Leading Through Election Stress with Megan Romano, LMFT

As the 2024 US presidential election looms, leaders face a unique challenge: supporting their teams' mental wellness during a high-stress period. In this episode, Kristen and Mike explore this timely topic with licensed therapist Megan Romano. They discuss how leaders can navigate the emotional minefield of election season, from recognizing their own triggers to creating a psychologically safe environment for their teams. Megan shares practical techniques for emotional regulation and emphasizes the importance of leaders modeling vulnerability and self-care. This episode offers invaluable insights on how to lead with empathy and resilience during turbulent times.

About Megan:

Megan Romano (M.S., LMFT) is a New York-based Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist specializing in trauma therapy. With extensive experience in inpatient rehabilitation and online therapy, she has treated clients globally and trained therapists in various settings. She is certified in treating disruptive behavioral disorders, crisis intervention, and trauma-focused cognitive behavioral disorders. She provides therapy for individuals, families, and couples, addressing a wide range of challenges. She has received "The Best of Brooklyn Award for Counseling and Mental Health" for nine consecutive years. She is also the founder of Human Nation™, a mental health resource, and the inventor of a patent-pending trauma intervention that is 100% effective and substance-free.

Highlights:

• The impact of elections on workplace dynamics: 79% of employees reported being distracted during the 2020 election.
• The importance of leaders recognizing and regulating their own emotions before addressing their team's concerns.
• Techniques for emotional regulation, including breathing exercises and identifying physical signs of stress.
• The value of taking timeouts during tense meetings to allow for emotional processing.
• The role of vulnerability in leadership and how it can foster trust and psychological safety.
• The concept of "tend and befriend" as a positive stress response in the workplace.
• The importance of authentic check-ins with employees and listening to learn rather than to respond.
• Tips for finding the right therapist and normalizing mental health care in the workplace.
• The benefits of proactive therapy for leaders, even without a specific crisis or diagnosis.

Links and Resources Mentioned:

• Human Nation™ website
• Megan Romano Therapy
• Megan’s new Instagram account
• Zippia election study
• The Upside of Stress by Kelly McGonigal
• Dare to Lead by Brené Brown

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Transcript

Kristen: Welcome to Love and Leadership, the podcast that helps you lead with both your head and your heart, plus a bit of humor. I'm Kristen Brun Sharkey, a leadership coach and facilitator.

Mike: And I'm Mike Sharkey, a senior living and hospitality executive. We're a couple of leadership nerds who also happen to be a couple.

Kristen: Join us each week as we share our unfiltered opinions, break down influential books, and interview inspiring guests.

Mike: Whether you're a seasoned executive or a rising star, we're here to help you level up your leadership game and amplify your impact.

Kristen: Hello, and welcome back to Love and Leadership. I'm Kristen. 

Mike: And I'm Mike. 

Kristen: And we have a very special episode for you today. It's going to look a little bit different from our typical episode formats, but we are tackling something really timely, which is how leaders can support mental wellness during a super high stress period, like the rapidly approaching US presidential election, that is, you know, once again, extremely polarizing and high tension for the third election in a row.

So we've, as we've said before, this is not a political podcast, so we're, we're not gonna be talking about the issues here. Like, not because we don't care about them, but because we really want to stick to the charter of this podcast. I also know a lot of people are just on news overload in general. So don't worry, this will not be that if you're kind of looking for a break.

But what we are talking about is what this means for leaders, because. What you don't want to do is just simply pretend that the election is not happening because it does have a tremendous impact on your employees and with the tensions running so high, like everybody feeling the weight of the world, it's, it's on leaders to just not just manage their own stress, but also support their teams.

So this, this conversation, at least in the context will be pretty US centric, but I think the things we're talking about can apply to many situations and other countries and regions as well. And because we are talking a lot about mental health and wellness on this episode, and we have previously noted that we are not licensed mental health practitioners.

So we decided to bring somebody on who is to help us with this discussion. So we're really excited to have Megan Romano here. She is a licensed marriage and family therapist. She's based in New York, and she specializes in trauma therapy and works with individuals, families, and couples across a variety of challenges.

She received the Best of Brooklyn Award for Counseling and Mental Health for nine straight years. And she's also the founder of the mental health company, Human Nation, and is the inventor of a very cool patent pending trauma intervention that is 100 percent effective and substance free. So welcome Megan, we're really happy to have you here.

Megan: Thank you. I'm excited to be a guest.

Kristen: Before we kind of get into the topic, I'd love to give you a few moments to just talk a little bit more about Human Nation and your method, because I think it's something It's really interesting to share with our listeners.

Megan: Thank you. Well, it's still in the process. It's a, it's a bit of a baby right now. But the goal of Human Nation is to hopefully end up as one of the number one mental health resources out there that anybody can go to for anything. Hoping to build an app off of that, along with many resources to go into organizations, jails, schools, hospitals, um, really to reach people globally, especially with this method that I've come up with.

It's a hundred percent effective. I'm treating Vietnam vets. I'm treating people who are struggling with addiction, severe trauma, and everybody is doing really well. It's a very brief method. So you start off weekly and then quickly move to bi weekly and then monthly and then as needed. And, uh, it's really taking off.

I'm really excited about it. There's plans in the making to get more people invested and to hopefully reach a higher volume. So I'm really excited about it.

