Ep. 67: Throwback Thursday: How to Respond After Trauma with Guest Manya Chylinski

After the recent school shooting in Nashville, where I live, I reached out to Manya Chylinski for support. I thought it would be appropriate to replay this episode with her, in light of the traumatic event. Please consider checking out her new podcast, Notes on Resilience. 

--Original Notes--
How do you support someone after trauma? What does is look like to lead through trauma? I loved talking with Manya Chylinski to answer these questions. 

In this episode you'll hear:

• Manya's story of surviving the Boston Marathon Bombing
• The #1 way you can support survivors
• How to create safe spaces following a traumatic events

Communications specialist and survivor Manya Chylinski helps people whose lives have been touched by trauma understand how resiliency and compassion are part of the path to healing, to enable them to thrive after difficult experiences. As a speaker and a writer, Manya’s mission is to spread the word about how some survivors of trauma appear unharmed but actually experience very real mental health injuries.

She’s an entrepreneur who uses her experience as a survivor of the Boston Marathon bombing to help others understand the importance of trauma-sensitive leadership and recognizing the psychological impacts of violence. She has spoken about the importance of validating the invisible victims of trauma on stages across the US including the Pennsylvania Governor’s Emergency Management conference, the National Homeland Security conference, and SXSW.

Manya is also the founder of Alley424 Communications, where she helps businesses tell their stories, and the co-founder of Project BFF, where she works to empower women and their friendships. She serves on the board of NAMI Massachusetts and is a commissioner with the Massachusetts Eastern Regional Commission on Women.

Chapters

• 11:50 Do this first
• 22:00 Build a trauma sensitive tent
• 36:20 When leaders experience trama
• 45:22 Balance?

Transcript

Kyla Cofer: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Leadership School podcast. I'm your host, leadership and self-care coach, Kyla Cofer. Here at the Leadership School, you'll hear leaders from around the world sharing their stories and expertise on how to lead with balance and integrity. Our goal teach you how to be an extraordinary leader.

Welcome back leaders. So today we are actually replaying an episode with my friend, Manya Chylinski. So I actually live in Nashville, Tennessee, where a few weeks ago we had that infamous shooting at Covenant Presbyterian School. Now I did know people in the building and while everybody I knew was safe, I have people that I love who are grieving people that they loved, and it has been really difficult. It's been a hard couple of weeks, and the person that I turned to was Manya Chylinski. Manya is a survivor of the Boston Marathon bombing that happened a decade ago this week, and she's the person that I turned to because of our conversation that we had coming up here in this episode.

She knew what to say and what to do, and I'm very, very grateful for her. So I hope that this episode will be some support for you as you're leading people through this, because I know that even though it's been a few weeks since this happened, it's not the last one.

It's not the first one, and grief is cyclical, right? Grief comes in waves. It doesn't just go away once the tragedy has passed. So I hope this will be of some help to you, just like it was to me. 

Kyla Cofer: Welcome back to my friends. I'm Kyla Cofer and I'm here with my friend Manya Chylinski. So Manya is a survivor of the Boston Marathon bombing, and she uses her experience to now teach and train other people on what it means to be trauma sensitive. So I know we've talked about this before, but we're gonna really get today into some practical how-tos, some principles of trauma sensitivity and what to do if you are the leader who's been through a traumatic experience, how do you approach that? 

Kyla Cofer: So thank you so much for joining me and listening. I'm [00:01:00] grateful and honored to share this space with you. Here we are with my friend Manya.

Kyla Cofer: Manya, thank you for joining me on Leadership School. We have been talking about this for a really long time, so I'm glad that I could finally have you on and hear what you have to say.

Kyla Cofer: So before we really get into it, why don't you introduce yourself for everybody listening. 

Manya Chylinski: Oh, thank you Kyla. I'm so excited to be here. I love talking with you. As you know, my name is Manya Chylinski, and I help leaders understand how to deal with people who've gone through difficult life experiences, and that takes the form of giving talks and sometimes workshops and sometimes consulting where I talk about the importance of the words that you choose in helping people heal; in talking about what is trauma sensitive leadership and how is that something we can incorporate into our organization? And I also talk about resiliency, even though that is a word that I hate.

Kyla Cofer: What makes you hate the word resiliency? 

Manya Chylinski: I think a little bit is how it [00:02:00] came into my life. I certainly knew the word. But in terms of psychological resiliency, emotional resiliency, the first time I heard that was after experiencing mass violence, and I'm a survivor of the Boston Marathon bombing, and I was at a meeting of survivors where they were talking about resiliency.

Manya Chylinski: And I remember thinking, I don't have that. I don't know what they're talking about. That's not something I have. Who are these lucky people who have this thing called resiliency? It started out already a little fraught and the more I pay attention to resiliency, the more I fear that when we're talking about it in the public sphere.

Manya Chylinski: We're talking about it as a way to say to people, Hey, you're resilient, and then by the way, that means I don't have to take care of you. I don't have to be trauma sensitive in the way that I deal with you. So yeah, I have a slightly less hate relationship with the word.

Kyla Cofer: I love this, we're diving right in.

Kyla Cofer: I have more questions about your story [00:03:00] and about why you're here and all that, but I love this diving straight into this because we've talked about resiliency on this podcast before, and this is a unique perspective. So what I'm hearing from you is that it's not so much the word, but it's the context of the word and it's the ownership with the word. That in using it, people are saying that I don't have to have any ownership over this situation or being there for this person because they've got it.

Kyla Cofer: They're resilient.

Manya Chylinski: Yes. I love you framing it that way as not having to take ownership. 

