Dimple Dhabalia began her career as a lawyer but after a stint at the Attorney General's office in Denver, she found her calling as an asylum officer. Working for almost two decades at the crossroads of the government and humanitarian sectors, Dimple found her job fulfilling, but it also led to vicarious trauma, compassion fatigue, moral injury, and burnout. This episode explores mental health issues resulting from workplace demands and the exposure to the trauma of others - and the inspirational work of Dimple Dhabalia.
Dimple Dhabalia began her career as a lawyer but after a stint at the Attorney General's office in Denver, she found her calling as an asylum officer. Working for almost two decades at the crossroads of the government and humanitarian sectors, Dimple found her job fulfilling, but it also led to vicarious trauma, compassion fatigue, moral injury, and burnout.
With a mission to put the word “human” back in “humanitarian,” she started “Roots in the Clouds” which - among other things - supports humanitarians around the world in challenging the narrative of service before self and normalizes improving and protecting mental health in the workplace.
Dimple’s book is titled, Tell Me My Story: Challenging the Narrative of Service Before Self. You can find here on Twitter @dimpstory And don’t forget to check her website: rootsintheclouds.com
You can also listen to Dimple's podcast, Service Without Sacrifice: Conversations on Hope and Healing here: https://pod.link/1720788849
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>> Myrna McCallum : I'm Myrna McCallum, Metis Cree lawyer and passionate promoter of Trauma informed layering. Welcome back to the Trauma Informed Lawyer Podcast. As you know, I believe that law schools and bar courses are missing a critical competency requirement in their curriculum. Trauma Informed Lawyering. Becoming a Trauma Informed lawyer will, among other things, challenge you to critically reflect on your personal behaviors, beliefs and biases, call on you to positively transform the way you approach advocacy, guide your practice to avoid doing further harm to others, and ask that you commit to remaining open to learn new and old knowledge you didn't know you needed before beginning your career. Your education starts right here, right now.
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>> Myrna McCallum : Dhabalia always wanted to be in a profession that helped others. But helping others takes a toll. After spending almost 20 years in a career advocating for asylum seekers and refugees, she had to take a step back from the work she loved because her mental health and wellness was suffering. Not only did she have a heavy caseload, the cases were were difficult. Dimple was frequently exposed to the traumas of others, which ultimately resulted in her experiencing vicarious trauma, compassion fatigue, and moral injury. Dimple left her job and eventually founded her company, Roots in the Clouds. Roots in the Clouds specializes in using the power of story to heal individual and organizational trauma and moral injury. It offers workshops to leaders of companies and organizations on human centered leadership and cultivating belonging to improve workplace culture. Dimple believes that the expectations that humanitarians should serve others while ignoring their own health and well being are changing. The days of celebrating perfectionism, wearing exhaustion as a badge of honor, and downplaying the impact of how your work is impacting your mental health is quickly fading. I was excited to talk to Dimple about the work that she is doing because we are living in a time where mental health and wellness is being talked about as well as emotional intelligence, organizational trauma, moral injury, institutional healing, or all of these things. I think that employers and employees alike are going to take away a significant amount of wisdom from today's conversation. So let's jump into it. Hi there Dimple Dibalia. Welcome to the Trauma Informed Lawyer podcast.
>> Dimple Dhabalia: Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure.
>> Myrna McCallum : It's really good to meet you. I came across, I think somebody, one of your people emailed me about you and that is how I learned about you. And it was a really, I guess like the stars were aligning at that moment because I was working with a client on some workplace issues around organizational trauma, around the sacrifice when people are serving. And then I get this email and I was like, whoa, I need to speak with this lady. I'm really Happy that you're here. If you want, please tell folks a little bit about yourself.
