You don’t have to be unemployed to have a whole lot of big layoff feelings. Let’s make some space for ‘em.
Layoffs are on a lot of people’s brains right now—but the challenges and complicated feelings aren’t limited to those who were laid off. In a bit of a companion to last week’s episode, Sara and Jen help listeners work through how to move on after others have lost their jobs, how to find your footing if your role has changed in a post-layoff reorg, and how to be present and supportive to loved ones who are struggling when your own work is going well.
Links:
Got a work situation eating away at you? Send it to us! Submit your dilemma at PMLEshow.com
.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 0:00 The most valuable thing I can do here is actually being, and that is enough. And the more spaciousness I have for being present for this person's pain and able to sit with them in their pain, the more I can help them.
Jen Dionisio 0:36 Happy birthday to you.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 0:39 Oh my god. No.
Jen Dionisio 0:40 Happy birthday to you! Is that too much?
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 0:47 Okay. Okay, I think that's enough. I think that's enough. Too much. That's enough. Thank you, Jen. Hi, everybody. We're recording this a couple days before a very big birthday for me. I'm turning 40.
Jen Dionisio 0:59 Welcome to the club.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 1:00 Yeah.
Jen Dionisio 1:01 It's creaky over here.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 1:02 Oh, I don't like that it's a little creakier. I do like that I feel a little bit wiser. Mixed feelings. Mixed feelings.
Jen Dionisio 1:09 Yeah.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 1:09 But hey, turns out I don't really get a choice either way. So I'm going to try to embrace it.
Jen Dionisio 1:15 Yes. I'll tell you when I was growing up, you know, there was something about turning 40 that my mom always said was, like, the year she became herself. So I've spent my whole life expecting my 40s to be the start of something new and good. And I'm happy that that's gonna start for you.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 1:34 Oh, my gosh, well, you turned 40 right at the same time that you joined Active Voice full time. So I hope it is the start of something new for you.
Jen Dionisio 1:41 It sure is.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 1:42 Well, on that note, I think we should do a podcast.
Jen Dionisio 1:45 Let's do it. Hi, friends. This is Per My Last Email, the show about what to do when work gets weird. I'm Jen Dionisio.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 1:54 And I am Sara Wachter-Boettcher. And today we're talking about...wait, Jen. What are we talking about?
Jen Dionisio 2:00 So today's episode is a little bit of a partner to last episode when we talked about layoffs. But this time, we're going to look at them from a little bit of a different perspective. So not people who have been laid off, but people who are worrying if they are about to be laid off, or people who have survived layoffs and aren't sure how to be supportive to the people in their lives.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 2:27 I'm so glad we're answering some of these questions. I think we spend a lot of time thinking about the people who have been laid off and who often have the highest level of need. And I think that's really important. They deserve to get that kind of primary attention and care. But the reality is that layoffs wreak havoc and raise stress for everybody all around. And I think it's really important that we talk about all of those different ripples of a layoff here.
Jen Dionisio 2:52 Yeah, I know so many people who feel a little bit, like, ashamed and embarrassed to be thinking about their feelings when they've survived a layoff. They still have a paycheck, they still have benefits, they still have a job, like, who are they to express a need?
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 3:08 "I should feel grateful."
Jen Dionisio 3:10 Exactly. And it's totally reasonable to have those worries. But it's also true that layoffs are really stressful and emotional for everyone, just in slightly different ways.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 3:21 Yeah, I think that's such a good point. And I think it really comes back to something that I hear coming up so often in people, which is like, "Do I deserve to be struggling?" Or, "Do I deserve to have these feelings?" And the answer, of course, is like, if you're struggling, you're struggling. And if you have the feelings, you have the feelings. And I think all of us deserve support going through them. I think maybe you shouldn't necessarily dump those feelings on the person who was just laid off if you're in a better situation than them. But I don't think that that means that you don't deserve space to process it. So we're going to try to create some space for that here today.
Jen Dionisio 3:56 Yeah, so let's get started. Sara, our first submission is from a UX director. And here's what she shared.
DD 4:08 I have been through two rounds of layoffs in my career, and both times I didn't lose my job, but I did lose my project or my position. Both times the work changed so drastically or a demotion was involved so that I had to find other work so as not to derail my career without severance or support. Is this a common thing? Or have I been unlucky? Could anything be done in these situations to help someone remain at an organization they still want to work for or to receive support with moving on?
