Episode #67 - Healing At Work: Pt 1 Ft. Susan Schmitt Winchester - Overcoming limiting beliefs
- Mel Katzenmeyer
- Apr 3, 2024
- 2 min read
In this powerful episode, Susan Schmitt Winchester shares her personal journey of healing and growth, discussing how her childhood experiences and limiting beliefs impacted her 36-year career. Susan reveals that despite her impressive accomplishments, she struggled with feelings of inadequacy and turned to unhealthy coping mechanisms to manage painful emotions.
Key Takeaways:
Childhood experiences and trauma can significantly impact our adult lives and careers, often leading to limiting beliefs and unhealthy coping mechanisms.
Recognizing the connection between our past experiences and current emotional triggers is crucial for personal growth and healing.
Susan and her co-author, Martha, coined the term "Adult Survivor of a Damaged Past" (ASDP) to describe individuals who have experienced significant negative events or trauma in childhood.
Symptoms of being an ASDP include experiencing more painful emotions than positive ones in the workplace, ruminating on negative experiences, and engaging in unhealthy patterns to manage emotions.
The Rapid Power Reclaim (RPR) is a three-step process Susan developed to help individuals regain their power when emotionally triggered:
Step 1: Create Choice - Allow yourself to feel and process your emotions through sound, movement, or breath.
Step 2: Elevate Action - Choose to take a different, more constructive action instead of falling into old patterns.
Step 3: Celebrate and Integrate - Reshape neural pathways by celebrating your progress and integrating new beliefs and response systems.
Susan's story serves as an inspiration for anyone struggling with the impact of their past on their present life and career. By sharing her journey and the tools she's developed, Susan empowers listeners to embark on their own path of conscious healing and growth. Part two available April 10, 2024.
Episode Transcript
Looking back on your impressive 36-year career, what achievement are you most proud of?
I think what I'm most proud of was really becoming conscious and really understanding how much my own dysfunctional past, my own dysfunctional childhood was showing up in ways that work every single day in ways that were causing me to experience a variety of painful emotions. And what I sometimes say is that, You know, my career looks like it was an amazing career, but what most people don't know is that 30 of those 36 years, I was basically driving all my accomplishments because of my underlying belief that I wasn't good enough. And as I mentioned, this sort of realization you can live a different career experience., that was a major revelation to me. I didn't realize how hard I was on myself for so many years, never feeling like I measured up, constantly evaluating what I did that day or didn't do, giving myself a pretty low performance score, and then sadly turning to alcohol to try to take the edge off all those painful emotions, fear, anxiety, stress. And for me, what I'm most proud of is, and I really credit God for this, but becoming aware and conscious of the connection between the patterns that I learned when I was growing up. And by the way, this isn't about blaming parents or anything like that. I think our parents do the best they can. But my dad had some issues with unpredictable rage. I never connected that experience to the stress that I was having in the workplace. Specifically, I felt like it was my responsibility for his anger. And so somewhere along the line, as a kid, I figured out that it was everybody else's job to determine my value.
My job was to be as perfect and as pleasing as possible, and that's a really broken belief system. And then the way that that transpired for me, was this trying to constantly please everybody, always striving to over deliver, to over achieve, that's an exhausting way of living a career.
I always think now that I could have had those same accomplishments with all the misery that I suffered that was unconscious. So what I'm most proud of is learning principles of understanding how to get off what I call the unconscious wounded career path, where I spent a lot of time and actually learning that you can live the conscious healing career path, which I've been living for the last six years and that a totally different experience.
There might be some people listening going, how do I know if that's me? And how would I even recognize that? What are the warning signs? And what would you say to someone like that?
Yeah, it's a really great question. Martha, my amazing co-author, and I weren't sure what to call ourselves at first. If you look at the research on dysfunctional upbringings, it shows that nearly two-thirds of us experienced at least one significant event, which some people might call a trauma or a major emotional wound, before the age of 18. Moreover, 40% of us experienced two or more of what are called adverse childhood experiences. These are 10 really significant negative events that happen to kids when they're little.
