Episode 72 of Coffee and Contemplation with Susan Dunlop was recorded on 14 June 2024 and is available through your favourite streaming service or my YouTube channel. This is the transcript of my conversation about CPTSD (Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) in Professional Environments with guest, Lindsay Morgia, from Colorado.
Susan Dunlop: Welcome to Coffee and Contemplation with Susan Dunlop. I’m Susan Dunlop, a self-leadership coach and 3 Vital Questions facilitator living in Noosa on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland, Australia. If this is the first time you’ve joined me, welcome. And if you’ve been tuned in before, thank you for coming back.
On Coffee and Contemplation, we explore intriguing stories and life lessons of individuals passionate about making a difference in the world. My guests are leaders, believers, and creators, each committed to their unique missions.
Today’s guest is Lindsay Morgia from Colorado. Lindsay is a non-profit consultant and founder of Morgia Research Services.
Her work is about helping non-profits build their capacity for high-quality data collection, analysis, and reporting to show their positive impacts on communities. Before becoming a non-profit consultant, Lindsay wore many hats and then tossed away a bunch of those hats to focus on her expertise. I will leave the introduction there because there’s so much I could share, and we will touch on more of what Lindsay does throughout our conversation today. Welcome Lindsay.
Lindsay Morgia: Thank you so much for having me.
Susan Dunlop: It’s a pleasure to see you on the screen and to talk with you again.
On the 9th of May, I spotted a blog on Facebook titled Flying Under the Radar with CPTSD. Lindsay wrote that she struggles with CPTSD symptoms every single day due to the emotional abuse and neglect she experienced as a child.
However, Lindsay managed to fly under the radar in her professional life. She has two master’s degrees and two bachelor’s degrees, over 15 years of experience as a data analyst for non-profits and runs her business. So how did she fly under the radar? Because her symptoms and coping mechanisms fall on the socially acceptable end of the spectrum.
What caught my attention and led me to send an email to invite Lindsay onto the show was the list of the three coping mechanisms: self-sufficiency, perfectionism, and an extremely high bullshit tolerance. It made me wonder how many people, who may not have figured out that it is CPTSD, are operating in the same way. I know for myself that I had no idea I had CPTSD until I was 55, after a career where I dismissed my own coping mechanisms as me just being me.
How can we make workplaces more inclusive for people operating this way? So many questions sprung to my mind, so I asked Lindsay to come talk today.
Lindsay, you and I prepped, as we always do for these shows, as I like people to feel comfortable to come onto the show. We chose some questions that you felt you would like to use as a theme for today’s episode. We’ll begin with, what were some pivotal moments or epiphanies in your journey that shaped your understanding of CPTSD and its impact on your life?
Lindsay Morgia: There were a few moments, but I’ll talk about two that I found particularly validating.
The first was reading Pete Walker’s book, Complex PTSD: from Surviving to Thriving. Now, I had been in therapy, I would say, for about two years, before my therapist started to slowly introduce the idea of complex PTSD to me, and suggested that I maybe take a look at Pete Walker’s book.
And I was resistant. I thought I don’t have PTSD. I’m not a war veteran. I haven’t experienced anything terribly violent. What I experienced as a kid certainly wasn’t that bad. But eventually, I said, okay, let me take a look at it. There was one paragraph in the first chapter that just grabbed me by the collar and shook me around a little bit and I’ll read it. It says
CPTSD can also be caused by emotional neglect alone. This key theme is explored at length in Chapter 5. If you notice that you are berating yourself because your trauma seems insignificant compared to others, please skip ahead to this chapter and come back upon completion.
Pete Walker
And I was like, who is this man telling you what to do? How dare you? But I did, I followed the instructions, and I read chapter five and, initially I got really angry about it because the way that he describes what emotional neglect is and what that does to you developmentally felt like he had been following me around with a camera for my entire life and had access to this knowledge that I didn’t know anyone else had access to. I was like, why hasn’t anybody told me about this sooner?