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 4:38 Yeah, this is exactly what I meant before. This person, who I'm going to call DD for "demoted and derailed," they sound like they might feel like they're lucky to still have a job. But yet being demoted or having your work pulled out from under you, that is going to impact your job satisfaction, that could have a big impact on your self-esteem. Like that has a big ripple effect on everything even though this person is "lucky"?
Jen Dionisio 5:03 Yeah, I mean, of course it does. And these new kind of responsibilities aren't necessarily what DD signed up for. And it sounds like they didn't have much input on these changes being made. So Sara, what should DD do to cope with this? I mean, is this normal?
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 5:23 Yeah, let me start with "normal." So I do think that it's pretty normal for layoffs to be combined with reorgs because you know, you cut a lot of people from a company, you have to make changes to how it's organized to make the org function with fewer people, different teams. And so I think there's a piece of this that's absolutely common. And also, when there's a workforce reduction, if you're a manager, you might lose headcount. Or you might find yourself suddenly reporting to somebody who used to be a peer. Some really weird things can happen. And they're pretty common. And that doesn't mean that they're right or like that I think companies are doing an awesome job with this. I think companies are often doing a terrible job with this. But they are pretty frequent. This is common stuff that happens.
And I also think it's normal to have a lot of feelings about it, though. Because if you thought you knew what your job was and where you stood in the organization, and then all of that feels like it crumbles, yeah, you might feel a lot of grief or loss there because you've put time and energy and potentially a whole bunch of yourself into something, into building a team, or into building out a vision for a project and trying to move it forward. And so if that is taken away suddenly, of course, it's going to feel bad. And I think it's really helpful to just acknowledge there's a loss there.
Jen Dionisio 6:37 Yeah, that makes me think of something you said on the last episode about layoffs being kind of the death of a dream, and this sort of shift feels very similar to that.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 6:50 Did I say that? Sounds smart.
Jen Dionisio 6:51 It was.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 6:53 Yeah, I really think that because of that, too, it's a really fertile ground for cognitive distortions, you know, where your brain will tend toward those extreme thoughts? And in this case, the extreme thought that's very tempting is that this is personal, that this is something being done to you. And that's on one level true, because like it is happening to you, right? So like in this scenario, DD is experiencing a shift in their job responsibilities and potentially a sense of demotion. The first thing I would just encourage everybody to really keep in mind is that the vast majority of the time it is 1,000% not personal. Just like the layoffs themselves aren't personal, a reorg to adapt to the post-layoff reality means things get lost in the shuffle.
And it's a very messy process. And it's often a process that's being carried out in a not particularly humane way. So it impacts you personally, but to think that it is being done to you specifically because of who you are or how you are being, it's very tempting, but it's unlikely to be true. I think odds are very high that these things are happening because organizations are somewhat dysfunctional, and they're just trying to get shit figured out enough that they can keep moving forward without thinking real hard about how it impacts individual people.
Jen Dionisio 8:13 Yeah, I mean, you think about the panic and reactionary actions everybody's taking within that organization, and it's easy to see how everyone's kind of winging it and trying to figure out how to move forward.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 8:30 Yeah. And so that's why, you know, before getting into how to cope, I would suggest that DD maybe even start out by taking a step back and trying to get some distance from the situation and saying, "Okay, well, what's really happening here?" In a stressful moment like this, where you do feel like the rug was pulled out from under you, it can be easy to perceive what's happening as a demotion because you are experiencing a loss. Right? The loss is there. But I would consider, is this really a demotion? Was this, like, structurally a demotion, or does it just feel that way?
Jen Dionisio 9:04 Yeah.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 9:04 And it's okay if it feels that way, like, you're allowed to feel that way. But I think it's important to kind of separate out that feeling from what is the actual change in employment status?
Jen Dionisio 9:13 Yeah, I could definitely see my brain immediately going to demotion without actually really thinking about what that truly means.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 9:21 Yeah, I mean, same. So now the question then I think is: What can DD do to get herself back to a place where she feels good about the work on her plate and about her career path? And I think for that the first thing I would suggest is that she get really clear on what's missing for her in her new role. What about the new work doesn't feel right? And to help figure that out? Well, you could probably guess where I'm going with this. I think it's time to turn to our old pal BICEPS.
Jen Dionisio 9:51 BICEPS. Yeah.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 9:52 I talked about it before I'm sure we'll talk about it again. But BICEPS is this model of identifying your core needs at work created by Paloma Medina. And we use it all the time because it's so helpful for getting under the surface of these kinds of situations. Jen, can you remind folks what BICEPS stands for?
