the world (a world I 100% want to live in!)
To learn more and connect with Lucia, Melinda, and Heather, check out:
Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and let us know your thoughts on Twitter!