>> Dimple Dhabalia: So I actually am a lawyer by training as well. I went to law school right out of college because I felt like that was the safe path. I didn't know what else I was going to do. And so when I was in law school, I really felt an affinity toward kind of human rights law. I didn't know exactly what that meant, but right out of law school, I ended up working at the Attorney General's office in Denver. And it was an incredible experience. You know, we were representing the State Department for Human Services. And so most of my cases were abuse and neglect related. And it was a good fit for me. And then I ended up moving to California and I got married, went there, took the California bar, then and ended up working at a small private firm. That was just the worst experience ever. It was such a terrible fit for me. But I had this thing in the back of my mind. Human rights, human rights, human rights. And so I just. Every day I'd be searching online and one day I ended up finding a job posting for an asylum officer position. And as I read the posting, it was my dream job on paper. So I left work early that day and went home and spent the next like eight hours working on this application. It was the last day to submit it and I submitted it at like 11:58pm and then I didn't hear anything back for months. And then when I did finally get a call from them, they just offered me a job because it turned out that they were looking for attorneys because they felt like we had the skill sets to adjudicate these types of cases. So as a result of that, my career ended up being almost 20 years working in service of asylum seekers and refugees. And about 12 years of that was in the field where I was actually interviewing people, a good chunk of that around the world, a lot of it here in the United States. But as a result of that work, I really ended up experiencing a lot of vicarious trauma. I experienced moral injury, compassion fatigue, and of course, burnout, as is very common in these types of work. And I just didn't feel like I was in an organization that was able to support me through that. And there was a lot of stigma associated with that, especially in, in these kinds of helping professions. This idea of tending to our own mental health or even talking about it, you know, the vulnerability it takes to admit, like, hey, I'm really struggling. Especially when you feel like the people you're serving are struggling more than you are. And like, who am I to say that I'm struggling when somebody else is so much worse off? And so there was a lot of things like that that I started working through on my own. And I realized, hey, I cannot be the only person dealing with this. Others have to be experiencing similar things and we're just not talking about it. And so I was really fortunate that at the time I had started moving up in my career and I started having a little bit more of a platform and ability to start advocating from within my organization. So I started setting up kind of well being programs and I set up a human centered leadership program that was all based in mindfulness and positive psychology. And it was all. I was, I was just testing things, I was trying things and seeing what was resonating for people, what wasn't. But what I noticed was that people were really appreciative of being able to talk about some of the things that they've been experiencing. And that really shifted a lot during COVID as well, because my little team of people, we were the only ones using words like anxiety and trauma and loneliness. And so we were creating spaces for actually these like, story circles, that we called coffee chats, for people to come together and actually connect and talk and, and be real about what they were experiencing and not behind that wall of professionalism or that mask that we all wear. But I got to a point though where I just felt like I was hitting a wall and I wasn't getting the support I needed from really higher levels of leadership to continue doing this work. And there was this feeling of, why are we doing this? It's not contributing to the mission. And I felt like if you don't see, how, you know, the well being of your workforce is contributing to the mission, I don't know what else I can do at this point. So I ended up leaving in 2021 and started my own company at that time called Roots in the Clouds. And really just using kind of the power of storytelling to heal occupational and organizational trauma and moral injury in the workplace. So it's a very long way of kind of introducing myself, but that's what I do. I'm also an author. My first book is coming out soon. it's called Tell me my Challenging the Narrative of Service Before Self. And I'm also a podcaster, so wear a lot of different hats. But enjoying all of it at the moment.
>> Myrna McCallum : So definitely I know we need to talk about human centered leadership. It's something that a lot of folks are talking about and thinking about right now. But before we go there, I think we need to talk about something that you said a few minutes ago about the wellness of workers. Like if that isn't a priority for you as a leader, then there's a big problem. There's a big problem in your organization. I can tell you that I do a lot of work with organizations and leadership. I'm not sure that enough leaders are making the connection between the wellness of their workers, the psychological safety of their workers in the workplace, and performance and productivity. I think they're looking simply at one side of the teeter totter and not understanding how the other side actually is required to bring people and organizations into balance. And what happens when there is this imbalance that's solely focused on output and productivity and performance, but none of like the person who brings that skill set to the workplace. And what are your thoughts about that? Short sightedness or not being able to see the bigger picture and what the impact is for workers and the workplace.
>> Dimple Dhabalia: It drives me nuts, if I'm honest. so in the book I talk about, you know, I have this call to action for organizations to provide a duty of care. And so historically duty of care, especially in legal terms, you know, it's based in tort law and it's all about, you know, and m. Many organizations feel like their duty of care is to our physical health and safety in the workplace. Right. I think that we need to provide a more holistic, human centered duty of care that looks at the whole person. Because I always say this, that we are whole human beings and we don't leave a piece of ourselves at the door when we walk into work each day. So as much as this legacy of the industrial revolution is that there is this idea that we can compartmentalize and be like robots in the workplace, but we are not robots. And so we have emotions and we have things that are happening and all of it is impacting how we show up and do this work. And I like to say that I wish that organizations would do this because it's the right thing to do. But we have to make a business case for everything. Right? And so at the end of the day, what gets people's attention is what it's going to cost them. And so there was a World Health organization report from 2022 that said that the COVID 19 pandemic triggered a 25% increase in the prevalence of anxiety and depression worldwide and globally. An estimated 12 billion workdays are lost every year due to depression. And anxiety at a cost of $1 trillion per year in decreased productivity, which is pretty massive. Right? And that's like, that represents the general population. But then you look in like these human centered professions and you think about where we're serving other human beings. And I always say that being human is messy, but serving humanity is even messier. And when you think about the additional on our minds, our bodies, our spirits, you know, that aren't typically experienced in kind of these non human centered workplaces, you know, we're exposed to direct and secondary trauma, violence, really long working hours. If there's an international component, sometimes back to back deployments and doesn't even have to be international. Right. Even here, locally, moral, injury, extended periods away from loved ones and family, like all of this, these are unaddressed kind of things that we encounter in this work. And there's what was said about the cost of decreased productivity. But the other piece of this that I think people don't think about is that when these things go unaddressed, we have attrition, right? Because people burn out, we have lost productivity, we have low morale. And then the big one that I think is the loss of institutional knowledge. Because in these lines of work there's a certain amount of confidence that has to come with decision making. And you only gain that confidence as you do this work over a period of time, right? But if you have like many places are these revolving doors these days. And so number one, organizations are spending so much money to train new people, but if you can't even get people to stay a year, first of all, you're not getting a return on your investment, right? But the other piece of this is you're not building up any institutional knowledge. And so as people are going through the work and they have to make these decisions, they're not able to make these decisions with confidence. And so number one, it slows the work down. Number two, it also leads to oftentimes people kind of deferring decisions to other people and, or people who've been there longer or to their leaders or whatever. And so it has this like domino effect that I think people don't think about. So all of those costs together are costing organizations quite a bit.
