Notes on Resilience
Conversations about trauma, resilience, and compassion.
How do we genuinely support individuals who have experienced trauma and build inclusive and safe environments? Trauma significantly affects the mental and physical health of those who experience it, and personal resiliency is only part of the solution. The rest lies in addressing organizational, systemic, and social determinants of health and wellness, and making the effort to genuinely understand the impact of trauma.
Here, we ask and answer the tough questions about how wellness is framed in an organizational context, what supports are available and why, what the barriers are to supporting trauma survivors, and what best practices contribute to mental wellness. These conversations provide a framework to identify areas for change and actionable steps to reshape organizations to be truly trauma sensitive.
Notes on Resilience
133: Invisible Wounds and the Workplace, from The Breakout podcast
When tested, we don't rise to the level of our aspirations. We fall back to the level of our training, habits, and policies.
This episode originally aired on The Breakout podcast, where I joined hosts Dr. Keri Ohlrich and Kelly Guenther to talk about trauma, recovery, resilience, and how society fails invisible victims of traumatic events.
For every physical injury in mass violence events, studies show between 5-40 people suffer psychological injuries—yet these survivors remain largely unacknowledged. "People openly told me my experience didn't count," she shares, revealing how this invalidation creates a secondary trauma that compounds suffering. This stigma drives many trauma survivors into silence, delaying treatment and deepening isolation.
Our workplace environments significantly impact healing—we spend approximately 90,000 hours at work over our lifetimes, and research shows managers influence our mental health as much as spouses and more than therapists. Yet most workplaces remain ill-equipped to support employees dealing with trauma.
Good intentions aren't enough. Organizations need embedded structures that support psychological safety regardless of who manages a team.
Listen to this powerful episode to understand how workplace cultures can either accelerate or hinder healing, and discover practical ways to create environments where everyone—including trauma survivors—can bring their best selves to work every day.
Go to https://betterhelp.com/resilience or click Notes on Resilience during sign up for 10% off your first month of therapy with my sponsor BetterHelp.
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Producer / Editor: Neel Panji
Invite Manya to inspire and empower your teams and position your organization as a forward-thinking leader in well-being, resilience, and trauma sensitivity.
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#trauma #resilience #compassion #MentalHealth #CompassionateLeadership #leadership #survivor
there's this phrase that I really like, which is we don't rise to the level of our aspirations or our goals. We fall back to the level of our training or our habits or our policies. So part of my thinking about wanting to work in the workplace is because we need to be thinking about changing the culture and changing the policies and the procedures so that it doesn't rely on you happen to have a good manager or you happen to have someone who thinks about compassion and empathy, but that the system that you are in is designed to be supportive, that you are in is designed to be supportive. Hello and welcome to Notes on Resilience. I'm your host, manya Chilinski.
Speaker 1:Today's episode is a conversation I had with Keri Ulrich and Kelly Gunther on their podcast, the Breakout. We talk about my experience as a survivor, the importance of compassion and trauma-informed leadership, and my mission to ensure that survivors are seen, heard and supported in a place that many of us spend so much of our time the workplace. I think you'll enjoy this episode. I had people say you don't count as a victim of this crime. It was the worst day of my life and now people are open to tell me that that experience doesn't count.
Speaker 2:In 2013, two bombs exploded at the Boston Marathon a short distance from where Manya Chilinski stood cheering on the runners. Three people were killed that day and hundreds were wounded. And while Manya Chilinski stood cheering on the runners, three people were killed that day and hundreds were wounded. And while Manya had no physical injuries, she was one of thousands who suffered incredible trauma for years afterward.
Speaker 3:As an invisible victim of the attack, manya was offered no support for her PTSD and zero validation of her experience. That's when she realized how pervasive and disregarded trauma really is, so she decided to change that.
Speaker 1:That's when she realized how pervasive and disregarded trauma really is, so she decided to change that People who have experienced trauma are everywhere, but we don't talk about it, and I started to think about the workplace as a system that can impact people's recovery.