Despite that initial reaction, it was really so helpful to see my experiences reflected back at me and to have somebody else say, yeah, it was that bad. Yeah, the impact on your life is real. And so that was really the first real step on the road to. Acceptance.
Susan Dunlop: It is a strange moment, isn’t it, to hear it being said about you, and that resonated, what you just said, with me. I remember thinking the same thing, I haven’t been in war, I haven’t been through any major tragedy, surely not me, but then thank God it is. Actually, it’s got a title. It’s not me being me.
Lindsay Morgia: Right, it has a name.
Susan Dunlop: What were the next steps you took when you came to understand that?
Lindsay Morgia: It was a lot of discussion. It was a lot of research because that’s what I’m inclined to do. I learn about a new thing, and then I Google it to the ends of the earth. I read a lot of other people’s stories about living with this disorder, experiencing emotional abuse and neglect, and what emotional neglect was.
The second moment that I had was another sort of validation experience.
Before I became a consultant, I worked for the State of Massachusetts, where I worked in what was an oversight office. Our role was to oversee all of the different State agencies that provided services to children and families to ensure their safety, ensure people were getting access to the services they needed, and other things like that.
Part of the job was reviewing instances and reports of abuse and neglect of children in State care. So, that’s foster care, or that’s in a hospital, a residential school, all these different things. Now, we rarely receive reports about emotional abuse and neglect. Rarely. It’s not as obvious, it’s not as well understood as other forms of abuse.
But one time, I had a report given to me to review that was solely about the emotional abuse and neglect of two siblings in the system. And I could barely get through it because it was so familiar. And by the time I did get through everything, it was another one of those pivotal moments where it’s like, Oh, someone investigated a family like mine.
It was both very unsettling and extremely validating. It was Yes, what I experienced was a problem and it wasn’t right. And there should have been accountability and there wasn’t. So again, two moments to get me out of that mindset of, Oh, it wasn’t that bad. Nobody hit you. Kind of thing to oh, actually it is, and it was and the impact on me and my emotional development, my brain development, everything, you know, that all had consequences for who I was going to become.
Susan Dunlop: What a blessing that you got to discover that. How many people haven’t discovered that? I saw that on your website, the type of reports and projects that you were involved with – look very interesting for people who may want to go and have a look at your website later to see the type of work you’ve done. Thank you for sharing that.
I’m going to skip down to the workplace dynamics side of things and talk about flying under the radar with the symptoms in your professional life. Can we talk about those symptoms and the coping mechanisms that I mentioned earlier and how they affected your interactions and relationships in the workplace?
Lindsay Morgia: Yeah. So I was thinking through this, and in the workplace, I think the core of it comes down to an inability on my part to communicate feelings and needs in a healthy way.
This is the background:
I grew up in the kind of environment where there was no open communication about feelings or needs. Whenever I had needs as a kid, I was a problem. But at the same time, there were pretty severe consequences for me if I didn’t anticipate other people’s needs correctly and act accordingly.
So, with my mom, in particular, I would have to use cues like her body language or tone of voice to figure out what she needed from me. Again, it’s like an eight-year-old kid having to make her feel better about whatever thing was bothering her that day. And a lot of the time, I would not know that I had failed to meet these unspoken expectations until I got a nasty comment, or I’d get some passive-aggressive text messages, or stuff like that, and, I’m not a great mind reader, so I would get this a lot.
Unfortunately, I realised that I took many of these habits that I learned from her and brought them into the workplace. So, again, I had certain unspoken expectations of my coworkers, my bosses, and even leaders. I would get deeply frustrated when those expectations were not met.
Now some of those are reasonable, like I would love for you to care more about your staff, but others weren’t. Pre-therapy, I would get really upset and frustrated with people who I saw as not as self-sufficient as me, I perceived to make really sloppy or careless mistakes, when I was working so hard to ensure that all of my work was perfect.
