Emilia's story: Do I abandon my dream job?

James (0:04): When Amelia was elected president of her national cycling federation, it was the fulfillment of a lifelong ambition, but when she discovered the role was a nightmare, what followed were years of inner conflict between wanting to do her duty and wanting to escape the abuse.

James (0:30): Have you ever felt torn, experienced that inner struggle of clashing needs, yearnings and beliefs, not a fight with others, a fight within yourself? It's confusing, it's painful, it's in a conflict. I'm James.

Caitlin (0:40): I'm Caitlin.

James (0:41): We are coaches with different areas of expertise and a shared passion for helping everyone understand and navigate torn feelings. Welcome to our podcast where we share stories, resources and hope around all things inner conflict. This episode dives into a real life story of inner conflict. From our research interviews to maintain confidentiality, we've removed identifying details, and the story is narrated by an actor.

Amelia (1:40): From the first time I rode a bicycle, I fell in love with cycling. As I grew up, I got more and more involved at a national level, really at a global level.

James (1:52): In today's episode, we're focusing on what happens in the workplace when one's commitment to the job conflicts with the near impossible demands of doing that job. Amelia worked hard to excel at the sport she loved and then to help others achieve their potential, but then she fell foul of a toxic workplace culture.

Amelia (2:18): When I tried to step into the higher levels of my sport to give back, to contribute. Well, everything changed, and I landed up in a living hell, and I was totally torn about what to do.

Caitlin (2:38): Well, we often feel torn at work, right? It's a place where we want to do a good job and we want to receive validation and recognition, but the problem with most workplaces is full of other people, and a lot of those other people are out of our control and how we We then must relate and interact with them and struggle with our desires to go do a good job and find that sense of reward in our career. What are your first thoughts here? James?

James (3:18): Well much like you, and then thinking about how we have somebody who's trained extremely successfully to be a competitor moving into what should be a cooperative and a collaborative setting in order To further the sport, and running straight into really nasty competition, undermining unhealthy competition, and there's a real pull, isn't there between what the heart wants. I'm in the job I've always wanted to get to at this stage, I can do some real good, and then just slamming into a wall of antipathy.

Amelia (4:12): I've always been an athlete, and cycling has always been my sport. It's a kind of love affair for me. As a teenager, I was a member of our national team. When I went abroad to study, I won that country's national championship. Yeah. So when I came back home, I started to volunteer. I ended up climbing the ladder to the very top of cycling in my country. And when the president of our federation retired, I ran for the election, two men and myself, and to the surprise of everyone, I got elected at the first run, first run. Of the election. It was a breakthrough for women in the sport in my country,

James (5:07): this is a crazy setting, isn't it, this all sounds so good and so positive for her individually and for the sport as a whole.

Caitlin (5:17): It's all good. This isn't any job, right? It's a huge part of her life, her history, her identity. And she's coming here to translate what has been a hugely important part of her entire life into service, into meaning, into giving back. So you can hear right from the start of her story, all of these beautiful intentions,

James (5:43): how misleading, but it seems really smooth, doesn't it? Yeah, she has clearly done everything she needs to do to step into this role.

Amelia (5:55): You know, the very first day I was elected as President, I knew something was very wrong. Whenever, whenever I was going into the office, I could tell something was wrong. I had to ask 10 times, 15 times, no, actually, 50 times in the documents I wanted, they were just not providing the things I asked for and they they were hiding things from me, not telling me things. They were going into my computer, searching. They were spying, you know, on my phone, listening to everything. It was a secret network, and they were preparing for war. They were doing everything to kick me out as president. I wasn't prepared at all. I was a little bit naive, and I just went, Okay, so the job is that we need to get medals, and we need to get the Federation going in the right direction. I still, you know, I thought, you know, I thought sports was clean, that it had values. I still thought athletes were heroes. So all of a sudden, I didn't understand the rules, the name of the game, the fact that they were trying to get rid of me, I was blaming myself. So I was totally torn apart.

Caitlin (7:38): Yeah, I mean, right from the get go, she expresses this is not right, and she sees and experiences a number of what we can now identify as red flags right and clear signs that this is a place of Workplace bullying.