Kristen: Very cool. Yeah. Can't wait to see what comes from it.

Megan: Thank you.

Mike: That's a cool name. Human Nation.

Megan: Yep. It's going to be Human Nation, where people go. That's going to be the full slogan.

Kristen: I love it.

Megan: It's going to be the umbrella for everything mental health, hopefully.

Kristen: Amazing. And kind of getting into this topic of how mental, health of employees and how workplaces are impacted by elections is particularly like high stakes elections. I found this interesting study from the 2020 election that found that 79 percent of employees reported that they were distracted from work during the 2020 election, um, which is not surprising, but I think also good for people to hear because I thinkoften what people do in situations where they're not sure how to handle it is they just say nothing but if you just try to ignore this you're definitely missing something big that is happening for for your team. 

Mike: I just want to say I find it extraordinarily odd that voting, the day of voting is not a national holiday.

We have so many holidays, you know, we take off bank holidays for, for some pretty random stuff, but the national. Oh, okay. All right. All right.

Megan: Right on cue. There we

Mike: on cue. Hi. This is Beezus. We know Beezus. Yep. Anybody who is. We know Beezus' backside. 

Kristen: Listen to almost any episode of our podcast, knows Beezus.

Okay. 

Mike: Okay. Alright, everybody get a view. Alright, good. There she goes. Upside down cat. So automatically, like, The first thing is like to let people go vote if they want to vote and, and not make that a problem for them. And I imagine there's a lot of workplaces that are not very supportive of that.

You know, people are like trying to get to the polls before, after, where it makes, it makes no sense to me. Yeah. I don't get it at all. 

Kristen: Well, and there's, of course, there's a legal requirement to allow people to leave work to vote. But what that actually looks like in reality is, I think, very. As 

Mike: we know, all employers follow all federal mandates on, okay, so.

Kristen: Yeah, exactly. Uh,

Megan: What's ironic is they, they close schools on Election Day. So if you're a parent, you have to like, make sure your kids are covered for that day and somehow work and somehow try to vote. It's a bit of a conundrum.

Mike: It's almost like they don't want you to, okay, we won't go there, but I, I never thought I thought anything of that too. I mean, COVID, right? Like that became a thing when COVID hit. Parents had to figure out like, Oh my god, my kids are now home. What do I do? I have to go to work. That was super stressful for

Megan: Oh, you, you don't even know the half of it. It was complete and utter insanity.

Mike: I

Megan: Utter insanity.

Mike: I don't, yeah. I think there's just an overall lack of attention to quality of life, mental health, you know, support of a populace, and there's so many issues. We're so fragmented as a society. We're such a big country, but really we should be like nine different countries. 

And she said the word polarizing. we have a very us and them mentality and we're all in echo chambers. 

But people just want to fight and they want to, you know, they want to stir stuff up and probably a lot of it is is actually not even real people.

It's Russian bots

Megan: Especially on social media. Yeah.

Mike: On social media, and it's designed to make people anxious. So how do we, how do we fix all that, Megan?

Megan: Well, and I feel like in, I treat people all over the globe and of course they're processing the election with me, the economy, who's running, it's very polarizing. Polarizing is the word I've used for quite some time, and in my opinion, there's no other way to describe it. I, I used to live in New York City, and it's one shape there, and then I recently relocated out to Long Island, and it's another shape out here.

And even raising kids in this environment, it's, it's very different with what my kids do. My children assimilate on the daily basis politically, and I feel that everything is based out of fear, that we do everything to keep people and to not feel alone. And people are very fearful about their money.

And I think being fearful about your money is driving them to do the wrong thing. Everything right, fearing one party is going to destroy the economy, fearing the other party has destroyed the economy. What is this going to look like if we go to war again? What is the health care look like? What are the resources look like?

And unfortunately, what's been magnified is the hate. You know, the hate is costing is hemorrhaging money at this point. And it just seems like there's such a divide. I always joke that I wish there was like a purple party, you know, where you can mix them together and and be just strictly for people of no matter who you are.

Um, and it's very interesting being a mental health professional treating all of this because if we're also talking about the workplace, you know, you're going to work to earn money to support your lifestyle. Right? And if there's a threat to that, you immediately go into a trauma response and the trauma responses are fight, flight, fawning, which is people pleasing, and ultimately a shutdown of dissociation. Most people know what fight or flight is because we learned about it in like third grade with animals. But we actually have different responses as humans and when the nervous system perceives threat, the ability to shut down is there.

That's why we go on our phones and we, we doom scroll. You know, we do that to dissociate and we go on things like fake book. I call it fake book because nobody's really being real there and everybody's keyboard courageous and treating this is, is I love it because it's what I do. But like the stress level that people are facing right now is at an all time high, you know, not to be morbid, but the suicidal tendencies are definitely high, especially, believe it or not, in men. You know, men, a lot of their worth is wired in their job and what they are bringing home. And if there's a threat to that, it's very scary. And if you have a boss that is not an effective leader who is is kind of perpetuating all of this, it can really be very, very difficult to navigate.

And a lot of times therapy is not normalized, right? So, it's not like it's been advertised as okay to do, even if you are a strong man who was taught that you're not supposed to talk about your feelings. Well, this is all about feelings. Everybody's got feelings. That's what's kind of going on right now.

