Most of us think of trauma as the capital “T” kind: war, natural disasters, serious abuse. But day-to-day life is full of smaller traumas, and those need to be processed, too: bullying, work stress, the aftermath of the pandemic. Rachael Dietkus of Social Workers Who Design is on a mission to help us do just that.
Most of us think of trauma as the capital “T” kind: war, natural disasters, serious abuse. But day-to-day life is full of smaller traumas, and those need to be processed, too: bullying, work stress, the aftermath of the pandemic. Rachael Dietkus of Social Workers Who Design is on a mission to help us do just that.
Rachael Dietkus is a writer, author, and social worker focused on the ways trauma shapes how and why we design. Through her organization Social Workers Who Design, Rachael and her team work to normalize and codify trauma-informed practices in design workplaces.
We've demonstrated a certain kind of toughness and unplanned resilience that has really been built on this collective trauma of living through a pandemic. And so there can be some power and some comfort in that. I think that with all of the adaptability and need to be adaptable throughout the past several months, what it has really shown us is that we now need flexibility. So is there flexibility in scheduling? Is there flexibility in how and where we work?
I have sometimes used this phrase that I personally have a very high threshold, but a quick tipping point. I see that in a lot of people. You know, there's just this like, "Well, everyone else is doing it. It can't really be that bad." And the more that we just keep suppressing and deserting those cues that we're getting, the more it's just building, building, building. And at some point, the body is going to respond.
—Rachael Dietkus, founder of Social Workers Who Design
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Plus: in this week’s You’ve Got This, Sara talks about the importance of specificity in our feelings and how that can help us get out of “comparison mode.” Are you really “just stressed,” or are you feeling something else: shame, betrayal, anger? Ask yourself, what is my anger telling me? What triggered it? What can I learn from this feeling? What unmet needs do I have here? For all this and more, check out https://www.activevoicehq.com/podcast.
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Rachael Dietkus 0:00 It's hard to look out for others or understand others if we don't understand ourselves. I don't think that is really heavily prevalent in design education, or even in the practice.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 0:24 Hello, and welcome to Strong Feelings, the podcast all about the messy world of being a human at work. I'm your host, Sara Wachter-Boettcher, and today is our last episode of the spring season. So we'll be back in the fall with a whole new set of interviews after a little bit of a summer break. So for that season closer, I'm so excited to share an interview today with Rachael Dietkus who's a licensed clinical social worker, a design researcher, and the founder of Social Workers Who Design. And as you might guess, based on those things, we talk a lot about the intersections of social work and design, and specifically about trauma: the trauma we carry with us at work, the trauma we experience in our workplaces, and the trauma of others that we often encounter when we perform research or design products. Y'all this conversation is so timely. Over the past few weeks, I have been talking with internal groups at companies about how they're coping with pandemic stress, and burnout, and what it looks like to actually rebound from this. And the message I've been sending is that, you know, we've all been through some serious trauma this past year. And while getting back to normal sounds good in theory, it's just not so simple. And in fact, actually assuming we can bounce back at work is really dangerous right now.
1:35 So I did some reading on this. Did you know that there are four phases to a disaster or mass violence incident, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs National Center for PTSD? Yeah, it's impact, rescue, recovery, reconstruction. And they map pretty well to the pandemic as well, which is, of course, a disaster and mass violence all rolled together in this slow-moving tragedy. And so impact and rescue are considered the acute phases, so this is when the event has just happened, right? And during impact, people are often in shock. They're operating from fear or anxiety, you get stunned responses, people are jumping into action, trying to help. And then during rescue, people start to look at what the damage has been. And that's when people really focus on how do we meet core survival needs. And I think we've seen a lot of both of those things over the past year, I mean thinking about all of the mutual aid efforts that have sprung up, right?
2:28 And so, once we get to this place of recovery, though, it's when things kind of get a little bit weird. So recovery is what begins once the biggest danger has passed, which I hope is where we're at right now. And so recovery sounds really good, sounds like a thing, right? Who doesn't want to recover? But what they found at the National Center for PTSD is that recovery isn't so simple, because it starts with this period of altruism where there's this outpouring of support, where people feel really grateful. It can even be like a post-disaster utopia, which I don't know if we're experiencing that, at least in the U.S. right now. But we are seeing a lot of very excited people looking to, like, party on the streets, get back out there. But during this time, when it is feeling like things are looking up, things are moving forward, people are often really hesitant to express feelings of distress because they feel lucky. They feel lucky to be in recovery. They feel like they have it good compared to others. Does that ring any bells for you? It definitely did for me. I've had this feeling so many times recently, like, "I have it so good. I shouldn't feel bad. I have it so good. I've really weathered this time so well." And see, that is exactly when things start to go wrong. Because eventually, people start feeling resentful about feeling pressured to stay positive. And so right there during recovery, right as things are looking up, you actually start to get this phase of disillusionment, and the National Center for PTSD, they say that this is often called the second disaster because it presents all these new problems, this new adversity for people, because it feels like no one cares anymore. It feels like you're supposed to just move on, it feels like you're supposed to just get on with it. And inside, you're screaming.