James (8:00): But at the time, in the first days, hours, weeks, you're not going to want to believe that are you your dream job is suddenly opened up and turned inside out. And inevitably, I imagine there's a huge amount of questioning oneself and one's own competence that happens before the realization that there's something else going on,

Caitlin (8:22): absolutely this kind of like gaslighting of yourself, of your own experience. Right to deny your own experience when just as an explanation and gaslighting, when somebody denies your experience, that is gaslighting, and when you deny your own experience that can be a form of self gaslighting. And as you explain at the beginning of this job, with all of these hopes and dreams and yearnings, and you know, the history that's gone into it, I imagine she does not want to believe what she's experiencing. She wants to, you know, avoid confronting that.

James (9:02): In my experience, every time you start a new job, there is inevitably that period of uncertainty. Do I actually understand what the job is? They said I was a good fit. Am I actually a good fit? Or is this, oh, hell, we made the wrong decision. I'm the wrong person for the job. Of course, before you get the job, when you run the outside, you saw the previous incumbent doing a good job, and so you assume, well, it's a good job and competent people can do it, and then your own fingers starts pointing at you, doesn't it? That's the gaslighting. It's got to be me before I can figure out that it's not necessarily me. There's something deeper going on

Caitlin (9:46): totally so it's a kind of muddled up in all of the the normalcy of entering into a job and trying to learn the ropes and also questioning yourself and trying to do a good job. And, you know, there's and and, and, right? Like all these things would normally be in question and at play in an early stage of a job, but I, I would love just to draw something out here and allow our listeners to step back for a second. Workplace Bullying is real, right? It is real. It is a huge problem. It leads to stress and isolation and anxiety and depression. It can lead to really critical mental health issues when it's not addressed. I want to say that workplace bullying can also start subtle and build over time, and in some ways seem very insidious because of its starting with minor details, a few red flags just for our listeners to know and to have in their in their minds, in their back pockets, criticism, undermining work, taking credit for other people's work, micromanaging and excessive monitoring, unrealistic demands, withholding information, rumors, gossip, isolation, exclusion, any kind of threats, intimidation, humiliation, gaslighting. This is not your experience. You know, denying somebody's

James (11:27): experience. For me, the really slippery thing about that list is potentially in the very first moment any one of those things could be a simple misunderstanding. I'm still trying to find my way into how this job works, who my colleagues are, how we're going to interact. And so if it is bullying, before you know it's bullying, you're questioning yourself, and you're pointing at yourself, going, I haven't got this right. It must be me. And it takes, I think it takes a bit of time for the weight of it to become heavy enough that finally we go, oh, it's not me. There's something else at hand. It's the nature of this business that it's elusive. And when you try to put a finger on it, it slides away from you, and people go, Oh, that wasn't what was meant. Or sorry, I was late. Here's the information you need. It's very, very slippery, undermining.

Caitlin (12:23): I think one other stepping back and away from this story that we can offer our listeners is that when you have these sort of slippery, insidious bits of self doubt, it can be very helpful to not just hold on to them yourself, but to have a trusted person, a friend, a partner, that you can talk about some of these issues with, even when they're early, even when they're you know, half baked thoughts and you're not quite sure, because having an objective point of view from The outside can help you to decipher what is realistic to feel and what is maybe a bit of a red flag, something to watch, something to be mindful of. The importance of not holding on to these inner conflicts as they just start to bubble up, if you can, right? And then that's an other important point, if you can, because it's a lot of people feel the urge to keep it private and internal.

James (13:25): The supporter is obviously a very important job, but they need a really incisive view into the person who's going through this, the person who is torn

Caitlin (13:35): totally and in this context, they may need to know you at work, right? They may need to be previous colleagues or mentors or bosses. So

James (13:45): having had that horrendous shock of finding out what the job was really about and what was really going on, let's see what that did to Amelia and how she responded to it,

Amelia (13:57): I was incredibly conflicted, torn between a sense of duty, wanting to do my duty, but not being able to master it. I didn't know what to do or how to behave. My heart told me I wanted a job and I had a responsibility. My gut said it was all wrong and I should get out from under those really unkind people. It had a terrible effect on the rest of my life. I was elected October, and my daughter came back from her gap year in early April that very next year, and she said, Mum, what's going on? I don't recognize you. I don't know I was I was just, you know, I was torn. I was in a trap, a total trap.

