We Are STILL Not Okay

Today’s article was meant to be on a different topic but as I was researching for my new book yesterday I came across a new study that claims

“Nearly half (46%) of employees say they wouldn’t recommend their company or their profession to their children or any young person they care about. An alarming 38% of global workers (46% in the U.S.) say they wouldn’t wish their job on their worst enemy.”

Not on their worst enemy! Just let that sink in. How much hardship and mental strife is behind that answer? Sheer pain and suffering, let’s stop sugar-coating it. So I can’t ignore it and this video is again addressing the fact that we’re in the midst of a mental health crisis and that ignoring the trauma the pandemic represented for all of us is compounding the crisis.

People didn’t walk into the pandemic happy as Larry with no care in the world and super engaged only to then lose all that due to the stress of Covid alone, of course not. We started off already burned out by extreme demands, learning imperatives that never ceased, living with VUCA’s ambiguity and overall rather anxious and burned out already. Disengagement isn’t a new problem either. What the pandemic did do, as the horrid shared reality that it was, was exacerbate each and every one of these factors and flood every brain out there with a tsunami of stress hormones while their work demands only increased.

When trauma happens to the human brain it leaves marks which have extremely adverse reactions in particular in cases where said trauma overlays on top of pre-existent conditions. The way to mitigate the effects of the trauma and diminish or prevent PTSD is by diligently talking about it, rationalising and processing it so that individuals can then safely “put the issue to bed” so to speak in their minds. Only then can they heal and move on. This all-important last step is completely missing in the workplace following the pandemic so as a result, people simply have to keep their extreme discomfort -that is so intense they wouldn’t wish their jobs on their worst enemy!- under wraps with only serves to further compound the issue.