4:09 This is so dangerous, because when we stuff down our feelings in service of "getting on with it," the feelings don't go away. We like to think that they do but it ends up bubbling just below the surface. We stay in that mode of hyper-vigilance, and fear, and stress, and living like that is exhausting. It will absolutely lead to burnout. And even more than burnout, it can also lead to really long term distress like PTSD. That does not mean that's what everybody's going to have coming out of this pandemic by any means, but what it does mean is that all of us really need time and space to process what we've been through, make sense of what's happened, understand our feelings about it, and then kind of like, recalibrate: recalibrate our sense of stress, recalibrate our sense of danger. And if we don't have the space to do that, the real risk is we end up dumping our feelings on the people around us, people like our colleagues. Because if we're not honest with ourselves about what we're feeling and what we need, we cope using some pretty bad habits, like lashing out defensively at our peers, or shutting down entirely and making ourselves really small and not letting any of our ideas out, or all of these other things that ended up not working well for us and for our colleagues in the workplace. And so that just compounds in us, it hurts us, and it ends up hurting others too. So that is why I really wanted to talk with Rachael today, because she's got so much to say about how we can better understand ourselves, reflect on our feelings, both in this moment, and just in general, so that we can show up in our work in ways that are healthy for us and for the people around us. So let's get to that interview.
SWB 5:48 Rachael Dietkus is a licensed clinical social worker, a design researcher, and the creator of Social Workers Who Design where she helps organizations build more conscious, restorative, and trauma-informed practices. Rachael, welcome to Strong Feelings.
RD 6:02 Hi, Sara, thank you. Happy to be here.
SWB 6:05 Oh, gosh, I am so happy that you are here. The first place I want to start is that you have such a fascinating background that I think is a bit rare in design, maybe too rare in design. Can you tell us a little bit more about how you went from being a social worker to being a designer and sort of the intersections between those?
RD 6:23 Yeah, I think a lot of this really started for me back in the 1990s, when I was an undergrad, and I actually started out as an art and design student. But I stumbled upon a Sociology 100 class that just completely shifted my gears for my undergraduate education. After that, you know, so then this takes us into the early 2000s, where I was living and working in Chicago doing a lot of human rights work, activist work around abolition of capital punishment in Illinois. And I just kept coming up against highly creative people, so musicians, designers, artists who at the time wanted to work very closely with the organization that I was working with. And that was probably one of my earliest explicit examples of really seeing this power between social justice work and activism with just the creative community as a whole. And it stayed with me for many years, and I kept yearning for these opportunities where these two very different passions, that were highly complimentary really, could keep coming together. And just through other life experiences, I had this very chance encounter with a designer who had started a group called the The Champaign-Urbana Design Org, and this is probably 2007, 2008.
7:46 We met in 2009 and just struck up a conversation, and within less than 10 minutes, we learned that we shared a birthday and that I was looking to get more involved in just the local design community. It was really just an aspiration, wondering if it was something that would maybe come to fruition. And with the group that she had started, they were looking for someone who had an explicit knowledge of the local nonprofit community. And then it just kept slowly, very, very slowly growing from there. And I think as there were different opportunities to get involved in, it just became more and more clear to me that we as social workers, or I, as a social worker, was doing very similar work to a lot of human-centered designers, but we were tackling it through two very different perspectives. And I just made a commitment to get more serious about immersing myself in the world of design. And so I'd say, it's been this long, you know, kind of happenstance, episodic journey, but then one that was much more deliberate over the past five years.
SWB 8:52 You said something a moment ago about how you saw all these parallels between the work that social workers are doing and the work designers were doing, and I'm curious, can you say more about that?
RD 9:00 Yeah, you know, I really started seeing that social workers and designers are really tackling the same issues, but from, I'd say, through just different disciplinary lenses. So when I see that designers are maybe trying to, you know, understand humans and the human condition, that they are uncovering the very things that social workers typically are actually already reacting to and have been reacting to for decades, so long before there was a formal Social Work discipline. And I just kept wondering, like, why are we not working more closely together? Where are these specific opportunities for us to actually be coming together, learning from one another, but also, more importantly, really working side by side? So being collaborative and being participatory in learning from one another, but also understanding where maybe that educational practice is coming from and then, like, building something new from there.
SWB 9:58 Yeah, was there a particular issue or something that you worked on where you really saw that issue where you said social work was coming at it from one angle and had been working on it for a while, and it was different from where design was coming from?
RD 10:09 I would say some of this work with the CUDO, the The Champaign-Urbana Design Org, was probably the first explicit example of that for me. Here are all these very talented individuals doing their day-to-day job, their professional work, but wanting to build some type of a pro bono portfolio, or knowing that they had a skill set that could be beneficial to a fill-in-the-blank local social service agency or nonprofit that might not have the ability to have an in-house designer. I mean, that's incredibly rare. That was probably one of the first from a real application of different lenses of how we're looking at the same issue.