Jen Dionisio 9:56 Yes. So the B is for Belonging, then Improvement, Choice, Equality and fairness, Predictability, and Significance.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 10:19 Yeah. So DD, when you think about how your role has changed, what I would ask is which of those areas feel threatened right now or not supported right now? For example, Choice is maybe an obvious one. Choice was taken away from you. And so that might be feeling really threatened or not nurtured. And so maybe one of the things that you're craving potentially is autonomy, having a sense of ownership, feeling like there's something that's yours. And so if you're feeling that way, then I would ask, "Okay, what does Choice look like in this new role? What's something you could fully own in this new role? Where is there a space for autonomy in the new role?"
Similarly, it might also be your sense of Predictability has been threatened. You used to know who to go to for what, how to get things done in your org. You used to know just the ebb and flow of things, and now that's changed. And that can leave people feeling at sea, untethered, uncertain. And so if you're feeling that, then you might ask yourself, "Okay, how do I get my need for Predictability met? What would it look like to ground myself in this new role, to feel a little bit more confident in the lay of the land?" And I think all of this is really designed to clarify what is missing in the new role and also just to get you focused on the future here, because it can be really easy to hyper focus on the past and everything that you are upset about losing, which is important and needs time to process and to feel those feelings, but I think the reality is, you're not going back to that old job.
That old job exists in an organization that doesn't exist anymore, so it's not going to happen. What you have is what's in front of you, and it's either in this organization or moving on from this organization. And so being able to get to a place where you can recognize, "How can I get my needs met in this role, as it stands today?" is going to help you find your footing in a way that ruminating on what you wish it were, will not actually do for you. So that's why I think it's so important to figure out what your unmet needs are right now, so you can figure out how to meet them in the here and now. But of course, knowing your unmet needs is only a piece of the situation here. After that, you have to do something that can be really scary for a lot of people—
Jen Dionisio 12:37 Like talk about them?
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 12:39 Yeah, guess what? We do have to actually talk about them sometimes. Because we can wind up in situations where we've recognized that something needs to change, we've had these unmet needs, but where we need someone else's support or advocacy to actually get those needs met. This is really hard, because for a lot of us, talking directly about our needs is not something we're very trained in doing. It can trigger some vulnerability because if you ask for a need to be met, then there's a chance somebody could say no. Of course, if you don't ask for the need to be met, well, probably nobody's going to try to meet it at all. But our brain forgets that part in the moment.
Jen Dionisio 13:14 They're not gonna read your mind.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 13:15 Right? Right. And that's what we want, right? That's what a lot of us walk around wanting is somebody to read our minds. "Why can't you just know that I have this need and then meet the need for me without me ever having to say it?" Sounds great, sign me up. But like, humans can't do that very well. That is a method of getting very inconsistent results, right, and a lot of frustration. So when we start working through the fear of talking about it directly, I think we can get a lot further. I actually made up a model for that. It's kind of like my pair to the BICEPS model, which is what do you do when you need to start talking about your needs and how to get them met? This model is called SURE—as in, you got to get SURE when you're gonna have a conversation.
Jen Dionisio 14:00 Love it.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 14:01 And so it's for having a conversation about needs with somebody like a manager or somebody in a position of power. So the SURE model is Situation, Unmet need, Request, and then Expectations. The Situation is just your neutral description of things: "After the layoffs happened, here's how my role has changed. Here's what I've observed in my new role around what my responsibilities are, what my sort of level of authority is, projects I'm working on, et cetera." And then the Unmet need. Now this is about you and what you've identified that's missing. So for example, "I know I can't get Project X back, but for me to succeed in this new role, I need to establish some autonomy on my new project Z as soon as possible. Without the sense of autonomy. I'm really struggling.
Jen Dionisio 14:52 So that's going back to that Choice need, right?
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 14:54 Yeah. So then this is you identifying what's missing. Then we get into a Request: What are you asking for to help get your needs met? For example, if Predictability was your unmet need, maybe you would request that your manager host a team workshop on, like, aligning around some new team norms and establishing some new processes for communication. Maybe that would help you feel more grounded. Or maybe you would ask your manager to support you in pushing a deadline back so you could spend a week or two building a stakeholder map in your new org, so you can feel confident about the lay of the land, you'll know who to go to for what, you'll feel like, you can predict a little bit more about how things are going to happen in this new role on your new project.
Whatever that request is, I think it's really important here to get as specific as possible about what can they do that will help you get your unmet need met, and learning to ask for it directly, which is hard. But it's something that I think we can really work on and actually gets a lot easier over time.
