Healing at Work by Overcoming Adversity: Transform Workplace Conflict into Personal Triumph

✨ Overcoming Adversity: Transforming Workplace Conflict into Personal Triumph with Susan Schmidt Winchester ✨

🙏 Special thanks to our sponsors Lifeguides & GoHappyHub. Your commitment enables us to illuminate the path to mental wellness in the professional realm.

Highlights: 📍
🧠 Embracing Neuroplasticity: Susan sheds light on how childhood experiences shape professional reactions and how we can rewire our brains for positive change.
💼 The Healing Workplace: Discover Susan's innovative approach to using workplace challenges as opportunities for personal development and self-care.
🔑 Key to Resilience: Learn about Susan's "Rapid Power Reclaim" method—three pivotal steps to reclaiming control during emotionally triggering work situations.

Join us as we dive deep with Susan Schmitt Winchester, an HR visionary at Applied Materials and its 24,000+ global employees. Susan bravely opens up about her journey from childhood trauma to HR leadership, offering potent insights on healing past damages through career conflicts. With Martha Finney she wrote  “Healing at Work: A Guide to Using Career Conflicts to Overcome Your Past and Build the Future You Deserve.”

Susan's revelations remind us that our professional lives aren't just about advancement, but also about healing and growth. Her conviction in the workplace as a lab for personal development is a powerful reminder that our career experiences can serve as a conduit for profound self-improvement.

➡️ If you're navigating the complexities of past adversities or looking to harness the transformative power of your career, this episode is your slice of hope.  Join the pursuit of emotional strength and professional empowerment.

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Transcript

Welcome to the Anxiety at Work podcast. I'm Chester Elton and this is my co-author and dear friend, Adrian Gostin. We hope that the time you'll spend with us will help remove the stigma of anxiety and mental health in the workplace and your personal life. We invite experts from the world of work and life to give us ideas and most importantly tools to deal with anxiety and I love and it's all made possible by our wonderful sponsor Lifeguides. Lifeguides is a peer-to-peer community that helps people navigate through their day-to-day stressors by providing a place of empathy, listening, wisdom, and support with a guide who has walked in your shoes, experiencing the same challenges and life experiences as you. Go to lifeguides.com forward slash schedule a demo and add the code healthy2021 in the free text box and you get two months of free service. A great deal. Gotta love that. We also want to thank our sponsor Go Happy Hub, the most inclusive and timely way to communicate and engage directly with your frontline employees and your candidates with 95% plus open rates. With GoHappyHub, you can send text messages directly from corporate and you enable permissions for your frontline leaders to communicate with their team, sending notes of gratitude, logistical updates, referral opportunities, LTOs, new hire introductions, learning content, celebrations and more. Easily you can get the right message, the right people with simple segmentation by location, job type, language, etc. and you get feedback from the field in a structured, digestible and actionable way. That's GoHappy Hub. And we love our sponsors. Of course, not as much as we love our guest for today. Our guest today is our dear friend Susan Schmidt Winchester, who leads human resources for applied materials with its more than 24,000 global employees. She has more than 30 years of experience in HR, providing executive leadership for the function most recently at Rockwell Automation. With Martha Finney, she wrote the new book, Healing at Work, a guide to using career conflicts to overcome your past and build the future you deserve. Welcome to our Humble Podcast. We are delighted to have you here today. Well, thank you, Tester and Adrian. It is a delight to be here. Thank you so much. Susan, we're big fans of your book along with Martha that you wrote. As you can see, I'm holding up in front of you, it's dog-eared, it's kind of beaten up a little bit, but that's how books should be. You know, I love that, you know, we still have the, you know, physical books that we can hold. And really, you use a term in this book that we hadn't seen before, and I think you coined this. The acronym is ASDP. Tell us a little bit about this and why this term is so important for all of us. Well, thank you so much. And it is a term that Martha and I coined. And when we started to do the research around those of us that grew up in dysfunctional homes, or had some kind of a dysfunctional childhood, there wasn't really a term to capture the nature of that past on us, particularly as we think about ourselves in the workplace. So of course, there's the adult children of alcoholics, but what we're talking about here is a much broader set of dynamics that can be happening. And so when we think about ASDP, first of all, the adult, adult survivor. So adult just basically means we're no longer children. Obviously we're now grownups, but that we may still carry some physical, emotional, psychological memories from the past that can sometimes affect us in our careers. But it's just a reminder that we are indeed adults and we have an opportunity to choose