>> Myrna McCallum : I hear you about how it is costing organizations quite a bit. And at the same time I have a suspicion that one of the reasons why leaders don't want to get into this kind of conversation or why some might be reluctant to look at the whole person that's coming to work and the things that make them who they are. And that create certain, maybe vulnerabilities in terms of mental health or whatever it is. I suspect that part of it is leaders have not really been trained in things like emotional intelligence or human centered leadership. And so when we start to talk about quote, unquote feelings, they will.
>> Dimple Dhabalia: It's uncomfortable,
>> Dimple Dhabalia: right?
>> Myrna McCallum : Yeah, they back right up. But like, if you want to talk about analytics or you want to talk about like, the things that dominate the left side of the brain, they're there for it. But when it comes to empathy, compassion, patience, active listening, seeing the human being in the worker, there's less of a skill set for it. And so some folks are very afraid. I think they're afraid to go there.
>> Dimple Dhabalia: Oh, for sure. I mean, I think there's less of a skill set for sure. Also, there's just not time. Right. Everyone feels overwhelmed. Like, show me a leader who's just like, yes, I've got all the time in the world to mentor people and to coach people. Like, as you know, I think most of us go into leadership because we have those aspirations. We want to help other people grow and succeed. And then we get into the reality of our organizations that are understaffed, that are. The workloads aren't reasonable. And so mentoring and coaching and all these things go out the window. And we're just in constant survival mode and it's all we're doing. And I think there's this belief that, like, I don't want to take on somebody else's stuff. Like, and especially as a leader, I don't have, I don't have the time, but I don't have the energy and I just don't want to be the one. Like, I'm not a therapist, it's not my job. But actually what was interesting is, so the leadership program that I created, it was kind of an experiment in this, that how do we take a group of newer leaders and teach them to have more of a human centered philosophy. And so we launched this program in February 2020, brought all these leaders in to D.C. to do like a one week in person. And during that week we worked with the leaders on the self. Because you can't effectively lead others if you don't know yourself first. Right. And a big part of this was we brought in a lot of like, mindfulness practices and ways to start regulating our own nervous systems because we know that, you know, our mirror neurons, we can help other people regul their nervous systems, things like that. So, you know, a full week and the first two days the daily feedback we'd get at the end of the day was like, what am I doing here? Like, what are we doing? This is, you know, what does this have to do with leadership? What is, you know, people were very uncomfortable. And then around day three, we started to see like a, shift happening. And by the end of the week it was like a whole new group of people and they were so excited to get back. And what we found was two weeks later, when, Covid shut everything down, the leaders who had gone through this program, their teams, because they were able to start just holding space to have or asking the question, how are you doing today? What's going on? Are you okay? And doing these little check ins every day with their teams, they were able to create a sense of connectivity within their teams that the other teams that had leaders that hadn't gone through this program weren't able to do. And we know this because we were tracking, you know, every like six months we were doing like these 360 surveys to see how people were feeling about their leader, things like that. And what we found, like, we had actual metrics showing that these teams were so much more like tightly knit and they were able to make their way through Covid and get through kind of all the challenges together. They were supporting each other. And the thing that's important about this, I think, is that a lot of leaders don't realize that if we don't invest the time when things are kind of smooth sailing to create this kind of connection within our teams and within our organizations, then when we encounter the pandemics of the world or we encounter some other large challenging event, it is so much harder to get through that. And so if you've already built this trust and psychological safety just by taking little actions, right. It doesn't have to take three hours. It's literally one question and being present to the person to really hear what they're saying and maybe doing a little follow up if needed, but actually connecting on that human to human level, then when we encounter these challenges, we are able to work through them together and get through the other side in a much more healthy and supportive way.