Speaker 3:In this episode, Manya shares her story of that terrifying day and why she left her career to start educating corporate audiences about compassionate, trauma-informed leadership Manya's on a mission to ensure that everyone is seen and supported in the place where we spend most of our waking hours the workplace. Welcome to the Breakout a show about smashing through life's little boxes and forging your own path. I'm Dr Keri Ulrich.
Speaker 2:And I'm Kelly Gunther. Keri and I are people and change experts, best friends and business partners. We've spent more than 25 years helping employees and leaders change With love and a lot of laughs. We're here to empower you to live life on your terms. Our methods may seem a bit unconventional, but trust us, they will change your life.
Speaker 3:We know change can sometimes be scary Heck, it even scares us. But staying the same can be even scarier. On the Breakout we prove that you can escape expectations and, best of all, we show you how.
Speaker 1:So we are so happy you're here, madhya. So why don't you start by telling us in a couple of sentences what you're helping people break out of? My core motivation is to ensure that trauma survivors are seen, heard and supported in the way that they deserve. I want to help people break out by building a future where mental wellness is prioritized and people can really live their best lives.
Speaker 3:Such important work and especially to bring it to the surface, about trauma. I know you survived something horrific, so if you could just tell us as much as you're comfortable about that day and what happened.
Speaker 1:I was at the finish line of the Boston Marathon in 2013 when two bombs exploded at the finish line. I was directly across the street from the first bomb. I was in the bleachers. It was only the second time I had ever gotten seats in the bleachers and it's so exciting to see the race from that perspective. You can actually see people step over the finish line and I am not a runner, but I just was so wanted to. So support these runners, right? They've run 26 miles to be passing in front of me. And that's where I was standing when a bomb exploded across the street from me and my body responded by freezing.
Speaker 1:I had tunnel vision. I could just see the bomb site across from me and the smoke rising up and the people running away, and I couldn't see anyone else around me. I couldn't hear anything else and I knew it was a bomb and the only conscious thought I really had was they just ruined the Boston Marathon and I'm trying to figure out what's happening. Like, intellectually, I don't get what's going on in front of me. And as that's clicking over and I'm trying to figure it out, the second bomb goes off and I turn to look down the street and see the smoke rising, I don't know what to think of what's happening. This is my neighborhood and as I'm looking down the street, it doesn't look familiar. This isn't real. This isn't reality. And that's when I realized, okay, we have to get out of here. And again, no conscious thought. I just looked straight down at my feet and watched my feet the whole way. I never looked back across the street. I think my brain knew what was happening and that was one way to protect me.
Speaker 3:Right. It's so interesting that your brain, one of the first things you thought is now you've ruined it. And then tunnel vision. How do I get out of here? It sounds like when you tell the story Mania, that everything just seems like in such slow motion and you were so conscious of every thought.
Speaker 1:Yes, and that's not uncommon after a trauma and I think it has something to do with the way trauma imprints on our brain. So we remember every little piece of it, whereas the drive home from the grocery store we remember none of because we don't need to remember it. It feels slow motion in my mind because I just remember each piece. It was only 12 seconds between the first bomb and the second bomb, Wow, but in my memory it seems much longer.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's longer to tell the story at this point right Than the actual 12 seconds. Yes, because you go through so much. Well, I'm glad you're here to share your story with us.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 3:What did the trauma look like for you after?
Speaker 1:I ended up developing post-traumatic stress, which is basically that fear of death that you experience in that moment and your body kind of can't get rid of it, and it's absolutely natural to be affected by something like that and to to feel fear and to feel anxiety and depression and all of those things. In my case, I wasn't able to work through them and get them out of my body very quickly and that ended up becoming post-traumatic stress and it took a lot of work for me to get through that. It was a lot of talk, therapy, a lot of trauma counselors and a lot of mindfulness and meditation work. And it's been over 11 years and I still occasionally get that heightened sense of safety where my body's reacting beyond what is actually happening in that moment.
