Gather At The Well: Navigating Uncertainty - Lindsey Fuller

How do you respond to uncertainty? How do we microdose wellness in the face of a macro event? 

In this episode, Lindsey offers a framework for navigating uncertainty with grounding, resilience, and a focus on collective care. You’ll hear the pitfalls of reacting versus responding, the power of trauma-informed practices, and the importance of prioritizing self-care before engaging with the world. It’s a roadmap for leaders and teams to weather any storm while staying true to their values and mission. Because in the end, the way to freedom is choosing each other, communicating and collaborating across differences, and staying resourced enough to access our innovation.

Episode Highlights

• Navigating Uncertainty (1:05)
• Reframing Perfectionism and Self-Compassion (06:55)
• Profile of the public instead of me, we, the world (4:00)
• Somatic: Compost perfectionism (08:55)
• Understanding Trauma Responses (13:30) 
• Projection vs. Reflection in Leadership Communication (17:50)
• Somatic: Ocular Reset (22:05)
• Creating trauma-sensitive containers: consistency, predictability, and caring relationships (28:25)
• Pro-social pauses (33:00)
• Embracing curiosity (37:00)
• Affirmations (38:25)
• Homework (38:50)
• Critical hope: Be a rabid fan of yourself, of your self-care, of your stability. Heal out loud, but do so in mindful ways. Lean on community and trust into the fact that you joined this work because you wanted to make a difference. (39:00)

For more information + episode details visit weareforgood.com/episode/navigating-uncertainty.

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Chapters

• 0:02 Embracing Wellness Amid Global Uncertainty
• 14:20 Navigating Trauma Responses in Organizations
• 22:45 Mindful Practices for Wellness Recharge
• 41:42 Building Sustainable Collective Liberation

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

I'm Lindsay and it's time to gather at the well. We're on a mission to microdose wellness, create human-centered systems and retain our greatest asset our people. We believe it's time for podcasts that teach moving beyond thought leadership and towards change leadership. Join us and our friends at we Are For good as we model the way with concrete examples from the field and gain tangible tools, because it's possible to build adult work cultures. We don't need to heal from. Let's get into it. Welcome to Gather at the Well, where we've been embracing the concept of microdosing wellness, those small investments in self and collective that, over time, contribute to our resilience.

Speaker 1: 0:48

You may have showed up today excited with the little sprinkle of content I left at the last episode, ready to talk about some of the common DEIJ pitfalls that are getting in the way of our wellness. Don't worry, that's coming. But we decided to meet the moment and to be with what's here, to be responsive and to share our unfiltered thoughts around how we all microdose wellness in the face of a macro event. Don't worry, the other piece is still coming. I've been sitting with this curiosity of how the very invitation I've made to embrace microdosing wellness holds up in the face of a macro event, an event that shakes the stability within us, within our team, shakes the foundations that our communities are standing on. How do you orient in times of uncertainty, when things happen and when things for sure things will always happen? How can we respond and not react? So much easier said than done Whether the challenges that you're navigating are locally situated. Maybe the transition of a leader, of a principal, maybe it's a natural disaster that pulls on resources, requires a crisis response from your team. Or it's even larger than that, the pandemic we all navigated, two communities struggling across the world, or our most recent election. I want to share in this episode a little bit about what I'm seeing the behavior profile of the public, how our internal stability, or the lack thereof, is spilling outwards, and offer you a tool that we use at the Teaching Well to help us take a pro-social pause, consider the circles of control and to act in ways again that uplift self and collective care.

Speaker 1: 3:08

Hey, now episode two, and ensure we're living our operationalized values. What's up? Go back and check episode three. Before we do that, let's take just a couple of breaths to prepare ourselves for this behavioral profile. You might breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth and two more just like that. Whether you want to grab a bowl of popcorn, a comfy blanket or some tea, it's time to talk, some real talk. I guess the headline for me is there's a recommended sequence for a response it's me, we, world, but what I'm seeing is everyone is turning to the world first, then maybe backtracking to their internal team, and what's left is a disconnected, confused, dysregulated you. What am I seeing?