Jen Dionisio 16:04 God, and as a manager, I'm always so relieved when somebody has something specific that I know I can do to make them feel happier and more comfortable, you know, especially when they've had a big change that I couldn't protect them from.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 16:18 Yeah, right. So many managers actually really appreciate getting those specifics, because it gives them something tangible and achievable that they can do. It also gives them something to react to, right? Because sometimes they can't do the thing that you'd like them to do, but it helps them understand where you're coming from, and then figure out, "Well, what are some alternate paths forward?" And so that's actually the last part of the model. So E is for Expectations. And that is really getting clear on what are the expectations that we both have about what's gonna happen from here? What are the commitments that we're going to make to each other? For example, is your manager committing to supporting your request for that extra time to get the lay of the land to the stakeholders?
Great, what do you need from them to feel confident that they really mean that and that that's going to be okay? If they can't do that, right, if the thing that you're asking for isn't something that they can support, what can they do? And can you align around expectations about what is possible right now? And I think this is really important to get some clarity on because oftentimes, people will have a hard conversation with a manager or somebody in power, but then they'll leave it a little like, "Anything I can do to support you," at the end. And that's not a commitment. Really making sure that you're focusing on what is actually being committed, so that then you have some method of accountability, so you can check back and say, "Thanks so much for agreeing to do this thing." Follow up and see if it actually happened, or have a deadline for it. All those things become a lot more possible the more concrete we get.
Jen Dionisio 17:50 God, I can think of so many situations that in hindsight, I thought we had clear expectations, and it turns out me and the person I was talking to, whether it was my manager, or somebody that was reporting to me, totally thought we had agreed to very different things. So I'm glad that you're bringing this in as a very important final step.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 18:12 Yeah. Well, and you know, there's a lot of reasons for that, right? Like, we are two different people, we have different lenses, we're listening for different things, something stands out to you, that doesn't stand out to me and vice versa. It's very human to come out of the same thing with a different interpretation. And so if we can state like, "Here's my interpretation of what we're agreeing to, is that your interpretation? And then what does that mean for our commitments?" It's just so clarifying. And my experience is that it's sometimes a little uncomfortable, because again, there's a lot of directness there.
But it is also oftentimes more welcome than you think. And it is something that I think with a little practice starts to feel less weird and begins to feel freeing, honestly. That brings me to the last thing I want to mention for DD, which is if you're going into this feeling nervous about having these direct conversations, it's totally normal. You are so not alone, you will be joined by almost every client I've ever had. Because if you're really used to guessing...
Jen Dionisio 19:18 And me.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 19:18 Yeah. Yeah, if you're really used to guessing and hinting instead of having a direct conversation, it is weird-feeling because it's new. So what I would just reiterate is kind of what we talked about before: When we don't ask directly for what we need, we often end up resentful and our needs aren't met, and then we leave anyway. Right? We end up leaving because we never said what we needed, and so our need never got met. There is not a guarantee that by speaking up you will have a manager who is able to and willing to meet your needs.
But this is also how you find out because if you assume the answer is no, if you never ask, then it's very unlikely to happen. If you ask directly, and if you're clear about the request you're making, then that's an opportunity for them to step up. And it's an opportunity for you to find out what's possible there. It's an experiment in finding out whether this company in its new form is a place that can serve you. And if it's not, well, now that you understand your needs and what's not being met, it actually gets easier for you to detach from the role and move on emotionally if that's what you ultimately need.
Jen Dionisio 20:29 Yeah, thanks for sharing that, Sara. I really think that so often, we feel like we have no power after something like a reorg, or a shift in role that like was out of our control. And I, again, going back to my manager hat, like, after layoffs, the thing that a lot of your leadership is most worried about is if everyone is going to be demoralized and quit.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 20:57 Yeah, yeah.
Jen Dionisio 20:58 So you may have a lot more power than you think because people hopefully want you to be happy with this new role you have.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 21:07 Yeah. All right, DD. Thank you so much for your question. Please let us know how it goes.
Jen Dionisio 21:16 Alright, Sara, are you ready for our next question?
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 21:19 Yes.
Jen Dionisio 21:20 All right. This one is from MO, or "moving on." And here's what she shared:
MO 21:27 I was laid off in November from my dream job. I have since started a new job and am having a hard time. There's always stress with starting a new job, and I'm finding that it is compounded by having been laid off. I'm feeling incredibly insecure and struggling to find my place on the team. At the time of the layoff, I was doing well. In the summer, I was struggling due to a complicated divorce. How can I move on from a layoff and do my best work when I'll never know if I was selected because of my work or if it was random?