10:50 The first time CUDO actually partnered with a local nonprofit, it was with a food pantry that I got involved with as a volunteer when I was a grad student in social work, called the Wesley evening food pantry. And it was very strategically on the third Thursday of the month, it was set up like a marketplace.A lot of food pantries are set up this way now, but back in, you know, 2008, 2009 this was highly innovative to be able to go to a food pantry as a patron and actually select the food that you want, as opposed to just being handed a bag of things that you may or may not use, or may or may not even be able to eat. But they were a very shoestring budget, and so, you know, in this one day designathon, there was a team of us, mainly creatives, but I worked as this bridge and as this is mediator, sort of, between the nonprofit individuals who worked there and who were volunteers there, but also some of the patrons who actually utilized that food pantry. I was like a translator between the two different worlds to make sure that these voices were being heard and that this creative work and output that was being done throughout this day was being, you know, translated back to the very people who would be using it. It was just powerful in so many different ways. It was powerful in the sense that there was just a significant volume of work that was done in a 10-hour day, but then also just the amount of respect, and trust, and admiration for everyone in that space, I just knew that I was hungry for more of that kind of feeling and that kind of an output.
SWB 12:25 How did that lead into you creating Social Workers Who Design?
RD 12:29 Social Workers Who Design really came about through this transition and evolution of starting to see a very tiny but mighty group of other social workers abandoning their social work identity, but they had started working as human-centered designers, or they were working in UX. And I wanted to just put out there this very obvious thing that social workers do do design, you know, we might not be like graphic designers, but you know, we're constantly designing programs, designing interventions. And I really thought if I want to try to find others around the world who are either doing this kind of work, or others who might have interest in working with social workers who have these abilities and these strengths and these competencies to be of value within design, I needed to just kind of put it out there. And then as soon as I did, people started coming out of everywhere. I mean, I've talked to people all over the world. It was an idea that had been bouncing around for a while, I just decided to launch it into the world and see what happened.
SWB 13:34 Yeah, as you've been doing that, and as you've been getting kind of closer and closer to the design community, to human-centered designers, UX designers, etc. I'm curious, what have you found in terms of things that you wish that community knew more about as it was going about its work?
RD 13:51 Two things immediately come to mind, so I'm gonna go with my gut instinct. One is that I wish designers knew that social workers exist and what we do as a profession because it's very similar to what designers do. I'd say another thing is, you know, there is growing interest in being trauma-informed. I see this growing significantly. I think it's going to be impossible for us to not be trauma-informed as we move forward in our work.
SWB 14:16 Well, so I think that this is a really good place for us to slow down a bit, talk about trauma, talk about being trauma-informed, talk about all of this because, you know, my experience has been that people have some idea about what trauma is, but oftentimes, I feel like it's a little bit limited in terms of like, "Oh, yeah, that's what happens after you go to war, or maybe you have, you know, a really violent assault happen." But I'd love to hear your definition of how you define trauma and then we can get to being trauma-informed.
RD 14:46 Yeah, so there are several medical, and clinical, and psychological definitions of trauma. I think a really short and simple one is anything that is significant that has an impact on you. That can be, you know, significant events like what you just mentioned, Sara, or it could be something that is slow-growing, or that's just incredibly pervasive, could impact you as an individual, could impact you as part of a community. Racism is a trauma, is a serious trauma. Being bullied is a trauma. There are important distinctions that are based off of the individual, but there are things that can happen to the individual that can really impact a community or do impact a community and therefore impact the individual. Everyone has likely experienced a trauma but may not be traumatized. And so that's also an important thing to keep in mind, too.
SWB 15:41 Yeah, yeah. So when I think about being "traumatized," I think about that as being sort of the long term adverse sort of reaction to having experienced the traumatic event.
RD 15:52 Yeah, I'll give an example: I was in a pretty significant car accident, I was fine. I got diagnosed with PTSD after the accident, actually. But the car that I was in was totaled. And it was here in Champaign-Urbana, where I live, where there was only a two-way stop for a number of years, and there's now a four-way stop. And so anytime I come even within, like, 100 feet of that intersection, I get a wave. And the wave, it has grown to be smaller and smaller over time, but it's a wave that is still there. You know that's something that happened back in 2004, 2005, so a number of years ago, but there's something there from that event that is still, like, living within my body. Now I have processed that, I have integrated that processing, but there still is a visual cue that reminds me of that thing that happened to me. I haven't really talked about that, to be honest. I went back to work a couple days later. I mean, I could feel life, essentially, like, moved on. But it still has this very slow and meandering, like, lingering.