Right? So I find it,fascinating right now. And what this election is bringing out. And I think. As a leader. It's really important that you try to stay regulated as best as you can and try not to fall on your triggers. You know, if somebody has a differing mindset than you not trying to change that mindset, but really try to listen with empathy and meet somebody where they're at and really try to model staying regulated throughout all of this because the workplace is a huge trigger for most.

And then you go home and it spills into your life. Many don't shut their brains off after work. They just keep going, and going, and going, and checking the emails, and checking the text messages, and not sleeping well because of it. 

Mike: Staying regulated as a leader is 

Megan: probably my number one advice. And what I mean by regulating is making sure you're in a calm state, making sure you're not triggered, making sure you yourself are not in that fight or flight or freeze or fawn state so that you can meet somebody where they're at. We all want to be heard. That's what all of this is.

Everybody wants to be heard. Everybody wants to be noticed. Look at narcissism, right? It's like the number one way to show, Hey, everybody, look at, look at me and how wonderful I am. So these are trauma responses in my opinion, and we're doing things to survive because it's primal. It's, we're wired for this. 

Kristen: We're reading Brene Brown's book, Dare to Lead,

Megan: She's amazing.

Mike: She's amazing that we're doing, yeah, that we're doing for our next LBC. And she's breaking down empathy and there's like five characteristics of empathy. But the first one I find very interesting. Uh, it is perspective taking and it's the ability to put yourself in the other person's shoes.

You know, I have friends, close friends who have very different political beliefs than me, but I understand where they're coming from, and I understand what motivates, you know, their thinking, or I try to, anyway.

Megan: Right.



Mike: All that you said really resonates to like first you leader heal thyself. Right? So first you have to be, calm and undisturbed and, or at least pretend to be, uh, 

Megan: And you, you can't have empathy, you can't have empathy unless you feel. So when people are dissociated, they're disconnected from their bodies, they're not feeling. You can't meet somebody where they're at in a feeling unless you have felt yourself. And we are, we are conditioned to not feel and when our body is made to feel.

And so it's, emotions are different than feelings. Feelings are labeling something, but emotions are in your body. When you feel an emotion and you actually feel it out, which is a lot of what my method is, I call it restorative emotion regulation. You are feeling the sadness and locating where you feel it so that you can get it out.

Even if that means crying, people think crying is weakness. It's not. It is. It can be euphoric, and it is just salt water. That's all it is. And people act like it's, it's acid, you know, destroying you. But that's childhood trauma. We, we grew up in environments where crying was a sign of weakness, right?

And so, trying to normalize crying is really important and trying to feel these things. You know, I have a 10 year old son, and I'm trying to raise him so that he knows how to say, I feel really angry about that. So he doesn't want to go do something impulsive. And take down a mass amount of people in a school because he's had a bad day.

You know, I want him to be able to feel his emotions, get it out, be able to yell it out, do what he's gotta do, so that he knows what that feels like. You can't have empathy unless you're feeling. Otherwise, it's sympathy. And Brené Brown talks about the difference between empathy and sympathy. Most people are sympathetic.

Death is a perfect example. When you have a death in your family, you see who has empathy and who has sympathy very quickly. Oh, I'm so sorry for your loss. And and they run like cockroaches versus what do you need from me? I'll clean your house. I really don't know what to say right now. I'm just going to give you a hug.

This sucks and joining somebody. But people are very scared to join others in a feeling and especially this election is bringing out such opposing views. It's separated families. I mean, I have clients who are estranged from their families now because of who they voted for. And it's really, It's really sad that we haven't perfected the art of just listening and that we think listening is some hippie dippie stuff, right?

It's like, oh, you must be a total liberal because you want to hear. It's like, no, that's just ears and we're just listening. Like, it's just a main skill for communication. It's not, it's not a political party. It's just hearing, you know, so it's, When you're a leader and you're not hearing your employees, I think it's, it's just one of the worst things that you could possibly do as a leader, especially with this.

Kristen: Yeah. And we've, we've talked a good about, about listening already on this podcast. I talk a lot about it in my work as well, because it is, it is really a skill that we are not taught at

Megan: Oh, people are awful at it. They're

Kristen: Yeah, yeah, it's crazy and it is so important because yeah, as you said, people just want to feel heard and then how that feeds into that, that self management.

We're actually going to do. I think like two or three after this that breaks down emotional intelligence and what are the different components of that. But having self awareness and self management are critical parts of that in order to lead your team well.

Megan: And being vulnerable. Being vulnerable is key. Putting yourself out there, not knowing what you're getting back, but doing it anyway is key. That's how you make connections. 

Mike: Back to Brene. She talks about like, if you have emotional literacy, you're supposed to be able to describe and or feel 30 emotions. And I'm like, I got like three, you know, and even those are hard to articulate sometimes.



Megan: You're working on them, I'm sure.

Mike: Well, sure. But like, you know, men too, like we're the only emotion that we're really taught that it's okay to feel as a man is rage or

Megan: Yep, anger. Uh huh.

Mike: Anger, you know, that's cool because that's manly.

And even being able to like articulate the difference between, you know, angry and sad can be hard. You know, I'm, I'm almost 50. It's like, I don't a hundred percent know what I'm feeling, I know I'm feeling something. Maybe that's progress. Like a lot of people can't even don't even know when they're feeling something.