how we show up. The word survivor, I think it's a very inspiring word. It simply means that if you had some negative thing happen to you in the past, whatever that was, you are a survivor. You are resilient. You have overcome difficult and challenging things. Often, you're an incredibly, you know, hyper vigilant, overachiever in our professional settings and it's intended to be an empowering word, which is really recognizing that it's worth celebrating the fact that we are survivors of some difficult situations. The word damage, the D in the ASDP, really acknowledges that there was something that happened that wasn't necessarily positive. And this doesn't necessarily have to be some of the adverse childhood experiences, the ACEs, which are very severe, physical, sexual, emotional abuse, neglect, violence in the home, et cetera, this could be as simple as having an overbearing or critical parent that led us to believe certain things about ourselves that weren't always helpful. I didn't really like the word damaged at first because I didn't want people to think that they were damaged. That's not what this is about. It's more a recognition that it was a dysfunctional past and we have some opportunities to learn about that. And then finally the P which is the word past just recognizes that there may have been painful and upsetting events that happened to you or certainly to me and others as well, about two-thirds of us in fact, that are still affecting us in how we show up and in many cases affecting us quite unconsciously in our careers, which is exactly what Martha and I talked about. So the other thing to note about ASCPs is that we all show up differently. Some of us show up as, you know, crazy overachievers doing everything we can to constantly perform. Others actually are much less. Sometimes people become invisible in their workplaces. Sometimes some people become bullies. There are a lot of different ways ASDP show up in the workplace, but that is the term, and yes, we coined it. Really interesting as you talk about that, because there is so much talk about PTSD, right, from soldiers and so on, and yet there are a lot of experiences that we have as children that we do carry into our adult lives. You know, you, in the book, you get very vulnerable. And it was really interesting the way you told your story. You see, you've been recovering from deep-seated emotional wounds for a long time. So as much as you feel comfortable, can you tell us a little bit about that journey and how you got to where you are today and why you chose to write about it in the book and share it with other people. Sure, no, thank you so much for asking. You know, if you were to look at my resume, you would say that's a pretty impressive resume. I've had the good fortune of being the chief HR officer now for two Fortune 500 companies and just have had amazing career experiences. But what most people don't know about me and that I never shared before writing the book is that my success was fueled by my underlying belief that I wasn't good enough. And so it was a constant drive to prove myself to the point of living a life that while there were certainly wonderful achievements came with a significant dysfunctional cost, a number I mean, the list is endless, I hate to admit it. Workaholism. Going home after the end of the day and beating myself up because I felt like what I'd done wasn't right or I should have done something differently, I should have said something differently, I shouldn't have said something. And so it was this constant distraction of essentially giving away the responsibility to everybody else to determine my worth through my work. And I unconsciously believed that my job was to please them and that it was their job to determine my validation as a person. And again, this was totally unconscious. I was completely unaware of where that was originating and how much my past experience growing up in a household, which by the way, I never would have described as dysfunctional. I never would have described it as traumatic. Those words did not resonate for me at all. But in doing this work with Martha, it became very clear that I did grow up in a situation where I had a dad, and by the way, this isn't about blaming parents. I'm not about that at all. This is about understanding the impact of our parents and how that affects us today and how we can live more productive and more joyful lives in our careers. My dad was a very amazing man. He was smart, he was worldly, he was incredibly intelligent. And he also had his own deep-seated issues around anger and rage. And so as a little girl growing up in the home, it often felt like walking on eggshells, never really knowing for sure when my dad's anger was going to explode. And it was always unpredictable. The smallest things would set him off. And so what that did was to cause me to be hyper-vigilant about managing my environment to try to create a sense of safety. For me, what that showed up as was people-pleasing and perfectionism. If I could just be the perfect student, if I could get the best possible grades, maybe my dad wouldn't yell. When he yelled, it was very scary. He was a big man and he would come charging at me and his face would get all red and it was very intense and very frightening. And so that whole experience of living in that environment led me to walk away from my childhood with these deep unconscious beliefs that I had about myself that I