Safe Space Made Simple Episode Two Origin Story
[00:00:00] How does somebody go from having unresolved trauma and, and being filled with anxiety and not even really realizing that themselves and having it sort of spill out of them onto every area of their lives? That's, that's exactly where I was.
[00:00:20] Welcome to Safe Space Made Simple, a practical podcast that guides clinical leaders and healthcare managers to create trust and support with their teams. I'm your host, Trace Hobson. Join me for weekly interviews, practical tools, and inspiring transformational stories of bringing people together in healthcare.
[00:00:39] Now, let's dive in. Hi everybody, my name is Trace Hobson. Welcome to Safe Space Made Simple. This is Episode 2, The Origin Story. Now, this is the origin of my work, but I'm sharing it in a way that I believe will resonate with you. If you're a clinical leader or a healthcare manager that's working in a healthcare [00:01:00] system today, that's under pressure and under stress.
[00:01:04] And I choose to share it in a couple of narratives or stories about client interactions that I've had, as well as my own experience as an executive leader in urgent, high pressure, high stress cultures. And what I learned through my own experiences. with that. I believe this is going to be highly relatable and relevant to you, and it's going to give you clarity on how this podcast is going to be able to serve you.
[00:01:33] Now, make sure that you stay until the end of the podcast. I'm going to share three big areas that relate to practically applying and creating a safe space. What does that mean? Well, it relates to these three areas. specific areas that are going to be really helpful for you to flesh out how to do this yourself on your clinical leadership team and in your health care setting.
[00:01:56] Now, without further ado, let's move right into the podcast.[00:02:00]
[00:02:06] What will happen to your body, your relationships, and your career if you continue to work like this for the next five years? Linda looked down at the floor as the impact of the question washed over her body. She struggled to compose herself and tried choking back the tears before completely losing it.
[00:02:28] In the silence, I raised the stakes before she could brush the question aside like she'd done so many times before. What will happen to your team's bodies, relationships, and careers if they continue to work like this for the next five years? The question was like the last click in a combination that opened the door to a safe, Holding Linda's genuine feelings, her care and concern for others often made her feel like she had to lock her own needs and wants [00:03:00] up inside that safe deep inside of her.
[00:03:03] Linda's an executive leader in the completely disrupted world of healthcare. Her colleagues describe her as successful, competent, and highly effective. She's laser focused and loves to get things done. The managers on her team admire her and even want to be more like her. Linda shared that she felt trapped, alone, and like she was failing.
[00:03:27] She looked around her office, lowered her voice, hoping that nobody would hear, and said, I'm thinking about getting out of healthcare so that I can focus on my life, my marriage, my children, and my health. Then she began to laugh and continued by saying, besides, at the rate I'm going with the amount of hours that I'm working, I'd be better off being a barista at Starbucks.
[00:03:50] We laughed together and took a moment to appreciate the comic relief inside the gravity of what Linda was facing. She wanted to stay in a 20 year career that she [00:04:00] used to love, but that now was draining the life out of her. And we both knew, in that conversation, that she and her family needed the financial support her role provided.
[00:04:11] That's part of the reason why she felt trapped. She began to talk again after a long silence. You know, this isn't what I wanted when I got into clinical leadership. I got into healthcare management to make a difference with a team of people who all felt the same way about helping, serving, and caring for people that I do.
[00:04:29] I wanted to make a meaningful difference in the lives of my teams and patients simultaneously. That's why I left my clinical practice and took on the role. But I feel more detached from people than ever, and even more alone than I've ever felt before in my life. I'm either working on a mountain of paperwork, the latest labor dispute, or running around putting out fires.
[00:04:54] And to make matters worse, my team is quietly critical and full of complaints, and I feel like [00:05:00] they're constantly judging me. I end up going home feeling powerless, helpless, and completely exhausted. I mean, I keep doing everything that I was trained to do, like performance management, reviews, coaching conversations, respectful workplace investigations, and gradual discipline, but nothing seems to change all of this.
[00:05:21] As I watch her, Linda's voice trails off, and she begins to cry. Then she wipes the tears away with her hands and composes herself, while her face turns red with embarrassment. As she steadies herself, she breaks the silence by saying, I'm sorry. I don't usually let this stuff get to me, but now things at home are starting to suffer and I'm scared that my health might be affected by all of this or my relationship with my kids or my spouse.