Okay. So knowing that you're like, you know, and I like to break down words. So emotion is literally E and motion. So there's some sort of motion of energy or thought inside you. Right. Um, yeah.

Megan: And that's why you get visceral reactions when you're triggered.

You know, where, where do you feel sadness? Where do you feel anger? You feel it in different parts of your body and people don't understand that it's all in your body. Your body is screaming at you. We just ignore it or we overmedicate it or we numb it out with drugs or alcohol or shopping or sex.

Or it's like, shh. You know, and meanwhile, it's like screaming at us, like, no, I got things to say, but we're so in that left brain and that logic brain dictating everything that doesn't care about emotion, emotion's all the right brain and the right brain is connected to all the bodily reactions for when you're triggered.

But we stay in our left brain. That left brain loves I call that left brain my nagging nana. It loves to whisper stuff in your ear. That inner critic that's like, everything is bad. You are terrible. You're never going to amount to nothing. Especially if you've grown up with any type of childhood trauma. Those are the inner voices that stick with you. That's how I came up with this method too not to keep promoting it, but the whole point of it is to align the nervous system to be able to feel an emotion at the same time as talking it out at the same time as trying to breathe it out so that you are in a calm, regulated state when it's over.

And if we can't feel emotions, we're just not in a good situation as a society. We're really not.

Kristen: Yeah, and I mean, it's interesting because the, the definition that you brought up that, that part of the definition of emotion is that it is in motion. It is inherently temporary, right? And I think that's as somebody who has definitely struggled with identifying my and feeling my feelings.

Mike: You don't have feelings. Oh yeah, totally. I'm a robot. Yeah, you're a robot. 

Kristen: Not really. I don't do wish that. 

Mike: Look at that. 

Kristen: A little bit. Some truth. But, but part of, I think, what a lot of people, including me, struggle with is that, like, when you're trying to avoid this big scary emotion, right, because it's, but often the, the act of avoiding it is more painful than the emotion, because the emotion is temporary if you 

Megan: It lasts so long when you avoid it. It lasts so long. The torture lasts. But we were never taught how to regulate ourselves. We were never taught how to identify an emotion or anything like that. But it's in us. It's absolutely in us. If you give yourself time and really tap into these things, you're able to identify an emotion.

You know, I used to be a therapist that handed out feelings wheels to everybody. Here's your feelings wheel. Here's your feelings wheel. Here's your. And now with this method, I haven't touched a feelings wheel because now I know it's within us. We do have the ability to identify these things and once you kind of feel it out like a wave, it's just a wave. It's just temporary. I tell my clients this is for now, not forever. And once you get through that wave that you thought was so terrible, you feel accomplished. You're exhausted. You're definitely exhausted, but it's like a workout. You, you feel like you accomplished something.

And there's, there's a sense of calm after, after that huge wave, you just gotta get there and sometimes it is the most debilitating thing ever. I, I call myself the traumatized therapist because I have significant trauma from my upbringing. And when I get hit with waves, they're so big. They're big. I'm a very big emotional person and they are sometimes suffocating me and I used when my mom passed away I suffered debilitating panic attacks and there's nothing if you've never had a panic attack, you're lucky. But if you have you know that they are the worst thing that you can possibly go through. Because it feels like you're dying.

It truly feels like you're dying and you don't know the cause of it. And you cannot catch your breath. And it is the scariest thing to go through panic and not be able to regulate yourself. And with things like the election and all of this stuff, there's an increase in the panic. There's an increase of the what is it? Fear mongering. Am I saying it right? Like everything is like that. They want you scared. They want you scared. They want you sedentary. They want you relying on on whatever you can get your hands on to numb this out, you know, and it's not the answer. The answer is to feel this stuff so that we can regulate ourselves, prove that you can regulate yourself and meet people where they're at.

And I think an effective leader really needs to be in touch with themselves, what their own triggers are. Even as a therapist, we're trained. If a client triggers us, that's an us problem. It's not a client problem, and we're either supposed to work on that or refer the client out if, and I pride myself on not being triggered by clients.

Sometimes it may, I guess it may happen, but it's my job to take care of it. And I feel like as an effective leader, that should be the same job. It's like, if you're starting to get affected by your employees, that's a you issue. That's not an employee issue. It's your job to deal with the employee, but you can, if you're not regulated and you're bringing in your own agenda and you're trying to coerce people or trying to force people, it's just going to back people into a corner.

So, and we're in that survival mode and now look, there's so much going on with this violence and everything else happening thatit's really escalated.

Kristen: Well, and then you've, you've created the opposite of psychological safety for your team. If you're in that, that stage.

Megan: And when they're not safe, they go talk, right? They go talk and their little, and their little cliques and their, and their morale goes down, and it's, it's not a good, situation. The job of an effective leader, I think, should be to create safety. I have to create safety in my sessions. You know, it's my job to hold space for others in my sessions so that they can process.

And I think an effective leader should work on doing things like that, especially to mitigate whatever is happening with the election and learn how to soothe properly, validate and try to soothe as best as they can.



Kristen: So I want to go back,to something you talked about, you know, and I'm right in the middle of Dare to Lead. This episode is actually airing in the middle of the two episodes for Dare to Lead. 