was not smart, that I wasn't good enough. All these things that I believed about myself. I don't think my dad ever intended to send those messages, but those were the messages I took. So I have to say that for 30 years of my almost 34 year career, I was living what I call the unconscious, wounded career path, where I was showing up every day, I would get triggered, I would have an emotional trigger to something that would happen at work. And I'm talking about, you know, what are my triggers? My triggers are being judged, being criticized, feeling like I'm getting in trouble or going to get in trouble, feeling like I've let somebody down. You know, there's a whole host of triggers that I've now become conscious about. Those triggers would happen at work. I would have a physiological response of fight, flight, or freeze. Mine was always freeze. And then I would kick right into my people-pleasing perfectionistic behaviors. And as I mentioned before, the reason why I felt so compelled, I felt almost this duty to write the book in partnership with Martha, who by the way is fabulous. The book would not be what it is without Martha. I became aware on this journey, and I'd done a lot of self-development, a lot of different things, but it became really clear to me that I was reacting in the workplace to a set of outdated scripts. And I started, because I have the privilege of working with so many leaders and executives in my companies, I started watching other people in the workplace. I started watching how they responded to challenging moments, conflict in the workplace. And anytime someone was having an overreaction, I started thinking about my own overreactions. And I started wondering if those overreactions were actually these outdated, sort of the childhood past hitchhiking along on my shoulders to work every day, affecting how I was showing up and how I was feeling. And in doing some really deep work about why do I feel like I need to write this book, it became very clear that this is about teaching people that there's a different path. There's a path that I call the conscious healing career path, and we have a choice about which career path we want to live on. I believe that we can have as many wonderful achievements and accomplishments in our careers without the heavy burden of beating ourselves up and being in reactive mode unconsciously to other people and different things that happen to us. And that if we can step onto that conscious healing career path, we can have a completely different set of experiences. We can have in-the-moment interpretations of what's happening versus outdated interpretations. As a result, we make healthier choices and decisions. We are less emotional in how we're reacting to other people. We develop better relationship with ourselves. Actually, the journey takes us into a deeper discovery of self-acceptance. We have better, less strained relationships with people at work. We have the ability to set boundaries around work-life balance. Honestly, and I always get choked up when I talk about this, when I was in that unconscious place, and I was so focused on trying to get validated through other people at work, particularly men in authority, I was in a place where I was unemotionally available for my kids when they were growing up. And I regret it. I can't get those years back. And so the impact of the unconscious wounded path is significant in terms of how we show up in relationship to the people we most love outside of work. And so that I felt compelled to bring forward to be totally open and vulnerable about my own story in an intent and desire to create a better world through teaching people self-acceptance, that they don't have to look to validation from bosses and people at the workplace, so that we can be much more present and in the lives of the people we most love. Actually, ultimately, my secret hidden agenda is we can actually improve the cultures of our companies too. So that was a long dissertation, but a really important question, Chester, that you asked. You know, it's so interesting, as you were talking, I was thinking, gee, I want to follow up with Susan. How did that impact your personal life? And then you shared that so beautifully. It is really interesting, isn't it, we get so caught up in one aspect of our lives that we can often forget about those people that are most important to us. Well, and Chester, if I could, I'm sorry to interrupt, but there's one other significant negative personal impact that happens to a lot of people like me, and that is we use unhealthy habits to self-soothe. So for me, it was alcohol. It was Chardonnay. That's what took the edge off for me. For other people, it's shopping, it's gambling, it's eating, it's all these other things. And it's a way of trying to make ourselves feel better when we feel like we aren't being accepted. That there's huge cost to people's lives as a result of those unhealthy habits. Well, thank you. Just thank you so much for being so vulnerable in your book and being so vulnerable with us now. I think my unhealthy habit was chocolate, so it was a little less damaging, just a little more weight around the middle. But thank you so much, Susan. It's just a delight when we have people that can share and be so vulnerable with us. Adrian? Yeah, and I love that you're talking too about coping mechanisms, because that is something especially when we're young, you know when everything you're describing