Kyla Cofer: Okay, well that makes sense. I see why you would be hesitant against that word. Because we do all have to take ownership of our only ourselves, but when we're leading the way from other people, we are taking ownership of, and some responsibility of the people who are leading.

Kyla Cofer: I mean, yes, everybody owns themselves, but there's still responsibility there. 

Manya Chylinski: Right. We all live in the world and we work in a workplace with other people and systems and procedures and processes, and if the things around us are not supportive, then does it matter how resilient I am? I [00:04:00] mean, yes it does, but if I'm then not getting support for the things that I need help with, my resiliency isn't the only thing that's gonna impact whether or not I'm able to recover or I'm healthy.

Kyla Cofer: Oh. That's gonna be really important. Well, that, that gets us right into why we're here. So we're talking about trauma sensitive leadership today and a couple episodes back we talked with David Dawdy, which you actually know David, and I've talked with him about trauma informed leadership. And I'm bringing you here because I think you bring a totally different perspective and both of them are really, really valuable.

Kyla Cofer: So I really believe this is an important conversation, but maybe you can explain to us the difference between David's trauma informed leadership and trauma sensitive leadership, and why we need to talk about them both. 

Manya Chylinski: Yes. The difference is probably not as great as you might imagine. It might entirely just be the word.

Manya Chylinski: Instead of saying trauma informed, I started saying trauma sensitive. I think because I'm not necessarily, I do sometimes work in the healthcare, you know, work with companies in healthcare [00:05:00] field, but I think, you know, the word trauma is scary and saying trauma informed that feels like a very medical term that feels like very official psychological term, which it actually is.

Manya Chylinski: So in my case, I wanted to make it maybe a little less heavy handed for the folks that I'm talking to. But the core is the same, which is finding a way to make sure that we're dealing with people who are dealing with trauma in their lives, and that we are not re-traumatizing them, that we're creating an environment where they are. You know, I just gave a talk on this topic.

Manya Chylinski: Trauma sensitive leadership and I made sure to say, you know, this is not talking about, we all should sit around and share our feelings together. It's not about that. It's about creating an environment where people feel safe and welcome and seen. And so I think I started calling it trauma sensitive leadership cuz I wanted [00:06:00] to maybe take the edge off.

Manya Chylinski: But a lot of the principles are the same. 

Kyla Cofer: Making people feel safe and seen. You know, I guess that's really what we talk about a lot. I think all last season, this podcast we talked about people first leadership and, and what that is and how that mattered. And I of the belief that to be a positive and effective and great leader that's what you're doing. That's part of the definition is that you're making people feel seen and part of a story. 

Kyla Cofer: So one thing that stuck out to me and then something else that, that we wanna make sure we're not re-traumatizing people, which if we're not in a psychiatrist or psychologist, and even those people, can't be perfect,

Kyla Cofer: we don't live in a vacuum, so that can be something that's, we're not aware of, we don't know how to do. So I wanna talk about that, what that looks like. But also, I just wanna bring up, because I'm thinking about it, we wanna be careful to not exploit people and their traumas, which I think can be really easy to do.

Kyla Cofer: Well [00:07:00] this person was a survivor like you of the Boston Marathon bombing, and so now we're going to like exploit that in you to try and for our own gain and I think that that we need to be sensitive about that as well. So maybe you can talk a little about both of those things. 

Manya Chylinski: Well actually there's a great example going on right now depending on which news media outlets you're listening to.

Manya Chylinski: You know, there was recently a just horrific shooting in Texas and some of those parents are testifying in Congress at a point in their lives when this is not what they need to be doing. Putting themselves on the public stage, putting everything out there in an effort to make change, to affect real change, and having somebody tell their story in this kind of environment is absolutely retraumatizing. 

Manya Chylinski: These folks haven't even had a chance to process the original, the trauma that they're still dealing with. I know that they're a survivor just to stick on that theme, I know there [00:08:00] are survivors of previous shootings who get asked to share their story and get asked to talk about it in incredible detail or show photos, things that

Manya Chylinski: we're kind of trying to get them to prove that they were hurt enough or that their pain is enough, that then we will do what it is they want us to do. Those kinds of things, those are unique examples, but those kinds of things are incredibly re-traumatizing. 

Kyla Cofer: Just to satisfy our own curiosity, tell me all the details, what exactly happened, how did you feel, how many times, and walk me through it all.

Kyla Cofer: We just have this great need for curiosity and details. I wonder how much of it is that we wanna feel that kind of trauma with somebody like, I mean, that's kind of a twisted thing, but I think there's some part of us that like, we don't understand it. So in order to empathize, we feel like we need all the details, but we don't need all the details.

Kyla Cofer: We can still have empathy without having all of that information. And just because we're curious doesn't mean we need to know. 

Manya Chylinski: Right. I find it [00:09:00] fascinating. I'm part of a group of survivors of terrorist attacks and we all get it. I don't, I can meet somebody for the first time and understand what they're going through, even though their experience is different, the level of physical injury often completely different than what I experienced, but we all get it and we don't have to explain that piece of us. 

Manya Chylinski: And then outside of that environment, it's very difficult for people to understand, which makes sense. I certainly didn't understand this experience before going through it myself nine years ago, and I think there is a curiosity.

Manya Chylinski: Just speaking for myself, I have gotten to the point now where I can tell if somebody is asking me a question cuz they're curious about my own wellbeing or my health and how am I taking care of myself. Or if they're asking a question cuz they're curious, I've never been in a bombing, what was that like?

Manya Chylinski: And then the third people who kind of have [00:10:00] an agenda or are trying to get me to say something and maybe not as open and friendly as and objective as some others. And I can now tell just by the way you asked the question, almost with the exact same words. I can tell kind of where you're landing on that. And then if I should even answer the question, cause people still do probe in a way beyond just the curiosity of, I'm a human and what was that like?

