Work Trauma Addictions & Coping Mechanisms | Ep. 8

The conditions of modern work culture often cause us to turn to unhealthy coping mechanisms in an attempt to regulate our nervous systems. For many of us, we have become addicted to or reliant upon coping mechanisms like fueling ourselves with caffeine, drinking alcohol, and overeating. 

When we bring our disregulated nervous systems into a collective field, we can disregulate the nervous systems of those around us. We never know who on our team struggles with addiction, or how unhealthy their coping mechanisms might be. This is why I believe leaders have a self-responsibility to process their emotions and healthily regulate their own nervous systems.

This requires the leader to heal any patterns that sit underneath their own coping mechanisms and additions. Many of us have been operating in a state of stress, anxiety, or depression and coping with that. If we exist in toxic work cultures, perhaps we ourselves turn to toxic behavior, or habits of putting toxins and drugs in our own bodies. 

In this episode I share my struggle with alcohol abuse as a coping mechanism, and my journey to detoxifying my leadership practices. 

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Chapters

• 6:56 It’s easy to fall for the belief “this is just how it is”
• 10:04 Fragmentation and the separation wound
• 14:22 Alcohol disconnects us from our higher selves
• 17:01 I couldn’t exist in this work paradigm without numbing and suppressing myself
• 19:46 Processing our emotions (rather than numbing) makes us better leaders
• 21:39 Stressed-out leaders create work conditions that trigger harmful coping mechanisms
• 32:13 Turning to caffeine to artificially boost performance
• 35:12 Drugging ourselves into more productivity
• 41:16 The coping mechanism never actually solves the problem
• 44:53 Detoxifying our bodies and our cultures

Transcript

0:00

Hey conscious leaders, welcome to episode eight, I can't believe we're on episode eight already of the new self podcast, whether you are a leader of a company, a family, a community, or simply your own life, if you are wanting to lead any aspect of life with more consciousness and more intention, you are in the right place. And I so appreciate you showing up week after week to be here with me. I'm committed to showing up week after week as well, and share this space step into these conversations with you. At this particular time, during this particular paradigm shift in humanity's evolution, it's a wild time to be alive and witnessing these many shifts within our cultures, our relationships, what work even is and is becoming is in question right now. We are getting to redefine that I think work up until this point has has been quite unsustainable in terms of the amount of energy intensity that's required of us to show up in western models of work of overproduction and overconsumption on the consumer side of the equation. To work in, in that paradigm, has required us to develop many coping mechanisms to attempt to survive, to try and thrive but at a minimum, to, to self regulate, and maybe even self medicate our nervous systems so that we can get some relief and not be stuck in a constant state of fight or flight that's exhausting. And that is damaging to our adrenal system damaging to many aspects of our physical health and well being to live in a constant state of stress, with cortisol pumping through our bodies. This leads to so many diseases and we know this, we know this and yet we we have built a work system that requires us often to be in this state of being to be able to even I don't even want to say function in it because that to me, this isn't functioning This is malfunctioning actually. To be in this constant state of stress. I guarantee that's not why your soul incarnated why you chose to be here to work for for money to put yourself through the wringer potentially if you have ever been in cultures of toxic relationships and dynamics at work so I don't know about you, but over the years as as I found myself in, in the trenches of Western work culture, I absolutely developed coping mechanisms. And I had you know, my specific versions of self medicating my stress load in in an attempt to self regulate my nervous system so that I could sleep so that I could show up the next day. For me, this was often a cycling through of caffeine in the morning. And eventually that bled into the afternoon as well with a second or third cup of coffee or latte or whatever it was and alcohol in the evening. Whether that was drinks with coworkers a glass of wine while I watched the bachelor having a beer with my housemates took many forms and maybe you're familiar with this, you know this, this feeling of ending a long day and feeling like ah like I just I just needed Drink, I just need, I just need a bag of chips. Chips are my guilty pleasure, oh my gosh, I just I love chips like I can't have them in the house if I don't want to eat a whole bag in one sitting most of the time. Ah, designed to be addictive. And food can actually be quite grounding when we when we feel ungrounded when we feel unsafe food is a way to bring us into our bodies and ground us down. It comes, it calms us to be in a state of rest and digest. Those things go hand in hand. When we're in fight or flight, we don't like our metabolism shuts down, or at least slows so that our bodies can prepare to fight or run. I think there's one reason why there's so many