Mike: So she, she talks a lot about vulnerability and shame, but one of the main drivers of all of these things are, you know, fears and unspoken fears.

And you talked about the fear of disconnection and shame. She talks about shame being exactly that. Shame is the, the feeling and the fear that we're separate from everybody else, right? And that, you know, that as, as you mentioned, like the fear mongering, there's a reason to do that.

You know, Art of War, 101 divide and conquer. Right. Fear of 

Megan: want to be led. People want to be led. They want to be led. So they will believe somebody who's talking. Even if there's no evidence to back up what they're saying, if that person is confident in their convictions, they're gonna follow them. They just are. People are very scared, so they want to hear that somebody knows what they're talking about when you have an effective leader who is like, I got you.

We got this. You're safe. You're okay. You can. You can rest. You can trust in this situation. I think that with this election. A lot of people are not feeling that way, and not feeling safe, despite whatever the choices are here. I don't think that everybody's feeling very comforted and safe as a whole, but would never really admit it, to be honest with you. 

Mike: So, as leaders, how do we regulate ourselves? It's fine to say that, but, you know, how do we do that? 

Megan: Well, I am I'm somebody who thought, oh, I can't do meditation. I can't breathe. I struggle with ADHD myself. Um, and I always thought, like, oh, I can't, I can't sit still enough to be calm enough to breathe and be in my body. And the thing is, that's how I actually came up with this method. Breathing is one of the number one things you can do to regulate, because when you go into survival, your nervous system is perceiving a threat that may or may not be there, and it will cut off oxygen, it will cut off the ability to go to the bathroom, it will cut off the ability to sleep, it will play dead if it needs to, and when you don't get oxygen to that brain, the brain thinks you're actually in a, in a a life threatening situation.

So trying to breathe is really, really, really important.I always say to my clients, when in doubt, breathe in and out. If you can just touch your chest and just slowly breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth to try to calm down. Get a list of coping skills. For me, music is everything.

Music has saved my life. I've had very dark times in my life. Music has gotten me. through it, taking a hot shower, going to exercise, you know, whatever your thing is to be able to regulate. It's hard at work though, right? You can't just go take a shower at work. You can't go blast music at work. Like if you come into my office, I have this basket of fidgets and everybody picks their fidget that they want to use.

And most of the men use them all the time, especially when they're talking about their anger, they're squeezing crap out of these, out of these like squishy balls that I have and things like that, there's a lot of things that you can do to regulate yourself. I've, I've left audio messages on my phone. If I just need to vent something out, I've went and screamed in a pillow if I need to get it out.

I've called a friend sobbing. If I need to get it out, you really need to be in touch with the things that work for you. You know, color by number may work for somebody and and going boxing may work for another person really being able to explore some coping strategies that. That are helpful. The ticket is to notice your body. When your heart rate starts going, that's the immediate signal that you got to abort. You got to just call a time out in our house. We actually have a safe word when we need a time out when it's just getting too muchand it works. It works. You know, you can take a break from a meeting as a leader and just say, you know what?This is changing direction.

Why don't we take five? I always recommend take 20 because it takes 20 minutes for adrenaline to come back down when you're trying to calm down, but you can take a break as a leader and say, Hey, this is getting a little heated. Why don't we take a break? Why don't we take a step back?

You know, you go marinate on what you want to say. I'll marinate. Taking ownership. Taking responsibility is super important. I think there's a lot of leaders that don't do that because they want to save face. And I think there's great learning that can happen when somebody takes ownership of maybe overstepping a situation or losing their cool, or it allows for it.

Really being in touch with like when you feel your body get tense. I've even told people to squeeze their hands really hard and then just let it go. That is such a great release, especially if you have anger and things are brewing and you're in a meeting with somebody, right? You're in a meeting, you can't just get up and, and go.

There's things that you can do to try to regulate and calm yourself down because once somebody's triggered, they're not hearing you anyway. You're not hearing each other. It's just, one upping each other, getting defensive, perceiving attacks when there are none. And we really need to take ownership and really look at our part in these things.

I hope that answers.

Kristen: Yeah. That's awesome. There's so many good things in there. Yeah. And I think it's, it's also a really important point what you said, like, you can take a time out. And I think for one thing, that's something that, most leaders don't really realize because we're all like, Oh, we have these strict meeting

Yeah. go, go, go.

to, got to hold by them, but power 

Mike: through, 

Kristen: but it is so much beneficial. I mean, if there, if you feel it happening in the room, uh, for one thing, if you feel those tensions, like that is a great signal that maybe you need to call a time out, but I think also what you said of having an awareness to figure out what's happening in your body and knowing for you, like, are, are you capable of holding space for your team right now?

Are you capable of listening or are you triggered? Like, that is an entirely good reason to call that time out. It's not just about what you're feeling with your team, but also what you're feeling inside of yourself and how you're able to show up for them.

Megan: Yeah. Maybe you had a bad night the night before. Maybe like it's where we can't be on all the time. We can't be on all the time. So being vulnerable and being like, Hey. I'm rescheduling the meeting this week because last night was not the best for me. Let's reschedule. Like, that to me models vulnerability, it models boundaries, it models knowing when to call it quits, and it models self care for, for your employees so that they can be normalized and being in touch with how they feel.

Kristen: I think that's really powerful. It's like one of the best ways to encourage self care and wellness for your team is to model it yourself. 