Speaker 3:It's having a memory of it. It's just you're transported back about your story and what you're doing is that so many of us think well, I see the person from the Boston Marathon who lost a limb or has a scar or there's something so physical, and the work you're doing and talking about invisible disabilities or invisible trauma, which is well, it's a relatively new term. You might say we've been talking about it for 50 years, but it's finally kind of come into the zeitgeist of it. But maybe you could tell us what that means, why it's so important to understand invisible trauma and invisible disabilities.
Speaker 1:The response after the event was largely focused on the people with the catastrophic physical injuries and the bereaved families who'd lost a loved one, and that's not wrong. The response didn't extend to individuals like myself and I started to say why are we invisible? Why doesn't someone recognize that these are real injuries too? And there are studies to show that for every one physical injury in an event like this, there are between five and 40 mental health emotional injuries. The scope is knowable, but it's not something we pay attention to in the aftermath to the mental health impacts of those people who were not physically injured. People who are physically injured kind of get put through a different process. If you went to the hospital, many people were able to work with social workers and to find a way to deal with it, but you know it can result in post-traumatic stress, anxiety, depression, all sorts of challenges with getting back to our regular functioning.
Speaker 1:And then people like me. We live with that stigma. I had people say to my face you still have your legs, why are you complaining? And I had people say you don't count as a victim of this crime all the reasons you can imagine. It was the worst day of my life and now people are open to tell me that that experience doesn't count and that isolation and that stigma can be difficult to deal with, because it is. But for some people it can delay them maybe getting treatment, because I learned pretty quickly not to talk about what was happening. And even when I started publicly sharing my story, initially I did so anonymously. I thought I don't want to put my name to this, and when I started putting my name to this, my friends started saying things like don't read the comments.
Speaker 3:And I never have when we report on mass violence, what do we report? People who died or injured, and so we say, oh it's. You know, I was thinking of what happened in Vegas, or like 50 people died or something right. But we don't say but 20,000 were there and have been impacted and will most likely have mental health issues because of it. Like wouldn't that change the conversation? Just to even say we acknowledge that we don't even acknowledge it Exactly.
Speaker 1:It would absolutely change the conversation, and I would love for us to be in a place where we start talking about that. One of the challenges is it's personally defined, so you and I can be standing next to each other, experience the exact same thing and two weeks from now, you are absolutely fine and I am not, and then there still is the stigma about talking about our mental health. So it's all mixed up together and I want us to move past that. I want us to recognize how many people might actually be impacted by something like this.
Speaker 2:I mean, I, honest to God, never really thought about the invisible victims, like I never really thought about that and I kept thinking you are dealing with just the people who are bleeding, wounded, you know, unfortunately, fatal injuries. You're not really thinking about the people who are all going in their cars or getting on the subway or walking home and what they sit with at night. There's zero talk about that at all and it's more like it's on you if you're going to do anything about it. You really are kind of left to just figure things out. You're really suffering every single day of just what is my new existence?
Speaker 3:When you're looking at marginalized groups, those with disabilities are the biggest marginalized group. I mean their percentage is bigger than all the others, kind of combined. It is a very large group, that invisible we don't really talk about, right? No, because we can't see it.
Speaker 2:So I'm so thrilled that she talks about it and helps people break out of their understanding of what is a disability and that trauma and that she's taken that feeling and decided I'm going to do something about it and I'm going to educate and I'm going to try to get this in a workplace environment. It's just incredible.
Speaker 3:Vanya, now you've changed your career. You weren't a social worker to begin with. You weren't a psychologist, you were in marketing correct, correct? Tell us about that journey of changing your career after this event.