Speaker 1: 4:33

Well, first, let's start by talking about the role that social media and the news are playing in our nervous system. I was recently taking a look at a study by UC Davis that talked about in 2023, 4.9 billion users worldwide are on social media and the average person is spending 145 minutes on social media every day, every day, yo, as my brilliant director of innovation, rebe, says, it's clear that this is the new way of being in community, or at least that's what we're being pitched. We're crying out. Are you like me? Do you like my thoughts? Are we in affinity? Are we in affinity?

Speaker 1: 5:24

Folks are demonstrating those thought leadership behaviors, this race to release the perfect statement first getting the content out, to, in truth, distinguish ourselves from the other, whoever you think the other is. It feels like there's a somatic disregard happening and, frankly, it's giving diary. Some of y'all are using your social media accounts to house your unfiltered, unprocessed thoughts and feelings. You see, as we're trying to establish more connection we're trying to establish more connection, seeking stability we're actually cutting that connection. I'm talking about how many of us wake up and the first thing we do, before we open the curtain and let the sunlight touch our face, before we reach over and hold the hand of our partner, and hold the hand of our partner, before we pick up our little one to embrace them and welcome them into the next day, we are reaching for our phone, trying to figure out who said another thing, that cutting edge thought leadership. That doesn't lead to change. It leads to an hike in our cortisol levels. It leads to an internal pressure to do and say the right thing. When we go to the world first, when all that we're watching is the news or we're scrolling and taking in everyone's crisis statement, we're not actually able to articulate. What is our organizational stance? What is the good trouble that we're invited to take up? Is this how we want to spend our time, truly showing up for the world before we lead our team and before we take care of ourselves.

Speaker 1: 7:30

Perfectionism is insidious. It creeps in and takes over the full somatic experience. Our mind ruminates, our body contracts and our spirit feels distant. When we let perfectionism take hold, we lose the essence of our brilliance and our gifts. There isn't a perfect formula, more an orientation. Whether you're listening to this and we've just navigated the recent election, or whether you're listening to this, months from now there will be another big event. I don't say that to cause you anxiety or to have you brace, or to have you brace. I say that because when you can rest into your response, you'll be well and be able to stay in this marathon of creating a more socially just world, around actualizing your organizational mission, around being able to sleep at night with your leadership stance to retain your people and invite them towards the solution. The answer is in community, but first you have to find the place within you where your truth lives.

Speaker 1: 9:03

Let's take a moment to drop in compost, control and perfectionism in this moment and invite just a little bit more space. You might get comfortable in your seat, letting the chair sofa, even if you're in the car the seat and the earth just hold you in this moment, if it feels safe to close your eyes or lower your gaze or, if you're driving, stare off into the horizon. Let's begin by taking three deep breaths here. Deep breaths here, dropping our shoulders from our ears, correcting our posture so that we're alert but relaxed, noticing if there's any place in the body where you are constricting. I'm loosening my hands, letting the back of them just rest on my lap. I'm unhinging my jaw and softening the corners of my eyes, and in this moment I want to cultivate greater self-compassion. You're doing the best that you can with what you have in this moment, whether you have external pressures or you're the one creating the suffering. Just take a moment to notice, to release any expectation that what you produce or who you are is any way related to perfectionism.

Speaker 1: 11:04

We are imperfect, whole humans trying to make a difference, inviting you to source into an anchor spot, if you will, a place of resource of power where you sense love, self-forgiveness. It might be your heart beating your heart space. It may be the enormity of your lungs swelling 360, the enormity of your lungs swelling 360, working so hard to bring in that fresh reserve of oxygen into your system. I used to tell my first graders to kiss their brains. You are doing an incredible job. What would you tell a young person in your life when they feel discouraged? Do your best, don't give up, you are enough. Those messages are still true for you too, inviting us to take the longest, deepest breath of our day, audible exhale.

Speaker 1: 12:39

Hopefully we were able to release just 1% of that perfectionistic tendency. Able to release just 1% of that perfectionistic tendency, letting it seep through our feet back into the earth that can hold most things, and coming back to focus. So what I'm inviting is a reframe, a reprioritization, a recommitment to yourself, which is that we want to flow in the order of me, we, world. That's how I opened this episode. What I'm seeing is a reverse order of my recommendation. I'm seeing us turn to the world to spill outwardly rather than ensuring we have an inner source.