>> Myrna McCallum : I love that idea. And the challenge is I have found that some folks have this kind of like, well, it's really not my job. It's not my job to hold space. It's not my job to do a check in. That's why we have EAP programs. That's why people have therapists. So sometimes there's that attitude, other times, like the piece that you said about, like, leaders being overwhelmed, they're busy, all kinds of things. I mean, some months ago, I was in a training, delivering, training to a group of leaders. And one fellow reflected, he's like, you know, I come into the workplace every day and I see my staff and I'll go, hey, how are you? How are you? How are you? As I'm walking from, like, the entry to my office. But he's like, I never actually stopped to listen. And then I think he talked about. Either he said he's going to stop and listen, or at some point that occurred to him to stop and listen. But, you don't have to have a solution. Even if somebody shares a problem, just the act of listening can be incredibly powerful. And I think dimple that. A lot of us, especially lawyers, but many leaders don't have active listening skills. We think we're good listeners. But then when you start to learn a little bit about what active listening is, then you realize, okay, maybe I have some more to learn here. And so there are challenges. And if you're in an environment or a workplace where you've inherited, like, institutional or organizational trauma, and you have the idea like, well, I didn't make this mess. I think my view is like, okay, maybe you didn't make it, but as a leader, you've got to clean it up. You've got to help clean it up. And it's not fair. But that is just. That is how it is. And so what do you say when you encounter leaders who present with this kind of resistance?
>> Dimple Dhabalia: Yeah. And it's so common. Right. And I get it again, I think I was one of those leaders when I first started out, when I, you know, I share this story in the book. It's one of, like, my biggest regrets as a leader, but it's also one of my biggest growth opportunities. Right. That when I first started out, I went into my position with, like, an agenda. I knew what we needed to accomplish. And, you know, you were either on the train or you could get off. And I, you know, it didn't matter to me. And number one, I burned a lot of bridges. And I also, I burned myself out because I was creating a situation where nobody was doing things the way that I thought they needed. Like, it wasn't good enough. Right. And there are two things that I think if we can just practice these in little increments. Right. Number one is curiosity. And I think that we can all be a little more curious. If we are truly curious, there's not judgment attached to our questioning or our thoughts or whatever. Right. We are genuinely curious about what's happening. And then the other piece of this is empathy. The thing about empathy is that a lot of leaders don't understand is what you said is it's not about fixing, it's not about finding a solution. There's nothing, you don't have to do anything except be present to the person. So a, really good friend of mine talks about this as creating a ministry of presence. And so can you be present to the person in that moment and just be there with them, let them express what they're saying? And like you said, the act of having our stories witnessed is so powerful regardless. We're not often looking for people to solve our problems, but we just want to feel seen. And so to me, human centered leadership is about making your people feel seen, making them feel heard and making them feel valued. And this is why I say that leadership starts with ourselves. So the more that we can create opportunities to practice curiosity, to practice empathy and create those new neural pathways so that it becomes easier to default into those ways of connecting with other people, you start to notice that that connection just, it starts to form on its own. There's not much else that we have to do to create that. And so that's often how I approach it, even in the face of resistance. And you know, and sometimes it clicks for people, sometimes it clicks a little bit later. And I hear from them later where they say, oh, you know what, I had this situation today and now I get it. And for some people it's going to take time. But I also think it's a generational thing too because, you know, I'm Gen X and I think Gen X and above, so baby boomers and whatnot, like we had a different way of moving through life. And work was work and home was home. And you know, and I think as we see a lot of newer generations coming in, it's not so clear anymore. There's not this clear delineating line anymore because again, there's this feeling of being whole, of being this whole person. I think organizations and leaders that don't start to shift how they're operating are, ah, going to struggle. Because there used to be a time, especially in the kind of work I was doing, where there was this attitude of a million people want this job. So if you don't want to be here, that's fine, we'll just bring in the next person. But those benches aren't as deep anymore. And we saw with the great resignation and Things like that. A sense of coming to terms with our values again and figuring out what's really important and being treated this way, not being seen, not being. Feeling like I'm a human being in my workspace is not something many people are willing to put up with anymore.
>> Myrna McCallum : You know, I've had the pleasure of building relationships with a number of very young lawyers. And so I hear what you're saying about the generational piece. And what I love about these young folks is they, talk often about mental health and wellness. So you know how back in the day, everyone was talking about, like, work life balance, which I personally think is a myth.
>> Dimple Dhabalia: I do too.
>> Myrna McCallum : Right. They would talk about mental health and wellness like, yes, I need to make a living, but I also want to go ride my bike on the weekends and I want to go have dinner with my friends on Thursday night. And I also want to do yoga in the morning and be able to come into work at 10:00am and, like, finding ways to integrate themselves into their work versus making work all about who they like, becoming their identity. Right. There's this shift, and, I love listening to young people talk in this way because it gives me hope for this profession. And I am really curious to see what this profession is going to look like in 20 years when they take over. They become the partners, they become the judges, they become the leaders in all of these spaces. And so a lot of my hope hangs on, like, the millennials and the Gen Zs and all the others, like, all the other people who are going to come further up.