Many of us had experiences that weren't necessarily positive, but we weren't sure what to call ourselves. There are support groups out there, like ACOA (Adult Children of Alcoholics), which I was a member of for many years. It's a wonderful organization. However, we were looking at ourselves through the lens of a broader bucket of dysfunction.
So, we came up with our own acronym: ASDP, which stands for Adult Survivor of a Damaged Past. I'll explain the acronym and then discuss the symptoms that indicate whether you might be part of this group, which is actually quite large. And in a nutshell, it simply means that today we are adults and that we don't often realize how much some of the things that we experienced are influencing us. We're not always able to show up as our highest functioning adult self at work. I can say more about that if you want to explore that.
The S is for survivor, which for me is a word of resilience and strength. And it recognizes that when we start to look at an own different things that may have occurred and, there are lots of things that are more than just the adverse childhood experiences or lots of things, bullying, discrimination, poverty, whatever, that we actually have amazing gifts and superpowers that come from that. Often we're really good at managing stressful situations, chaotic situations. We tend to have a different perspective on compassion and empathy because of some of the things that we went through. But the S is a strength word. I love it.
The D is for damaged, and what it really refers to is dysfunctional or damaged past, but more importantly, the fact that many of us are carrying damaging beliefs about ourselves that can be debilitating and can create a lot of spiraling down and a lot of super talented overachieving perfectionists turning to unhealthy self -soothing habits. Becoming aware of the impact of that damaged belief system and how that's affecting us in our careers.
And then the P is the past, which is just acknowledging that lots of things may have happened to you and to me when we were little. We're often carrying a lot of patterns with us from the past. For me, it's people pleasing and perfectionism. For some people, they use anger to push people away, to try to create their own sense of safety (the bullies, the corporate bullies).
Then there are also people who try to stay invisible, sort of the wallflower, off the radar, if you will, and not wanting to be noticed. So those are all the things that can happen as a result of our past.
And so how do you know if you're an ASDP?
I think the easiest way for me to articulate it is that you realize that you're experiencing more emotions that are painful than emotions that are positive from your workplace experiences.
I talk a lot about workplace conflict as an opportunity for really getting clear on this, but workplace conflict, what Martha and I call bumper car moments, happen all the time at work. We're constantly crashing into each other emotionally. If you're an ASDP like me, when these experiences happen at work and we get triggered, like I can't believe Joel looked at me like that in the meeting. It was obvious he was judging me.
So immediately my limiting belief of you're not good enough is reinforced. I start to go into panic mode and reaction mode, which for me was that tap dancing, people pleasing, perfectionism. I'd always blame myself for whatever you were upset about.
The other thing is that when we have these triggered moments at work, we ruminate about them. We spend lots of time replaying what happened.
Another bumper car moment for a lot of people is being skipped over for a promotion. That can be a hugely charged moment. We immediately feel unvalued. We immediately think and tell ourselves all kinds of stories about x company doesn't value me. I need to leave, I need to go look for another job. But it's just ruminating like, what could I have done differently? Should I have said something differently in the interview? I knew that so -and -so didn't like me. I know they don't think I'm smart enough.
It's all this internal conversation going on in our heads that's like monkeys jumping around in there. And we create all these assumptions and stories that fuel our emotions, the anxiety. For me, it was anxiety, worry, fear, fear of getting in trouble. If I thought somebody was mad at me and I might get in trouble, that was another trigger.
If you're experiencing this, I feel like the unconscious Wundukurppets. like the spiral down into a miserable place you're spending way too much time rethinking and replaying everything that you did or didn't do in the workplace or everything that your colleague or your boss or whoever your own direct report is doing. (Our own direct reports can trigger us as much as our bosses can trigger us)
So I think it's starting to notice when you're feeling those emotionally charged moments in the workplace, especially during these emotional crashes, these bumper car moments, which by the way, the other person may not even realize they've crashed into you. And we don't always know, we may do something and be completely unaware of how much of a negative impact it had on somebody else, and then they come at us and we're like, whoa, what happened? So those are a couple of the symptoms. There's a lot of internal dialogue, creating a lot of stories, beating yourself up, feeling, worried, all the painful emotions, angry, sad, alone, abandoned, all those emotions and then constantly going into old patterns to try to manage a safe environment, which can lead to workaholism, addiction, exhaustion, relationships with family and friends that are distant. And so that's way too long of an answer, but that's my answer.