That perfectionism. I would get annoyed if people weren’t being as flexible or adaptable or were complaining about certain things. It would all frustrate me so much. Instead of sending a passive-aggressive email like my mom might in an office space, I kept all of that frustration and anger to myself.
It was never safe to express feelings or frustrations at home. Why in the world would it be safe in this workplace? Absolutely not, right?
The problem is, when you’re always pissed off at lots of people around you who fail to meet your unspoken and honestly probably totally irrelevant expectations, it prevents you from establishing relationships where you can really learn from other people’s experiences, learn from other people’s work styles.
It can also create a lot of resentment, which I think probably contributed to my repeated experiences with burnout.
So this overreliance on self-sufficiency, trying to do everything perfectly all the time, judging other people who were not doing what I was doing, not finding healthy ways to communicate that kind of frustration, and having no one to check me to tell me that I’m being unreasonable at all. I missed out, I think, on opportunities to really connect and learn from colleagues. Because I was so in my own head about what I thought was the right way to work and what I thought was, like, the right thing to do.
Susan Dunlop: How interesting.
Lindsay Morgia: Yeah, I loved this question because it was a really interesting one to think about, of what did I bring into my work environments, because of my experiences, and because of these coping mechanisms.
I think if you talk to anybody I’ve worked with, they’ll tell you I’m a great worker. They’ll tell you that my work is solid, and it’s detailed, and checks all the boxes. But that relational piece with other people was very hard for me.
Susan Dunlop: Doing an aerial or a helicopter view of you in your office space with all the other people. How do you think you showed up there? Were you that person that people left alone? Just let her get on with it? Or did you just show up looking like you were part of the team, but you inside felt you weren’t part of the team? Just tell me about that.
Lindsay Morgia: It was much more internal. I tended to be in roles, I think, in any sector, but particularly in the nonprofit sector, and people will tell you this, when you are a solid and reliable worker, your reward is more work.
So I would take on a lot of increased responsibility because the folks around me saw how I worked and what I was doing, and they’re like, Oh, she can handle it. And I would always say yes because I didn’t want to disappoint anybody. But internally, I’m like, why am I doing so much more? This isn’t really my job.
I don’t necessarily know how to do what you’re asking me to do, but sure, I guess we’ll keep going.
Susan Dunlop: What an internal battle that is then. You talked about burnout. Did you burn out through that period?
Lindsay Morgia: Yeah. Absolutely. My last job at the State agency, which is full of brilliant people doing incredibly hard work, I just crashed and burned after a while.
A combination of the issues within me that I just talked about and then the constant exposure to other people’s trauma as just a part of your day-to-day.
Susan Dunlop: Okay.
Lindsay Morgia: I don’t really know what I was thinking on that one. I’m like, I’ll be fine. I’ll be fine. I’ll be fine.
Susan Dunlop: The leaders that you were working with at that time, did you have any mentors or leaders who could see what was going on?
Lindsay Morgia: No. I don’t think so. No. In the sector that I was in, in the places where I’ve worked, these are people who are so devoted to the issues that they work on, the families that they serve, and the communities that they partner with. There’s always a crisis. There’s always a fire. And everybody is expected to get on board, pitch in, and help out.
It made it even easier, in a way, for me to fly under the radar. I got my work done. I stepped in when I was asked to and I sometimes stepped in when I wasn’t asked to, and I really tried to be a part of a team. But I often felt very lonely.
Susan Dunlop: Okay. And you seem to have worked on projects that are pretty close to home?
Lindsay Morgia: Yeah.
Susan Dunlop: How did that happen?
Lindsay Morgia: Because I have no sense. I have no sense at all.
If I look back on where I’ve been, what I’ve worked on, and the issues that I care about, it’s now pretty obvious to me that I’ve been trying to work something out. I’m trying to protect kids and families who should have gotten protection but haven’t. I’m trying to make sure that kids don’t experience what I experienced or worse.