17:04 Now that might not have the same kind of effect on someone else. But even though for a number of years, there's a hotel that's now built on that quarter that has a restaurant, and a lot of people on campus like to meet there. But for the first year that that building was open, and people would say like, "Oh, let's meet at such and such," like, "Oh, I'd love to check that out.” I would really try to avoid that area. It's like, "Can we meet somewhere else?" or like, "That's too far off campus." Again, that's probably a very clear example of a traumatic event that has left some kind of an impact on me. Now I can move away, my family could move away from Champaign-Urbana, might not ever think about that. I don't think about other four-way stops or two-way stops, just at that one in particular because there's a visual cue and visual reminder of it.
SWB 17:52 Yeah, I love that example, too because it's all about your particular experience of that accident. It's like your car was totaled, but you were okay. And on paper, it's kind of like, "Oh, things are fine." And then in your body in the moment, you know that they're not actually fine. There's still something there. And I think that's a feeling that I think probably all of us have had at some level, but I don't know that everybody has always had the language to really understand what's happening or even maybe the self-awareness to really realize what's happening in their body in those moments. What does it look like to become more aware of trauma, I guess, as a society, but also as a designer specifically?
RD 18:31 Hmm, I think so much of it really comes down to tuning inward, which I feel like, as a design community, we're starting to talk about a little bit more. Most of what I have seen, and honestly, most of what I have even talked about is how, you know, like, we need to be trauma-informed, and this is how we can do it or these are some of the ways that we can start thinking about this and applying it. But it's hard to look out for others or understand others if we don't understand ourselves. And that's something that I don't think is really heavily prevalent in design education, or even in the practice. We're constantly doing something for others, and so we want to understand, like, what does the client want? What do they maybe need? I think there's an under-appreciation for understanding ourselves and that reflective element that I think is critical to being able to help or just even work with others.
SWB 19:28 Yeah, gosh, I've been talking to people about that specific thing recently: how important it is to be able to understand yourself, particularly because like, when we don't understand ourselves very well, we are out there enacting all kinds of feelings and things that we're not processing them here, we're pushing them out onto other people. And so I think we can be really harmful to the very people that we think we're going to help, right? So like we think we're going to be helping our users, and actually we are projecting all of our own stuff onto them and onto the work that we do.
RD 20:00 Absolutely. To add a piece to that, Sara, I think there's that act of either acting out your own unprocessed or unresolved and you know, not-integrated trauma onto others, and I would add that there's almost sometimes this expectation that someone else will carry that burden for us. It's almost like, "This is too much for me to hold on to. I'm going to offload it, and I need you to absorb it. I need you to carry it." And that's damaging, it's so incredibly damaging if you just assume that there's trauma in the workplace, and that is just being passed around and unloaded on others who may be dealing with their own unprocessed trauma, or even just their own just serious stuff. We all have things that we're carrying day in and day out, things that we're stressed out about, that we're worried about, that we're concerned about. There's a line that, that Brené Brown often says, and she's quoting her spouse when she says, "I just try to assume that people are doing the best that they can." And if we did our work, even our human-centered design work, when we're actually interviewing individuals, when we might be co-designing with them or designing with, or for, or from them, if we came at it with that kind of a mindset shift, I mean, that to me, that's an element of being trauma-informed in a design space.
SWB 21:23 What I'm hearing there is that, it's like if we can go into those conversations with the assumption people are probably doing the best they can, like, most people most of the time are probably doing the best that they can, it allows us to go in with so much less prejudgment, and I think open to a lot more curiosity and generosity, which I think we could really use at work and in our design practice.
RD 21:49 Yeah, I think so too. And that will always be a little more difficult to do in actual practice if you are not doing and building your own form of reflective practice or looking inward. And that looks like different things to different people.
SWB 22:07 Yeah. When you think about that reflective practice and looking inward, what are some things that you have found work really well for you or that you've seen work well for others?
RD 22:15 I'll start with what works really well for me: writing is definitely one. So some people might call that journaling, or it might be keeping a diary, it could just be taking notes on random things, like, as they're coming up to you or just being much more intentional and deliberate on setting that time and making that space to do some deep writing. You know, I referenced this in something I wrote not too long ago, from Roxane Gay about, like, "writing into the wound." I think that is incredibly powerful for a lot of people. However, I think there's a bit of a fear that's like, "Oh, if I actually write this down, then it's real, giving it life, I'm giving it energy." I would counter, it already has like an energy, it's just stuck inside.
SWB 22:55 Yeah.
RD 22:55 You know? Like, get some of that out. So writing is a big one for me. Very simple things like short breaks. Last night, I actually had the house to myself alone for about three or four hours. And I literally for probably, it was not quite 45 minutes, I just stared at the window. I wasn't listening to anything. I wasn't playing with my phone. I wasn't at my laptop. We have a huge sycamore tree right outside where I'm sitting. And I was just watching the leaves move a little bit in the breeze. And I was just letting my mind wander, to be honest.
SWB 23:31 Yeah.