>> Dimple Dhabalia: There's a desire for a quality of life. Right. That we somehow gave up along the way.
>> Myrna McCallum : Yes. And this desire to have their whole selves be reflected, like, you know, how many people will talk about. Well, you have to compartmentalize. And, like, you have to leave this. The reality is we don't do that well as human beings. And so when I listen to these young lawyers talking, I'm not hearing any of that language because they're taking a more holistic approach. Like, you cannot compartmentalize. These are all the pieces of you that you bring to your workplace. These are all the pieces of you that you take home at the end of the day. And I really love that, you know, broader way of looking at themselves and their relationship to the work that they do. And I also wanted to ask you, Dimple, have you heard of Daniel Pink?
>> Dimple Dhabalia: Yes.
>> Myrna McCallum : I think he was a lawyer. Right. And he became an author. And he has talked about, this book he wrote called how, like. Right. Brainers will rule the world or whatever. But he has said in this age of AI and this wave coming forward, where a lot of work is going to be outsourced to AI and to the bots, he says even legal services will be taken over by a lot of AI programming because it can spit out a memo, it can spit out, spit out a factum, it can spit out an opinion, it can do all of those things and it could do it quickly, it could do it cheaply, and it could do it more reliably. And so he said the lawyers who are going to survive this AI wave are going to be those who operate from their right brain. So those who are creative and innovative and have developed their emotional intelligence, because it's those folks who can offer individuals an experience similar to what you said, that you are seen, you are heard, and what you have said to me matters. AI cannot do that, at least not to this point. And people will always want that human experience. And I really think leaders need to listen to exactly what Daniel Pink has said. Because if you want to be effective, if you want to have a healthy workplace, that needs to be a primary function of what you do is providing that experience to the people who work with you and for you.
>> Dimple Dhabalia: Yeah, I think there's ways to find opportunities to give people agency in how they choose to show up at work within certain parameters, obviously depending on what the work is and things like that. And to your point, I don't like the term work life balance either because I feel like work life balance sets us up to fail because it implies that all things should be equal and all things are never going to be equal. And so we always feel like we're failing at something. Right. And so I love the term work life harmony because it's, it's this idea that there are going to be times where I am going to need to work longer hours and focus my attention there, and then there are times where I absolutely want to just take time to be and do other things. And so how do we allow these different parts of our life and find ways for these different parts of our lives to come together and be in harmony? And that's really like what it's about. Right. And when we choose not to have human centered organizations, when we choose to focus on productivity above everything else, this is where we start to see that it hinders innovation, it hinders creativity, it hinders connection. Right. Because people are so focused on just hitting that target and the fear of like, what's going to happen if they don't that you're actually cutting off entire spaces where people could come up with new ways of doing things or better ways of doing things or something better. And so that's the other piece of this, right? Is that we, we end up not letting people live up to their full potential. We cut off entire lines of that.
>> Myrna McCallum : Absolutely. I talk, in some of my training programs about the four keys to psychological safety. So, like belonging, right? Belonging. Is that something that you practice within your organization? How do you create belonging? Also, is learner safety something that you prioritize? Do you allow people to make mistakes and not punish them or isolate them or whatever afterward? And challenger safety, can they ask questions? Can they disagree with you? Is it safe to do that in your organization? And collaborator safety, that is really about being innovative and allowing people to innovate and be creative and think about like, okay, yeah, maybe this is how we've always done it, but could we also do it this way? And do you allow people to do that? And I often invite leaders and managers to reflect on those four pieces and figure out, are these elements that you prioritize in your workplace? And if not, then why not? And right back. To be curious. Just be curious. This isn't about judgment. This isn't about, like, shaking my finger at you saying you're a bad leader. This is just about being curious. If not, why not? And then also, what is the impact on your people, on your team? How are they functioning? How are they showing up? And I really wish more leaders were curious because I think that within curiosity, you could heal even the most fractured workplace.