Those are always the kinds of issues that have drawn me in. I’m trying to make sure children aren’t treated unfairly or unjustly. For a long time, I worked on school discipline issues in the US and issues like black and brown kiddos being suspended or expelled at much higher rates than white kids. Missing school time, missing peer and social time, and stuff like that have always been where my head is. And to say that doesn’t stem from what I experienced growing up would be like a bonkers thing to say; of course, it does.
Susan Dunlop: The companies that you’re working for, the non-profits, when I was reading those words, to build their capacity for high-quality data collection, analysis, and reporting to show their positive impacts on communities, that can sound like just a line to people. But when you look beneath the surface at what you’re delivering for those, it’s such an important area to work in.
Lindsay Morgia: Yeah.
Susan Dunlop: How do you find that? Do you love doing that work?
Lindsay Morgia: It’s fun. It’s very fun for me. I’ve had really good clients. I’ve been working with organizations that are so committed to their missions, and I get to work with folks one on one and really talk about What are the issues that you’re facing? What are the challenges you’re facing as an organisation? And what can we do to get you the info you need to correct those challenges the first time? So that you’re not going over and over again, or, Oh, we didn’t really quite get this right. We have to go back to the drawing board.
Susan Dunlop: You mentioned in our prep chat, in line with that, that you get to hear a lot of stories. As you said earlier too, about the siblings you read about. Do you find the storytelling helps you a lot in formulating what you need to do for those companies?
Lindsay Morgia: I think the storytelling is the most important thing. I think a lot of the time when people might think of a researcher, you think of someone who’s very objective, maybe a little bit cold, maybe a little strict scientific method, all spreadsheets, no soul kind of situation.
I can do that stuff, but that’s not really the kind of researcher I am, I want to hear your story. So I’m doing a lot of interviews and small group conversations with people to give them the opportunity to share their stories and experiences that they’re not necessarily going to tell their boss or their executive director.
I’m an impartial third party here. My job is to create a safe and welcoming space in which you have control over what you choose to share and what you don’t. This way, you can feel comfortable telling me what the real root of the problem is.
Susan Dunlop: Gosh, so valuable.
Lindsay Morgia: You could tell that to me, but you don’t want to tell your boss in case you get in trouble. But I can then take all of those stories and analyze them and find the big themes.
Then I can go to leadership and say, these are the big three things that your employees are struggling with. There’s a reason that they’re not telling you this. It’s not a safe environment because they’ve had issues before when they’ve tried to say anything.
So let’s work together to figure out what we’re really going to do to make sure that these big three things are met.
Susan Dunlop: You’re making me think about my work. I talk about the cost of workplace drama. The type of work you do would be so valuable to the organisations to do that type of study first. We’re talking about understanding what’s going on beneath the surface for all the leaders and their people. If you could have someone, an impartial third party, doing that analysis, it would give you an amazing starting point to make the change.
Lindsay Morgia: Yeah.
Susan Dunlop: You’ve been open and honest about your experience with CPTSD. I read about it in your blog. In your personal life and your professional endeavours, how do you balance your advocacy and personal privacy? And what’s motivating you to share your story with others?
Lindsay Morgia: That article, that’s the most public I’ve been so far, in that article. I’m sure you may have noticed that I don’t get into a tonne of detail about the specifics of what has happened to me.
At this point, I don’t think I need to get into who did what, when, and who didn’t do what to get my points across. I guess I’m trying to focus more on me and my journey in the hopes that my stories and experiences, maybe more as an adult, can help other people who are wading through this new territory.
Now, someday, if or when I write the whole story, I’ll have to get into some more details. Some more things will be said. But that’ll be on my terms. That will be for me to decide what’s most relevant and what’s the most important things to include to get my points across. I think right now, I can still educate and relate while protecting myself from maybe exposing too much too soon.
But I’m at a point now, I’ve been in therapy for over 10 years. I think I said to you earlier that maybe it’s something about turning 40, and I don’t care anymore. I guess I’m just feeling more ready to share. And so much about what I’ve learned about Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder has been from reading other people’s stories.