Manya Chylinski: I appreciate that kind of curiosity. 

Kyla Cofer: Wow. So I'm curious then, during the aftermath of your experience, what were some people who approached that well with you and people that who didn't, not like asking you to name those people, but I'm just saying what are some ways in that was approached well with you in some ways that weren't, and then now how are you taking that and you're teaching people about trauma sensitive leadership, so let's pull all of this kind of together.

Kyla Cofer: I'm trying to think. I guess those are two [00:11:00] different directions of my questions, but I really am just wondering how that played out for you. 

Manya Chylinski: Yes, that's a great question. And who did it well and who didn't do it well are two sides of the coin, and the people who didn't do it well to a certain extent, I have to say thank you to them because I wouldn't be here talking about this subject, trying to educate people on being trauma sensitive if I hadn't bumped up against a lot of people who weren't being trauma sensitive. 

Manya Chylinski: So to start with the positive, the folks who really were helpful were people who were able to let me be in pain, who were able to let me be vulnerable and who were willing to admit that they didn't necessarily know how to help me. 

Kyla Cofer: That sounds like kind of going through someone who's grieving anything.

Manya Chylinski: Yes. It's not that different from how to deal with someone who's lost a loved one and people who let me lead the way saying, yes, I [00:12:00] wanna do this. No, I don't wanna do this. Especially early on, one of the things about trauma, Which does not have to be for your listeners, does not have to be a big trauma like a bomb, literally going off in someone's life.

Manya Chylinski: But it can take away your sense of control. And so one of the gifts people can give you afterwards is giving you back a little bit of that control. So you may think that I should be in therapy, but if I don't think that then you need to kind of follow my lead and don't insist that I go to therapy or make an appointment without asking me.

Manya Chylinski: But instead, if I decide I wanna go to therapy, then offer to drive me. But if I decide I don't wanna go to therapy, then that's what I have chosen for myself, whether or not it's what you would have chosen for me. And so I dealt with many people in my life, family and friends who were just really able to let me feel what I needed to feel and weren't afraid of being uncomfortable [00:13:00] around me. 

Kyla Cofer: Sometimes that's it, right? Is someone comes in to the office after you know, something really bad has just happened to them and you're like, uh uh, what do I say? I don't wanna make it worse. Do I make a joke? Is that okay? Like, do I ask them about it directly?

Kyla Cofer: Do I avoid the subject entirely? I mean, people who care, you're asking yourself a lot of these questions because you want to make the best effort and you're not gonna make some joke about it, like in an improper way. You know, you're gonna think through that. I mean, how do you get through that awkward moment?

Kyla Cofer: Do you just let it be awkward and get through it? Because I kind of think you do, but I dunno. 

Manya Chylinski: You know, I think you just let it be awkward and you know, that's, that isn't a great answer, right? But the truth is, you know, there's a couple things happening. If you have ever grieved someone you love, you may remember this time, this is very similar.

Manya Chylinski: There were times when I had no idea what was going on around me, so you could have said anything, and I wouldn't have noticed. There were times when I didn't know how to help myself. [00:14:00] I'd never gone through something like this before and I had no idea what the right step, the right quote, unquote steps were to take to recover.

Manya Chylinski: And I'll be honest with you, some people did say the wrong thing. People in my life said the wrong things, and some of those people are no longer in my life. I made the choice to not continue to be around people who couldn't accept that I was traumatized and that I was dealing with this. So yeah, it is uncomfortable.

Manya Chylinski: I'd say you're right. Jokes are definitely not the way to start out, but I think, you know, you said the word, we both said the word earlier, curiosity, I think, you know, being open, being vulnerable, and if you are those things, your curiosity is gonna be okay. If you ask me if I wanna talk about it and I say no, and you respect that.

Manya Chylinski: And that's the other thing is really listening to what the person who's dealing with it wants to do, [00:15:00] some people get a lot of value out of sharing their story, talking about it with certain people, with everybody who knows. A lot of people don't get any value with sharing their stories. They're much more private for whatever reasons.

Manya Chylinski: And that's fine if they don't wanna share what's going on or their deepest feelings about what's happening. So as the person who's dealing with them, it's just kind of being able to be flexible and be open and listen to what they are saying and what they're telling you they need, and also to recognize that, especially if you're dealing with someone who has experienced a significant trauma recently, their emotions are gonna be all over the place and sometimes really intense.

Manya Chylinski: So that also can be really uncomfortable to sit with somebody who's feeling really intense emotions, 

Kyla Cofer: but do it anyways. 

Manya Chylinski: Yeah, if you can. Yeah, if you can. Yeah. And also remember, I [00:16:00] think we sometimes forget this, but I don't have to be the person who talks to you after something bad happens to you. If you have somebody, that's great, maybe I don't need to be that person.

Manya Chylinski: Personally, now I can be that person for certain people in my life and for certain kinds of things in my life, but for people I don't know very well, I can't be that person for something intense that's happening to them, and I just have to see if I can help them find somebody who can be. 

Kyla Cofer: Hey, one of my goals here at the Leadership School Podcast is really to provide you with a lot of resources that can really enhance your leadership, and one resource that I found recently is the Humanitarian Entrepreneur Podcast, so I wanted to refer you to go check them out.

Kyla Cofer: What the Humanitarian Entrepreneur is doing is they're talking about what does it look like to do good in the world. But not exhaust yourself and burn yourself out and not be completely broke. You know, can you invest in yourself? Can you be an entrepreneur, but also change the world? [00:17:00] And how do you do that?