James (14:59): Well, I. Thank goodness for her daughter. I would love to know what precisely her daughter saw, what the change was that she saw, because we know that this kind of inner conflict hits you, both mentally and physically. I'd be really interested to see that what has happened in a fairly short space of time to amelia's mind and body? Yeah.

Caitlin (15:26): I mean, you mentioned it can affect you mentally, physically, but it also affects your emotions, how you are showing up to your people, to your relationships. It affects your energy, your bandwidth, to be with other people. You know, I in this is a six month time her daughter is away, on a gap here, doing something interesting. You know, I imagine she would expect her mom to receive her and show up in a particular way that she recognized her mom, and for whatever reasons, she did not see the mom that she was expecting. But what a support it is to just hold up the mirror, because that's my assumption here. My assumption was her daughter said, Mom, I don't recognize you. This is what I'm seeing, and how helpful it is to see it, name it, allow the other person to feel that, to recognize it a bit in themselves. Those starting points of a conversation between a supporter and somebody who is in inner conflict are extremely powerful. You are. You are helping the person separate from the inner conflict and kind of objectify it a little bit, see it for what it is. See themselves before they felt torn in themselves. Now they see the difference.

James (16:50): I also wonder whether this is the first time that Amelia actually was given an opportunity to stop and take stock for herself, rather than continuing the earlier naive view of, well, I'm not ready for the job, and it must be me and have somebody say, No, I know you. This is the job. This may be the first moment that she got to stop and recognize the effect it's having, and perhaps recognize that in the conflict about the job is the cause, and I think that is the most important thing about support, is that the supporter holds you for a moment, so you don't have to hold yourself. Or a better metaphor is pauses you so that you're not just running and running and running for the job, but that you pause and take stock, absolutely huge gift from her daughter. Also very brave. I think she also

Caitlin (17:47): points out in that segment a bit about the nature of this inner conflict. She talks about, I was torn between a sense of duty, wanting to do my duty, but not being able to master it, not being allowed, you know, the space to do her job well, not being given the tools to give her to do her job well. And this identification of the different parts of her inner conflict is really important. So I am torn because I have a sense of duty, and my heart is saying one thing, and my gut is telling me that I am not given the conditions to do what I want to do and what I know I'm capable of doing. So it's duty without agency. And how does she wrestle with that? But it's a very important part of the process actually, to tease out what exactly your conflict is.

James (18:47): I personally find it really, really useful to be able to name different places within me that allows me the clarity to say my heart, one part of me experiences this and my gut, another part experiences this and that. When I'm talking about two different parts of me, that's when it clicks. This is an inner conflict. This is not just me not being a fit for the job. This is not the world against me. That may all be true and inside, I have different voices arguing for their beliefs within me, and that's this is just for me, until I can say that clearly I can't think or experience that clearly and I can't act on that. How am I ever going to resolve an inner conflict if I don't recognize it as such

Caitlin (19:39): totally? And I also like that she talks about, you know, body, part, heart, gut, yeah, but also a values thing, duty, agency or ability to follow through. So there's a bodily clash that she can tap into, but also a values. This clash that she can tap into.

James (20:15): So amelia's daughter helped her see what was going on for herself, and she was able to see what was happening inside. Then what? What's the next step?