So, in a way, sharing mine feels like giving back. I’m feeling more secure and ready now. I love the idea of being a small step in someone else’s discovery and recovery journey. And for people who haven’t experienced this type of trauma, I want to show them that a serious mental illness can look very normal on the surface. You may not even notice. The best thing you can do for someone who has this kind of trauma is to develop relationships that are based on trust. It’s not always enough to check in and see how you’re doing. You will only get a meaningful answer if we trust you enough to share that information with you.
Susan Dunlop: Trust is so huge with all this, isn’t it? So we’re talking too about inclusiveness. And again, in our pre-chat, you told me that in the USA, and I’m not sure whether it’s the same in Australia, CPTSD is not even recognised. Is that something that we can talk about next?
Lindsay Morgia: Absolutely. I double-checked my statement and looked in the DSM. In the United States, the bible of mental health disorders is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. We are on version five. This is something that comes from the American Psychological Association. This is what we’re using to decide whether you are showing symptoms of whatever disorder.
Complex PTSD (CPTSD) is not in this manual. PTSD is, and there’s been a lot of back and forth between psychologists, psychiatrists, and other mental health professionals about what exactly defines PTSD. CPTSD, I don’t know that it’s quite in the conversation yet.
If and when I choose to disclose to clients and colleagues, it’s not going to be a situation where I’m battling any misconceptions. I’m doing the education from the ground up. I have to be the one to introduce what this means. I have to explain what it is that got me here. That can be tough when people are also not aware of emotional neglect or emotional abuse.
So it’s a lot of education, and it falls on the individual, again, to choose to share that information. Then, you have to get into the details and hope that you’re talking to someone who is trustworthy and empathetic and will understand where you’re coming from. I think that partially contributes to the flying under the radar idea. A lot of times in my life, I think it’s just been easier for me not to say anything.
Susan Dunlop: I understand that. Yes, for sure.
Lindsay Morgia: So head down and barrel through!
Susan Dunlop: I found the same in terms of just the idea of trauma-informed anything, like a general medical practice. I’ve become conscious of what they ask on their intake forms, or if you even go for something as simple as a procedure. No one asks you anything to do with this.
You’ve got to presume in the ‘Is there anything else you need to tell me?’ question that’s what they might need to know about. Trust is such a big thing when you’re in the space of a practitioner.
What do you see there? Do you come across that too? Do you wish that something had changed in that part of the world for you?
Lindsay Morgia: I am probably the worst person to have as a patient regarding this kind of thing. I’m looking at your forms and listening to the kinds of questions you’re asking. I’m like, that’s not trauma-informed and making a note.
Susan Dunlop: Okay, so it’s not just me, right?
Lindsay Morgia: No, not at all. Especially when you know too much.
I’ve done a lot of work researching what trauma-informed practice looks like in different settings, in schools, and in healthcare. So that’s all rattling in the back of my brain when I’m ever in these sorts of more institutional settings.
I would love for healthcare practitioners of all sorts to know more.
I would love for educators to know more.
I would love for leaders of organisations to know more.
But I also recognise that this is one more thing in a sea of a thousand things that they have to stay on top of. I don’t know what the solution is for that. That’s maybe the need for patient self-advocacy, even though it can be exhausting and frustrating.
Susan Dunlop: The self-advocacy part is something that I’ve started to do. I’m just saying, bugger it. I’m writing whatever I need to write down. If you’re asking me Is there something else? I think I’ll just write it and see what comes up. It’s all a new practice for me, but already I’ve found it has been helpful. As you said, it’s just one more thing for them, isn’t it? There are so many ‘one more’ things that all these people have to deal with.
You just listed a few places, like educators, medical practitioners, and business leaders. Where do you think would be the easiest starting point?