RD 23:31 And it made me think about how much and how often I used to do that as a kid, when I would just get a little blanket and sit outside, and I would just stare at the clouds for hours. I try to channel some of that feeling because I remember feeling so free and calm in those moments and not distracted. Those are some of my very simple things. I know that you know others, they take part in either some kind of a coaching or just processing and various decompression exercises. Meditation is a huge one that has a lot of science that backs up the efficacy and the actual success of that. I don't think I know a single social worker who is not in therapy which I think is important because we need people to help us process the various things that we're processing as well. And so it has this domino effect and this sort of, like, chain effect too.
SWB 24:31 Yeah, yeah. I mean, I definitely am a proponent of therapy, although I also know it's not always accessible to everybody, and it's not always easy to find a good therapist. And it's not always easy to find a good therapist who understands your life experience, particularly if you're a person of color. I think there's a lot of factors there, but at the same time, I think it's so important to say having that kind of relationship and having sort of that space to go inward with some guidance and some accountability, I have found incredibly, incredibly powerful in my own life. And, you know, I really connect with this idea of taking some time to just be with yourself, "write through the wound," like you said. Being able to just let yourself feel the things that you feel and to let them exist. And I know that it is so common to feel uncomfortable with that and to want to kind of, like, push that away. And to bring it back to work, I actually think that there's this pressure that so many people feel at work to, like, not be feeling creatures and to be rational in their decision making, and to keep it "professional." And so I think when it comes to our workplaces, what I see is a lot of people who feel an intense amount of pressure to kind of strip away any humanity. And it can really make it even harder from my perspective to get into this place of self-reflection. And I'm curious what your thoughts are on that in terms of, like, what do our workplaces need to do to be more, I don't know, trauma-informed, or, like, even just actually human-centered?
RD 26:06 I think, you know, a couple of things are coming to mind, like, as you were talking. And I think about, and I know a lot of others have thought about this, if you were or have been in a role where you had that privilege, and you had that opportunity to be able to work remotely, and to try to juggle all the things under one roof, so to speak; My spouse works in healthcare. He can't do his job from home. He has to go to a physical space and do that job. I've thought a lot over the past year, year-and-a-half about just "performing work." I feel like if I'm really honest, and I think about the various roles that I've had where I've performed outside of myself in those role, because of some either written or spoken, or unspoken or unwritten ways of doing, of being professional, of following the rules, I feel like there is a lot of abandonment of self that is occurring.
27:01 But there's also this counter-narrative that's talking about, you know, being authentic at work, and authenticity matters when you're at work. Well, that isn't safe for a lot of people to even do or to be. If I think about the times when I've been an authentic working mom in the workplace, I mean, I've been punished for it. So how much is authenticity going to serve me? Now there's a risk with that because work is a structure that was designed to not be supportive of people who are not part of this machine, if you will. So you know, what can workplaces do to be trauma-informed? There really is a world of opportunity for training, but training is never enough. I don't think that these things are things where you go to a seminar, and you check a box, and you get a digital badge or a printed certificate, and it says like, "Now you're competent," you know? It really comes down to very mindful checking in with yourself and others and practicing these very things. There's been lots of work and research around psychological safety in the workplace, workplace trauma, there's a range of things that can occur in the workplace that can be incredibly traumatic for different people. One of the things that I have been most recently a bit more fascinated by is these dual ideas of institutional betrayal, but also institutional courage. And what does that mean to have a courageous workplace that actually is supportive and welcoming of people as they are, as their authentic selves so that they don't feel like they have to abandon parts of them in order to, you know, fit in with some mold that honestly doesn't really help anyone?
SWB 28:43 Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I've had conversations with leaders in companies about how you know, like, "Oh, gosh, we just want everyone to bring their full selves to work." And what I keep hearing is this message of like, "You, worker. Bring your full self," as the directive from the company. And I'm like, "No, no, no." Like, I will take you at your word that that is something that you actually want to have happen. But the way to have that happen is not to tell people to do that. The way to have that happen, is to create places where that seems safer for them, and then let people decide. Trust your people to decide how much of themselves is safe to bring here, and if the answer is "not very much," then you got to go look at yourself as an organization, as a leader, as a team. Telling people to bring their whole selves will never make them feel safe to bring their whole selves, you know?
RD 29:26 Oh, no. I mean, and that sounds very transactional. I've been working, you know, professionally for you know, 20 to 25 years at this point. I think about the different times where either colleagues or supervisors, you know, that those "leaders" have said, "You can trust me, you have to trust me." I mean that's like the unspoken biggest red flag when someone says like, you know, "You can trust me," or, "I need you to trust me." I would say there might be a hint of trust, but usually there's very little or none. It's a great business model, but I think actually putting that into action is much harder than it really is.
SWB 30:04 Yeah, well so I mean speaking of, you know, I saw you write recently that a lot of design-centric organizations can talk a lot about this, about bringing your whole self to work and can talk about their values of human centeredness and empathy, and then actually, it can be very, very shallow. And I'm curious about how do these things that I think a lot of us broadly perceive as being beneficial or good, like human centeredness and empathy, how do those things end up being so harmful in so many workplaces?