Kyla Cofer: Well? So go check it out. Let us know what you think. I think it's a really great resource and really believe that you're gonna benefit it from it. 

Kyla Cofer: So I'm kind of thinking like, let's say in a, we're in a leadership role, like in an office. Maybe you run a nonprofit and you've got your team and your team members.

Kyla Cofer: One of your team members just went through something and they show up at work on Monday. I would probably approach and say, Hey, I'm just checking in with you. How are you doing? What kind of support do you need from me? Or what kind of support can I offer you? And then I would, my thought would be to let the other person definitely respond and also just say, Hey, if you would like to chat about it, I'm here.

Kyla Cofer: We can chat, but if you don't, I'll just go about my business. And that's fine too. Would one of those work for you? 

Manya Chylinski: That's exactly. You did mention, what can I do to support you? Just recognizing that people aren't necessarily gonna know the answer to that question. 

Kyla Cofer: So that is hard for me personally because I want to support people [00:18:00] and so I would naturally want to just do something because in my mind I hear people do need the support, but they don't know what they need.

Kyla Cofer: So there's, if I can offer something, they can say yes or no to it. So I might say, would it be helpful if I brought you a meal? Would you appreciate that? And I mean, I did that this week. I had a friend who went through something and they said, no, we don't want that. I said, okay, that's fine. You know, whatever.

Kyla Cofer: And then, but I offered something else. Would it be helpful if I watched your kids? And she said yes. And so we watched their kids and that was really helpful. But yeah, I think sometimes we just don't know what we need at all. So that those things happened to you, was that helpful when people offered those kinds of.

Kyla Cofer: It Absolutely. Was it annoying? 

Manya Chylinski: It was he, no. It was helpful when people offered specific things because I did not have the ability to think strategically or think deeply or even really understand what was happening to me. So, I didn't know what was happening. I definitely didn't know what I [00:19:00] needed to do to make it better.

Manya Chylinski: But if you said, can I bring you a meal? The answer is easy. Yes or no. I want that. I don't want that. Can I come visit you? Yes or no? It's simple. I want it. I don't want it all I have to say and okay, I'll check back with you in a couple days. Great. Perfect. 

Kyla Cofer: Is it helpful to ask people really directly to say, How do you want me to go about interacting with you right now?

Kyla Cofer: Like if you're in an office and you've got a lot of stuff going on, is it helpful to say, like, would you like me to keep checking in with you, or would you like me to just pretend, just go on and get work done? Like, or do you want me to find a, a place in between, like, how do you want to interact here or just kind of figure it out?

Manya Chylinski: Well, that's a really good question. And of course, because we're all so individual Yeah. It's different for each of us. In my own experience, I can say that it, it was most helpful when people offered me something reasonably specific like, I'm gonna go get dinner. Can I pick [00:20:00] something up for you? Cuz that's, I know the answer.

Manya Chylinski: I'll check in with you in a couple days. Great. But if you asked me a question that required me to think. Sure. Possibly What could I do to help you? I don't know, yeah, I dunno. There's a million things I need. What is the thing that I want you to help me with? I don't know. So, you know, when you're talking about the work environment, you're also talking about people who don't necessarily have the same emotional connection as my best friend and I do, as my parents and I do, or as my good friend who's my neighbor and I do. So I think it can feel harder to want to even tread into the fact that someone's dealing with some difficult emotions and we have taught, you led this off with, you know, say something happened to someone over the weekend and you happen to know that.

Manya Chylinski: But a lot of times people are dealing with these kinds of stressors or dealing with a certain level of trauma [00:21:00] and we don't actually know what has happened, or we don't know that something happened recently. It could be a childhood trauma, but it's something that's still a problem for them. So, you know, I like to think about these trauma sensitive principles as things that we just bring to each other no matter what we know about what's happened to somebody.

Manya Chylinski: Kind of, I heard it said the other day like building a big tent, building the big tent, and having everybody inside rather than people who are outside trying to get in. And right now, sometimes in some organizations, the people who are dealing with trauma are the people who are on the outside of the tent trying to come in and be part of it, but they don't feel safe or they don't feel comfort.

Kyla Cofer: When you've experienced something, whether it's like you said, recent or childhood, sometimes childhood things come back up. Like if you're going through therapy or you saw somebody and again, and you're remembering all of those things, you know, or situation happened and it just [00:22:00] all came rushing back.

Manya Chylinski: I'll jump in with, according to this CDC, 60% of men and 50% of women had gone through at least one trauma in their life. You can kind of assume that if you're in a room with more than two people, somebody in that room has probably dealt with some sort of trauma. Now, it may be long past and they may be healed from it completely, but these are the kinds of things about each other that we can't really know.

Kyla Cofer: Well, and we don't need to like I don't need to, right? In order to hire you, you need to first come through and tell me all of your experiences in life and what are we actually dealing with here? Like, no, can you do the job? And what kind of support do you need to do that?

Manya Chylinski: Right. And that's why continue on this metaphor, building this trauma sensitive tent that takes care of everybody and doesn't ask you, doesn't require that you disclose your trauma in order to get some support or to be part of an employee resource group [00:23:00] or to get a particular benefit because they're available to everybody and you don't have to tell somebody your story and say, please, please help me. That support and assistance is available because anybody could need it at any time. 

Kyla Cofer: Yeah. And I think when we are talking about working in a group full of people, that comes down to basic human dignity and respect. Like I can respect that you have a story in your life and that I have one too, and that we're gonna be supportive of each other in our own stories and supportive towards this ultimate goal that we all have, that we're working towards together.