Lindsay Morgia: Ooh, easiest. There is a lot of work going on in the US about social-emotional learning and about the impacts of trauma in schools. I think educators are getting more exposure to the topic. School districts in the US, everyone is doing their own thing to some degree. They can choose what to include in that realm or not, but I think that’s getting there.
I’ve had such varied experiences with doctor’s offices. I would love for what we call primary care physicians to have a little more mental health knowledge than they seem to, at least in my experience. I’ve had to do a lot of explaining, which I think has been good for both of us in the end, but I’d rather not be like, here is my presentation on everything that is wrong with me, that’s not what we’re here for.
Susan Dunlop: Is it the same there that there’s a feeling when you’ve got your general practitioner appointment that GPs don’t have time for that. You’ve only got a five-minute appointment, or your 10-minute appointment. I feel if I could tell you this background information once, maybe it would make all our future appointments better, or you’d be more considerate of what might be going on for me.
Lindsay Morgia: Yeah, it’s the same thing here.
Susan Dunlop: Wow. Okay. So, in terms of inclusiveness and in a workplace situation, we’re not saying here you need to expose yourself. Not stand up and say, let’s everyone just share something secret about ourselves in the workplace! I know that there’s that reality that people don’t want to speak about it. Whereas you and I are beginning to speak more about it. How do you balance that? There’s such a range, isn’t there?
Lindsay Morgia: There is a range. In a professional setting, and probably just in life in general, no one should demand somebody share their story. That’s not really what we’re talking about when we talk about being a trauma-informed workplace of any kind. What we’re really talking about is how we interact with one another. So, do your health care benefits at your organization fully cover mental health services? That’s a part of being inclusive.
It’s not, you might have five sessions with a therapist and then good luck and Godspeed. What could you do to be a little bit more comprehensive? But what if that’s not something you can afford, what other resources are out there that you can offer globally to all of your employees without singling anybody out?
If you’re going to allow people to take time off for health needs, that should include mental health. I think there have been a couple of studies about this, when leaders are more vulnerable with their staff, in terms of anything that they might be struggling with. We saw this a lot during the pandemic. You share what’s going on with you. Your employees may be more likely to maybe talk to a manager about something that’s going on with them or take that time off or use those benefits because you’ve demonstrated that vulnerability with them. You’re not asking for vulnerability back, but you’re trying to show people it is okay to be struggling. I am struggling. It gives you permission to get all the resources that you might need. To cope with whatever it is you’re going to cope with.
Susan Dunlop: Again, you’re making me think, like your comment did earlier, that coming from an outside, unbiased perspective as you do, organizations will benefit from having someone who’s trauma-informed, experienced, and understands what’s maybe happening for other people. I think that would be valuable.
In my work, our facilitations are about setting up a safe space and having every person drop their title and walk into the room as human beings. We model the practice of gentle vulnerability and show up as ourselves. It doesn’t have to be that you can’t speak up or be vulnerable or that this is just the way things are done around here. I’m happy that I’ve found the work that I’m doing because of that.
Lindsay Morgia: Yeah.
Susan Dunlop: I can see the benefit holistically, whether you’ve been affected by trauma or not, but it’s communication isn’t it when it comes down to it, the healthy communication we were never modelled by adults when we were children. That we don’t still have the experience in yet.
Lindsay Morgia: And you might have a lot of people on your staff who are still guessing what that communication is supposed to look like. And they’re taking, we’re all taking, cues from people around us, too.
So, developing the kind of organisational culture where needs are valued. Where people are acting toward each other in a caring way that cues everyone else in the room… this is the kind of place we are.
Susan Dunlop: That’s a really good point. I’m going to touch on something that’s on your personal side. You’ve mentioned your passion for powerlifting as a form of personal empowerment. Have you considered how the discipline and strength required in powerlifting translate to resilience in facing the challenges posed by CPTSD?
Lindsay Morgia: The powerlifting thing is still so funny to me because before I started, I never would have said that I was athletic in any way or strong in any way. I bump into furniture all the time. I can’t be out here in these streets doing anything like that. And I only started lifting about two years ago, I think I told you, after watching an episode of Queer Eye?