Amelia (20:30): People wanted to help me. They were being lovely, but I was angry with my husband if he tried to help, because he was giving me advice that was just wasn't me. I have my own character, my own sensibility. I could not I didn't listen. Other friends were really supportive, but I don't know, unless you sort things out for yourself. I just don't know how much good that is. Maybe I'm being too arrogant. I always manage myself, and maybe this is wrong, but in these situations, you don't dare speak to people you know. You start to question yourself, and you start to you start really to doubt yourself. You think you're the devil. You think you are the worst person. And so you just don't dare to speak to people, you start to to be isolated. Isolated. There's nobody there, just left alone. Left alone. Totally left alone. This

James (22:02): is utterly heartbreaking, isn't it? What I hear is that there are people at this point reaching out to her, which is absolutely right. Well done, all of them. And then the challenge comes of, how do you support someone? How does that someone Express? Are they able to express what form of support they need? And that's all very vulnerable and tricky work on both sides.

Caitlin (22:32): I mean, there's skills right there, the kind of empathy and support that somebody needs in the early phases of discussing their inner conflict is quite delicate, right? Because at first she's sort of put off by her husband's advice or his helping, because what I'm hearing in this is he wants to solve a problem, right? He sees that something is, is, has gone wrong, and he jumps into, let's, let's get to a solution together. And here's my perspective on how you get to a solution and the steps you follow. And very rarely, when somebody is in an air inner conflict, I'm not going to say never, because I don't like saying never, but very rarely do we want to give people the solution to their inner conflict. In fact, what is the most important first step is to provide space to listen to them and to acknowledge and validate their experience as it is, because she's experiencing all of this doubt in her organization with the people she's in contact with, and she's experiencing it inside of herself, so the only job of somebody helpful is to validate her experience so she doesn't start thinking, Am I crazy? Have I totally lost the plot? It's like, oh my goodness, that is awesome. Tell me more. I am here. I'm listening.

James (24:12): I'm quite intrigued by her recognizing that her other friends were supportive, but that wasn't working for her. It sounds like she appreciates the support they were offering, and was either it wasn't quite the fit or she was holding back from it because of her own expectations of I'm confident I should be able to resolve this myself. So validating, obviously, really important, and also somehow tickling the person who's torn into being okay with Well, this is the first step. I'm just going to let it all out, and I'm going to be validated before I need fixing. Goes on. You may

Caitlin (24:57): be able to ask them what the. Support from me look like right now, I think you can only ask them that when they feel good enough in themselves or able to, you know, come to a conclusion about that and then. And it's perfectly great answer to say, I don't know what support looks like for me now, but, you know, can you, can I just talk for a bit they're telling you, then I just need to be listened to, right? So as a blanket recommendation to supporters, begin with listening and acknowledgement and validation of the experience no matter what, and if you can move into a next phase, it would be, what else might you want from me now? What else could support look like from me? Maybe that's in the same conversation. Maybe it's in another conversation, after they've digested a bit of acknowledgement and validation to begin with, because that, in and of itself is

James (25:48): huge. I've had a number of situations where sitting down with somebody in a supporting role, in and of itself has been unhelpful, because even that is too placed, too deliberate. I think there's sometimes the listening, support may not look like listening, because the support is just you talk or you don't talk. I'm I'm still listening presence. I'm just present. I'm just with you. I think there is the potential in the person who's torn for them not to be able to say, here's all my shit. That's where we're already doing the job before we say, tell me what's going on before even that, we can be present with them, alongside them, in whatever context, before any talking can happen. Actually, the more intense, the more painful, the more important the inner conflict, the more tightly the person who's suffering holds on to it. A skillful supporter is there way before they're listening and somehow demonstrating their presence, way before we can use the word listening to describe their action. Yeah, I

Caitlin (27:13): love that. And presence can look like that kind of steady, actual physical presence with somebody, but it can also be checking in, yeah, text messages, let's go for a walk and let's have a coffee. And, you know, drip feeding, in the sense that there are people who love and care about you and are present and willing to lend their their listening, or just their presence in everyday activities with you is a starting place. Then we get to this, listening, acknowledging, appreciating, validating place, and then you see where it goes further. I wanted to say one more thing about the supporter, and one thing that the supporter can think about. We all have a bias in talking to people. We mentioned one of them, right? So her husband's bias, it sounds like, is to problem solve. Other biases might be to minimize. Like, oh, it's not that. Doesn't sound like that big a deal. Like, you know, let's, I'm sure it'll smooth over in a bit. Also not helpful to minimize. So if you have this tendency to minimize, recognize that about yourselves and make some adjustments when you're supporting people who are torn to not go to that place in the beginning, some people judge, oh, you know, they leap to who's done what and what that says about them, you know, oh, such and such is this kind of a person, or it's that kind of an organization, or you're so like this, or you know, this kind of judgment behavior might also be a default to listen out for. So supporters just being aware that we all have a bias when we show up to challenging supportive conversations, be aware of what kind of bias you have. Are there some biases that I might be missing? There, James, anything that pops into your mind?