digestive issues these days. So that a lot with my Reiki clients there were you know, there were themes that would consistently show up in the physical symptoms that my clients had, relative to burnout. And relative to operating within Western work cultures for as long as many of us have. And, you know, for many of my clients who were middle aged women or nearing their retirement years, they had been in this their whole lives. And we're now trying to repair the damage of you know, of these symptoms existing for so many years without healing the root cause because healing the root cause would require us to go into the system. And change how we do work, change how we do work culture and relational dynamics. And to imagine systems change at the scale that would be needed in order to create healthy work environments can feel so daunting, it can feel so daunting. So I think often the narrative that shows up in our minds is that this is just how it is I can't change this, this is just how it is I have to go to work to get a paycheck to be able to support myself to be able to meet my basic needs. So I just have to, I have to suck it up. But I better find a way to you know, to be able to keep showing up. There, there's this this lack of hope. When we don't see change, when we see the same harmful dynamics playing out. The repetition of those patterns eventually become our beliefs. Because if we've seen it enough times, our mind now has the evidence that this is how it is. And as humans I think it's it's also easy to to see things as as if they've always been that way, as well to to create a statement that feels universal. Like feels universally true. But humans have have done work and civilization in many different ways through many different iterations across history. This mechanistic view of the world is only about 400 years old. And came about through some of the earliest of philosophers like Descartes. This was when we first started seeing the separation between humans and nature. It's when we became obsessed with breaking breaking things down into all of their parts, all of their pieces. Understanding all the pieces individually as objectively as possible without seeing the full picture. And there have been incredible innovations and discoveries that have come with scientific and medical and technological advancement. Huge reason? We are even able to do this podcast and work remotely when a pandemic hits there. I mean there's there's good that has come From a lot of this, however, that core wound of separation within us, as we have separated ourselves from nature and separated or fragmented our professional and personal personas that can that can be disorienting, can be very disorienting, we can lose our sense of self. And when we don't fully love ourselves when we are not living lives of full embodied integrity, when we are being asked to sacrifice our health to be able to show up for work, or put our values aside, to be able to show up to work in the way that our company or our boss is asking us to. Like to literally step outside of our own integrity in some cases and cut corners or market in ways that feel predatory. That disconnect within us grows. And I think, yes, there are a lot of patterns around self loathing and self worth, that we learn in early childhood. I think that's where we first pick up these wounds of not being enough of not being wanted. Not being worthy of love, not belonging. The I mean, there, there's a, I think there are five core wounds that, that most human traumas from early childhood can be distilled down to, I may have that number wrong. But these are, these are patterns, these there are core wounds that we pick up in early childhood. And I think by the time we get to, we get to adulthood, and we step into the current system of work, the current culture of work that has been designed. A lot of these wounds get perpetuated through through how things play out. At work. We are incentivized to to be highly competitive with our peers with our quote unquote competitors out there in the market out there in our industry. We're incentivized to chase more money, higher positions. I mean, if you look at the incentives in our current system of work, and the behaviors that they incentivize, there's a lot that's really messed up about that. It's hard to go after those incentives and be a person who is whole within themselves integrated with all of their parts. Because I think when we're whole and integrated, the these these incentives, and these norms no longer add up, they no longer are true for us. We no longer choose them. And I can feel myself, it's so interesting, I can feel myself dancing around the topic that that I really want to name today, because it's a difficult topic that I have really struggled with. So this is this is vulnerable, vulnerable for me to go into this, this particular realm. But as I as I watched back, previous episodes, I could see this theme just showing up over and over and over and begging to be opened up begging to be addressed. And that theme is the theme of addiction, specifically alcohol abuse. Alcohol abuse is so prevalent among among leaders and among work culture. I believe that if we are going to rise in the ranks and be leaders in the ways that our current system is asking us to, through positional power through manipulation through coercing people into behaviors and productivity that might not be right for them. Like the word influence comes to mind, I