Mike: So, you know, I, I find challenged to like you say, okay, when you're triggered, first of all, the word trigger is, you know, Is a trigger?

And it's out there in the zeitgeist is a very negative word that has been co opted as an insult at this point.

Oh, are you triggered? You know, um,

Megan: People use it to gaslight and weaponize.

Mike: Sure.So we have some techniques that we can use when we're triggered. We breathe. We squeeze a stress ball. We scream. In in restaurants we cry in the walk in. So we go in the walk in and we cry and scream

Megan: I've done it many a time when I was a waitress. 

Mike: And yes, um, and no one can hear you. And it's cold. So it's very safe.

You know, I think there's a disconnect too. Like, we don't know when we're triggered. We don't know when we're operating out of that. And it's an altered state, right?

Megan: You're dissociating.

Mike: you somewhat, you know, and you talked about adrenaline and we, we, we know about this in, in jujitsu and martial arts, adrenaline creates an altered state. And if you're not aware, if you're not practiced in handling that altered state, handling yourself in the altered state, you will do things that you did not mean to do

Megan: Yep, you will blackout completely. You will completely

Mike: What are signs we can look for? 

How do we know when we're triggered? What are we looking for? You know, like, 

Megan: Really body signals like for me when I'm triggered, maybe I'll start stomping around and scanning the room and then maybe I'll start slamming some things here and they're talking under my breath. My, my breath gets rapid. Maybe I'll throw some profanity out there for good measure and start just looking for things to get like agitated about. Maybe my muscles are tense, I'm starting to sweat, my stomach is hurting, my body is aching. And again, that shallow breathing. Everybody's different in what they look like when they're triggered. But when we get to that, if you don't mitigate that in the beginning, what will happen is, the nervous system will get so flooded that it has too much coming at it.

And then it will dissociate and dissociating is the ultimate trauma response. It's actually your brain kind of breaking off from your body. And so when you're dissociated, you can't really feel much. It's a very numb feeling. It's a very clocked out feeling. We dissociate all the time, but, but this is a very intentional thing.

And it's what your nervous system does. It's playing dead essentially when the tiger is here and when there's no way to fight, there's no way to flight, there's no way to people please, all systems shut down, everything completely shuts down and you're just frozen. And we dissociate all the time, we dissociate on social media, that's, I use social media as a trigger for the method and what always ends up happening is the client is dissociating, is trying to clock out, is trying to numb out.

It's, it's trying these things. So when you're disconnected from your body, it's hard to feel these things. And then we make up stories about that, right? Oh, my God, I'm having a heart attack. It must be cancer. I mean, well, it's just know your, your body's perceiving a threat. So educating yourself on this stuff.

I educate my clients tremendously on their nervous system. My clients are probably some of the most well versed clientele out there. Not because I'm so great, but because I really use psychoeducation so they know their own body, so they know this terminology. Oh, I dissociated a lot this week, Megan. I was overwhelmed with this.

I was overwhelmed with that. Being able to identify what you're feeling, it's really important. I always recommend even writing stuff out and throwing it away. It's huge. Getting those thoughts out. You know, you're in the middle of a meeting and somebody's being a jerk. Just writing out. God, Marnie is being the biggest jerk.

I, I'd, I'd, we'd rather it go out than stay in and just rip it up and throw it away. You know what I mean? There's, there's different ways that you can just get it out because it will stay in the body and it will, it will trigger. And if we have unresolved things there, it's going to really cause an abreaction. It's gonna really cause an overreaction or a bad reaction to something thatshouldn't be.

Like, if my boss wanted a meeting with me, I used to catastrophize and go, I'm getting fired, I'm getting fired. I'm getting fired. I'm getting fired. I'm getting fired. 

Mike: What's that like? 

Megan: And it's like, Hey, I just wanted you to complete your note from Thursday, you know? And I'm like, oh my God, okay. I thought I was getting fired. Right.

Kristen: Like the, the sending the like Sunday night meeting request with no context whatsoever is a great way. 

Mike: Oh, I love that. To do that to your team. Put it on my calendar. 8 a. m. Monday morning. Okay. I'll be there. Yeah. So, I, I read a, I read a cool book called The Upside of Stress and they talk about post traumatic stress growth a lot, but there are other, apparently there are other stress responses besides fight, flight, and freeze.

There are healthy ones that you can turn, you know, even overwhelming stress into. There is a tend and befriend response, uh, that when you're under, you know, intense pressure or whatever, you look for your tribe. And I remember doing that a lot when I was in a, in a hotel, that was very stressful. It's like, I wouldn't know how to deal with it, but I would just talk to some of my, kind hearted team members and I would start to feel better.

I was like, okay, I'm not alone in this. Again, it's

Megan: People you can trust. 

Mike: People you can trust, the fear of disconnection, the fear of isolation. And then you're in some trauma, shame spiral. And then there's also a one that's a challenge response because your body, when you feel stress or danger, it will, there's a chemical reaction, right?

You know, it'll have a hormonal reaction, which are sort of gross, uh, control mechanisms for the body. They're very rough things that are designed to help you in a very like kind of non specific way. So you'll feel that and you go into the meeting or whatever, and you're having an adrenaline response and your body is producing adrenaline.