[00:05:49] I don't see any way out of this. I feel stuck like I'm between a rock and a hard place. What do you think I should do? As I listened to Linda, I thought about the hundreds of [00:06:00] people I've worked with in healthcare over the last five years who have shared similar stories. Then time seemed to slow down as my mind served up a memory for me to consider that happened years earlier.
[00:06:14] It was a miserable stormy night. I sat alone in the dark conference room with the glare of my computer screen being the only light in the room. Something startled me, but when I looked over to the dark part of the room where I thought that something moved, I realized that I had scared myself with my own reflection in the window.
[00:06:32] That was enough to get me out of my chair to look out the window overlooking the now empty parking lot. I stood in the dark room and stared at the silhouetted trees that were swaying back and forth in the wind. Here I am again, and I thought to myself as I watched the branches flow back and forth with the wind and the rain, a deep feeling of disappointment began to form in my gut, and then I spoke out loud.
[00:06:56] How long is this going to take? I noticed my voice [00:07:00] echo in the room as I felt my heart sink. And a lump form in my throat. As I stared at the sky and wondered, what the hell is wrong with me? Two hours earlier, I turned my phone off to get through the never ending paperwork. I glanced down at my phone, and I was sorry that I did.
[00:07:19] My body tensed when I saw the screen. The clock on the phone said 7. 30 p. m. I had missed three calls, two text messages, and an email from my field ops manager. My stomach and my throat tightened as I realized there was no way I would make it home for dinner with my kids. I probably wouldn't even get there before they were going to go to bed.
[00:07:40] That was the cue for my inner critics to start. There must be something that you're doing wrong to have to work like this, the first voice said condescendingly. Another one picked up where the first one left off. You know, you're letting your kids down when they need you the most. Remember, they don't have anyone else other than you.[00:08:00]
[00:08:00] The judgment in the voice was familiar, and filled my body with guilt and shame that burned my gut and made me look away from my reflection in the window. The comments were rapid and sent sharp jolts through my body, like electrical shocks of anxiety and anger. Suddenly, the burning sensation moved from my gut to my chest and emerged from my mouth in a scream of rage and helplessness.
[00:08:29] I screamed into the dark, empty office and slumped back into my chair. And tried to choke back the tears of frustration, powerlessness, and confusion. Then I stared at my office door, praying no one was in the building to hear me. And then relaxed a little when I remembered everyone had been gone for hours.
[00:08:52] Have you ever been in a position where you felt like you were doing everything that you could, but it still wasn't enough? [00:09:00] Or no matter what you did, you ended up so exhausted that it started to affect the parts of your life that meant the most to you. Like your health and your relationships. That was my experience for a very, very long time.
[00:09:15] 60 to 80 hour work weeks consumed all my time and energy. Then when I finally got home, anxiety, worry, exhaustion, and fear made me emotionally unavailable and hard to live with. Then I would eventually fall into bed exhausted, but unable to fall asleep for hours because my mind reviewed all that had happened and all that might happen tomorrow when I got up to do it all over again.
[00:09:42] Does any of this sound familiar to you? Years later, I learned I had been experiencing toxic stress, anxiety, and a constant toggle between fight, flight, and freeze in my nervous system. That had been going on since I was a child. My [00:10:00] standard operating procedure was to be in an unconscious, hypervigilant state.
[00:10:04] It didn't matter how many times I quote, won, end quote, or how many people appreciated and acknowledged me or my work. It never quieted the dread, worry, and anxiety I felt for very long. So, I did what I knew how to do, which was to keep moving. Underneath my drive was a deep, unconscious, systemic fear that I wasn't good enough, and that at some point...
[00:10:28] People were going to find that out. As a kid, I was obsessed with superheroes and people that helped others when they were in trouble. My childlike mind thought that if I could figure out how to develop superpowers to save myself and my family, then everyone would see that I was good. I fantasized like that because I live with daily trauma, neglect, poverty, abuse, addiction, and violence.