Susan Dunlop: Oh, no, you didn’t tell me.
Lindsay Morgia: Oh, no? So in an episode of Queer Eye, there was a trans woman named Angel, who was a competitive powerlifter, and the show was centring on her, and they filmed part of her episode at her gym.
And the gym was so cool. It was super supportive. No weird, diet talk, no weird, everybody must be 90 pounds, that kind of thing, or like annoying gym bros. It was all about gaining confidence. Being stronger. I was like, if I could find a gym like that, I would totally go. Then pandemic, then we moved to Colorado.
And I was like, all right, I’m going to try to find somewhere. And I got really lucky. I found an amazing gym that’s super supportive. My trainer is fantastic; shout out to PK, who just got second place in Strongman Nationals this past weekend. I just really took to it.
I think the whole experience has done a few things for me. Again, because of the culture of my gym, it’s about self-improvement. I’m trying to become as strong physically as I have been mentally. And like any kind of journey, you’ve got your good days and you’ve got your bad days. But even the bad days at the gym can sometimes be even more powerful than the good because they allow you to put things in a certain kind of perspective.
I can deadlift 265 pounds, which is unbelievable! But there are some days I can’t get 200 pounds off the ground, and that’s embarrassing. When I know I’m capable of so much more and, for whatever reason that day, it’s just not happening, my body is saying no. So I’ll get frustrated and, again, embarrassed.
But if I think about where I was a year ago, two years ago, when 200 pounds felt like a pipe dream, I can appreciate how far I’ve come because of all the work that I put into it. And so I can feel proud of myself, even on the days when I’m struggling. And it’s honestly hard to think of a more relevant analogy for recovery than that.
Susan Dunlop: Okay. So you’ve inspired me again. I appreciated strength training before. I loved the feeling of being strong when I was doing those things. We had one gym here that was like that, but they closed down through Covid. They had that sense of showing up and just being yourself. And it’s all about you, just for you.
Next question! We’re going to go to future directions, and you shared in the blog that you hope that non-profit leaders and other employers read your stories and take the steps necessary to create inclusive environments for those with serious mental health conditions. How do your services support them now, or do you have a plan for how you’ll take this into the future?
Lindsay Morgia: Oh, it’s a good question about the plan. I’ve been thinking about a lot of different things. Right now, I think the sort of organisational needs assessments, organisational culture assessments that I do, where I’m sitting down one-on-one with people or a small group, that allows everyone to participate.
Mental illness or not, disability or not, from the perspective of race or gender, creating open spaces like that has so much value in understanding where people are coming from and taking the specific steps that your workplace needs to take. Because what you need to do might differ from what another organisation needs to do.
But you’re getting your information straight from the source, from the people who are there day in and day out and committed to the work that you’re doing.
So that’s probably the biggest kind of service that I offer, and sometimes organizations are hesitant. It can be nerve-wracking. It can take time. It’s not as quick as a survey. It takes more energy and time to do.
I think it is ultimately worth it because you will have the stories you need for your organisation, best practices that have worked at other places that could work for you, and something really personalised to what your organisation is about.
Susan Dunlop: It’s about quality.
Lindsay Morgia: Yeah, it’s quality.
Susan Dunlop: To me, I’ve seen business people do all sorts of things, quantity, oh, now we’ll do this, and now we’ll do that, and that didn’t work, so we’ll go over here, and we’ll do that.
But if you start with a quality base and do that, and even if it takes time, I imagine whatever else you do on top of that, if you’re thinking in terms of building the foundations first, it would be easier to see the benefits.
Lindsay Morgia: Yeah, start with the most effective people, no matter what you’re doing.
Susan Dunlop: Was there anything else you would add to that?
Lindsay Morgia: I’m going to be writing more. I have a list of things. Is that a part of my business necessarily? No. But, I’ve always had in the back of my head that I want to write about this.