RD 30:33 I think one of the main reasons why they are so harmful is because they're rooted in white supremacy culture, and they're highly transactional and not relational. I mean, that really is what it comes down to. I've heard from countless people over the past couple of years about how they feel like they are expected to, like, perform empathy as opposed to actually embodying empathy and practicing empathy. So I think that's huge. And I think a lot of people, lik,e know when they're being duped by someone. They might not tell that person directly. There's something to be said about these elements of self-trust and self-compassion, and, you know, empathy for ourselves, and how do we develop that? How do we continue to nurture that so that it can create much more of a practice of relational empathy as opposed to transactional empathy?
SWB 31:35 Can you say more about that: relational empathy versus transactional empathy? What does one look like? And what does the other look like?
RD 31:42 There's a great piece. It's from Tad Hirsch, who's a designer educator at Northeastern University, and it's called "Practicing Without a License: Design Research as Psychotherapy." And he talks about this way of performing empathy in the context of design that can be, not always, but can be highly extractive just to get source material from the very individuals that we're designing with or for, and/or has a very strong intention of being very manipulative in the design process. And he talks about how the way that designers might be using rapport and practicing empathy, or performing empathy, to get a thing. And whatever that thing is, so whether it's like a, you know, a deeply emotional story, like a juicy insight, you know, fill in the blank, whatever it is, as opposed to really taking time throughout that process, not always defaulting to, like, the one hour interview, maybe actually including co-designers who have true lived experience. Maybe another way to think of this is: are there ways for us to actually slow down the design process so that there is more of an opportunity for it to be relational as opposed to just highly transactional, rooted in productivity, rooted in getting to that final design, that final product?
33:04 Now, I say all this, you know, also being very aware that there are dollars behind many of these projects that have to be time sensitive, and that we have to take into consideration a wide variety of constraints. At this point, I continue to see a number of ways that people do design, and the ones where there is just a deeper and richer final outcome, it's come because they have been doing that work through a bit more of a, either a trauma-informed lens, or they've slowed down the process. They've included others as part of the design they're working on. So, you know, we often default to one way of doing when actually we have many, many different ways that we can be doing this work.
SWB 33:48 That is such a valuable, valuable lesson. Rachael, where can people get more information about Social Workers Who Design and maybe get in touch with you to work with you?
RD 33:58 Yeah, there are two great places to probably find me. I would say on LinkedIn, I try to respond as quickly as possible. I'm always happy to connect with others from around the world who are either curious about this work or might want to partner on something. The other is through my website, and that's http://www.socialworkerswho.design/.
SWB 34:28 Okay, so in the first part of the interview, we touched on trauma and, kind of, burnout, exhaustion from the pandemic, and kind of how much people are going through right now. So what I'd love to do for our last few minutes together is to talk a little bit about that and about what people who are feeling some of those feels right now at work can do. And so, I was thinking a little bit about this piece I read recently in The Atlantic. It has a quote from Laura van Dernoot Lipsky who founded the Trauma Stewardship Institute. She said, you know, "People put their heads down and do what they have to do. But then suddenly, when there's an opening, all these feelings come up. And as hard as the initial trauma is, it's the aftermath that destroys people." And I've been thinking about that a lot, like, what is the aftermath of this pandemic? And what are the ways that our businesses are, like, "Nope, back to usual"—what's going to happen there? And so, as I'm thinking about that, something I'm wondering, from your perspective and your expertise, what kind of space do people need right now to kind of process some of their feelings in this moment and to get through to the other side?
RD 35:33 I think one of the biggest things that people need is definitely flexibility. As a population around the world, we've demonstrated a certain kind of toughness and unplanned resilience that has really been built on just this collective trauma of living through a pandemic, and some element of the shared experience. And so there can be some power and some comfort in that. I think that with all of the adaptability and need to be adaptable throughout the past several months, what it has really shown us is that we now need flexibility. So is there flexibility in scheduling? Is there flexibility in how and where we work? You know, even throughout much of the pandemic last year, you know, I have sometimes used this phrase that I have a you know, I personally have a very high threshold, but a quick tipping point. I see that in a lot of people. You know, there's just this like, "Well, everyone else is doing it. It can't really be that bad." And the more that we just keep suppressing and deserting those cues that we're getting, both inside and outside from the universe, like, the more it's just building. It's just building, building, building. And at some point, you know, the body is going to respond, is going to let you know that like, "Hey, we're at capacity. We can't do it anymore."