[00:10:55] And when I couldn't achieve my fantasy, I assumed that there was something wrong with me, [00:11:00] and I felt ashamed. I learned to be harder to hit by being a moving target, and live with three unspoken rules. Don't talk. Don't trust. I was in perpetual motion from the time I was six years old in the pursuit of fulfilling a vow that I made to myself to be prosperous and have a successful family, until my life system started to shut down.
[00:11:29] I started using drugs when I was seven, was constantly suspended from school for fighting or stealing, and eventually dropped out before finishing grade eight. As a teenage youth, I ran away from home, ran the streets, did drugs, and was homeless and in and out of jail. When I was 23, I overdosed, was rushed to the hospital by EMTs, and was revived by ER physicians.
[00:11:55] At this point, I finally entered into treatment for addiction. [00:12:00] By the time I was 26, I had 3 daughters, 5, 3, and 2 months old. At 28, I began to bleed internally and I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis. When I was 30, I was rushed to the hospital again to have my colon amputated. Over the next two years, I had two additional reconstructive surgeries that kept me off work for two years.
[00:12:22] Then, at 30, body sensations and memories of trauma began to emerge. At 36, I apprehended two of my daughters from their mother, who was using drugs, and planned to get my oldest daughter, Michaela, to come to live with me rather than with her aunt, whom her mother had left her with at 16 without my consent.
[00:12:43] Then I received a phone call telling me that Mikayla was in the hospital because she had used crystal meth with some neighborhood kids. I rushed to the hospital for a third time in my life. By this time I was leading businesses, teams, and organizational systems in technical [00:13:00] sectors with cultures filled with hierarchy, urgency, danger, stress, pressure, and risk.
[00:13:07] In hindsight, there are no surprises as to why I chose that as a professional path. It was my normal to be working in stress, pressure, and chaos every day. I became obsessed with controlling, organizing, leading, and managing chaotic, complex remote teams, systems, and workflows in multiple regions simultaneously.
[00:13:29] Over the years, I pushed myself and my teams relentlessly. I outworked, outmaneuvered, and outmanaged unionized workforces, vendors, employees, and colleagues in my obsession to succeed. My leadership style was directive, reactive, resistant, or reclusive, depending on my results. I mentally and vocally blamed people for being lazy, irresponsible, or uncommitted.
[00:13:58] I weaponized performance management [00:14:00] and micromanaged collective bargaining agreements and thought I was doing a great job because I was getting promoted. Between operations, risk management, safety, HR, project management, networking with departments that didn't report to me, labor relations, and customer demands, I was running my ass off to get things done, deal with problems, and avoid setbacks.
[00:14:22] I knew my vow to create a successful life wasn't working because my daughters were suffering, my teams were struggling, and my body was starting to show signs of strain. Again, I knew that it didn't matter if I had just built a business that made millions of dollars if I lost my health and my family at home, I was worried, overwhelmed and reactive as I tried to be a dad and field never ending calls and requests for my help for my team.
[00:14:52] I constantly worried about my family, my career and my health at work. I was a bulldog who got a lot done quickly [00:15:00] but caused chaos for myself and everyone around me. Then, a random conversation changed everything. A friend and I discussed some of the problems that I was having at work and home, and he suggested something totally out of the ordinary.
[00:15:15] He said I should take a course that he had just completed called Satire Transformational Systems Therapy for Family and Organizational Systems. I was stunned and had no idea why he was suggesting this training for me. But rather than immediately discounting what he said, my desperation and a feeling inside of me made me really curious.
[00:15:37] I discovered the training was related to Virginia Satir's work who was considered the mother of family systems therapy. I also learned that her training formed the basis for thousands of family therapist practices, organizational developers, social workers, and health care workers worldwide, and that her modality was used as a model to create constellation work and appreciative inquiry.[00:16:00]
[00:16:00] I talked my way into the next cohort that started a few weeks later. The cohort was made up of social service professionals, professional counselors, psychologists, therapists, and healthcare professionals. When I walked into that training, I was there to try and help my kids and my team. I had no idea that the real problem that I would be facing was deep inside of me.
[00:16:24] The first day when they went around the circle to introduce ourselves, I told them that I was a technical project manager and executive leader working in the industrial sector, and then I held my breath, fearing they might say that I wasn't qualified to be in the class. I'm thankful they didn't, because that training changed my life.
