Are Your Values Centered in the Workplace? Listen to Your Gut
Our bodies are kind of amazing. They can tell us all sorts of things about ourselves before we even know it. Heart rate, blood pressure, pain – these are all little messages our bodies create as nifty response mechanisms. It would only make sense that we stop and listen to them once and awhile. Because, as it happens, our bodies are also well-suited to tell us whether we’re safe or not and it comes down to our lovely gastrointestinal systems.
Ever been told to “listen to your gut”? This isn’t some empty advice that your friends might tell you in lieu of some more sage advice. The links between our brains and our guts are tremendous, and maybe a reason why the gut is often called the second brain of the body.
When we’re stressed or presented with a threatening environment, for instance, the sympathetic nervous system responds by triggering “flight-or-fight” responses, releasing stress hormones to alert the body to potential danger. Amazingly enough, one of the first places in our bodies we feel this is in our gut. Have you ever had a “gut-wrenching” experience? Has something you witnessed or experienced yourself make you feel nauseous? When our bodies trigger flight-or-fight responses, our actual gastrointestinal systems can slow down or even stop things like digestion in order to divert internal energy towards facing a threat! I don’t know about you, but I find that wild.
I share this all with you now, but only a few months ago I had no idea how closely my brain and my gut were connected. I was sitting in therapy one evening, stomach turning and grumbling and doing cartwheels, talking about how tired I was of my job. George Floyd had been murdered a few weeks prior and no one had said anything, no one in leadership even acknowledged what had happened. Leadership’s lack of response was bringing to head all the trauma and pain I had felt at the hands of a few coworkers months, years before and I was just physically sick. I would wake up nauseous, followed by a morning migraine, followed by tremors and dizziness.
My therapist knew about my general displeasure from previous conversations and that evening she asked me if I thought all the physical discomfort could be tied to the fact that this workplace wasn’t aligned with my values. I remember not understanding – what the fuck did my nausea have to do with my values? At this point she started to explain: that the brain and the gut are intimately connected, that our brains trigger stress responses and our guts are usually the first place we feel it, that when we’re in situations that we perceive to be threatening these stress responses go off. There are myriad things that are just not connecting with you at this place, she said – the paternalism, the elitism, the power hoarding, the disrespect, the clear lack of interest in racial equity, the lack of compassion. Your body is literally responding to the fact that your values are unrepresented in this space, she said in closing.
It took me a second, but it all made…sense. I had ignored all the aches and pains that my brain was sending throughout my body, unaware that it was…a response…to something I subconsciously found unsettling. A few days later I made a formal decision to start looking for jobs elsewhere.
Your gut and your body can perceive threats quicker than you may have realized, and threats in the workplace are no exception. While we can know that things like verbal assaults or jabs at our intelligence are threatening, don’t think of attacks on your values and principles as something to ignore. The things that you hold closely to your heart, the way you want to be treated – those are things we should absolutely protect. The next time you’re unsure, listen to your gut. It might know what you need before you do.