think. I think often if we're in full integrity, we're not doing those things. So one, one mechanism that allows us to stay in or rather outside of our integrity is through numbing is through lowering the vibration within our bodies. alcohol causes us to turn off our access to our consciousness, to the most conscious aspects of ourselves, we lose that connection with our highest self, because we essentially go to sleep, like we're awake, but not all of not all aspects of us to very limited amount of self of Higher Self that is still within us when we are under the influence of of substances like alcohol. So whether we are reaching for a bottle of wine because of a long and stressful day, or we are reaching for alcohol, because our job is about to demand of us something something difficult that we don't want to do. Maybe Maybe it's firing someone like I remember, I remember the first time that I let an employee go, I remember sitting on my patio, with my ex now. And just crying and just like shedding so many tears, and the only thing that used that for me at the time. The only way that I could continue to exist in a work culture that wasn't designed for my well being or my wholeness was to numb was to pinch off my consciousness. to self regulate my nervous system into a state of suppression and depression. My therapist will often say because I, I speak with her about, about alcohol quite a bit, and just how how it's everywhere, like you can't escape it. It's everywhere in movies, including movies about work everywhere. But you'll often say if you know if you weren't depressed before you started drinking, you'll definitely be depressed after so I think sometimes we you know, we reach for it because we want to feel better. We need some some relief from the difficult emotions or the the painful traumas that we are feeling within us. So we reached to, to try and get that momentary relief. But because it's a numbing agent, and and because it's a depressant. We're not actually processing those emotions. We're just shoving them down. And I think they accumulate over time, the more that we push off our own emotional processing. I think those emotions well up and eventually come out in really dramatic and dramatic ways. I've been in a conversation with a colleague on LinkedIn recently around this and around the the responsibilities that that leaders have relative to emotional processing. And that one of the core responsibilities that we have, as leaders is is actually space holding for our fellow humans for our fellow team members. We hold you know we hold the space for them to be creative, we hold the space for them to speak needs. Whether those are human base needs or financial needs if more funding is needed, or operational needs if we need to upgrade a system. We hold space as leaders we listen good leaders deeply listen. But if we don't have space within us If we haven't done the good deep work, to create space by processing and metabolome, metabolizing our emotions, digesting what has gone down in any given day of our lives, then we don't have much space to be able to hold other people in. And the debate that has been happening on LinkedIn showed up around this, the crying CEO, the CEO had, had just laid off a member of his team and posted a selfie of him in tears, which is very human, and it's a very real thing. But the debate that this sparked was this debate around was, you know, was that was that responsible? Was he putting the burden of space holding on others, before doing the inner work, to tend himself and to process his own emotions. And while vulnerability at work is incredible. I think if we show up untended and unprocessed, we do unconsciously put the burden on others to hold space. As as we process. It's part of the issue here is that our culture, our work cultures, and our work processes often move at a pace that is faster than our ability to metabolize our emotions. This is one reason why I am such a supporter of slowing down our work processes honoring all phases of a cycle of a product lifecycle of an annual or a seasonal or quarterly cycle. Because if we don't, if we don't slow this down to a more organic and natural pace, people are forced to cope. They're forced to suppress to even be able to show up. So if I'm running a company that has a highly stressful work environment, and oh, by the way, I'm not doing the the deep inner work to attend myself. So I'm, I'm showing up and creating more chaos and more stress. And I'm bringing my drama and trauma to my team, which then creates even more stress in the in the collective field. I'm creating an environment that promotes unhealthy coping mechanisms like alcohol abuse. I think as leaders, we really have to stop and think about how the way we show up impacts not just another person's life at work, but how it impacts the rest of their life. And the rest of their relationships. There has previously been such a such a distinct line that we have tried to draw between professional and personal life. But it's very clear that that line is is not only blurry, but it's it's not it's not actually possible, unless you highly fragment people and ask them to to be one way at work and one way at home. But the stress of work bleeds into home and the stress of home bleeds into work. So you can't you can't actually separate these things. So just to reiterate, I'm really, you know, I'm seeing this, this self responsibility that we have as leaders to not only do the