to you You know as we many of us have kids and they just don't have the coping mechanisms To be able to deal with things when they're young and and as you say then they start coping through alcohol drugs Looking for love or whatever it is that that finds a way So this is why just everything you're talking about is so important not only for ourselves, but for those that we're bringing into this world as well. Really powerful. Thank you. Yeah, the alcohol was my anxiety buffer. And I'm happy to say that God intervened 17 years ago, and I've been sober since. But completely agree. There's a lot of negative things that come from living this unconscious career path. So in the book, you get into, you know, a couple of terms that I really liked, where damaged is not doomed. That's really setting up the story of, look at ourselves, realize we are strong, we can get through this. But then I love the term, the rest of your life is yours. So give us some, I mean, you gave us already some great ideas about creating some boundaries and others. Give us some real specific things that you have learned, that you put into the book that we can take away if we are feeling anxious or our people are feeling anxious? Well, I think the first thing is to recognize, I mean, the concept of damage is not doomed and the rest of your life is yours is actually based on the science of neuroplasticity. And the fact of the matter is that this research shows that we can actually reshape, rewire the neural pathways in our brain to have different responses and different reactions. And so I think there, I know I felt like I was stuck on a hamster wheel that, you know, this is never gonna change. I had some pretty deep neural pathways from my past and then 30 years of reinforcing them in my career. But the neuroplasticity research shows that actually by taking different positive actions, we can rewire how our brains work. And so it's a combination of neuroplasticity and the study of positive psychology. And so the way that we teach this in the book, and there's so much more to teach in terms of application of these concepts, is that we can use the workplace as a laboratory for healing. I know this is a totally different way of thinking about the workplace. Typically we think about the workplace as a place of a lot of stress and anxiety. But what Martha and I have done is we flipped that whole idea on its head by saying, you can rewire your brain by practicing, first of all, becoming aware, becoming conscious, making an intentional choice to step off the unconscious, wounded career path onto the conscious healing career path, which is just becoming aware and conscious. So many of these reactions happening at work are completely driven by unconscious reactions. So that's the first step. I have a visual, I haven't put it in the book yet, but I've got to figure out a way to get it out to the world. A visual that shows that you can either kind of come from a life where you have bumper car moments, these are conflicts, things that happen in your life, and you can either be unconscious to those conflicts and spiral down into the depths of anxiety, the depths of addiction, the depths of, you know, a miserable life, or you can choose the conscious path which is a spiraling up, which is a spiraling up of discovering, A, that you're responsible for your own validation, nobody else gets to do that. And B, we can create a whole different experience in our careers with all these other positive outcomes I mentioned previously earlier. And so some of the very specific ways to do that is to, I mentioned briefly, and I know that this is fun and you show the picture of the book with the bumper cars on the cover, we use the concept of the bumper cars, we call it the bumper car moment, is a crash. It's a conflict that happens at work. And one of the beautiful aspects of the workplace is that there are lots of conflicts that happen. And so rather than thinking about conflict as a catalyst to distress, what Martha and I have discovered is you can actually use those conflict moments as opportunities to reprogram your brain. And so using the science of neuroplasticity that I talked about previously. So what do I mean by that? As soon as you feel like you're having an emotional triggered response to something that's happened, it's an opportunity to get conscious about, okay, first of all, I'm having a physiological response, I'm triggered. Number one, do you know what your triggers are? Do you know what sets you off? I got a whole list of things that I'm aware of that will cause me to go into reaction. And then secondly, when you feel triggered by whatever it is that are your triggers, what are your underlying beliefs that get launched? Mine are very clear, I mentioned them earlier, I'm not good enough is my biggest one. So those are some very specific, tangible things that people can do is first of all, become conscious of what triggers you and then what are your limiting beliefs and then what happens when you get triggered. So when I get triggered, I go into freeze. My heart starts to beat fast, I feel like an elephant sitting on my chest, I get frightened, I literally feel sometimes afraid for my life. It's the old central nervous system programming of what I experienced when I was little in relationship to my big angry dad. And so becoming aware of the physiological, you know, clues, when you're having those clues, you should immediately say, Oh my