Think back to seven years ago when you're still in your old version of yourself, how would she be manifesting differently in this conversation right now?
She wouldn't even be aware of these patterns that are playing out in her career every single day. She would be a very high achieving professional who had achieved some great success, but was constantly getting launched onto that spiral down. If something went wrong in her mind at work, it was like sliding into: stress, anxiety and worry. That's what it was for me. It's different for other people. I was talking to somebody recently and they were describing their every night and evening emotion as feeling, the crushing weight of what he didn't do right that day. Crushing.
For me, it was like an elephant was sitting on my chest because when I was in that unconscious state, I was unaware of how desperate I was looking for other people to validate me. I was unaware of how much power I was giving away to other people. I was unaware of why my reactions were so strong, having these kind of over the top emotional reactions. I was unaware that that's actually fueled by things that happened to us a long time ago, because the brain, the feeling part of the brain, fight, flight, or freeze part of our brain, the amygdala specifically, has no memory of time. If something happens to me at work, or if it happened to me at work in the past, and it triggered an old memory of fear or anxiety, it might be connected to my relationship with my dad or other major authority figures, including masculine women. I have a story of a boss who was extremely masculine in her leadership style. I was constantly triggered by her.
What would be different then is I wouldn't have known all of the things that I actually know. I wouldn't have known how to manage the stories in my head, the assumptions that I'm making. I wouldn't have known not to take everything personally. I took everything personally. If something was going wrong at work, I assumed that it was going to hurt my reputation or my image. It was like an old record playing in my head every single day and hitting the same grooves every single day. I was disconnected from that understanding. I always looked like everything was great on the outside, but inside, I was unhappy. I was really unhappy. I was sad, I was scared. If something happened with a boss and I took it personally, I hate even admitting this, I had these names for how big of a trigger was it.
IOD was an issue of the day. I kind of process it and manage it and be okay by the next day.
IOW was, I'd spent a whole week worrying about it.
IOM, a whole month consuming me, beating myself up.
And then IOC issue of a career where I felt like I was gonna get fired.
I named my levels of stress and anxiety related to what had happened. And I had some major bumper car crashes that sent me spiraling. That that would have been me seven years ago. And I call it, Healing at Work. Healing is a journey, and I am not completely healed at work. I still get emotionally triggered, but the time I spend in that deep well of misery is significantly shortened. I spend less time directing all of my emotion and energy onto the other person, judging and blaming them for whatever they did to me. I no longer wallow in those painful experiences or give away my power and responsibility to determine my own value.
I now realize that everyone else, two-thirds of us, are dealing with these same issues. This realization provides clarity and helps me understand why a particular colleague might be behaving in a certain way.
Now on the conscious healing career path is having the conscious awareness that when I get triggered emotionally to go: “oh, it's a bumper car crash, Susan, an opportunity for personal growth”. And I can start to unwind, like, why are you getting so triggered by this?
So there's a whole process I created called the rapid power reclaim. It's simple. I can walk you through it, how to regain your power in those moments when you're feeling completely unrattled. First the rapid power reclaim is a simple three-step process that you can do after the moment happens. I can also give you a technique for if you're in a meeting and you get triggered.
So, the rapid power reclaim or the RPR,
Step number one, when you're feeling triggered emotionally, like something happened, you're my boss and you were pretty hard on me about a project that I just gave you, for me, that would be a huge bumper car crash. The first step is realizing this is an opportunity. The first step is called CREATE CHOICE. And so, the first thing I say to myself is, “okay, I'm having a bumper car moment”.
In order to have an elevated approach to how I respond, I have to create choice. Before I can engage my prefrontal cortex and think logically, analytically, and enter problem-solving mode, I must feel the emotions I'm experiencing. We're often used to stuffing, ignoring, or pushing down these emotions. However, if your judgment on a project causes me to feel insignificant, stupid, or any other negative emotion, creating choice means allowing those emotions to surface.