Jen Dionisio 22:00 Ah, MO, God, you have clearly been through so much this year. And my heart is really going out to you right now.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 22:10 Yeah, seriously, that's really the first thing I noticed here: going through a layoff, especially from a job MO really identified with, they called a "dream job," that's a big identity shift. And then also getting divorced? That's another huge identity shift. And so what I notice is just that there's a lot of destabilizing events happening here and a lot of maybe questioning that could come up. Like I can imagine that MO might be asking themselves, like, "Who even am I now?" And so, I just want to flag all of those identity shifts, because I think those could potentially be at the root of some of MO's insecurity on their new team.
Jen Dionisio 22:49 Yeah, try as we might, it's really hard to separate the personal from professional, and there's going to be bleed over. So Sara, how might MO move past their past layoff and maybe get a little confidence back?
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 23:04 What I would say is that, if MO lost their old sense of self in a couple of big ways last year, right, like they lost the dream job, they ended a relationship, some big defining things for them shifted, then they might still be processing that loss. And so I wonder if they can pause to ask themselves who they are now? Both in work and in life. Because like, how can you be confident in what you bring to a new role if you're no longer clear on who you are?
Jen Dionisio 23:36 Yeah.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 23:36 So that's where I would really start. So I would say to MO, "Okay, maybe we can do some reflection around who you are now." So some questions that they might ask themselves: "How have my priorities changed in the past year? What have I learned? What's important to me now? What am I excited about now? What do I want to create more of in the world? What do I want to surround myself with? Who do I want to be?" And those are big questions, you don't have to answer all of them. But I would suggest spending some time kind of free writing around some of those questions. And then kind of zooming out and synthesizing what MO finds and saying, "Okay, what are some of the themes and trends I'm noticing here? What is this telling me about the version of MO that exists today? Not the version that was in the dream job, not the version that was in the marriage, the version that exists here and now and that is moving forward?" From there, I would also suggest maybe bringing some focus to the new team and starting to look at, "Well, what am I bringing to that team?" I think that this is a place where it can be very easy to focus on gaps or things you don't know because when you're new, there's all these things you don't know, you're like, might be a new industry, definitely a new org culture, there's norms you're not familiar with. And so it's very easy to tune into all those things that are question marks. So I would encourage you to tune in to the things you bring. What do you know, based off of all of your experiences, based off of your identity, based off of the places you've been, what do you know, that this team doesn't know or that this team needs? What do you bring to this role that the organization was missing before you were there? What goes wrong when you're not on the team? My thinking here is that I think this might be a really helpful place to get MO to refocus their brain on that here and now and kind of get out of that comparison mode. Like, the comparison mode of, "Well, I got laid off, but these other people didn't. What did they have that I didn't have?" Or getting really stuck in the past. Because that's not going to help you in your new job, right? Like, all of that is actually irrelevant to what's going on here and now. So like, tuning into that here, and now, I think that that might be a really powerful place to start.
Jen Dionisio 25:53 Yeah, you're really hitting on something in this question and the one before that I think is so important, which is like, there are limited returns on looking backwards.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 26:03 Yes.
Jen Dionisio 26:03 Right, like, it's easier to do that, because it's already happened. You know what to expect, and what's ahead is so uncertain. And yet there is a lot of opportunity and potential happiness in what's ahead, especially when you are focusing on some of those questions you asked, Sara, like, yeah, what's the gift that you're able to give to this team because now you're part of it?
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 26:28 Yeah. You know, it's interesting. I think a lot about rumination. I mean, it's very human. I don't know a person who doesn't have a level of rumination ,meaning, like, getting kind of stuck spiraling on the past. Those like, wouldas, and shouldas, and couldas, and all of the different things that you might regret, or like, I don't know, awkward moments that you replay over and over and over and over at three o'clock in the morning for decades. Maybe that's just me.
Jen Dionisio 26:56 Oh, no. Those are my favorite nighttime thoughts.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 27:01 Yeah. Yeah, it's very, it's very human. And so everybody does some level of it. But when we get really stuck in rumination, what that tends to do is really focus in on shame and guilt. So it tends to be very much about judging ourselves. In that mode, what we're not doing is we're not present in the here now. And we're also not even learning from the past, right? Because those are not learning-oriented thoughts, those thoughts are judgment-oriented thoughts. If you're going to look back, really trying to orient your thinking around what you've learned, how you might handle things differently, ways that you're proud of showing up in the past, things you were doing, what were you doing your best with, that can actually help you give yourself some grace and get out of that rumination cycle and be able to get some closure there to say, "Okay, here's what happened. Here's how I handled it. Here's what I'm proud of in how I handled it. And here's what I'd do differently if I were doing this, again."