gosh, it's a bumper car moment opportunity. And there's a great book, I haven't read it all yet. It's called the power of discord, the power of conflict, actually, is the moment of practice. It's that laboratory moment to say I get to choose a different response. So I've created a three step proprietary process that I only briefly mentioned in the book called the rapid power reclaim. And there are three steps to the rapid power reclaim when you're having this emotional reaction. Step number one is to create choice. Step number two is elevate action. And step number three is celebrate and integrate. And basically all that means, and there are lots of different ways to practice this, and I have several different practices that help you do this, but creating choice is first of all managing that physiological response. What I have found that I need to do before I can move to the next step is I need to discharge that energy. I need to get that fear, sadness, whatever it is out of me. And so for me that can look like just going into a room and pounding on a pillow as hard as I can, screaming, crying, hitting the floor, whatever it looks like, get it out of your system. Because if you don't discharge it, it stays there like a storm inside of your body and it's hard to move forward. I hope nobody's in that room with you, Susan, when you're doing this. They'll be a little afraid of me. Yeah, well, you know, it's intense. When we get triggered and we have these emotional reactions, our bodies remember that feeling. And so we have to discharge it and there's lots of ways to do it You could do it through art. You can do it through what I just described We've got a whole series of ways to do that That's creating choice because when we are lost in our trigger We have no choice and so we got to become clear of what are those clues? The second step is what am I going to do to elevate my action? How am I gonna stop beating myself up? How am I going to go from a place of feeling frightened and scared to feeling powerful and strong? And so generally what I do is I say to people, what do you need to do to elevate your action? There are a million different ways to elevate action. Recently, I'll admit, I got triggered by a situation. I was having a strong emotional reaction. I immediately said, oh good, great, another opportunity for growth. I discharged the emotion and the way I elevated my my action in the moment was I put I wrote a little post-it card to put underneath the the camera on my you know my my computer for a meeting I was going into. There was one particular person in this meeting that I was feeling a little bit intimidated by and so I just wrote a couple of reminders. I wrote you are in charge, he is not your father. You have options and choices. I can't remember everything I wrote, but I put that little post-it note under my camera for the entire meeting. It was fabulous. I was confident. I was strong. I was detached from him. It could not have been a better meeting. Again, there are a million ways to elevate action. The third step is critical to that rewiring of the brain, which is celebrating when we do something differently. We take a different positive reaction and acknowledging it to yourself and then celebrating, doing something to give yourself a pat on the back. For me that day, it was just going outside and standing in the backyard and letting the sun shine down on me and saying, gosh darn it, I am really proud of how I prepared for that meeting. And then that's what integrates it into our sense of who we are. Those are three critical steps to using the workplace bumper car moments to rewire our brains. And the more we do it, the more we become conscious like I'm having an overreaction, I think I'm in trouble. Okay, yep, that's an outdated script. I need to do this differently. And the more we use these bumper car moments to practice these new responses, we start to have a very different experience in our careers. Yeah, that's awesome. Hey, how can people learn a little bit more about your work, Susan? Sure, absolutely. I have a website. It's susanjschmidt, S-C-H-M-I-T-T dot com. I did get remarried last year, so I haven't changed my website to include a Winchester in there, but it's SusanJSchmidt.com. And then of course, I've got information on me on LinkedIn with Susan Schmidt Winchester. But you can find out a lot about the work that I'm doing in this arena with Healing at Work on that website, SusanJSchmidt.com. So great, you know, so many great tips. I'm gonna use that one next time Adrian and I have a Zoom. I'm just gonna put a little thing. You're not the boss of me. That's what I'm gonna say, you're not the boss of me. Exactly. I've never intimidated anybody, ever. Well, it's, you know, everybody has a different way of elevating their action. And I always love the creative ideas that the people I've had the opportunity to coach come up with, because they're just basically becoming conscious that they have a choice, and that we can be on the conscious healing path, simply by becoming aware of what our old scripts are. We're always interested in those tactics and those strategies, you call them triggers. Can you share a few more of them with us, either things that you use or like you say, people you coach? You're talking about coaching techniques for bumper car moments? Well, just those little things that you've got your alignment and like you say, you pound on the pillow, you do