There are different ways to process emotion, as emotion is energy in motion stored in our bodies. The book "The Body Keeps the Score" provides a wonderful description of this concept. Before we can enter problem-solving mode, we must find a way to access and feel our emotions. I learned from my amazing coach, Celine Dacosta, that this can be done through sound, movement, or breath. There are various techniques to accomplish this.
Listen to the episode to hear about the various techniques Susan shares.
So maybe in this moment, when you gave me this feedback on this project, I'm feeling like I can't do anything right. That's another limiting belief a lot of people have. Before I can come up in problem solving mode, I'll just go and let that emotion come up. I feel insignificant. I feel stupid. I feel small. One time I was doing this exercise and I started doing somersaults. It was the weirdest thing. I don't know where it came from. I just started rolling around. I haven't done somersaults since I was a kid, but my body wanted to get it out of me.
So that's step one is creating choice. Because the thing is, is that when we're in that emotionally triggered response state, that fight, flight, or freeze, we have no choice. We go into the adrenaline warp. I've seen people get stuck in that adrenaline warp with fights. They go into anger and they had these overtop reactions to something that's just happened at work. That's why it's so important to get that emotion out.
Once you've done that, and usually I feel better, I go, okay. Celine often uses the example of when a zebra is running from a lion, it's running as fast as it can. And then when they finally have eluded the lion, they're in a safe place, the zebras will shake their whole bodies. And it's kind of like that. It's like you're shaking off that emotion.
So then you can go into step two, which is elevate action. So for me, unelevated action is perfectionism and people pleasing. Tap dancing, I gotta go and prove to Joel now that I'm really a good employee, and I go into that people pleasing mode. Elevating action is saying you're gonna take a different action. You're not gonna go back into those old patterns. And so I may think to myself, what do I need to do to elevate my action in this case with Joel? You know what, maybe my elevated action is to go once and have a conversation with him. Maybe just test out my assumptions. “Joel, you gave me that feedback on that project the other day. I took it to mean that you thought maybe I wasn't qualified to do this job. Is that true?”
That would be an elevated action because then what you're doing is you're testing out and you're checking out the assumptions that you've been telling yourself. And so that's an elevated action, I'm not going to go into my old behavior patterns that are causing me that people pleasing imperfection, fueled my alcoholism. And I'm very grateful God intervened and I will have been sober it'll be 20 years on April 26, God willing. But that was the old pattern. So elevating action is I'm not going to go into my old pattern. What can I do to elevate that action?
And then once we do that...
My step three is so important, and it's really grounded on the principles of neuroplasticity, the ability that we have to literally reshape the neural pathways in our brains to begin thinking differently, to actually reshape our limiting beliefs, to reshape our old response systems and patterns. The third step is so critical and I was so bad at it in the beginning is celebrate and integrate.
Susan Schmitt Winchester is currently Senior HR Advisor for Applied Materials, a Fortune 150 Silicon Valley company, and the former Senior Vice President, Chief Human Resources Officer for Applied Materials. Additionally, she previously held the CHRO role for Rockwell Automation. She is also the CEO and Founder of Healing at Work.
She has more than 36 years of experience in corporate HR providing executive leadership in multiple leadership roles, both in the US and globally. She continually looks to meet today’s global business challenges with creative organization and people strategies that engage people, support a dynamic, inclusive corporate culture, and enable company exceptional performance. Her passion is teaching and inspiring executives, leaders and professionals how to succeed by discovering greater self-acceptance, fulfillment and joy at work and in life, especially those who came from dysfunctional childhoods.
Susan is the author of the book, Healing at Work: A Guide to Using Career Conflicts to Overcome Your Past and Build the Future You Deserve, with Martha I. Finney.
Additionally, Susan is a fellow of the National Academy of Human Resources—the highest professional honor for leaders in HR. She serves as a Board member for the HR Policy Association and on the Executive Committee of the Peer Roundtable for CHROs. She is Chair, Leadership Advisory Board to the Dean of Engineering, College of Engineering at the University of Michigan. And Susan is a member of the Society for Human Resources Management Executive Network.
For more information about Susan, please visit:
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