Speaker 1: 13:32

Another thing that I'm noticing across clients, my personal circles, partners, is that many of our primary trauma responses are colliding with unsettling news. If you don't know about trauma responses, because it's not your expertise, I'm going to give you a brief rundown of the four Fs that I see play out most frequently. Yeah, I'm talking flight, fight, freeze or fawn. Many of you have heard the first three. The fourth is an incredible force that can contribute to self-abandonment, overexertion and, frankly, is normalized, conditioned and rewarded into the everyday employee.

Speaker 1: 14:20

But first let's talk a little bit about how these things might be showing up. Your primary response is yours. It might be from your early adverse childhood experiences, it might be through an adult trauma, an employment incident. But both educators and social sectors are showing these responses when they face uncertainty. When they face uncertainty For flight, it might look like the news coming out and a colleague taking a leave of absence. We've been seeing recent examples of folks stepping out of a co-held project when you're already weeks or months in.

Speaker 1: 15:00

Folks that are avoiding conversations or having psychosomatic symptoms. You know it's when that student says I've got a bellyache or a headache right before an assessment. Their mental and emotional health is manifesting in physical symptoms. We're seeing a lot of flight in this moment. Or perhaps you're showing up with some fight energy. You know that combative communication, the tonality of your emails, are more intense. You might be issue spotting policy inconsistencies and demanding change. The amount of leaders that are hitting me up and saying are folks taking up the good fight? In your org too, are people challenging every leadership move you're making? It's not that we don't want to receive feedback as leaders it's. Is this, in this moment in time, the effort that we want to take up, or is this misplaced, dignified rage?

Speaker 1: 16:03

Perhaps you are more of a freeze trauma response. You might literally freeze during facilitation. If you're someone that holds space for others, maybe your productivity has ceased. You feel unable to respond the unanswered emails. The red circles on your phone everybody's left on red. The red circles on your phone Everybody's left on red or fawn. I named that.

Speaker 1: 16:39

I'm seeing almost everyone showing some fawning behaviors. Fawning is when you disregard what you need. Some people would say it's linked to people pleasing, but I'm seeing employees in some of the organizations that we support spending beyond their means, going to protests which is dope if that's how you express but ultimately exposing themselves to risk with legal or financial troubles. Or maybe it's just showing up inside of the organization and they're overcommitting, taking on too much work. All of these are trauma responses and too few organizations are equipped to actually address that. And I'm not saying you, leader, are responsible for building a robust set of programming for your team to process their trauma, but what I am saying is that there should be space and resources and benefits that help people explore whether they're responding from a grounded enough sense of me before they go out to the we and to the world, or if they are reacting in a survival mode and embarking on this journey the journey of getting to the next place where we all feel a little more settled and ways that represent their values All right.

Speaker 1: 17:57

So here's the third thing that I've been seeing. I'm going to call it projection rather than reflection. There are some observable behaviors that demonstrate an orientation to reactivity in leaders and in staff across the country. In this moment and in any big moment, what I believe folks are trying to do is model vulnerability, because that's what we've been told good leaders do. The reality that I'm observing is that you're projecting a collective truth Rather than I statements you might hear. I know we are all feeling despair Rather than validating a range of feelings and perspectives because you've hired a diverse team. There isn't one monolithic identity just because folks signed your employment contract. There are too few examples of folks providing open-ended questions, multimodal activities, anything from journaling prompts with music to coloring, to small breakout room discussions in affinity. There's so much we can do as facilitators, but the way that you set the tone communicates immediately to your staff or to your client. What views are welcome here?

Speaker 1: 19:27

I'm also noticing folks attempt to make healing mandatory. They're holding a discussion on recent events and there's no agency or option embedded. We're all going to come together and grieve is what one of my clients told me. Well, grief is nonlinear. The assumption embedded in that statement is that everyone is grieving and people heal in varied ways. So I'm inviting you to consider the ways that you're holding space for the we, that you're holding space for the we. And again, if you are not embodied, if you are not grounded enough and I keep saying enough, because there is no perfect amount of grounding then the way that you open up space, that you hold space, that you end meetings can inspire your team to move forward or can shut down their expression, and that repression that they may experience necessarily manifests into the work. I know what you're trying to do. You're trying to help your team process. When I ask my clients like what is your intended outcome? I want them to know that I'm here. I want them to know that I see them. I want to reassure them of my commitment to them and to the work. I want to help relieve the pressure valve, then do that, but none of what I just described. Those intended outcomes are aligning with some of the facilitation techniques that we're observing.