And it's Right, but if you can change your brain to think that this is just a challenge, my body's getting ready for this challenge, you can,control that response a little bit, and in this book they actually found even hearing that one time drastically changed people's ability to deal with stressful, uh, experiences.

And they also like found interesting things where like people who had experienced PTSD, they gave them like more cortisol or something. I got to look back like right afterwards and it helped them like transmute the experience.

Megan: Yep.



Mike: So body reactions is kind of the thing I'm hearing in all of this.

There's like stuff 

Megan: Regulating emotions. Regulating emotions. Regulating emotions. That is where everything is at. Regulating, allowing yourself to feel it. and get it out. We're not trying to push it aside. Sometimes it comes up when we don't need it, and we can do things like contain itand put it somewhere temporarily.

But we do need to get to it. It's it's essential. And that's what if you can feel your emotions, you will develop empathy. You will develop empathy. Because when somebody says, Oh, I'm so sad I lost I lost this person in my life. You can connect with sadness and go, Oh, it's the worst. Like, you know, I've lost a parent and I always say when you lose a parent, you're a part of a club that nobody wanted to be a part of.

Right. But there's great peace when you meet somebody else who's lost a parent. It's like this unspoken thing, like we're in this club. We're in this club now, like we're in this club where our parent is no longer and death is very final. Ambiguous grief is different. Ambiguous grief is when you're grieving the loss of somebody who's still alive.

Ambiguous grief is a lot more complicated, but death is very final. And so when my, when my mother died, I, I got a lot of sympathy, but not a ton of empathy. And the ones who stuck around the longest were the ones who were the empathetic friends who, you know, on the deathiversary will send me a little, Hey, just.

Because she was nice enough to pass on New Year's Day. Um, so there's that, but well, you know, so they're reminded New Year's Day is when my mom passed. So those little text means so much. It's like, oh, they get it. Like, they, when, you know, somebody gets it. Even a therapist, I could be the most well trained person in the world.

I could have all these fancy degrees and be a part of the things that I'm a part of and, and all of these things. But like, if I can't establish a relationship with a client, all that doesn't matter. It's all about relationships. Like if we can't establish and maintain relationships, we have nothing. We have nothing.

And that's what campaigning is, right? You're out there schmoozing for the relationships. You're trying to get, build this relationship, whether it's based on false pretenses or not, you're trying to build, you're trying to get the people, right? And you're trying to get them by the masses, and you're trying to say what they want to hear, and soothe these things, and, and whatever.

So, and that's why I think this election is so polarizing. Because you have these two very different things coming up, um, and using things that are very, very sensitive to us. Our money, our livelihood.We're working hard, and a lot of us don't have a ton to show for it, and we're scared. So, it's hard to believe who's talking when it's so polarizing.

Mike: It's interesting, you know, the polarizing the word again, it's poles, right? It's magnetic, North, South. They're the opposites. And I actually heard someone talk about, I don't remember who, that the US political spectrum is actually far more narrow then what we're led to believe. That we're if we were in a lot of if we were in a lot of other countries, it would really be the same political party that the spectrum of left and right, like there's so much more on the political spectrum than we really deal with here.

They're very kind of 

Oh, here we go. Oh my God. Right on the Beezus! Beezus No.. Oh my God. Beezus No. Did she, she triggered something. 

Kristen: Okay. 

For anybody who's not watching the video, Beezus just literally walked over the keyboard. Hi Beezus. Of my laptop. Beezus. 

Mike: I think the real message, you know, we can all regulate like cats and when in doubt, take a nap. 

Kristen: Right. Right. Yeah. Right. 

Mike: Stress.

Megan: We have to normalize rest. We do have to normalize rest because we're in a society where it's like if you have time to lean you have time to clean especially in New York, and I can't tell you the amount of clients I'm working on with just self care and resting and giving yourself permission to not do anything. It's crucial. 

Mike: Maybe get a cat. 

Kristen: As Mike is just holding

An office, an office cat. 

I think what's been really interesting about this discussion is that, you know, we're talking about, how can leaders encourage mental health and wellness within their, their teams, like, the overarching point is that you have to start with yourself and with understanding.

And regulating your own emotions first and doing whatever coping mechanisms, whatever self care you need to do that. Because if you don't do that, you're not able to show up for your team. You're not able to do the other things that they need, which is listening to them, like really being present

Megan: And checking in an authentic check in. Hey, hey, Sandra, how are things going? Right? Like, and really investing in the livelihood of your employees.

Kristen: Yeah, for sure. It's so important to to truly be able to embody from a place of curiosity as when you're listening to people. Because especially if you knowyou have a workplace where you really feel like there's people who feel very strongly about both candidates and it's especially high tension, right, like you have to be able to hear a perspective that is maybe very different from the way you feel, but be able to hear it and listen from a place of curiosity and still be like present in that conversation. But you can't do that if you don't take care of yourself first.

Megan: Nope. And there's a, there's a saying, listen to learn, don't listen to respond. You know, we're always listening to respond because we're on the defensive. And when you're listening to learn and you come from a place of curiosity, that's why I love my job. I never know what I'm getting. I could have the same client over a course of time, but I don't know.

That's why I really like my job and it suits my brain because I never know what is going on with somebody and I'm always listening out of curiosity and trying to meet them where they're at, which is a skill that takes time for sure.