Kyla Cofer: And you know, when you're doing that as a leader, You're bringing people along into a story, and so everybody comes with their own perspectives into that story, but they're all working on the same story, and so it's how can I support you best to be a part of this particular story? That doesn't mean I have to know all the details of your trauma.

Kyla Cofer: I don't have to know all your histories, but if you want to share them, we can go there, but boundaries are gonna really come into play there because we also [00:24:00] have to decide how much am I willing to enter that person's story and how much is appropriate to enter another person's story. Sometimes it's not really appropriate to do that and, and you don't need to, and there's some boundaries that can get really crossed there.

Kyla Cofer: How do you set some boundaries with the people that you're interacting with? 

Manya Chylinski: I wanna take a step back actually. I mean, that's the point of creating an organization or a system that is trauma sensitive at its core. That is a place where people feel safe. There's transparency and trust between, um, you know, leadership and everybody else.

Manya Chylinski: There's a level of support with your peers and people feel empowered and there's a level of equity and cultural affirmation because you don't wanna make it, you don't wanna have an environment where somebody has to disclose. You want it to be that the environment is taking care of everybody. Whatever their trauma may be, and that you do not require that [00:25:00] they share necessarily the details of what's going on.

Manya Chylinski: Maybe you need to explain why you need to take paid time off or you need to take a sabbatical, or, but you, you shouldn't have to prove that you are a victim or prove that you are traumatized. So that's why kind of taking these principles and creating an environment that has compassion and empathy for everybody makes it so that you don't have to cross those boundaries.

Manya Chylinski: Because in my own experience and few survivors that I know, a lot of recovery is about setting boundaries, especially if you are in any way public about it. It's having to say, these are the things I will talk about. These are the things I won't talk about.

Manya Chylinski: And whether that's you're actually saying it or they're just in your own head, you know what your line is. Again, because of that curiosity and because you know some people do find other people's trauma. I'm gonna use the word entertaining. It is, you do [00:26:00] have to create boundaries. 

Kyla Cofer: You need more a drug. I mean, I felt like this at times.

Kyla Cofer: You know when like I'm on the interstate and I see a wreck and you're like turning your neck to try and see what's happened. You've got this. We just have this curiosity in us and interest in things. And I think sometimes there need to be the hero. We wanna feel like we know the right things to say or how to respond and do in the moment.

Kyla Cofer: But you have mentioned some principles, and I think you've mentioned several of them, but maybe you can walk us through just the list of what are some of those principles of being trauma sensitive in your leadership? 

Manya Chylinski: Sure. So number one is in fact building a sense of safety free from bullying and harassment.

Manya Chylinski: For example, physical safety in the environment, emotional safety, transparency and trust. And this is really key involving people in conversations that involve them. So if you're making a decision about a particular person or a particular group of people [00:27:00] to include them in the conversation and also using.

Kyla Cofer: Which feels simple, but it doesn't happen.

Manya Chylinski: It doesn't happen. It happens less often than you would think. 

Kyla Cofer: Oh, we can probably do a quick roundup of some governmental decisions. I know that pretty quickly. 

Manya Chylinski: Yes. Oh my goodness. And helping people who choose to do so using their lived experience to promote recovery and healing. Maybe being peer support within an organization and remembering that not everyone with a lived experience wants to share and empowering people.

Manya Chylinski: For me, that means using strength-based language. So assuming that people are resilient, there's that word again, and that they will recover from something that's happened to them. They will get better. And offer them support, but talk about it in a way that you know they're going to be okay. And I like to say their voice, their choice.

Manya Chylinski: Let them in as much as possible choose [00:28:00] what they talk about and how they're involved. And then again, equity and cultural affirmation. So for organizations that can mean acknowledging your biases and power differentials, how those can impact people in the organization, and building a safe space for open and honest conversations.

Manya Chylinski: And also having policies that are truly responsive to the racial, ethnic, and cultural needs of the people in your organization or the people that you are serving. And that's a whole other avenue of we could go down. But you know, those are the basic principles of how to create this organization that you know, is that big tent that takes care of everybody, even though everybody doesn't always need everything.

Kyla Cofer: I would say it's almost neglectful to be a leader of an organization, a company, no matter what size that, to not think about some of these things. If you are a leader [00:29:00] and you're not thinking about trauma sensitivity and some of these principles, then you have neglected a key part of your job description.

Kyla Cofer: Uh, because like you said, so many people do come in with traumas and everybody's trauma is different, and just because your trauma might be bigger than mine doesn't make it bigger or less effective my life. You know, it doesn't make it like less impactful in my life because I did not experience the same type of trauma that you did.

Manya Chylinski: Right. And I'm sure that you and your listeners know some of the statistics about when people are dealing with mental health issues and stress in the workplace, in the additional money that cost the organization for their healthcare, the amount of money lost for absenteeism and the turnover costs. So, you know, these are all really heavily dotted lines between the trauma and this bottom line.

Manya Chylinski: But I think it can be hard to show, it can be hard to take that large [00:30:00] policy and draw a direct line to, well, if we don't have open communications, it means we're losing this much per year. I think it can be a little bit difficult to make those connections, but there are so many studies that talk about the cost of presenteeism, the cost of absenteeism, the cost of people dealing with mental health issues.

Manya Chylinski: Because when we're talking about trauma, we're talking about so many people and so many different kinds of things that can happen in their lives, making a change to the way your organization thinks about taking care of people, I think could make a real difference for the bottom line. 

Kyla Cofer: Yeah, cuz it's almost like we could approach of, well I think that person over there has a trauma or a disability.

Kyla Cofer: You know, we, we've talked about accessibility a lot here too, is we have to make way for that person over there and that really doesn't serve anybody well because it doesn't bring them as part of your culture and community. It's not creating a safe, open space for somebody else to [00:31:00] go, well, yeah, I've got some things too in my life and it makes it seem, it really stigmatizes it.