Speaker 1: 21:14

You don't have to be an expert facilitator to create space in ways that are non-leading Again, compost perfectionism. You don't have to have the right answer, you just have to prioritize the time, dedicate any resources you can and reassure people that their feelings are valid wherever they land, with you, in community or on their own and in therapy. It's worth taking the time to integrate this new recent event, not bottle it up and spill it later. There's complexity in everything that I'm sharing. Before I take you through that, I'd love to do just a brief somatic. I call it the ocular reset. Now I know that it's actually the oculomotor nerve, but it just sounds more kitschy to me. So I do this practice when I've been staring at the screen Hello, grant writers After I've been reading an artifact and annotating, making notes, providing feedback, that deep focus and, yes, I do it after I maybe have fallen victim to my own scrolling impulsivity.

Speaker 1: 22:45

It's a way to break up that pause and to literally allow your eyes to rest so that you have agency to decide where you go next with your time and your energy To do this. If you're seated, I recommend leaning your elbows on the table in front of you. If you are parked in a car listening to this in the parking lot while you pick up your kids from soccer, you can rest them on the steering wheel. You don't have to, but sometimes my arms feel heavy, so that's my business Now. To do this, I like to find a an alert but rested posture, resting my elbows in front of me. I close my eyes and then I also cover them with my hands. This additional layer of coverage provides a cloak of darkness that inspires almost a reset visually. If you want to get fancy on your own, you might also take your thumbs and reach them to plug your ears for an additional layer of sensory deprivation, but for now, let's just cover the eyes.

Speaker 1: 23:58

I want you to take five deep breaths here. Each time, the exhale is a little bit longer than the inhale. I've been with tech, but now I'm with my breath. I've been focused, but now it's my time to recharge. Typically, all it takes is those five deep breaths to now do a slow progression back to awareness. To do this, don't open your eyes yet, but first drop your hands into your lap, you'll notice this curtain of an orangish hue, almost like the horizon, and next, as you gradually reintroduce light, you might look away from your text screen and gently flutter your eyes open, looking to something green or blue whether it be a house plant or out a window Blinking naturally and what you'll notice typically is that your eyes have relubricated.

Speaker 1: 25:25

You'll notice typically is that your eyes have relubricated. Just giving them the darkness, the closed eyes and the intentional breaths has reset your hardworking eyes and now you can make a conscious decision. Do you go back to scrolling or into that document or do you stand up? Get that hydration station, take a bio break, get a snack, take this opportunity to microdose wellness real time by resetting our eyes. It feels good physically but somatically. What it also does is position us to see from a different perspective, to widen our lens, to embrace all that's in front of us.

Speaker 1: 26:17

And the three observations that I shared with you all are sprint to socials, the trauma responses that are spilling out and projection rather than reflection. There's so much complexity baked into these things. There is real pressure to say something, to have it all together and figure out how to show up united and professional, to create opportunities for dialogue with your team or clients. There's real pressure. You might even be wondering what do I do if I see all of that happening at the same time inside of my workplace Multiple statements from individuals and the collective, all of the trauma responses showing up at once, multiple leaders speaking and projecting. It can feel like a lot. I don't have the exact answer, but I do know that there's one thing, a human-centered test that we've tried at the Teaching Well to grow in awareness and practice responding and not reaching out, and that is a tool we call the control circles. Check out the teachingwellorg forward slash blog and you'll find that we'll be sharing a visual, a worksheet if you will, that you can reference in future times of uncertainty. The idea is that there's three circles, and the inner one is what you can control, the next layer is what you can influence and the final layer is what's outside of your control.