That is a lot more productive, because that kind of leads you through to a sense of, like, the end. "There's nothing more for me here." And I think for MO that might be a piece of this if they're ruminating a lot to really think about, maybe you squeezed all you're gonna squeeze out of going back to that past experience. And it might be really helpful to say, "What did I learn from this? Okay, great taking that with me. Everything else, I want to physically set it down," right? Like almost like this visualization of me setting down all that stuff. Especially because we're talking about that layoff experience where it's so easy to start ruminating around, "Well, if I'd done X or Y at my old job, maybe this would have been different. If I had, you know, been more assertive, maybe I wouldn't have been on the chopping block. If I had made myself more visible, people would have known who I was, and then advocated for me to not be laid off," or whatever, right?
And that really is about trying to control the past. Because it's like, "If I could have done things differently in the past, it would have changed." It's a little bit hard but actually very healthy to get to a realization that's like, "I wasn't in control of that. It wasn't really about me." Layoffs might not be random, they might focus on a particular line of business. They might decide that some projects are more important to the business than others. So it's not that it's random, necessarily. But it's very, very rarely personal. And so I think, trying to make it personal, like, "If I had only done X or Y," is an attempt to control something out of your control. You're never going to know for sure, right?
Like MO will never know for sure exactly how this decision was made. And so it's kind of like this place where you can spend the rest of your life spinning around it and still come out with no new knowledge. And so I think the more that you can kind of try to focus your thoughts on you here and now and the team that you have joined, not the whole job market, not your old company, just your new team and what you offer them, I think that that kind of just narrows the scope in a way that makes it a lot easier to see and believe the value that you bring. You're not competing in your head with people from your old job or people in the job market. It's just me bringing my skills to this present moment, period.
Jen Dionisio 30:15 Presence is really important, and I think hard to sit with, when your brain is either pulling you to the past or desperately trying to grasp some unknown future. So MO, we really hope that you allow yourself some time to be present with what's going on and let things unfold as they do.
Emily Duncan 30:41 Hey, PMLE listeners. This is producer Emily hopping on with a special message to the content designers and strategists listening. Hello, we hear you loud and clear: It's been hard out there. You're constantly advocating for your work and getting burned out in the process. You feel like your value is overlooked by your orgs are seen as just writing. And yet you care so much about the work you're doing and want it to get the respect it deserves. That's why we created a workshop on July 13 called Leading Content Without Losing Yourself. It's designed to help you find healthy ways to deal with the pressures you're facing. Last time we held it, Bumble's Director of Content Design, Candi Williams, described it as, "The tonic, I didn't know I needed to soothe my soul. It's the course all content people need right now." Aw, thank you, Candi. Want to learn more? Head on over to https://www.activevoicehq.com/events to read more details and register.
Jen Dionisio 31:41 Alright, Sara, are you ready for our last dilemma?
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 31:44 I think I got it in me. Let's do it.
Jen Dionisio 31:46 Great. So this one's a little different. And it's from someone we're going to call SF for "supportive friend."
SF 31:54 I have a friend in a different industry who got laid off and a friend who can't work anymore, possibly permanently due to chronic illness. I want to be supportive but don't know exactly what they need. And when asked, they don't either, which is understandable. I've tried offering what I can, like to be a sounding board, to review resumes and make connections ,or just to be comic relief, but it doesn't feel like enough. When we get together, I also feel odd talking about work knowing their situation is so different from my own. And I don't want to make them feel weird or unsupported when talking about my own successes or frustrations. How can I support friends who have weird work situations when mine is mostly fine?
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 32:37 Ooh, SF. I have been here. I absolutely know how it can feel a little bit, I don't know, impossible to do enough for friends who are struggling, and also maybe some guilt showing up when you're doing okay. Totally feel you. This is a tough one.
Jen Dionisio 32:53 Yeah, I can actually relate to this a lot from even just some recent experience. You know, like all tech companies, a company I left to come to Active Voice is going through a lot of challenges right now. And there's a lot of pressure and stress on my content team that I was running, and it was really hard to feel comfortable talking about how excited I was for this change and all of the hopes and plans that I was pulling together kind of knowing that I didn't want to rub it in the faces of people who were feeling very differently about work in that moment. It kept me from, I think, being very honest about where I was at right then.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 33:41 Yeah, oh, I can so see that because everybody's worried about keeping their jobs and you're like, "I'm so excited to be quitting," and you deserve to feel that. But like, maybe that's not the vibe that's gonna hit in that moment with that group.