It hasn’t been safe, or I’ve been too scared or there were other circumstances. I couldn’t, but I’m certainly now at a point where I think I can.
I’ve got a whole long list of topics. The CPTSD Foundation has been lovely, and so I’ll be contributing more to their blog in the future. They have a fabulous staff there, they’ve been super, super helpful.
And yeah, we’ll see where it goes from there.
Susan Dunlop: Okay. A LinkedIn blog would be amazing.
Lindsay Morgia: Oh, I already posted that article on LinkedIn.
Susan Dunlop: Oh, did you?
Lindsay Morgia: Okay. Forty years old. You all should be aware. You should be aware of who you’re dealing with.
Susan Dunlop: Yeah. It was trickling around beneath the surface for me, and I’ve been reflecting on that, how I’d started and run a company without realising I had CPTSD there. I didn’t realise, as I said earlier, I just thought it was just me being me.
What I found back then was that I needed, say, guiding principles or frameworks or something that I could almost put my hand out and hold on to, just to keep moving forward and standing tall.
There was one helpful book called Leading from the Front, No Excuse Leadership for Women. And that’s about female leadership, staying strong in the male-dominated workforce of the Marines. It’s these two female leaders and how a list of principles they applied. For me, they were a valuable set of guiding principles. Then I’ve also got The Power of TED* that I work with. So, what other books would you say may be helpful?
You’ve already mentioned Pete Walker’s Surviving to Thriving, is that right?
Lindsay Morgia: Yeah. PTSD, Surviving to Thriving. I’m gonna move my computer monitor so I can see all my books because I have a lot of them.
Okay. One book that’s been helpful for me is Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. So, if you are someone who’s in the space of growing up wasn’t great, but I don’t think it was that bad, or I know something was wrong, but I don’t know what was wrong, it’s a really great place to start. I think it’s a very enlightening book. Again, that kind of validating experience of, yeah, something was wrong, and it gives you language for it.
What else is there? If you are creatively oriented, and maybe even if you’re not, The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron can be a really helpful tool on the journey.
I think lots of folks are probably already familiar with The Body Keeps the Score.
Another book I have that I’m not completely through with is No Bad Parts by Richard Schwartz. It’s a nice introduction to internal family systems if that appeals to you.
Susan Dunlop: Okay. They’re helpful. So, Lindsay, there is at least a book, there are your blogs, and there’s the work you’re doing that may help organisations look and start to build a stronger foundation for this inclusive idea that you’re very conscious is needed. There’s plenty!
Is there anything else we’ve missed that you want to cover before we close out?
Lindsay Morgia: I don’t think so. Just a thank you. Thank you for reaching out. Thank you for this opportunity. Thank you for these really incredible questions. I could do stuff like this all day. And it’s great to find people that you can connect with on this and really get into these sorts of questions, in just a really courageous and open way. So, thank you again.
Susan Dunlop: Thank you, Lindsay, for joining me today. I’ll stay connected with you because this is very relevant to the work that I’m doing. It just takes it to that next level, especially since I’m also interested in empowering survivors, not just people.
The leader of the work that I do once said we engage employees, but people show up in their place. We’ve got to understand that workplaces are not just about roles; they’re not titles, it’s not tasks. We are engaging with people, and I think a lot of leaders don’t quite know how to do that very well.
Writing about what you do on such an important topic is fabulous. Thank you.
Listeners, you can find Lindsay, her services and her blog at morgiaresearchservices.com and on LinkedIn, which I found out since we first spoke.
What would be one key takeaway you got from this conversation today? If this was a conversation starter for you to take into your workplace, what would you take from this that could help change how your workplace operates right now?
I’m forever thankful to my beautiful guests like Lindsay, for allowing me to understand them more and to share their stories. Trust that you are blessed even when you forget that you are blessed. Take care of yourself and I look forward to being back soon. Bye for now.