emotional processing within ourselves to create enough space to show up as a conscious leader. But we also have a responsibility to not bring toxic work culture so that the way we run our teams and the way we run our companies doesn't create toxic outcomes in people like these are human beings. The people who work for us are not machines, they're humans. What we say to them matters. The language we use matters And for me, for me personally, you know, I've certainly I've certainly used alcohol as a coping mechanism for self regulating my own nervous system after a stressful day. Absolutely. And that has occurred, both in both situations where I'm either the leader. And in previous, you know, in previous iterations of, of self and of my leadership practice, I didn't yet have the tools to fully process my emotions on my own. So I was doing some suppression. But I've also been in the employee side of the equation, where I was existing, as best I could, in, you know, in highly toxic work environments, and would step out of those and use alcohol to self medicate, and reduce the stress turn off my mind, try to get away from the chaos and away from the work trauma that I had been witnessing and feeling unequipped to heal all day. So I've been in both seats where alcohol abuse because of stress has occurred. And for me, there's this pattern that I notice, where abusing my body in that way, is directly related to my wound of not being enough. All the way back from childhood. So when I would step away from a difficult day, as a leader, I'd spiral into that inner dialogue of not being enough not being a good enough leader not knowing what I'm doing. Not feeling qualified, having all of my imposter syndrome voices show up. And there, you know, there would be this this loneliness, and this, this self loathing, that would be the pattern that would show up in me right before I'd reach for a bottle. And in the employees seat, you know, the same was true in a different way, right? If I if I had a really stressful day, and I couldn't get through my tasks, and I had difficult meetings where I didn't get the clarity that I needed. Where, you know, I'm working my ass off, but my boss is asking me for more and more and more and more beyond what's sustainable. Guess what, I'm leaving that environment. And I'm feeling like I'm not enough like I'm not doing a good enough job. Like I'm not performing at the level that is expected of me somehow, so that that wound gets activated. And we never know, we never know what another person's trauma wounds actually are. So have to be really mindful of what our actions could trigger in another person. This is why perpetuating toxic work culture. And cultures of constant stress is so harmful for people it's so harmful. Like, yes, stress causes diseases. Yes, of course. But doing in this work, doing work in this way has been damaging people mentally and psychologically for a very long time. So by healing work culture, we're creating environments that allow people to heal these core patterns and wounds, I believe, that also is a really sacred responsibility of a conscious leader. Especially if they have innate innate healing gifts already. And I you know, and I identify as having gifts like that so i i Now love to create cultures that heal that create safe environments where there is psychological safety and trust and we really see each other we we move towards clarity together we take you know, We take breaks, we sleep on it, we don't move at a pace that demands that we cope with the unsustainable pace. So those are those are two examples of alcohol abuse showing up relative to the paradigm of stressful work. And I think what's what's interesting and worth noting here is that when when we begin to witness ourselves in these behaviors, we can begin to observe the pattern or the trigger that shows up just before the action. So what is the thought I'm having, or the feeling I'm having in my body, right before I reach for a bottle, right? Because it's often derived from the same core feeling of loneliness or not enoughness or just kind of being depressed and like wanting life to be more than then this work culture that I feel stuck in. So I can notice those patterns and then I can begin to work with them. And I want to name to that for me, you know, caffeine addiction also showed up, I'm not you know, I haven't struggled with that addiction as much as I've struggled with my addiction to alcohol. But in my most stressful work environments, where there was a lot of chaos and drama, and where there was a lot of pressure to perform specifically when there was a lot of financial pressure where I felt responsible for the financial health and well being of you know, of the team who worked for me when I you know, when I felt like, oh my gosh, if I don't, if I don't pitch this just right, I'm not be able to pay people. So especially when when stress like that showed up, I found that I was turning to caffeine, almost as an insurance policy. So that no matter how tired or foggy brained I was, in a moment by having caffeine right before a board meeting and investor meeting, whatever it was, like whatever the most pressure filled activity or meeting in my day was reaching for caffeine, the pattern that was showing up right before that was often if I don't have this I'm worried I'm not going to be able to perform which is really rooted in that same pattern of of our fear of not being enough or my fear of not