James (29:06): Yes, one of my biases, something I do, is that I think it's supportive to justify why the other person might be operating that way. So for example, in the workplace, a colleague is being horrible to Amelia. And I might say, to make it less personal towards Amelia, I might say, well, they're having a bad time. They are struggling with X or Y or Z, and they're just spilling that out on everyone, and you're receiving some of it. And I justify that by thinking there's a there's a 360 thing going on. You may be on the receiving end of some of that, and I don't want you to take all of that from the colleague personally, but I think the effect of that quite often, if I listen to myself. Is I'm starting to minimize and kind of suggesting immediately, you don't need to be so upset about that. Don't need to be angry about that. And I think that's a, I'll tell you, it's not a bias, because I'm trying to be helpful. I'm trying to, you know, let's see the bigger context, the bigger picture within which this is all going on. But I think it takes some power away from the person I'm trying to support.

Caitlin (30:22): Yeah, I love that, just so bottom line like biases to problem solve, to judge, to minimize, to rationalize.

James (30:32): Rationalize. I could have said that, yeah, rationalize. Thank you

Caitlin (30:36): all things to watch out for right in us, and we all have them, right? We all have them. I would also add, from my experience, would be to overly emote or relate. I have to work on my level of distance, particularly if I'm very close to a person, I will find myself taking on their emotions, and that's also not helpful. You need to maintain some objectivity and some standing separate to the person who is feeling torn, and so do not take on all of their emotions and experience them as well.

James (31:19): When I'm paying attention, the thing I'm aware of is how all of those things you've just described very quietly, very subtly, but they definitely do show up in my body as a slight quickening or a slight solidifying. It's like this tiny, almost imperceptible rush to a conclusion. And for me, that's a sign that I've I'm no longer present with the person I'm trying to support. I've gone to minimizing, or I've gone to rationalizing, because I feel safer over there, and I feel that this, I'm now contributing something by sharing my wisdom. Haha, nice. I love that and I can catch it. It's just like, oh, the energy in my body has just changed slightly. Now's the time for me to do the work of quietening down and getting back into the present with the person who's torn.

Caitlin (32:14): It's a great litmus test, right? And it is a mirror between you and the person who is torn, because are you able to stay present with this as you want, for them to be present, to their articulation, their exploration, they're telling you you need to stay in your body, present, calm, digesting the information as it comes, rather than leaping to the places that We we can

James (32:41): we may never know we need support. Need a supporter until we're in the situation. What becomes increasingly clear to me is that a supporter is a long term relationship, and a supporter is someone who knows me well, who can see my strengths and my weaknesses, and so supporters are all around us, and we can value and cultivate them for a lifetime, and then when we need them, they're there and they're primed.

Caitlin (33:08): I want to agree and disagree with you on this point. I think it is hugely valuable and important that we have people in our lives who can support us, who know us and have seen us through lots of different parts of our lives and areas of our lives, and they can be a really valuable supporter, because they know us. And I want to say that there are many supporters who can see something is wrong in somebody, there is some kind of unease, or they spot, maybe, in an example, like in this work conflict, they spot something that is going wrong in the workplace, and they can hold up the mirror of what is that is helpful to that person in their inner experience, right? Sometimes it can be incredibly supportive and incredibly helpful to do the job of holding up the mirror and saying something's not quite right with this situation. And you may or may not know that person deeply or for a very long time, but you may nonetheless be a valuable and supportive outsider.