Jen Dionisio 33:55 Yeah, exactly.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 33:57 Well, I want to come back to something that SF said in their question, which is: "It doesn't feel like enough." Like when they try to be supportive, when they try to check in and see what people need, it doesn't feel like enough. And I want to tell you SF, I completely feel you on this. I have felt this way so often. And that is probably where I would start. I might ask, you know, what is making you feel like it's not enough? Where's that coming from? In my experience, it's often a desire to fix that's getting in the way. Part of that, I think, is that we care about our friends. We don't want them to suffer. We don't want them to go through hard times. And so that's the really positive side, right? Like that part of you that wants to fix is wanting to help somebody else. However...
Jen Dionisio 34:48 Oh no.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 34:48 This is a harder side of it. But I would suggest also investigating what part of that desire to fix things might be about you, SF. Meaning, what part of it might be about your own need to feel valuable, or to feel like you're doing something? And that might not be true for you, but I've heard this with a lot of people, and I will say, it's definitely true for me that sometimes when I want to show up and fix things for people who are struggling or who are in pain, it's because I feel validated or important when I can do that. And that doesn't mean it's wrong or bad. But it just means that that is about me, and it's actually not about the other party at that point.
The other party, I mean, obviously, if you could fix something for them, you would do it. But oftentimes, what they need is, well, they need something that's maybe more uncomfortable, which is like, they need someone to sit with them while they're struggling. To just simply be there and be able to take in their pain and be part of that experience with them. I think being the one who shows up with a solution feels like a way out of that discomfort. So if I just have a fix for you, I don't have to sit in the discomfort of your pain. But we're talking about a situation you can't fix. And so I think that it's sort of this desire we have to get rid of discomfort that's often driving us.
Jen Dionisio 36:11 Oh yeah. I feel like when I'm feeling really helpless, like, I go into that frantic solution mode. And I know from my own experience that when I'm struggling, that's actually very rarely what I want from the people in my life. And it actually can get really overwhelming when people are just trying to solve things for me before I've even figured out what I need.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 36:34 Yes, I mean, think about it in like all of our day to day relationships. Like, I'll tell you yesterday, I said to my husband, "Gosh, I'm feeling really fried. I have been feeling like there's a lot of intense work stuff I'm trying to get done before we're about to go out on vacation." I had a weird, like medical thing come up that threw my timelines around a little bit. And I'm like, "I just feel like I've been working in a really intense way. And I'm feeling fried." And he immediately had this response that was like, "Do you want me to just handle dinner?" because we were in the kitchen starting to cook dinner. And it wasn't the end of the world.
But what I said was like, "No, I actually, I'm fine with cooking dinner. I just want you to hear what it's felt like to be me and acknowledge that sounds hard." You know? Like, "I hear that you're fried." I just wanted it to be something that could exist in the room, and have that be okay. If I need you to do something, that's a different conversation. And you know, he's working on it. This is a conversation we've had, but like, that's a hard thing for a lot of people because they feel like that's what they're supposed to respond with, is a fix. And in reality, that's actually much less useful to me than just, "Oh, wow, that sounds stressful. What do you need? How are you feeling?" You know, and just letting that be. That's all I really wanted was that acknowledgement. And I think that that's true so often, that that is actually the most meaningful thing, and we bypass it in service of jumping to solutions because those feel more comfortable.
Jen Dionisio 38:09 Yeah, it's like sometimes that acknowledgement, or like, a hug is really the thing that's going to feel right for the person who's struggling.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 38:18 Yes, yeah. Yeah. And what's hard is like, if you're the person who is giving that acknowledgement or that hug, sometimes it feels like "I didn't do anything," right? Like, that's my feeling is I didn't do anything. And for the other party, it might actually be incredibly meaningful. And so if any of this is resonating with you, SF, something I would consider is what happens when you maybe try focusing less on what you're doing and more on who you're being with these friends? Because if you ask yourself, "Who am I being with these people in my life? How am I showing up?" What that is going to help you understand is how well you're listening to them, how present you are with them. When you get caught up in what you're doing, then it's very easy to jump in with advice, to maybe tell them that things are gonna be okay, to tell them to look on the bright side. And all that stuff ends up kind of bypassing their pain and their feelings.