>> Dimple Dhabalia: Agreed, Agreed. And so much of what you just said, like, the framework that I lay out for this duty of care that, like, human centered duty of care is it's got kind of four key commitments that I say that, you know, organizations can make towards creating this. And all of this is based in connection and belonging, right? Creating those spaces of connection and belonging. And so the first commitment is normalizing and addressing occupational mental health challenges and trauma in the workplace. Because these are real. Like, you know, I talk about this a lot that, you know, we wear stress as a badge of honor, but as soon as the word trauma comes up, people are like, oh, no, no, I'm. I'm m. I don't have trauma. But yeah, yeah, you do. Like, we all have trauma. And so the more that we talk about it, the more we remove the stigma. And then the second commitment is evolving from metrics driven cultures into human centered ones. This idea of workforce well being needs to be integrated. And it needs to be an element of how policies are made in the workplace so that it's not like this thing that we're doing externally, right? It's not this collateral duty of wellness, but that it's part of the fabric of our culture that when we're determining how work is assigned or what our workloads are, that that factor of how this is going to impact workforce health and well being is a factor in making that decision. And then the third commitment is supporting rest and recovery. So again, this isn't about taking hours out of the day, but really helping people understand, helping staff understand that you can incorporate micro practices throughout your day. And really that is more effective than thinking like, oh, self care has to be this big thing that I don't have time for. And we need organizations to say, self care is okay, we want you to practice self care and you can do this throughout the day. And then the fourth commitment is fostering shared purpose and commitment. And so exactly what you were saying. And so creating this element of, letting people feel like they are a part of what we're building. Right? Because I always say, nobody wakes up in the morning and stretches and says, I'm gonna go out into the world today and just be mediocre. We genuinely want to be the best versions of ourselves. And when we feel seen, when we feel heard, when we feel valued, we are more likely to share ideas and to feel like we want to build this thing or contribute to this mission because we feel invested and we feel like it's a part of us too. And that's a really nice thing because as human beings, we are all searching for our purpose. When we feel disconnected from purpose is when we start to feel like we're flailing and we're not as happy and things like that. And so if we can create this within our spaces, it's. It goes a really long way.
>> Myrna McCallum : My gosh, Dimple, this is really incredible what you're talking about. Every organizational leader needs to read your book. And anyone who's doing training for organizational leaders needs to read your book. There's such a devastating impact to people when there's a refusal to innovate, create and sort of get with the times and understand, be open to understanding the harm that comes when you just operate with blinders on. And I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about things like moral injury, because I know not all folks are familiar with that language. And maybe to some extent some people understand a little bit about vicarious shape, trauma and compassion. Fatigue and burnout. But let's start with moral injury. And what is it? And how would you know from a leadership perspective, if moral injury is something that's operating within your team, within your organization? How would you spot it?
>> Dimple Dhabalia: That's a great question. I think, first of all, like, we really need to educate ourselves about it. Right. So to your question. Historically, moral injury has been associated with the military. So the term was actually coined when people in the military were coming back from deployments, and many of them were experiencing these, like, PTSD, like symptoms as a result of being in the field and being asked to do things that violated their own kind of deeply held morals and beliefs. I started noticing this. I think it's very applicable, especially in, like, government service, but also I think in nonprofit worlds. And again, any place where we are being asked to serve other humans, because moral injury, it really arises from this internal conflict between the work that we're doing and our own values and morals. And so when you look at, the medical field during COVID when, doctors and nurses and others were being asked or, they often had to make decisions about people's lives, like prioritizing who's going to get care and things that were really challenging. So we see that in the medical profession, moral injury is starting to come up a little bit more. In government service. I think this is a thing we should be talking about a lot more too, because we are asked to, especially as civil servants. We are there to enforce the laws and policies of whatever administration is in power. And this applies to lawyers, I think, a lot as well, because same thing, right, are the laws, and you have to work within them. And so if you have a career long enough, you're going to end up, especially if you're in the government working for someone you fundamentally don't agree with, or if you're in a nonprofit or whatever. And in those situations, the way that that weighs on us is really. It's very damaging. And so leadership in the context of moral injury, I think really requires creating a culture that values open communication about, like, ethics and ethical concerns, and creating space for people to have discussions about things that are weighing on them in terms of if it conflicts with a personally held value or belief. And so I guess in terms of how you would notice this, I think we see a lot of things being lumped, aren't under the umbrella of burnout, and it's a lot more nuanced. And so I think in this day and age, especially where we see so much conflict happening, we See, so many, like differing opinions and differing opinions are fine, but it's becoming a lot more personal in a lot of ways, you know, and so in these situations when we start to see that people are like withdrawing or they're not really, they're showing up and not really able to concentrate, they're experiencing a lot more emotion that, that's like out of proportion to whatever the issue is. Things, things that you know, we associate with, with like PTSD, like symptoms is how you know that these things are coming up. And so when you start to see. So for example, in my previous organization I did a workshop for all the attorneys and this was during the Trump administration and we were in immigration. And so when we saw these things happening along the border, when we saw things happening with like families being separated, things like that, so many of our attorneys were really struggling. And I remember doing this training and I was the first one to start talking about moral injury. And I, I was scared to death because I was like, I'm sure I'm going to get in trouble for saying this out loud, you know. And I actually had attorneys writing to me afterwards and saying thank you so much because I now have language to describe what I've been experienc and didn't realize that that's what it was. And so it's such a nuanced thing, but it's so prevalent right now. Like I see it everywhere across various industries and I think people just aren't aware that that's what it is. And it's not just burnout.