being enough and as you know, as I continued to show up in in those environments and stayed in a pretty consistent state of fight or flight and emotional and mental distress. There was also another another pattern that showed up that was more in the realm of coping when it came to caffeine for me and it showed up most like most prevalently in my in my first cup of the day. And I you know I kind of had this this ritual in the morning that that got more intense the more intense my work environment got. And that was this this feeling of I just like I need to get away from this. I just I need a break from this. Let me go treat myself when I you know I like I deserve this. I deserve a break. Let me go treat myself with this fancy expensive. Honey lavender latte. It was my favorite at the little cafe up the street. It's my lavender, honey, tawny lavender, whatever. Like six bucks. There's sugar in it. But it would momentarily soothe me. So I was I was turning to something outside of myself to soothe myself. I was outsourcing my ability to self soothe in a product that I was paying for. It was not healthy for me. But it was like it was the only thing that that I could I could go get that instant that instant shift From in, you know, in five minutes or less, because I also had limited time and was constantly in a state of urgency. So often I would feel like I like I need caffeine in order to even be able to show up to this work environment to this workload. If I don't drag myself into more efficiency and productivity, I can't do this job. So my caffeine addiction that grew over time, and the reliance that I developed on it was different than my reliance on alcohol. But it was still equally as powerful to ask myself, what is like, what is the pattern or the thought that showing up right before I reach for it right before I run to the cafe to go get another latte in the afternoon? Or better yet a double shot of espresso? What's the thought that showing up right before that, and what do I gain from this behavior. Because even when it comes to Addictive Behaviors, I think that there is usually something significant that we are gaining, that we feel we can't get otherwise. And so we we outsource, we outsource that need to fill a gap within ourselves, whatever that gap might be, we outsource that to something external. And you know, I think when it comes to when it comes to alcohol, sometimes, sometimes the things that we're outsourcing are a sense of belonging. If we're going out with coworkers after work, sometimes we are outsourcing a feeling of confidence that we haven't yet learned how to generate within ourselves. So we think that putting a substance that makes us lose our inhibitions, we think that that is going to somehow solve our confidence issues and give us that momentary confidence to be able to you know, talk to the person at the bar or make the make the pitch, close the deal with our client as we as we go out for for dinner and drinks. Think we, we even attempt to outsource self care to a certain extent because of because of this. This self regulatory aspect, this numbing aspect that alcohol has. So we are literally outsourcing our ability to relax when if we chose something else, like closing our eyes and resting for five minutes, or taking a nap or taking, you know, taking a break, meditating, whatever it is going for a walk in nature, those things, those things calm the nervous system as well. But it isn't as instantaneous as taking a big swig of wine. We don't get that instant gratification. And when we live in a pace that is so fast that it's damaging. We feel that we don't have time for these other healthier coping mechanisms. So we turn to the ones that match the vibration and the pace of the environment that we're already in. Because it's a match. It's a match to that way of existing. It's all sorts of interesting nuances here. But I noticed I noticed that in previous episodes, I have mentioned alcohol and I have mentioned addiction. I've alluded to this quite a bit without actually going into it. Because I wasn't ready yet. I think I was scared. It's scary to sit here and say I have really struggled with alcohol abuse as a coping mechanism, but especially because of my own patterning around self loathing and not being enough of not living up to the expectation that I've built for myself around professionalism and perfectionism it's a difficult thing to say, and I am still in the healing, I may be recovering for the rest of my life. As all alcoholics actually are, I've learned, you don't, you don't actually, like if you've, if you've gone that far in and developed that unhealthy relationship where you have, you don't have control over the quantity, where it impacts your life, then that does actually classify us in the category of being an alcoholic, and you don't actually get out of that. When you quit, you remain in in the recovery phase is what I'm learning. And I, you know, I'm no expert, I'm no expert. But I think when you know, there are there are so many experiences, and so many examples I could give here. But I think one example, in the realm of work is also you know, when stress gets so great that we we over consume alcohol in the evening to try and regulate our, our nervous system. And then we're hungover the next day, we can't show up and be our best selves and do our best work and be exceptional conscious leaders. In that we like you just can't, you can't, you can't have that, that