And so instead, "who am I being with this person who is struggling?" gives you more space to figure out, how can I just sit with them and kind of affirm what we've just been talking about? You know, a couple of years ago, I interviewed this amazing researcher Samira Rajabi, and she had had a brain tumor. And it profoundly changed the course of her research. She was like in her PhD program when she had the brain tumor. And she now focuses a lot on trauma. And one of the things that she told me is that in these moments of crisis, it's so common for people around the crisis to jump to placating, like “it's going to be okay,” platitudes like "you're a fighter." And she was like, "I don't want to hear that I’m a fighter," right? Yeah.
Jen Dionisio 40:02 Having had cancer, that fighter line is one of my least favorites.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 40:08 Right? It's like, I mean, sure you're a fighter. But that's not really what this is about. So what she says is that what a lot of us are just not comfortable with is “sitting in the shit with one another.” Not trying to make it go back to normal, not trying to pretend that it's not actually a big deal, not trying to fix, solutioneer, or any of that. Just sitting in the shit, being present for the shit, and allowing the person who's experiencing the crisis space to give their testimony. That's it.
Jen Dionisio 40:42 That seems so simple. And yet, like, really hard.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 40:47 Yeah, I think the simplicity is what's hard.
Jen Dionisio 40:50 It's against all of our programming.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 40:51 Yeah, it very easily triggers that not-enoughness. And to say, "The most valuable thing I can do here is actually being and that is enough. And the more spaciousness I have for being present for this person's pain, and able to sit with them in their pain, the more I can help them. And the more that I'm uncomfortable with that and try to rush past that part, the more likely I am to actually do them a disservice."
Jen Dionisio 41:21 Yeah. And, Sara, I feel like something that we haven't heard is what is the friend feeling like, what do they need?
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 41:31 Right. Yeah, well, I think SF mentioned that they tried to ask what do you think is a great first step, but the other parties haven't necessarily known what they need. So because that's a hard question, right? Especially like, if I'm struggling, it's like, "I don't always know what I need. I want to feel better. But like, I don't know how, and if I knew how I would do that." So instead of asking them what they need, maybe some other questions you might ask them to just get a better read on what feels like support for them is: what's been feeling helpful to you lately? What are some things that have given you a sense of joy or hope? Or what does it feel like for you when I share about my work stuff? How does that feel for you? Is that too much right now? What part about that is interesting or helpful for you to hear? And what parts should I take elsewhere?
And then also, I think it's important to give people permission to talk about the pain and the shit they're sitting in. You know, can you ask your friends, like, what's been hard lately?
Jen Dionisio 42:28 I think we worry sometimes that if we ask some of those questions, we're asking someone to dredge up bad feelings or opening up a wound. And again, it goes back to that idea of giving someone some choice and some options and even a little bit, Sara, it feels like the SURE model of that, what are the expectations of both sides? When is it appropriate to chime in with advice or share things you're excited about? And when is it better to just be there and be quiet and listen?
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 43:00 Yeah. And I will say that if you start with offering more space for their testimony, right? If you start with sitting in the shit with them, and you really focus on that a little bit, you might also find that it gets a lot clearer, where they could use a hand, what kind of advice or tactical support is actually viable. There's all this other stuff that I think can come out of the woodwork by slowing down instead of trying to rush ahead to it. And so I would also just hold space for the idea that by being present, and by simply thinking about who you are being when you're around them, that some of these other questions might actually resolve themselves.
Jen Dionisio 43:43 Yeah. And as final thoughts for SF, the fact that you care enough about these friends of yours to write into us to seek advice for how to be the most supportive friend you can be, I just want to applaud you for caring and being supportive. It's clear that you have a big heart and really want to be there for people.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 44:07 Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, SF. Thank you for being so thoughtful and so generous with yourself. And thank you for submitting such a good question.
Jen Dionisio 44:15 Sounds like the moral of today's stories are really focusing on the here and now, especially when things are hard or confusing or uncertain, and not trying to think too far in the past or too far in the future and really just being present with what you're feeling, with what the people around you are feeling, and putting one foot in front of the other while you figure it out.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 44:48 Well, on that note, that's it for this week's episode. Per My Last Email is a production of Active Voice. Check us out at https://www.activevoicehq.com/ and get all the past episodes, show notes, and full transcripts for Per My Last Email at https://pmleshow.com/. This show was produced by Emily Duncan and our theme music is (I'm a) Modern Woman by Maria T. By her album at https://thisismariat.bandcamp.com/. Thank you to “Demoted and Derailed,” “Moving On,” and “Supportive Friend” for sharing your stories today. And thank you to everyone who's listening. If you have a work dilemma eating away at you, send it to us, head to https://pmleshow.com/ to submit your story. See you next time.