Speaker 1: 28:05

When I work with clients to externalize the mental load, I typically walk them through a process of first noticing. The first step to stress management is noticing what's present Bodily sensations, ruminating thoughts, somatic constriction, internal or external pressures. From noticing we move to externalizing the mental load. From noticing we move to externalizing the mental load. Your mind will continue to swirl if you don't get it out. Whether that's a voice note, a written list, an interpretive dance, whatever you need to do to get the stressors out of your mind and onto paper or some medium and last you can mindfully act Right, prioritizing what is realistic and feasible, highest leverage what's in your lane and moving from there.

Speaker 1: 29:10

When I think about control influence and not in control I'm reminded of the first thing I did after the election. The first place I went was inside myself to figure out what I thought, what I felt, what I needed and what I believed my staff might benefit from, and what the outside world expected of the teaching, well, what we could actually control or influence about those expectations and which ones of them we needed to completely release. And the next place I went was to my staff, the very people who I needed to link up with, to align and to act in solidarity to carry out our mission. You see, when these major things happen, it's an invitation to show up and do exactly what you said you were about. You might even consider asking your values for guidance, not just going to your board or the superintendent or the regional team, but your values, the ones you spent so much time constructing.

Speaker 1: 30:25

When I was an administrator in deep East Oakland I worked at a school that now has an incredible behavioral health program, but when I got there it was just the principal and I and one special education teammate. We didn't have a mental health clinician, we didn't have a whole behavioral response team, we didn't have all the one-to-one aids that were needed for very high needs students. And one of the saving graces for that first year, oh, did I mention to say I was pregnant in my first year as an administrator, with my first child? Lovely Ask me more about it later. But one of the most essential parts of the team that I had to forge out of necessity but also being the scrappy young leader that I was was leaning on an outside agency of trauma psychologists Shout out to Mel who was responsible for so much of my personal development.

Speaker 1: 31:27

But we really dialed down to the three core tenets of trauma-sensitive work and you can Google things and there are other ones and maybe you spar with this but for me, so much of creating trauma-sensitive containers consist of these three elements consistency, predictability and caring relationships. You might be saying to yourself well, what's the difference between consistency and predictability yourself. Well, what's the difference between consistency and predictability? Consistency, to me, is what is planned and designed by the space holder. Predictability is what's experienced by the person in your charge or care, and caring relationships are the bedrock. They weave through everything. When I think about major macro events or crises that are happening, whether in our org, in our community or in the world, I come back to these three tenets At the teaching.

Speaker 1: 32:27

Well, a bit of what we did to show up consistently, especially in the face of this election, when we could anticipate there would be harder days, like the day when everybody was waiting to find out the results. The anticipatory energy was palpable. We actually held a staff professional development meeting the Tuesday before. What we did was we created open space, acknowledged that there would be multiple truths and reactions, engaged in numerous somatic practices and multimodal expression, meaning art and play, joy and humor, music, multiple ways of working through tension and stress, multiple ways of working through tension and stress. We also provided agency and choice. We called it choose your own adventure. Some of the rooms focused on how we could prepare and pivot for client work. Others allowed for witnessing and connection with a teammate. Still others were able to engage in movement. One of our directors provided chair yoga and intentional stretching, while others had affirmations or art projects that they could work on.

Speaker 1: 33:57

We didn't over-prescribe, we just said whatever you're navigating, wherever you stand, however you feel it's normal. That doesn't mean it's pleasant or you're enjoying your experience, but it's normal To be in your entirety, to be with all that humanity holds is a lot. You can come here. There's a consistent container. The agenda is socialized in advance. There's agency and choice. There are multiple caring relationships you can access and we want to invite you to process here, before you're in front of clients. We want you to process now, at baseline, before the big news drops, and not every major event gives us that runway.

Speaker 1: 34:45

But for these more predictable events that occur every set number of years, what we're inviting is both an individual pro-social pause and collective pro-social pauses. What is the pro-social pause? It's from our curriculum at the Teaching Well and it teaches a couple of steps for folks to navigate, to discern whether or not they're prepared to communicate in connected ways and to take action where necessary. In connected ways and to take action where necessary. Within a pro-social pause, you're instructed to notice and honor your somatic experience, what's happening in your mind, your body, your heart, to get inside of your body using a strategy, any of the somatics we've offered going on a walk, talking to a trusted friend, journaling, going to therapy, whatever it is that you need to reground and re-resource and then prepare right. It's the pause and the preparation. You might prepare for the event or the meeting by reviewing the invitation, the questions gathering, data, scripting your questions. How do you show up feeling more clear, more contained, more informed and empowered? So it's one step right.