James (34:16): Yes, yes, absolutely, you're right. My shorthand was wrong. My shorthand was assuming that somebody who's known you for a long time sees you clearly, and actually, the important part of that is clearly, it's the clarity. So you're absolutely right that, yeah, so scrap what I said earlier. Let's go for somebody who can see the situation and you with clarity.

James (34:56): So Amelia struggling with support, not getting. And quite the support that she's hoping for. Let's find out how she worked through that.

Amelia (35:10): So then, importantly, I read a wonderful book about the war, the Second World War, and about Vietnam. It was called, it was called lamestes, and he said, Before you make peace with people, you have to make peace with yourself. You know that really, really brought consciousness to me, saying, okay, as long as you're not in peace with yourself, you're not going to be in peace with the others. And I did think, well, maybe someone said to me, have you ever asked God for help? I said no, but I told myself, I should ask him so when during the day I was walking or climbing in the mountains, or if I woke up at night I was praying, help me. I can't find a solution, so, God, you've got to help me. And I did come to the point of, you know, well, you've you've got to learn that you've made mistakes. But maybe the story is not over. You have to accept it, and we'll see what comes of it.

James (36:50): I want to jump straight in and think about peace, peace with yourself and peace with the others, because peace, to me, sounds like the absence of conflict, right? And the problem there is that we can't have peace until we have resolved conflict. So I think it's important to say we can be peaceful by allowing the existence of conflict within oneself. So I have these parts that have different voices, different opinions, pulling in different directions, and I don't I can abide with that internal, internal difficulty. That's peace, and that's the kind of peace that creates space enough for resolution to arise.

Caitlin (37:38): I love when you're pulling out here a kind of acknowledged peace within oneself of what is going on, having digested it, understood it enough to recognize it for what it is, and that is urging her or moving her towards resolution. But there's there's a kind of peace before there's a completion. And that's quite cool, that you have pulled those two pieces out as slightly different.

James (38:06): Yeah, I think, yeah, radically different. I think if we don't find peace within the conflict, then we end up taking one side of the conflict and listening to the louder part and not honoring the other parts.

Caitlin (38:23): Say that again, if we don't find a peace

James (38:28): within the conflict, I am the container for my parts, right? And I am also the one that's experiencing the pain of those parts in conflict. But if I can find a peace in being the container of those bits whilst they're in conflict, then I can contain to allow the resolution of the conflict. The peace in our time is not about no conflict. It's about the ability to resolve conflict and facing the fact that conflict will occur, if not today, then tomorrow and the next day,

Caitlin (39:02): as we have heard in many of our research interviews, it is a great strategy for many who are religious and use that as a practice. And I also want to acknowledge that if, if prayer is not your practice, the non religious version, maybe deep inner listening, tuning into your own guidance, feeling into your body, giving yourself that kind of space and practice to allow your many parts to speak to you.

James (39:37): Yes, thank you for picking up on that. My point of view is that whether you are religious or not, the effect of prayer is to create an open, requesting, receptive state of being, both of body and mind. And I think this has. These two effects that are really important. The first is, with an open state of body, we start to breathe the pain and the discomfort out through our pores, in effect, and just like breathing, we also inhale goodness. And I think the body benefits massively from just spending some time regularly in this open, requesting receptive state, from the point of view of mind, when we get caught up in things, we immediately individuate and isolate ourselves from other people in the rest of the world, our focus turns inward and again, this state that I believe Amelia is describing through or Finding through prayer, is a state that allows our mind to open again, to be less isolated, and that means allowing possibilities to come in. If you think simply of where does inspiration come to you, where does inspiration come from? And usually the answer is, I don't know. It just came. It just appeared. And the sense is that it comes from the space around us in and suddenly it's in. Well, to do that, we have to be open to it coming in. And so whatever your method, whether it's amelia's version of prayer or something else, spending time in what I'm calling an open, requesting, receptive state is a really good way of preparing body and mind for goodness to come In, particularly at a time when we feel alone, isolated and uncertain,

James (42:19): what we hear from that is Amelia making peace, asking for help and finding acceptance of the situation as it currently is that feels like she's getting to A real tipping point, a point where change may occur. Let's hear what happens next.