SWB 36:53 Yes. I mean, I had an intermittent eye twitch last year, for like five months, it wouldn't quite go away. And hmmm. I wonder what that was connected to? And I think a lot about the thing you just said around like, "Well, everybody else seems to be doing it." I see a lot of that coming out in people, this sense of like comparison, and then a sense of sort of, like, undeservingness. Like, "Well, I have it pretty good though, so I don't deserve to feel bad. Or “I don't deserve to be saying I'm going through a hard time." So it's like that process of pushing it down. And I think a lot about how reductionist that is, as if there's like one person who has the most pain, and they're allowed to complain. And then like, everybody else has to pretend they're fine all the time? Because it feels like that sometimes, there's almost, like, this tendency to, like, stack rank our pain. And then if I don't feel like I deserve to say that I'm having a difficult time or that I need something, then I need to just suppress that and keep going and power through, push through. More resilience, more grit.
RD 37:57 Yeah, you can't buy away the pain. You can offload it onto others, and it's going to have an impact on us as individuals, and it's going to have an impact on others. I think about something from recently reading and finishing "What Happened to You." It's a relatively new book from Dr. Bruce Perry and Oprah. And Oprah talks quite candidly about a lot of her own trauma growing up as a child and how that has stayed with her her entire life. So one of the most successful, most impressionable, most brilliant women on this planet, talking very candidly, like, while she was at the prime of her success, feeling very unsafe in her own apartment. I think people need to realize that the comparison of "who has it worse" is never ever going to serve us. What happens to us in present day definitely has a story that is rooted in how we were raised. It just does. And the more we avoid that because it is uncomfortable, and because it's difficult to really understand that, the more we're going to suffer ourselves, but also impact others around us.
SWB 39:05 Goes right back to the conversation we had about doing some of that self-work and looking inward, which is of course so hard to do, but also so important. For people who are in workplaces right now that aren't offering that much flexibility, that aren't really with the conversation we're having today, if somebody is in one of those environments, what would you recommend they do to still build some space for themselves, build some support systems for themselves, find ways for themselves to pause and reflect and heal right now?
RD 39:38 There are a few things I would suggest, even if it is just forming a bond or a team with others who are experiencing very similar things. So not to have a, you know, a commiseration-like party, but who are others who are maybe struggling with some of the same things and need more flexibility? I've had a lot of colleagues that work in places where there is an opportunity to form a union or to work with the union. In higher ed, the positions that I've had more recently, there wasn't a union, there was a collective, but it proved to be quite unhelpful, to be honest. And so I would definitely encourage people to work with communities of people who are in similar situations. I think that there can be some serious letdowns and setbacks and can sometimes contribute to a manifestation of deepening of some of the stressors when we rely on the various structures that are set up to actually help us and protect us, they often fail us. And it's really hard to see that. It's really hard to accept that because we assume that they have been built to serve a purpose. And when they let us down, it can really be soul-crushing.
40:53 So who are those like-minded individuals? Who are your peers? You know, do you have a supervisor, do you have other colleagues? Do you have, like, friends and family, either in the workplace or outside the workplace, who can just be supportive, and literally witnessing and knowing what you might be experiencing and living through? Also, if you are in a position of privilege, where you have the ability or the opportunity to leave a workplace that is truly unsupportive or is very toxic, I've yet to see anything that is turning us towards some kind of a magic, you know, unicorn opportunity or thing that we just haven't uncovered yet. Almost every single piece of advice is if you have the ability to leave, leave that place. It is going to cause far more damage in the short and in the long run than by staying. That's a very, very complicated path for a lot of people.
SWB 41:49 Yeah, I know, it's not easy for everyone. At the same time, you know, there's the external reasons, like it might actually be hard for you to leave and find something new. But for a lot of people, there's that big internal piece that's, like, feeling guilty about leaving, sunk cost fallacy, right? Like, "Well, I've put so much time in, I should like, wait and hope things get better." We can really get into these kind of mental spaces where we, like, convince ourselves that staying is the only option, or staying is the best option when we don't really ever even consider like, "What would it look like if I did leave? And what might be possible if I did leave?" Because it feels unknown, and it's scary. So yeah, what I really hear there in that answer is, like, if you have the means to leave, it's so valuable to just, like, consider that as a real option because so often it gets sort of thrown away early in the process, and we kind of, like, resigned ourselves.
RD 42:43 Yeah. And it's also, you know, when you said, "If you have the means to leave," I mean, that definitely made me think of the financial means. I also, I think of that as, "What are those other aspects that are often necessary?" Do you have a supportive community? Do you have people who are going to doubt your reality or doubt what you have been experiencing? Or say like, "Oh, well, it's not that bad. You know, someone else has it way worse." You know, so kind of getting into that comparison, like we were talking about earlier. You know, I recently left a workplace for a number of different reasons, and I thought about risk for several months, like, what's the risk of leaving? You know, I've worked so hard to get to this point. Why would I walk away from this? A lot of doubting myself, and honestly, sometimes a lot of my gaslighting my own self.
SWB 43:28 Yeah.
RD 43:28 But over time, I started to flip that question a little bit. And I asked, "Well, what's the risk of staying?"
SWB 43:35 Yep.