toxicity and that energy of depression and recovery in your energetic field and show up in the way that you're fully embodied soul self could. So the gap, the gap grows. And this is a this is a self perpetuating, spiral. Because we do it to cope. But then it prevents us from fully showing up the next day. So we can't, we can't ever catch up on our work. Maybe we didn't show up as fully as we would have hoped. And so the pattern of not feeling enough is still there, the judgment that we might have towards ourselves the feeling of failure that we might have, for that particular day. Because a day after being wasted is a day wasted, pretty much, pretty much. And I've hit a point where I'm, you know, I'm no longer willing to lose my days, I'm no longer willing to lose my life force, I want to show up as a clear channel. And I've learned how good that feels. Right. It's like, if you've been sick your whole life, if you've been addicted to sugar your whole life, you don't know any better, you don't know how good you could feel. On the other side of giving that up until until you until you do until you experience it. I think the same is true for really healthy and organic food. I didn't know what I was missing. I didn't until I studied permaculture at an eco village where there was incredible organic homemade food for every meal that was locally grown on site is all vegan was incredible. I was like I have more energy than I even know what to do with that didn't know I can have this much energy in my body. What am I going to do with all this? It was an incredible feeling to have. But until we experienced that we don't we don't know what we're missing. We think that our current state of being is normal. And maybe that state is rooted in stress or depression or anxiety or insecurity or low self esteem and that's all we know. That's all we know. Because we haven't healed the patterns and we cope we self medicate so that we don't have to so that we don't have to do that difficult inner work we can just suppress and try and forget but it does have a way of of always surfacing I've found so if this difficult work is is inevitable. Why not do it eyes wide open and together is kind of where I'm at now with all of this but yeah, I think I think addiction goes hand in hand with unhealthy work culture. toxicity at work toxicity, through substance abuse, it's all toxic, where, like a big part of what we're doing here, when we heal work trauma is we're detoxifying. All of the toxicity that has, has been in our work culture and in our bodies through this current way of living. And we're choosing a new template, we're designing a new template for life and work. Where we don't have this, like self perpetuating cycle, what's a different pattern that we could create? What's a different cycle or experience that we could create that we would love that would would send us into an upward spiral towards our our highest potential and highest vitality as human beings. There's a lot at stake that we might not be aware of, if we've never been in those states of being totally in our in our vitality in our creativity. So I think it's important that we try this on that we step out of the toxicity, and try on these new ways, because we don't know what we don't know. And right now, there's a lot we don't know about where work is going, and what what work in the future really looks like we can speculate. We don't know what we don't know. So what a time to experiment into our own vitality and create a different energetic pattern, a different energetic signature or frequency through our behavior, our habits, our thoughts, our beliefs. To experience something else, if we're caught in an unhealthy cycle in an unhealthy loop, as I was for many, many years, without even knowing it, because I like I've, I've been high functioning through my addictions. And many people are. It's not, it's not something you can see on the surface. So I trust that this topic will continue to show up organically and authentically as I continue to heal. And as I continue to learn into the many layers of healing this aspect of work culture. But this has been an incredibly vulnerable start to that journey. And I know we can go deeper, I know we can. And there's a part of me that really looks forward to that, to sharing some of you know, some of the stories, light and dark. To connect with you in this way, if this is something that you are also contemplating and also struggling with. I think when we name these things, we no longer feel alone. And so I hope my naming of this struggle has perhaps opened up something in you and brought you one step closer to loving yourself into the vitality that's possible to loving yourself into seeing through these harmful patterns that are not of your creation. Much of this is marketed to us much of this is normalized. And it takes good deep work to be able to see through that. But we are beginning to see through many of these veils. And to see a lot of this for what it really is. And I know that I know that if I can do it, you can do so thank you for being with me in this vulnerable chapter of the journey. Again, there's so much that we that we can and will dive into here. So let this be let this be a taste. Let this be an opening of this conversation that I'm so grateful and open to having with you because it's an important one. Thank you again for continuing to show up for looking at these things with me within you. I will see you next time.