Kyla Cofer: It makes it be like, well, there's something different about you, so we're gonna put you over here in this category. I'm using my hands to really push somebody over it. You're putting you in this category and there's something different about you, so you just need a little extra help dear. No, you know, like that doesn't really help anybody and really to acknowledge that.

Kyla Cofer: Everybody has something in their life that's been hard. That's part of the human experience. Everybody's got something, and so the more we can provide resources for everybody and provide those safe spaces for everybody, just the more successful we'll be as a culture in society overall. 

Manya Chylinski: Right? People are messy.

Manya Chylinski: Our lives are messy. When you really, if you ever dig into somebody's life, right? There's just, they're just messy. I talk about my experience, so you happen to know one of the things that has happened in my life, right? For other people, it's not necessarily something that big or it is absolutely that big, but they don't wanna talk about it.

Manya Chylinski: But [00:32:00] you know what, think about how much time we spend at work. If you imagine somebody works an eight hour work day and they sleep eight hours, I don't know who those people are. I'd love to be them, but if you think about that one day, half of your waking life is spent in your work environment, so it's gonna have a real impact on your health and wellbeing, no matter what's going on with you, whether you've had a trauma or not.

Manya Chylinski: And if we can create these workplaces that understand that we're all messy. But we can still get our work done if we're just supported. 

Kyla Cofer: I wanna go back to what we talked about earlier, about re-traumatizing real quick before we kind of head towards the end of our conversation here. But as we're, we're approaching that and we're thinking about all of these things, How do we caution with re-traumatizing people?

Kyla Cofer: We've talked about this a little bit, but I wanna get like really clear on it because re-traumatizing is gonna be like that, making you tell the story again, over and over, bringing it up, [00:33:00] bringing up different things and you know, making that the pinpoint of your life, like your life is only about this one thing that's happened to you or this one thing that you did.

Kyla Cofer: How do we be sensitive about that and to admit when we've maybe screwed up, like, Oh, I did not realize what I was doing, and I'm really sorry. Like, let's approach this again, but let's be people who, someone can say that to us. Someone can approach us and tell us that, and that we're not gonna fly off the handle.

Kyla Cofer: What do you mean? I, I I wasn't re-traumatizing you, you know? 

Manya Chylinski: Yes, yes. And also because I as a survivor, again, just taking my own story, I'm not gonna say stop doing that. You are retraumatizing me, because I don't necessarily know that that's what's happening. But for me, the avoiding retraumatization is all about control because trauma takes away your sense of control.

Manya Chylinski: It takes away your sense of safety, and it's really important to let people, you know, their voice, their choice, can [00:34:00] control their own story and. include them in conversations about them not doing those things are things that can be quite re-traumatizing for people. Asking somebody to share their story, knowing full well that you are not going to make any changes whatsoever based on what they share with you.

Kyla Cofer: Just asking 'em for the sake of a story time.

Manya Chylinski: Just asking for the sake or for theater to make it look like you're gonna be doing something. And yes, we listen to everybody. We're still not gonna change the policy, but we listen to everybody, so that's good. To me, the basis of it is really control. And if you mess up, because we all do, we're all human, we all say the wrong thing sometime with the best of intentions, then it's just about owning it and apologizing. Because I also mentioned earlier on trust and transparency. 

Manya Chylinski: So I, as a worker, I as a human, need to be able to trust somebody that I'm working [00:35:00] with, I need to trust that you will listen to me. I need to trust you were not gonna share my story without my permission. I need to trust that if you say you were gonna do something, that's what you're gonna do. And by taking away someone's control, we're you telling me this is now how something's gonna be, or the only way I can get services is if I share with you my trauma, I'm not gonna trust you.

Kyla Cofer: Yeah. I love how this all boils down to like boundaries and compassion and respect, ownership. Yeah. Well, we've talked about boundaries, ownership, respect, dignity, some of these basic principles, trust. 

Manya Chylinski: Yeah. You know, things, those things we learned in kindergarten, but you know, work environments can feel so different because you've got the profit motive and which is not necessarily a bad thing, but you're all together for this shared purpose.

Manya Chylinski: And the shared purpose is fulfilling the mission of the organization, whether that's creating widgets or saving the world, but you are brought together with [00:36:00] people who you might not otherwise spend time with. And you've, you are part of this community and I think it's often been thought of as just kind of a separate entity from the rest of life, but it's not, it's so ingrained for so many of us.

Manya Chylinski: We spend so much time at work. 

Kyla Cofer: What if we flipped the script a little bit and talk about when you are the leader and you've experienced some trauma. 

Kyla Cofer: How do you go about continuing to lead people while you're also going through a traumatic experience? It might be just one we just think about too.

Manya Chylinski: But you know, I'm gonna quote that old trope.

Manya Chylinski: We've all heard it. You have to put your own oxygen mask on first before you can help others and. You know, it's true. And the best thing I think that as a leader you can do if you are going through something, is to take care [00:37:00] of yourself. And that may mean stepping away or handing over the reins for a short amount of time so somebody else can deal with it, with the day to day of the work environment.

Manya Chylinski: Because you know, there are circumstances if you think about workplace violence, where everybody in the workplace experienced it. So now the leader has experienced it and so have the employees and the staff. So that's something you're all going through together, but as the leader, people are going to be looking to you.

Manya Chylinski: It may be something that you've gone through alone, not something work related. I think it's all about self-care. And for some people that's compartmentalizing things and dealing with work at work and other stuff at home. For some people they can't. I'm in certain times I'm absolutely not good at compartmentalizing, and other times I'm, I'm quite good at it.