RD 43:35 And there's a significant risk in staying, and again, this comes down to deeply individual, personal experiences. What's our threshold? What is our body telling us? What is our mind telling us? What are other things and other ways of doing that aren't always, like, the default to these entrenched systems that aren't necessarily all bad or all horrible, but are not delivering on the very thing that they say that they do. Are there other ways that we can do things? I believe that there are.
SWB 44:05 I believe there are other ways that we can do things too. Rachael, thank you so much for being here today. I hope everybody, everybody goes and checks out http://www.socialworkerswho.design/. Follow Rachael on LinkedIn, reach out to her. I would love to talk to you all day.
RD 44:21 Likewise. Thank you, Sara, thank you so much.
SWB 44:28 I hope you loved hearing from Rachael as much as I did. And there's one thing from that conversation I want to come back to here for our last segment, You've Got This. That's where we look at a concept and explore how we can bring it into our everyday lives. And today, that thing is breaking out of comparison mode. You know what I mean: that feeling that you shouldn't complain because other people have it worse, or you shouldn't feel stressed because at least you have a job, or you shouldn't be struggling because, well, you've had it so good this past year. You hear, all those "shoulds" in there? Yeah, they're not going to help you. Because the truth is, we feel what we feel, whether we believe we deserve to feel that way or not. And you feel what you feel whether you believe somebody else has it worse or not. In fact, the more we try to judge our feelings instead of understand them, the more we actually end up feeling worse because you still feel what you felt in the first place, and now you have this extra layer of shame or guilt layered on top of it. And there's just no way you can kind of stack rank people suffering like that and figure out who had it the worst, or who deserves to have a strong response to this situation and who doesn't. After all, as Rachael said, you know, we carry around so much from our childhoods from our past experiences. And so the way that you react to something today is inextricably tied to what you've experienced in the past. Everyone's personal histories are different, so there's no quantitative, clear cut measure for what your reaction should be or how you should feel. It just doesn't exist.
45:56 So, how do we get out of that comparison mode, then? How do we stop going around thinking like, "Oh, well, they deserve to feel that way, but I don't," or, "They don't deserve to feel that way, but I do"? Well, it starts with something really simple, yet a little bit challenging. And that's just acknowledging what you're feeling without judging it. Because when you stop judging yourself, it helps you stop judging others too. So this can be hard, because so many of us have learned not to talk about feelings at work, which means we're often really bad at naming our feelings in the workplace. In fact, what I hear a lot is we reduce our feelings down to just one which is, "I'm stressed. I'm just really stressed right now." And that might be true, but stress is often really an outcome of some other deeper feeling. And so when we go a little deeper, and we kind of look at our feelings a little more carefully, we might find that our stress is actually, say, about fear: feeling afraid that things won't get done, and we'll end up looking bad. Or maybe it's about shame. Like, if we feel exposed in some way, like everyone can see that maybe we're not as good as they thought we were. Or maybe our stress is really about anger, rage. This is particularly true if you've been socialized as a woman or perceived as female, you might have been taught explicitly and implicitly that you shouldn't be angry. That's not an emotion you're supposed to have. And so then it's sometimes hard to even acknowledge when you're feeling that way, even to yourself. And so it all gets channeled into this more acceptable feeling: stress.
47:30 But the thing is, when we start getting more specific with our feelings, when we start naming what they really are, then we can kind of understand those feelings better, and we can start looking at them differently. We can start noticing them instead of judging them. So for example, instead of telling yourself, "Oh, I shouldn't feel angry," or conversely, justifying all the reasons you should feel angry, that you do deserve to feel angry, try asking yourself some different questions instead, like, "What's my anger telling me? What triggered it? Where's it coming from? What can I learn from this feeling? What unmet needs do I have here?" The more curious we can be about our own feelings, the easier it is to hold space for others without comparison, without judgment. And when we do that, well, that's when we can realize that many things can be true at once. We can be both privileged and struggling, lucky and traumatized. We can be so many things at the same time. And we don't have to deny the one in order to acknowledge the other. So give it a try. And let me know how it goes. You can get this and more resources at https://www.activevoicehq.com/podcast.
48:45 And with that, that's it for this season of Strong Feelings. We'll be back in the fall with a new set of episodes, and in the meantime, take care of yourselves and remember you've got this. Strong Feelings is a production of Active Voice and hosted by me, Sara Wachter-Boettcher. Check us out at https://www.activevoicehq.com/ and get all of the past episodes, show notes, and a full transcript of every episode at https://www.strongfeelings.co/. This episode was recorded in South Philadelphia and produced by Emily Duncan. Our theme music is "Deprogrammed" by Philly's own Blowdryer. Check them out at https://blowdryer.bandcamp.com/. If you like the show, please go ahead and give us a rating or review wherever you listen to podcasts, and give a huge shout out to Rachael Dietkus for being our guest today. Have a great summer and see in the fall. Bye.