Speaker 1:It started when a friend asked me to tell him what happened to me. Just curious, I know this happened and he and I were members of a business communication organization. And when I finished he said I want you to tell the story at the conference. I want to pull together a panel of like a PR person who was dealing with the issue, with somebody from the Boston police who was dealing with the issue and with my story. And I said sure, and I started to realize after I shared that story, that I have a background in communication and storytelling and I can use my voice to make change. Yes, the other side of it is it was very important for my healing. Part of my story is that I felt like the story of those of us with mental health wounds wasn't shared publicly. It was not part of the larger story and I didn't feel validated. But standing in front of a group of people and saying this happened to me and having people hear it and recognize it and ask me questions about it later validated that.
Speaker 3:What I really want to dig into your story now is the fact that you've moved into more kind of corporate workplace and trauma and unfortunately in America we have too many people who are in your position who have witnessed kind of mass violence, but not everyone has, and so you're really talking now about trauma just in the workplace, not emergency responders, not first responders. So tell us about how you see trauma in kind of everyday workplaces.
Speaker 1:We're everywhere. People who have experienced trauma are everywhere. If you are someplace where there are more than two people, chances are reasonable that somebody in that space with you has experienced some sort of trauma. It might not be mass violence, could be domestic violence, losing a loved one to a homicide or suicide, a car accident, tornado so many people have experienced these kinds of events and may have some level of trauma, but we don't talk about it and I started to think where are these people? They're in our workplaces, they are in the grocery store, they're everywhere we go. How can we reach people and how can we be supportive? And I want to take a step back.
Speaker 1:Part of this is I got to this place where I realized I live in a society and I'm involved in other institutions that have an impact on me, so the city was not particularly responsive to people like me. That affected me. That system affected my recovery, and I started to think about the workplace as a system that can impact people's recovery. We've got people who are dealing with trauma, who are in the workplace, and I know people who have lost their jobs because of having post-traumatic stress and their workplace was not able to accommodate them. And you know the workplace also. It's a community. Whatever else it is, it's a community of people who are working towards a shared purpose, and the communities that we are in when they are supportive, that helps us.
Speaker 1:When they are not supportive, that can make it harder for us to heal.
Speaker 1:Over the average working life, we spend something like 90,000 hours in our workplace and there are studies that show our managers have as much impact on our mental health as our spouses do and more impact on our mental health as our spouses do and more impact on our mental health than a therapist does.
Speaker 1:So that doesn't mean our manager needs to be the therapist, but when we are in a situation or in a system where we are not feeling supported, that can absolutely make it harder to heal if we're dealing with a trauma or just to be our best selves. If we don't happen to be dealing with a trauma. There's this phrase that I really like, which is we don't rise to the level of our aspirations or our goals. We fall back to the level of our training or our habits or our policies. So part of my thinking about wanting to work in the workplace is because we need to be thinking about changing the culture and changing the policies and the procedures so that it doesn't rely on you happen to have a good manager, or you happen to have a good manager, or you happen to have someone who thinks about compassion and empathy, but that the system that you are in is designed to be supportive. That's one of the underlying foundations of the work that I do.
Speaker 3:We'll get back to the interview after this quick break.
Speaker 2:On the Breakout, keri and I celebrate big changes and small shifts. Only about 10% of us are really self-aware, but 90% of us think we are Without self-awareness. Change is tough and if you don't know what box you're in, you can't break out of it. That's where we come in.
Speaker 3:We are coaches and consultants that help you dig into change. We've spent our lives breaking through expectations and we've devoted our careers to showing people how to do the same. We're here to help you demolish the story you've built around yourself, to reveal the true you. Then the real fun begins.
Speaker 2:And by fun we mean helping you figure out your why and taking action to forge a fresh path. Connect with us at abracigroupcom.
Speaker 3:Manya, kelly and I talk about the importance of the manager so much and when people might say, well, hr should do this, and I'm like, sometimes, yes, but quite often it's the leadership and that can impact so many people. It's the drum we're constantly beating Kelly on. The manager is so important to the mental health, absolutely.