this. What are some other rituals or things that people do to cope in those bumper car moments? Maybe your rituals of self-care. Yeah, what do you do? Oh, okay, sure. Yeah, no, it's a great question. I do think self-care is key because it's an element of self-acceptance and that as we develop deeper levels of self-acceptance, we become much more grounded in managing those bumper car moments. So that's a beautiful lead into self-care. It is a critical ingredient to engaging on this conscious healing career path. So some of the things that I do for self-care. Number one, I have made it a priority every single day to get up and exercise for an hour. 30 minutes of cardio and weights and 30 minutes of fast walking on the treadmill. And the reason I chose that as a key technique for taking care of myself came from a book that I read years ago called Younger Next Year. And in the book, I'll summarize it quickly, basically the authors say we have one of two choices in our lives as it relates to our health. We can either have a life where at the age 50 our health starts to decline slowly over many years, and we die at the end of that. Or we can choose a different path and continue the same quality of life from age 50 at least to 75, if not longer, with a much shorter decline to death, simply by choosing to stay active every day. Grow or decay. And the way we grow is through activity, daily activity. And that idea of, I don't really want to get out of bed today because I'm tired and I really don't want to go do cardio, but the idea of decaying is such a horrible word. That it really motivates me to get out of bed and do that. So that's one big thing is the daily activity. Secondly, I track what I eat and keep track of trying to maintain a generally healthy balance with my fitness pal. I love that app. And I think the other thing around self-care is having what I call a purpose-driven life, a life where you feel like you're living your life on purpose. And Chester, you asked the question about, you know, while you were so vulnerable in this book, I didn't really want to be this vulnerable. I'm telling you the truth. I'm pretty good at hiding all this stuff. But I felt a duty and a responsibility to share it so that other people would have less suffering in their careers. And so for me, my purpose is teaching self-acceptance to create a more joyful world, and healing at work enables me to do that. So the purpose-driven life, and I think the last thing I would say in terms of self-care practices is making my relationships with the people I love a priority. In the past, I would always say, oh, I'm sorry, I can't talk right now, I'm working. Now, if one of my sons calls and says, mom, can you talk? I just, if I'm not in the middle of an important meeting, I will say, absolutely. Taking time off with each one of them recently to go to Six Flags Great America and ride amusement park rides all day. And taking time out to have fun, that's another key practice. All of those things allow us to be better equipped to handling the conflict. This has been so great, Susan. I can just see people, whether you have anxiety yourself or you're leading others, just taking ample notes throughout this. Such a great discussion. As we kind of wrap up, what one or two things would you want our listeners to take away today? I think the first thing is just remembering that the rest of your is yours and that we have the opportunity to seize healing and joy and self-acceptance. It's part of our birthright. Again, it's not about blaming parents. I don't come from that place at all. In fact, at the end of my book, I give my dad credit for being the greatest teacher of self-acceptance because in his not, I felt like he did not accept me. It was essentially a lesson that it was my job to determine that, not his. And so I think that's really key. And to make sure that in doing so it allows us to fulfill our full potential for life. That's the first thing. The second thing is just I think an important message that see the workplace as a venue for healing. It's an opportunity to rewire our brain and it really is an opportunity to welcome conflict as moments of growth. Those are my two key takeaways. Amazing. You know, you've been a wonderful guest. Thank you so much for sharing so much of your life with us and your journey. I just know that people that are listening to this are gonna go, yep, I can do it. You know, that encouragement, that purpose that you've got to bring it out. And I love that you say that the workplace is a place of healing. So often we hear that the workplace is a place where it beats you up and beats you down. And I love the way you flip that around. Well, listen. Thank you so much. Yeah, we'd like to thank you for being on the show. It's been a delight. We knew it would be. Take care and be well. And Adrian, what would you like to say and Susan as we wrap up? Yeah, Susan, CHRO of really a Fortune 500 company, you've got many things pulling you in other directions. I just love that you would take time with our community to help them today. So thank you so much. Absolutely. And I forgot to mention too, if it's okay, Christina said it'd be okay. I do have a free giveaway. It's our Chapter 5, Why the Workplace is the Laboratory for Healing. And so if anybody is interested, feel free to email me at Susan at SusanJSchmidt.com and I'll send you this beautifully designed Chapter 5, Why the Workplace is a Perfect Venue for