Manya Chylinski: But all of those self-care things that we [00:38:00] know are really important. If you are the leader who's dealing with a trauma, 

Kyla Cofer: Hey, thanks so much for listening. Since you've listened, this fart tells me you're really enjoying the content, and I'm so, so grateful. I work really hard to bring you some awesome resources to help really enhance your leadership game.

Kyla Cofer: If you're liking this, can you pause really quickly, make sure you're subscribed, but then also share with one person or more people who you think could really benefit from the content. My goal is to really bring this into some of the. Podcasts on leadership in the world, and you can help get there and help us grow by sharing this with everyone you know.

Kyla Cofer: Thank you so much. I'm glad you're enjoying the episode. 

Kyla Cofer: I think it's important too to note that you know, just because you're the person in leadership doesn't mean you have to have all the answers. That there's this great lie out here that says that everybody else knows what they're doing, but it's not true.

Kyla Cofer: Like nobody really knows what they're doing. We're all just figuring this out, and if [00:39:00] you're leading the way and kind of going through some of these experiences yourself, it's okay to say, I don't have the answers right now. And to start looking for other resources. And that's what the leader's job is, is to find those resources, to bring people along and to offer that support and to ask for the support when you need it.

Kyla Cofer: To show by example, to show I need some support here, I need some help. But to be the one, to find those resources and, and to take the action. Really, you're the one stepping up and saying, I'm gonna take the action. I'm gonna move us forward here. But it's important not just that it's okay, but it's important and it's crucial, required that you also are taking care of yourself.

Manya Chylinski: Right. If you think about an organization where you wanna show everybody that you are a trauma sensitive environment, you are taking care of everybody, you don't have to ask for special treatment; as a leader, going through something difficult it's not that it's all about work and being a leader, but that's an opportunity to model.

Manya Chylinski: That [00:40:00] kind of behavior as well. And you know, it all comes back to, I think, a word that you mentioned a little bit earlier, which is stigma. Because what we're talking about is people's mental and emotional health. And that still is difficult for some people to talk about. It's still difficult for people to think of that as 

Kyla Cofer: part of the body, part of, yeah, part of something that needs attention.

Manya Chylinski: Yeah, I think the very thin, thin silver lining to the pandemic shaped cloud that we're all living through is that people are talking more about mental health and in general and in the workplace, and people are doing more studies and people are really looking at how can I support my employee's mental health.

Manya Chylinski: I like to think, I hope my fingers and toes are crossed that we're chipping away at stigma now that more people are thinking about [00:41:00] it, but we don't like to share our mental health. Some people never share talk about those kind of things, our emotions. And in a workplace in particular, it can feel really fraught to even have emotions depending on your type of workplace.

Manya Chylinski: So, you know, I don't think anybody has a problem with, if I break my leg and I still need to come to work, okay, quick, let's accommodate, let's fix things. We'll change her desk so she can use the wheelchair. We'll fix this, we'll do that. Nobody seems to question those kind of changes or adaptations, but as soon as it gets to mental health, there's a like, whoa.

Manya Chylinski: This is different. 

Kyla Cofer: You know, the cool thing is, is I think you mentioned this, but I really have seen a shift in our culture. It's slow. I mean, if you just think about 50 years ago, these conversations weren't really happening at all. Maybe in a therapy, like a, someone who was interested in psychology, who was writing the book on it.

Kyla Cofer: You know, maybe not 50 years ago, [00:42:00] maybe 60. Maybe we have to go back even further. Forget my age sometime. I, sometimes, I still, still think 2000 was just a few years ago. But, you know, way back, you know, people really weren't having these conversations and if they were there was really something wrong with you and ooh, that person need, you know, there's something different about that person, or they just weren't enough.

Kyla Cofer: They couldn't figure it out and they had problems. But as it got more and more common, people are starting to realize slowly, it's like we're slowly waking up and realizing that, wait a second, that's really not true. Never. It never has been true, and it's not true now. It wasn't true then; that there's something wrong with you if you have a mental health issue anymore, then there's something wrong with you if you have cancer or broken leg or whatever. 

Kyla Cofer: It's just what your experience is and there are resources and support for that. And so if we're gonna find resources and support for your cancer or for your broken leg, we should get resources and support for your mental health as well.

Kyla Cofer: And, and I've seen, I have a lot of joy, I think for me, I'm seeing a, this huge shift in it. [00:43:00] Every day I'm on social media. I just see people talking about it and the more we're vulnerable with our own experiences, the more we offer other people the opportunity to be vulnerable with theirs. 

Manya Chylinski: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Manya Chylinski: And I think I just want it to be moving faster, but I don't we all, but I agree with you. I have definitely seen some changes and even from, you know, my own young adulthood thinking about the way we think and talk about these things. I have just gotten to a point in my life where I'm like, all right, I see the light.

Manya Chylinski: Let's everybody get there. 

Kyla Cofer: Right, right. Well, that's why we have these conversations too, is just to say we're bringing others into that light with us and to go, this is not a weird thing to talk about. This is a normal thing to talk about, especially if you've got 60% of people, like you said earlier, who have experience some kind of traumatizing event and at some point in your life, you probably will. 

Kyla Cofer: Everybody has something in them and I would even venture to say with if you're reading the news, if you're involved in social media on a [00:44:00] consistent, regular basis, then you are experiencing some trauma anyways. Maybe you might not be in the middle of it, but by continuing to put yourself in those situations and you got bad news bias and reading all that information, that can be really, really tough for some people.