[00:16:43] I learned to be present even when everything in me wanted to run, hide, or fight. I learned how to practice appreciating and accepting myself. I learned that my internal system, which was in a constant state of fight, flight, freeze, and faint, would serve [00:17:00] me if I learned to listen, interpret, and translate what it was saying.
[00:17:05] It was incredibly awkward, triggering, and uncomfortable to be present mentally and physically to do this work at first. Taking a deep breath in the middle of this felt impossible. I learned, eventually, that I could feel safe by slowing down, being present, and listening regardless of what was happening around me or even inside of me.
[00:17:29] The course marked the beginning of my journey to learning to take radical responsibility for myself and everything that was happening inside of me. Thank you. My workplace and home provided me with an intense, immediate feedback loop to practice in. Taking one deep breath in the middle of that stress and chaos was all I could do sometimes.
[00:17:49] This new way of being went against everything my mind wanted to do and say. And then slowly, I noticed small, almost imperceptible changes. [00:18:00] I noticed that I was more present and could step back and observe my thoughts and feelings more. My interactions with people weren't escalating like they once did. I started to notice more capacity to resist my knee jerk reactions to direct, cajole, manage, push or prod myself and the people around me, which led to an unexpected discovery.
[00:18:23] People at work that were usually difficult to manage started to act differently around me. My teenage daughters, who had become highly resistant to my direction, began to relax and shift in my presence in ways that shocked me. I viscerally felt people become more open to me and my leadership when I practiced what I had learned.
[00:18:45] Then slowly I began to share the techniques that I was practicing with my family as well as with my team. As I introduced the skills and tools I learned to my teams in an intentional meeting that they named our weekly Zen [00:19:00] meeting, our team's culture began to shift and transform. The meeting provided relief, support, and energy for a new level of teamwork and performance.
[00:19:12] People that struggled began to receive support and reassurance. There was an immediate inspired feeling within people that motivated everyone to pitch in where they could in a more energized way than before. Communication became more respectful and civil even when people disagreed. Operations, projects, and coordination became more efficient and seamless.
[00:19:35] I began to notice people went from feeling distressed and tired, to feeling light and joyful. People started to laugh more and have fun together in the middle of the stress and chaos. Our good team went to a great team because everyone had more space and energy to give and receive support, encouragement, and contribution.
[00:19:54] People had each other's backs and the team had my back, which gave me joy and [00:20:00] relief. And the best part was that when people came back from their time at home on weekends, they told me that their spouses had told them, whatever you're doing in the Zen meetings, don't stop because you're different at home.
[00:20:13] You're more present and available to us and the kids. Now the real litmus test was when I introduced these methods to my daughters and began to coach them. I failed a lot, but eventually even my teenage daughters moved toward me instead of away from me. The safe space we could create together provided the environment they needed to open up and be vulnerable with me.
[00:20:37] We laughed and cried together and practiced healing our relationships with each other in ways that still amaze me. We learned to talk to one another and share the intimate details of our lives, our hopes, and our fears. After this, I started a safe space zoom call for my parents and sister that has continued in a weekly format for the last [00:21:00] eight years and has now become multi generational and includes friends and extended family.
[00:21:05] At times, I discovered that creating an intentional safe space has the potential to heal, support and generate the energy of a healthy expansion in areas where trauma. Toxic stress and suffering seemed impossible to solve. What amazed and inspired me the most was that I was suddenly getting breakthrough results that I had tried for so long to get.
[00:21:30] But I was getting them without doing anything. At least not in the old way that I did things. My work within my internal system was creating a systemic ripple effect. That produced better results than I was ever able to get the areas that had been stuck for years where I struggled and longed for changes to happen, shifted and transformed.
[00:21:52] I had stumbled and suffered my way into a way to live and work that had huge implications and potential. [00:22:00] The feeling that something was wrong with me began to lose its grip on me and I was getting glimpses of how to harness that power of presence in my life and work in ways that were creating results in a completely different way than I thought possible.