Amelia (42:49): I wanted an end to the conflict, an armistice, as it said in the armistice book, a cease fire between me and those who wronged me. So I focused on clarity to getting clear. A dug deep. I listened to all the signals my body was sending me. I found a spot where there was calmness and some joy, inner joy. The Tipping Point was at an Olympics. We were at the Olympics, and someone on my team made it known that he was running for the presidency against me. No communication with me, nothing. So when I came back from the Olympics the next day, I spoke to the minister, and I said, This is it. This is over. I

Caitlin (44:06): She got her clarity. Yeah, I think we heard this again and again in our interviews, that with many inner conflicts, not with all of them, but with many of them. We go through this process of gathering information, wrestling within ourselves, learning to listen to what's going on inside of our bodies and in the many parts of ourselves that are torn in different directions, trying to, as you said, come into a sense of peace that you hold all those different parts, but then it's almost like some little thing that you you didn't, you could never imagine or expect that would be the thing that that flipped the switch, but some moment or some other little nugget of information lands, and all of a sudden, things are clear, and quite often that's out of your control. What is that final nugget that tips the balance?

James (44:59): Sense? Yeah, absolutely. I think all of the struggle is about control. And what we see here, with peace and acceptance and just little nuggets appearing, is we are learning to be okay with the lack of control. And when that happens, the thing happens, the direction reveals itself. And here, brilliantly, it's clear that the thing is not what she would have hoped for some time ago, but it's absolutely the right thing, which is to say, Thank you and goodbye. What happens after that?

Amelia (45:37): Leaving wasn't the end, though I realized that other people do not live my life. I cannot go against myself. So when I finally stepped down, the last my my last big meeting to everyone, I made such a speech that, well, I killed myself, but I killed the Federation also. During my final speech, I stopped for a moment and I said, Now I have something to tell you. What does it say about the Federation when the former president does not support me? What does it say about the Federation when the technical director is hiding information and cheating on me? I know, I know. And I knew then that I was killing myself, but I had to say all of that. I had to say it. I chose to tell truth. And then I walked away.

James (46:47): Really powerful. Yeah, it's important to remember this story started with a new job and people just being horrendous. This is a story of workplace bullying, so it's not just about making a decision, do I stay or do I go? It's also making the very brave decision of being quite vocal about why I'm going and what is actually happening here. That's a very strong move, I think,

Caitlin (47:16): totally and for her, it was the right move, right. The abstract thing that I want to pull out here is that this was her owning the story in her way. And so the resolution that applies to anyone is to own the story in your own way, not necessarily to do the big, bold thing, but for her, that was the right thing, and she was conscious and awake, and she said, I knew I would kill myself, and I knew it would, you know it would kill the Federation. But this whistleblowing was the full stop on my story.

James (47:52): That's good. That circles right back to what we were saying at the start about this being a or did you say it was

Caitlin (48:00): duty versus agency. Was the value, like duty versus being able to follow through and have the agency. And then we were looking at heart versus gut. Was that was what was

James (48:12): going on in the body. So there's the the action that is about her body and her well being, which is, I'm stepping away. But then there's also honoring an action that honors her values, which is, I will not stay quiet about this, because otherwise it will continue. And so it's an immense resolution of this problem. I think

Caitlin (48:33): I love that full values and body alignment. And I think her final quote is gonna be the the nice mic drop

James (48:45): to that, give it to

Amelia (48:50): me. I have a strong constitution, and I have many, many plans. I'm back on track. Now, do I think back on my time of inner conflict and regret it. Well, no, because when you have an inner conflict, that means you care. You care a lot. And you know that because it hurts so much and I really cared, I still do. I wanted an end to the conflict and a cease fire between me and those who wronged me, a cease fire within me. I did both. Now I'm at peace.

James (49:46): One Well, this podcast may well have left you thinking about in a conflict you've experienced in work situations. So. If you're interested in knowing more, the show notes will offer you not only a transcript of the podcast, but also link you to helpful resources on our website at the tornproject.com and please do follow us on Instagram at the torn project for regular stories, resources and hope for all things in a conflict.