>> Myrna McCallum : Definitely. I think for individuals who are just trying to figure out like, what am I experiencing? And you're right, like burnout is such an umbrella term. I hear people talk about burnout all the time and really what they're describ describing is vicarious trauma or they talk about burnout, but really what they're describing is like secondary stress disorder or people talk about burnout, but they're actually experiencing compassion fatigue. Like the thing that I've come to learn about burnout is that it seems to me that secondary traumatic stress disorder, compassion fatigue, these types of things are like yield signs or red flags on your way to the dead end. And the dead end is burnout. Like that's when suicide risk is something that shows up. Your ability to function, to give, to go to whatever it is is just like non existent. Like you're depleted in all the ways and then moral injury. I mean, I personally think that when you're asking people to do a thing as a function of their job that could be not in alignment with who they are. There's a duty to inquire about like, are you okay to do this? Like, how can you be supported? Do you require, like, what kind of supports can we put in place so you can do this thing? As, somebody who was a prosecutor, I think that when you're prosecuting things like sex crimes or crimes against children, there has to be some other safeguards put in place or some supports provided to prosecutors who do that job. And I know defense lawyers who've chosen to rigorously or vigorously defend their client who is charged with sexual assault. And at the end of the day like they're vomiting and they're feeling terrible about what they did in court that day because it doesn't align with their values. And oftentimes when I've asked them like, how do you go to sleep at night? It's usually with a lot of alcohol. And that's something, I mean, we don't talk about enough either is like, if we're going to do the thing that doesn't align with our values, but this is what we're choosing to do. And there's no judgment about that. Sometimes we choose to do a job that is going to, you know, where we're perpetrating harm. and we are. And in doing so we're also harming ourselves because of moral injury. What is the cost, huh? And what is the cost in how you are coping? And alcohol is one of those coping mechanisms that people use, but there are other coping mechanisms that people engage in and that have occurred. Cost. And I think that for folks who are listening to us and going, how would I identify this? Well, begin to look at how are you coping? How are you coping as a consequence of the work that you're doing or called to do? What kind of supports are you getting in the work that you are called to do? where do you go to debrief your experiences? Where do you go to practice real self care? As Dr. Pooja Lakshman talks about in her book Real self Care, where do you go to engage in that? And then how do you create a collective care practice within your organization or within your workplace or within your team? Because real self care is all well and good, but it shouldn't end with you. It has to be something that includes others around you who do a similar thing.
>> Dimple Dhabalia: I love this idea about the inquiry because I think that that's absolutely right. And to your point, a lot of times we're taking jobs because we have to right. We have to make ends meet. There's a really great book on moral injury by a man named IL Press. He interviewed all these people who worked in, like, prisons and, like, prison guards and things like that. And so there was the moral injury of even if they weren't necessarily doing something, but the act of not doing something when they saw people being harmed and things like that, Right? And so there is this element of we may have to do this work. And so to your point, you know, how can we be supported? And the other piece of what I really appreciated you saying is, how are you coping? So, we all often forget, I think, that at the end of the day, everything is about our nervous system. It all comes down to regulating our nervous system, right. And finding that feeling of safety. And so when our nervous system is activated, like we all know fight or flight. So fight shows up as blame. It shows up as criticism. It shows up as actual fighting and judgment. And all of these things can be applied towards ourselves or towards others. Flight is where we actually, you know, we do anything to escape feeling those emotions or whatever we're encountering. And so this is where we see a lot of these numbing behaviors, whether it's. And I call them the isms, right? Alcoholism, workaholism, anything where we just throw ourselves in to forget about everything else. but it's in this space of flight that we have a hard time connecting with others as well. And then freeze. Is that paralysis by analysis? I was just telling my sister the other day that I know that my nervous system is activated right now, and I'm in this place of freeze because I can't make any decisions right now. I'm struggling to make a decision, about different things. But then there's also two others that we often don't realize, which is fix and fake. And fix is where it's always like this. If then, you know, like, if I could just be more productive, then my organization would value me. If I could just do this thing then. And so we're always trying to figure out, what can I do to fix this so that it'll. And it gets us into this space where our nervous system, we're operating from that space again. And then fake is the one that I think a lot of us experience, which is we hide behind these masks. And so to your point about, you know, what we were talking about, being whole human beings, we don't want people to see the whole human being. We don't want people to see our vulnerability. We don't Want people to see that we're struggling or that we might make a mistake or whatever. And so we go into overdrive towards things like perfectionism, where we put on this mask, of I am strong, I could do everything, I don't need help. And, and for me, this showed up as I wanted everything done a certain way. And I was very in the weeds of the details and it's not sustainable. And so anything that we can be doing to recognize. And so in the book I talk about notice, name and navigate. So noticing when, our mind, body reactions, noticing the thoughts that are arising, noticing how our body's reacting, noticing when our nervous system has been activated. And then when it gets activated, what is the, the reaction? And it's usually one of these five things or multiples. Right. Fight, flight, freeze, fix, fake. And so the more that we can start to notice those and actually name the underlying emotions that triggered, you know, or activated this response, the more that we can start addressing those more directly. And so this is like when I think about self care, to me, self care is all about finding ways to regulate. I look at self care as six buckets of things that we can divide it into. And so there's the physical, emotional, spiritual, relational, but then there's also what I call practical. And so if I know my finances are really stressing me out, a practical act of self care in that moment is maybe let me sit down and create a budget or let me take a look at where things are at. And so there's. So the more that we can like, start to recognize these moments where we're activated, then we can choose something that's going to be more targeted in that moment to help us move past that. And so same thing with all these different occupational traumas. We have to notice that these things are coming up for us. And then as leaders, if we start to educate ourselves about the signs to look for, I think that that can be really helpful.