Kyla Cofer: And if people don't have a support system in places to talk about that and have healthy support, then they're coming to work for that. They might be a single person who lives in a house by themselves and doesn't have a community, and their community is coming to work, and that's the place that they need to come to find support.

Kyla Cofer: But that's not even at work. Like this is at your church or your synagogue or your neighborhood barbecue. This is in your family reunions. The places where people are coming, there's differences of opinions, and you, any place you have people gathering, you've got things like this happening. What a great opportunity that we have as leaders to be the ones who to say, I'm here for you.

Kyla Cofer: I support you. I'm not gonna tell you that I'm a safe person, because then you'll immediately think I'm not to Christ. [00:45:00] Create, create a spirit about me where you know that I'm a safe person that you can talk to me about or, hey can I bring you some cookies because it's been a hard week for you and I just made some cookies, you know, to show up to be the person who shows up and to care enough to show up.

Kyla Cofer: That's what leadership is. 

Manya Chylinski: Yeah, absolutely. So I cannot improve on that. 

Kyla Cofer: I would love to hear Manya.. We talk about balance. We've already talked about that. You've even mentioned my magic word, self-care. So for you personally, what does it look like for you to have a balanced life with your work and your speaking and your own processing of your own trauma and all that?

Kyla Cofer: What does balance mean to you and look like? 

Manya Chylinski: I love that question. I was just talking about this with a friend. I have finally come to the conclusion that balance for me does not mean equilibrium. Balance for me means like I'm on a [00:46:00] teeter-totter and my goal is just never to be all the way at the top or all the way at the bottom.

Manya Chylinski: But I will have, you know, weeks where I am flat out with everything I've got to do, and then suddenly everything frees up. I've got a few days where it's a lighter workload and lighter social load, and I think to myself, I do this all the time, I think to myself have anything to do, but if I just look back or look forward to the plans for the next week.

Manya Chylinski: So for me, what I realize is kind of learning the pace of my life and you know, either being okay with it, which I realize I am, or changing it when I need to. I take a lot of personal time for myself. I have days of the week or evenings that I will block off and my plans are spending time with me, not social, with even Zoom going out, any of [00:47:00] that.

Manya Chylinski: I definitely do tend to focus more on work than on leisure activities. So it's kind of reminding myself to take those breaks when I need to. But I do a lot of self-care. I meditate, I do yoga. I love to go for long walks. 

Kyla Cofer: Chris Kelso, I talked to him just recently and his answer was, it's like being on a bike where you're balancing and you used a teeter tutter.

Kyla Cofer: And so that made me, that kind of made me laugh a little bit, but I. Really appreciate that you take that time, but that you brought up that important topic of sometimes it's easier to do work than leisure, and so I wonder what it is that we put so much value on and you're, I'm not asking you to answer this, I'm just wondering out loud, we put that value on work as being something that we have to do and that we need to do and these checklists and these priorities, but we don't really think about that as our leisure and so I'm trying to teach myself to like flip that .Like the leisure time is just as important and takes needs as much effort and much of my attention as my [00:48:00] work time and that that looks like balance.

Kyla Cofer: Well, what about integrity? We actually haven't talked about that a lot in this episode, but I'm just curious, what does it mean to you to live with integrity?

Manya Chylinski: We haven't used the word very much in this episode, but I think we've been talking about integrity. To me, it's honesty and follow through, right? It's being honest and open with who you are and doing what you say you're gonna do, and that is something that builds trust, right? Both of those things are something that builds trust with other people.

Manya Chylinski: I have a whole string of people in my email inbox who have not gotten back to me and via all rights, need to get back to me, but they don't. So then I start to question, you know, do I trust this person? Do they have integrity? I, they can't even respond to me when something, when they have said they are going to respond to me.

Manya Chylinski: So what does that mean about [00:49:00] doing business with this particular person? So, yeah, that's how I think of it. 

Manya Chylinski: Yeah. 

Kyla Cofer: Wow. Well, thank you for that. Hey, how can we get in touch with you? You know, if we're looking for more information on being trauma sensitive or we're looking to help our leadership and grow in that, how can my listeners find you?

Manya Chylinski: You can come to my website, which is manyachylinski.com which I'm hoping we put in the show notes to spell it right for everybody. And my email is manya@manychylinski.com and on social media, I live on Twitter and LinkedIn. Those are places where I share some of my thoughts and also ways to get in touch with me.. 

Manya Chylinski: Awesome. 

Kyla Cofer: Thank you.

Kyla Cofer: Well, is there anything else you would like to say before we go? Make sure. I don't want you to walk away having left something unsaid. 

Manya Chylinski: I have not left anything unsaid. You had great questions and it got to all the points that I wanted to make. So I guess my final thought is thank you for [00:50:00] this conversation and for your leadership in thinking about how we can be trauma sensitive in our work lives and our personal lives. 

Kyla Cofer: Well, thank you so much for coming and joining me in the conversation. It's been really valuable to me, really as I think I'm a really practical person, so I wanna think through like practical and we talked about some of that. Okay. What ex specifically can we do? Cause I think we need that.

Kyla Cofer: When we're talking about these issues and when we talk in these generalized terms, it's just like, okay, that's all well and good, but what do I do? So, right. I think, I think this conversation really helped with that and I'm, I'm just really grateful for you being willing to share your story and being the person to put these out in the open and say, Hey, let's talk about it.

Kyla Cofer: And so thank you so much for joining me and for being my friend and coming along. 

Manya Chylinski: Oh, thank you. It's a pleasure. 

Kyla Cofer: Thank you for joining me on this journey to grow in our leadership. If you enjoyed this episode, you've got to check out the leadership and self-care coaching programs on my [00:51:00] website at kylacofer.com

Kyla Cofer: let's change the world together.