And being yourself, you know, I use humor a lot in my sessions. I'm told that it helps. Of course, self deprecating humor can get you everywhere. But showing a softer side doesn't mean you're weak. It means you're authentic and being genuine and a person and people need that. They need to be led by somebody who's genuine.

Kristen: Absolutely. Yeah, I'd love to get your take too, Megan. I think you've given so many great tips for like all these different ways that you can help regulate yourself in the moment. Everything from breathing to, I mean, you've, you've given many of them, right? But I also, I'm a big believer in all leaders should have therapists for exactly this reason, because, um, especially if you have any childhood trauma, but like really just everybody, these are not skills that I think it's, I mean, hopefully then the younger generations are learning more of this now, but I know certainly any of us we were not, we did not learn these skills of emotional regulation, recognizing and regulating our emotions as children, right?

So, um, recognizing that it can be really helpful to have a therapist to work with on this. Um, 

Megan: Even bringing somebody in house who can, who can help, you know, like organizational psychology, right? Like just bringing somebody in house even to do some seminars, some meetings, and making healthcare accessible, you know, like making it accessible, making it a part of the benefits package where they're not, just,pressured to pick who's in their plan, but can really have access to authentic clinicians who know what they're doing.

Do your research. There's a lot of clinicians out there who just hang a sign. Do your research. If it doesn't feel right, it's not right.

Kristen: And that's actually, I was just going to ask you on that because I know when I talk to people who have not been in therapy before, a lot of what stops them other than, you know, stigmas that may exist in their families or in certain like workplaces and cultures. But another thing that stops them is that it's incredibly overwhelming to find a therapist who is a good match.

So if there's somebody who really, who is a leader who knows that this is, that these skills, like, especially on like emotional regulation, is something that they need to work on, is something that they would benefit from seeking therapy for. Like, do you have any recommendations for how they can find somebody who is a good match for that?

Megan: A majority of therapists advertise on Psychology Today, including me. Um, Psychology Today is a good place to start because you can put your insurance information in. You can put if you want a male or female, religious background, you know, what's modalities, what specialties are there. I would start with Psychology Today.

I think that's a really good resource. Call your insurance company directly and see who they recommend. And again, when an insurance company is giving choices, they're just giving who accepts insurance, so you really have to weed out. I would pick people on Psychology Today and BCC email several and have phone consultations with each one and see what what fits the best.

If you know a friend who's in therapy, ask your friend, you know, do you like your therapist? If so, I get a majority of my referrals now, especially through the method are personal referrals at this point. Oh, my aunt went to see you. She said you were great, you know, that kind of thing. So if you know anybody in therapy, I, I highly recommend that.

Um, Zocdoc is also a decent Resource if the therapist is actually listed on there, ZOC, DOC, um, and some of us are registered, like I'm registered through the American Academy of Marriage and Family Therapists, or I'm a part of the, American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress. So, any of these well knownorganizations can help too because we have to basically, you're paying for a membership to be a part of it. It means that your credentials have cleared so, um, and do your homework for sure. But the resources are out there and just, just try it. Just try it because if it works and you find the right person, you can move mountains.

You really can and it's nobody's business. You don't need to tell people you're in therapy. It's your own private thing. You know, it's not anybody's business. You share as much as you want. You share as little as you want It's your own private thing.

Kristen: For sure. Those are all great suggestions. And I think it's also worth noting, I think a lot of people wait until they're in crisis. So you're in a state of depression, to find a therapist and it can be extra difficult when you're in that state. So like, you don't, you don't need a reason like being in a state of depression or anxiety. 

Like you don't need to actually be diagnosed with something to seek therapy. It can absolutely just be something that

Megan: It's just having a person 

Kristen: Yeah. To improve how you process things, how. how you, how you show up ultimately. Like, so I think that 

Megan: And somebody that's for you Someone that is for you and nobody else like for you. In those 45 minutes that hour It's just about you and anytime you feel like it's not about you. It's the wrong therapist.

Kristen: I love it. This has been fantastic, Megan. I think we're, we're definitely going to have to have you back again. Cause I feel like there's so many topics we can discuss in the realm of mental health and leadership in the workplace. Um, but yeah, thank you. Thank you so much for being here and for, for giving your takes. It's, it's 

Megan: It was my pleasure.

Mike: Thank you. 

Kristen: Yeah. 

And for our listeners, we will have links to Megan's therapy site as well as the Human Nation site. 

Mike: Trademark. 

Kristen: Human Nation trademark site. Yes. As well as a link to her new Instagram account. You can find all of those in the show notes and we would also love to hear what you thought of this episode.

And if you have any, anything you, you really want to hear next, or if you have any questions, we will probably eventually do a Q&A episode. You can always reach out to us at loveandleadershippod@gmail.com or you can DM us on our Instagram, which is at loveleaderpod. With that, we will see you guys next week and thank you so much for listening.

Megan: This was great. Thank you.

Mike: Thanks, Megan.

Kristen: The Love and Leadership Podcast is produced and co-hosted by me, Kristen Brun Sharkey and co-hosted by Mike Sharkey. Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. We can't stress enough just how much these reviews help. You can follow us on LinkedIn under Kristen Brun Sharkey and Michael Sharkey, and on Instagram as loveleaderpod.

You can also find more information on our website, loveandleadershippod.com. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll see you again next week.