>> Myrna McCallum : Absolutely. I think as I listen to you, I think about, a couple things. One is, you know, Dr. Gabor mate, in his book the Myth of Normal, he talks a lot about, you know, the connection between disease and the decisions that we make. Like, like living in survival mode. Like, and I've said this on another podcast, I really believe that when we choose to be in environments where we have to survive because there is no safety, that we're putting our bodies and our nervous systems through chronic states of dysregulation. And where we're in that, like, fight, flight, freeze, fake, fawn, I Talk about Fawn, where we're always saying yes when we want to say no. A lot of people do that to survive workplaces. And what Gabor has said is like the consequence of being in dysregulated states over long periods of time, studies have shown can lead to disease and inflammation in the body and all kinds of things. And so, and I've been hearing this, like, when I work with some workplaces where it's, it's an unhealthy work environment where people do not feel psychologically safe. I've heard people tell me about how they're being medicated, they're being diagnosed with horrible things, they are becoming really, really sick. And I think that's one of the consequences of making these choices or making these decisions and not holding leaders and employers accountable for the health of their organization. And these are conversations that we need to have. So that's one thing I'm thinking about right now is Gabor's book the Myth of Normal, which I think people need to read. And then coming back to, like, Pooja Lakshman's book, Real Self Care. I mean, just exactly like you said about, like, if your finances are struggling, an act of real self care is to do a budget and figure out how do you prevent yourself from getting into a state where you're facing like, foreclosure or bankruptcy or whatever it is. And Pooja talks about how, like, self care is not the bath, it's not the wine, it's not the chocolate, it's not the meditation app or the whatever, right? Real self care is figuring out what are the systems that keep bringing me back into a state of depletion. And then how do I stop engaging in that loop? Because, like, let's face it, you go get the massage, you go get the facial, three weeks later you're back getting another massage, getting another facial, because you're feeling all the things, right? And so how do you fill yourself up again? It means requiring harder work, like examining your boundaries. How often do you say no? How often are you saying yes when you want to say no? Who do you allow access to you? And what is the feeling that those people bring to your life? So it's not so much about, like, going to the gym and doing all of these things. It's about answering these deeper questions. And I really think as organizations, there's real value in, figuring out, like, what is your mission or your vision and how are you living in alignment with that and how is that evidenced in the relationships that you encourage and you foster with your team and also amongst your team. Right. And I think collective care practice is one of the ways in which you can come back to that, especially if you're a fractured organization. But these are just some of the things that I'm thinking about because they're really interesting to me right now, and I think they should be interesting to a lot of workplaces.
>> Dimple Dhabalia: Yeah. And to your point about all this unprocessed trauma and like the number of autoimmune issues floating around for people who aren't able to process their emotions and the trauma is incredible. But the other piece of this is all this unprocessed trauma, it. It becomes part of our systems. It's actually what ends up causing organizational trauma. Like organizational trauma is where just like we as individuals can feel get wounded, so too can the systems within which we operate. And I always talk about we have to heal the root issues in order to actually rebuild something better and new. And part of that is really creating this space where people can show up and be whole and, and vulnerable and feel that sense of connection and not judgment. It's a very tall order, but I think it's doable if we have people who are willing to do it.
>> Myrna McCallum : Absolutely. Thanks to my guest, Dimple Dhabalia, Her first book, Tell Me My Story, Challenging the Narrative of Service Before Self, is available, available right now. It is likely on Amazon. All the places that you find books alongside a companion podcast, which I'm sure you can find on any podcast platform. You can find Dimple on Twitter at Dimp Story. And don't forget to Check her website, rootsintheclouds.com thank you for listening. Thank you for sharing this episode with those leaders and, employees in your network and for rating and reviewing the Trauma Informed Form Lawyer podcast on whatever podcast platform you happen to use. But I would love it if you would especially leave me a rating on Apple Podcasts. Thanks also to Cited Media for their production support. This episode was recorded on the ancestral, traditional and unseated territory of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation. Till next time,