Speaker 1: 36:02

We did a proactive, preventative, collective intervention. What happened before that was a director sync, where leadership got to process together, and what happened before that was what we call a self sync, a structure I've shared with you all before, but it was the meeting with myself. That's by design. In other words, we expected teammates to have that self-sync, leadership to have a collective sync and then the team to come together. All before we turned to the world. It was me, we world, we turn to the world, it was me, we world. Just to drop a couple of pieces of what I said to the team in writing the next morning it's not a perfect statement, it's just what came through my heart, again acknowledging all that's possible.

Speaker 1: 36:50

Whether you're waking up shocked at the results or you felt like you knew who America has always been, today may feel heavy. While there's a lot of uncertainty, here's what I know, right as your leader, with 100% clarity. Ps. I arrived at that clarity because I had met with myself. We can do hard things so long as we choose each other. We hold each other down. Period Leadership team is staying flexible and fierce about our money and expansion to prioritize safety, impact and long-term financial solvency.

Speaker 1: 37:30

Our values, mission and unapologetic stance for supporting those on the margins will not shift and any policy that protects your rights and is based on employer discretion will remain untouched. The teaching well will continue to be the best place to work for BIPOC teammates. Women, folks who are undocumented, religiously diverse staff, queer and parenting people. Despite all that is targeting these groups or complicating their daily navigation, I'm strongly encouraging you to embed additional somatics, space, community and wellness infusions across today and the rest of the week. We trust you to handle business for your clients and colleagues and in any space that you have across the day. Be compassionate with yourself. If anyone needs a call, zoom or check in, I'm more than available to you all stay resourced.

Speaker 1: 38:28

The fight is not over. Love lens Imperfect. You can give me feedback, but what I wanted to do was demonstrate what was stable, what was in our sphere of control and influence, and to show my team that not everything was chaotic or falling apart. So the truth is that life is going to life and another major event will occur. Folks will look to you to lead and you'll impose certain responsibility and pressure on yourself, and there's a different way to respond, to embrace this posture of curiosity.

Speaker 1: 39:18

I keep hearing folks all over say I just can't understand why people would blink and that's not just pertaining to the election. It's any major world crisis or conflict, but maybe it's less about putting energy towards how unsettled we feel, the lack of understanding. Maybe we need to put 10% of our energy towards curiosity and actually working to understand one another. We won't solve the world's greatest problems in a silo, in our comfortable bubbles or with our nervous systems dysregulated, taking action before we've reconnected with our values. I'm inviting you towards the framework. Yes, in those moments where everything feels so enormous and out of control, to follow the steps of me. We then world A few affirmations to carry you through this moment. I have time for me. My pro-social pause is powerful. I can hold multiple truths and together we can weather uncertainty as homework.

Speaker 1: 40:50

I am encouraging you to reflect, first alone and then with your squad, based on our mission, vision and values. And, if you want to throw in those community agreements, what's ours in this moment? What is our lane and zone of brilliance? What is our contribution to make? What is our contribution to make? We'll be providing a resource on how to take a stance and not a side, as a professional organization, as your first response to the world, and to leave you with today's critical hope be a rabid fan of yourself, of your self-care, of your stability.

Speaker 1: 41:42

Heal out loud, but do so in mindful ways. Lean on community and trust into the fact that you joined this work because you wanted to make a difference. There isn't a timeline or a formula for collective liberation. Every step, every action, every part of this movement has to be organically created in ways that are sustainable and realistic and infused with community, and infused with community that's the way to freedom is choosing each other, communicating and collaborating across difference and staying resourced enough to access our innovation. We've got this. I know it feels intense, but find your inner well, and if you can't come back together with ours, have a beautiful day and we'll talk again soon. All right, y'all. Thanks for coming to play at Gather at the Well, the podcast that teaches. If you like this conversation, come visit us online at teachingwellorg and hit us up on our socials. Remember to visit the podcast page to download a couple of useful tools to get your life and heal up your work.