Healing. That's great. And Christy will put it in the show notes as well so everybody can get a copy of that. So again, thank you Susan and I'm sure we'll talk soon. Excellent. Thank you. Thanks Chester. Thanks, Adrian. So, Adrian, so vulnerable, so accomplished, so amazing. What a great interview. She really was. I mean, Susan, we've been able to do some work for Applied Materials and give some speeches. An amazing culture that Susan is helping develop. So, let's kind of unpack a little bit what we found from her amazing talk. I thought this adult survivor of a damaged past is so important. So many of us ignore the impact that our pasts have had and don't realize sometimes how it is influencing our work every day, how we react to conflict, how we react to our bosses, etc. I thought there was really powerful self-insight there. Yeah, how it manifests itself, a crazy overachiever. You become invisible, you become a bully, you know how that happens. I thought it was really interesting when she talked about relationships, about how it affected her. This is when she got very emotional. Making relationships a priority when you understand that You know, it doesn't just impact your work. You take it home. How often have we told people that right? It's not just your work It's your whole life because work is such a big part of your life and I should get very emotional about that and then dedicated to reclaiming those relationships You and I both were laughing a bit off mic when we said, you know, if you want to reduce anxiety I'm not sure riding the roller coaster is a six legs. Not for me. Those things scare the crap out of me, but she loves it for me. Interesting that part as well. Take it to your personal life, right? Exactly. Another idea too is this, you know, we walk an unconscious wounded career path and she said, you know, take instead the conscious healing career path. Well, how do you do that? I mean, it's great to say that, but then how do you do it? Well, one of the things, and we talk a lot about this in our work, she calls it rewiring the pathways in our brains. You know, in psychology, there's a term cognitive reframing, where we really consciously have to think about, oh my gosh, a conflict is coming. Instead of we're thinking about, oh my gosh, I hate conflict, we think about what a great opportunity. I get to build a relationship with this person. I get to work through an issue that could help me communicate better. I can be stronger from this. It's tough, but we have to consciously try to do this. Yeah, the other thing that just really made me think differently was that the workplace is a lab for healing. You know, so often we think of it as exactly, oh, I've got a toxic boss, I don't get the opportunities. That say, no, this is the place where you can experiment. This is the place where you can get healthy again if you approach it the right way. Really a wonderful juxtaposition, wasn't it? It really was. So, and I think the last point for me was, we always, not always, but a lot of times we'll ask people, especially when they're very vulnerable, we'll ask them about their self-care and how they are taking better care of themselves. I love her insight into, you know, sometimes coping mechanisms for anxiety can be really bad. Whether it's, you know, we're eating a pound of chocolate a day or we're drinking, you know, five glasses of wine, whatever it is, sometimes we are, we self-soothe in very bad ways. We have to reverse that and find ways that will work for us. She now goes into another room and pounds on a pillow. I hope her assistant isn't in there when she's in there, kind of terrified. But I know Susan and she's a delight. But the thing is, I love that she starts her day saying, okay, am I gonna grow or am I gonna decay? Wow, that puts it in perspective, doesn't it? It really does. You know, it's so interesting, too, that she really feels this obligation to share. You know, a duty, is the way she said it, a duty to share my journey so that other people don't have to suffer. Well, as we wrap up, of course, we have a sponsor, Lifeguides. That's that peer-to-peer community that helps people through those day-to-day stressors. I love that they pair you up with someone that's walked in your shoes, that is having that same life experience. And because you're a listener to our podcast, if you just go to lifeguides.com forward slash schedule a demo and add the code healthy2021 to the free text box, you get two months free. And of course, we don't have these podcasts without our sponsors do we? We don't we also want to thank our sponsor go happy hub the most inclusive and timely way to communicate and engage directly With your frontline employees and your candidates with 95% open rates We love go happy hub and you will too So we want to thank everybody for listening in today if you'd like to learn more about anxiety at work, of course, check out our new book from Harper Collins, Anxiety at Work. We want to thank our producer, Brent Klein, to Christy Lawrence, who helps us find such amazing guests, and to all of you who listened in. Of course, if you like the podcast, please share it. We'd love to have you join us in our online community, wethrivetogether.global, where we're creating a safe place to talk about anxiety and mental health in the workplace. Well, Adrian, until next week, to our next amazing guest, let's wish everybody that they might be happy and healthy. Take care and be well.