Speaker 2:I hadn't really crossed my mind, candidly, about, you know, the invisible victims of violence like this, so thank you for shedding a light on it. So, when you think about who your clients are, are you seeing common themes as to why companies are bringing you in the theme that I'm seeing is when the organization recognizes that they've got some mental health challenges.
Speaker 1:So they're seeing a lot of burnout. I've talked with folks who are dealing with a trauma that actually happened in the workforce so a shooting in one case and in another case an executive manager who died by suicide and those are unique because they happened in the workplace but that triggered. We need to be doing something to make sure that we're taking care of the mental health of our employees. I've spoken with other folks who know, for example, that they have one or more people who are dealing with a domestic violence situation and then needing to come to work and focus on work. So what I'm seeing is that people are reaching out when they see a particular trauma that they know about. Many people don't want to disclose that they've experienced a trauma, so they're still there, even if somebody hasn't necessarily shared that with you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I think a lot of people present a different version of themselves, maybe when they're at work. Leave the personal at home. Just bring your A game when you come to work Very hard to do, because our lives are so intertwined and it's so immersed. So what kind of change do you see happening in workforces as a result of the work that you've done, of the work that you've done?
Speaker 1:I see that people are paying more attention to mental health. I think we owe a debt to the pandemic for having people pay attention to the mental health in the workplace, because people were then actually seeing, hey, we have this crisis. We saw it change in the way we think about it during the pandemic. I think that was a catalyst to really thinking about it for the longer term. Now we need to move from a crisis response into how can we be integrating this into our system, our organization.
Speaker 1:For the long term, the challenge can be that it's hard to measure because, for all of the reasons we've been talking about, it's personal. I might not share what's going on and when you can measure some of those things like presenteeism, reducing that, reducing absenteeism, reducing turnover. That's a long time horizon. That's one, two, three years for you to notice that there's a change, and it's hard for us humans to want to do something today to see a benefit two years from now. I want to see the benefit next week, if not this afternoon. So it's still a challenge for people. During the pandemic, I think you did get that faster return on investment because it was a crisis and we needed to be dealing with it instantly. Now we're back to a place where it's not the same level of crisis. We probably can't show that same kind of ROI, but we still need to be making the investment ROI, but we still need to be making the investment.
Speaker 2:So I just think very practically at this point, because employees may come and they may share something about what's going on in their life. So when situations like that come up, I'm often very quick to point out the mental health resources that are available employee assistance program and EAP what kinds of things are you doing? That's maybe slightly different, because I'm just I'm imagining there's people who are wondering well, how does this really look?
Speaker 1:Those kind of programs absolutely necessary baseline as benefits.
Speaker 1:I'm looking at the next level up. I'm looking at what is the culture, what are our overall policies, and I talk a lot about building a culture of compassionate leadership and that means, for example, a leader being vulnerable and sharing their own story so that, as an employee, I know that if I wanted to, I could share my story without fear. The challenge is the kind of work I do is a little less measurable. It's a much more touchy, feely than I think a lot of people want to be. But if we can change the culture to be more trauma informed you know rising tide and we're showing that we're inclusive of all different types of employees, whether that is trauma survivors, individuals with disabilities, individuals of different races or nationalities than us all of those things we just want to feel like we belong us all of those things we just want to feel like we belong, which takes time, to your point, and culture change of any kind usually is three to five years if you're lucky, and it takes a lot of hard work and effort and participation.
Speaker 2:But it would just be such a beautiful place to work. Someone who feels like I'm cared about in my workplace that your discretionary effort typically goes up, the work that you're willing to do, the risks you're willing to take, that you might say well, I'll try that because I've got a manager who trusts me. The other thing that you'll see is employee engagement scores will go up because my boss cares about me. If I don't feel cared for and if I don't feel like a true member of this company, I'm not going to recommend someone come work for us.