[00:22:15] I realized that was almost 20 years ago and here I am sitting across from Linda, an executive in healthcare. How did I get here? I learned to create a safe space. I've had the privilege, honor, and joy of guiding many people like Linda who are trying to figure out how to navigate and thrive in the middle of toxic stress and systemic trauma.
[00:22:38] I'm incredibly grateful for coaches and thought leaders like Peter Levine, Otto Scharmer, Stephen Porges, Brene Brown, Amy Edmondson, Virginia Satir, Alan Seal, and Peter Senge to name a few. Their guidance through their books and content, along with my lived and learned experience, have shaped me and my work with healthcare executives, [00:23:00] teams, managers, coaches, and frontline practitioners.
[00:23:04] Why am I sharing these intimate details with you? Because as the years have passed, I've noticed that clinical professionals and leaders dealing with prolonged systemic toxic stress act the same way I did before I became aware and equipped to practice a more conscious way to live, work and lead. Now, even though most will not be able to relate to my background or the things that I've been through, they can connect to how those events create consequences and messages in their bodies, relationships, and workplaces.
[00:23:40] Serving people in these circumstances brings me great joy because if what I've been through can support people going through similar experiences and perhaps help them to avoid the consequences that I've been through, It makes everything that I've gone through worth it. After a lifetime of learning the hard way and 20 [00:24:00] years of integrating education and training and coaching, leadership, management, and facilitation, with my experience as an executive manager, I've been able to develop a trauma and resilience informed approach that teaches Leaders and managers, how to create a safe space within themselves and with their teams, as I've had experiences with people who work in high stress sectors in India, Europe, the United States and Canada and work with leaders and teams in large health care systems in British Columbia, I'm convinced that the systemic suffering that's going on in health care is an invitation for transformation individually, and collectively.
[00:24:41] All right. Welcome back, everybody. And thank you for listening to the end of this narrative that I shared with you that I hope gives you a really clear idea of the origin of my work and this podcast. And obviously, if you're still here listening, that means that it resonates with you. Now, there were three big [00:25:00] areas that I wanted to talk to you just briefly about that we'll also flesh out in.
[00:25:05] other episodes that relate to creating a safe space. What does that actually mean? And when I'm talking about this, um, what have I learned in the last 20 years that I'm now applying in healthcare settings? Well, the way I look at this is that creating a safe space is, is fed by three big buckets or big.
[00:25:24] Areas that I'm researching now in my work and also in graduate studies. The first area is psychological safety and psychological health and safety. The second area is neurobiological safety. And the third area is presence based leadership, management, and coaching. So when I'm talking about implementing a safe space, creating a safe space, it captures these three big areas and the modality that I've developed and also that I use that comes from other people's works really feeds into and the safe space [00:26:00] and comes from these three big buckets.
[00:26:02] Now, the first bucket psychological health and safety and psychological safety relates to Amy Edmondson's work and also the Canadian standard for psychological health and safety. And when I'm talking about neurobiological safety, I'm talking about the work of Polly Vagel Safety and Stephen Porges and many other thought leaders like Daniel Siegel and the Window of Tolerance and others who talk about this human energy technology that we have on board that we can harness To create and generate a safe space from inside of our nervous system.
[00:26:35] And then the third bucket is what I'm calling presence based leadership management and coaching. Now this is the area of expertise that draws on thought leaders like Otto Scharmer, Peter Senge, as well as Alan Seale in Transformational Presence. Of course, Otto Scharmer's work is Theory U, and him and Peter Sanjay wrote a book together called Presence.
[00:26:57] And then, of course, I'm very familiar with Alan Seale's [00:27:00] work in Transformational Presence Coaching. So these three big buckets are where I'm drawing from to create a specific practical application that, in my opinion, creates systemic change and transformation. So what you can look forward to in future episodes is to flesh out more about what it means to create a safe space and how we can simplify that and create it practically, especially in cultures that are urgent or where there's high stress, high pressure like there is in today's health care settings.
[00:27:35] Now, thank you again for getting to the end of this podcast. And if you enjoyed this and you found that there was value in it for you, my invitation is for you to subscribe for future episodes that come out weekly on Tuesdays. Thank you again, and I'm looking forward to being with you next time. Now, remember to be a safe space.