Speaker 3:I love everything you said. We should get a T-shirt, and I think I just go back to fear. If people are in fear, they tense up, right, you can't be at your best when you're fearful. That fear could be yeah, I have a real jerk of a manager, right. But it's also a fear of I can't be my full self and I have to hide something. So it still occupies some part of your brain that cannot be freed to go do other stuff. When I've had good managers, you don't have to worry about that, and man life is better.
Speaker 2:Mania, in terms of you know what you see going forward in workplaces and, obviously, a lot of work left to do. What does real change look like for you If you could wave a magic wand?
Speaker 1:Well, the first thing would be something we talked about earlier, which is, after something happens, we actually talk about the number of people who may have been mentally and emotionally impacted. So I want that just baseline for all of us forever In terms of our workplaces and our organizations. I want to see organizations where leaders are fearless in talking about mental health and mental wellness. I want to see people who are showing you that you can be a successful company and talk about mental health, and it doesn't mean we're all sitting around the campfire sharing our feelings, but we have a real company that works and we care about people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's not necessarily a one-size size fits all approach, which I think a lot of companies want to plug and play. Oh, here's our mental health plan. Boom. I think people, managers in particular, half of I don't really want to know too much of what's going on in your life. I don't, you know. So there's also that piece of it which I think is amazing important. What would you say in a situation like that? If I'm a manager and I want to enable and empower my employees and my team, and I want to be compassionate show us some empathy If I don't know where to start, what might be one or two things you would tell people.
Speaker 1:One great way is being vulnerable yourself. You don't have to share the story of the worst thing that ever happened to you, but share something that is difficult for you or a challenge that you've had. That is true in all our relationships, right? Building friendships, building romantic relationships. We need to be vulnerable with each other, and once someone is vulnerable with us, we feel like we can trust them more to share our story. And the other thing is to be trustworthy, right? So, as a trauma survivor, I very quickly learned how to tell if I could trust the person who was asking me a question, if they were just curious to hear the salacious details about what happened, or if they cared about what I was feeling and truly wanted to learn. You know we could tell the difference. So being vulnerable and genuine and open is one step managers can take.
Speaker 2:People, managers everywhere. Did you hear what she just said? Because this is like solid gold what she just. I feel like I want to sky write this Amazing, and it doesn't seem like so much, but it really is the difference between feeling connected to your employee and not, and someone willing to stay on and go through a burning building with you versus you know, I may take the call from the recruiter who happens to call me at a time where my manager and I aren't really seeing eye to eye on something or we don't feel close. One final question for you. You have one minute with someone who is stuck. They want to break out. What would you tell them?
Speaker 1:I would say you're not necessarily stuck. You are adapting to a challenging situation and a challenging environment, and resilience is both your inner strength and how the world around you is behaving towards you. So be kind to yourself and to remember that healing is a journey. It is not a destination. It is not a date on the calendar.
Speaker 2:Manya, thank you so much for taking the time to share your story, for your amazing insights and the work that you've done, paving the way forward for us to better understand this.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much. I appreciate the opportunity to share the story.
Speaker 3:I appreciate the opportunity to share the story that was survivor and advocate Manja Chilinski, and this is the Breakout.
Speaker 2:Remember you could win a pair of fabulous new Apple AirPod Max headphones. Check out our show notes for how to enter this awesome contest and thank you for being an amazing audience.
Speaker 3:Kelly and I are in the business of breaking free, being brave and living boldly. We're here to inspire you to be the badass you are meant to be. Coaching and consulting is kind of our thing, and we're really good at it. Connect with us at abrachigroupcom.
Speaker 2:And don't forget to subscribe to the Breakout so you never miss a new episode. Make sure you're following us on Instagram, youtube and Facebook and please leave us a review. Reviews help more people find the show, connect with us and live a more authentic life. I'm Kelly Gunther.
Speaker 3:And I'm Dr Keri Ulrich. See you next time.
