Trauma expert Bessel van der Kolk writes that, to heal from trauma, we have to be able to “know what we know and feel what we feel”—to consciously acknowledge our reality without suppressing it. Doing so is foundational to well-being.
Unfortunately, many workplaces shut down our capacity to do this. Employees are often expected to act as if nothing else is happening in the world or in their lives… or if it is, it’s less important than the next deadline.
The expectation, essentially, is that we function as if work exists in a vacuum—separate from the world that’s shaping our effort, our organization, our lives. The show “Severance” made this literal, but many employees live a version of it every day: unable to “know what they know.”
You’ve probably seen memes that capture this tension: “Can someone notify me when society collapses? I want to know whether to set my alarm for work.” Particularly since the pandemic, people have increasingly articulated the absurdity of pretending context doesn’t matter. It’s become more acute as communities face traumatizing ICE raids, rights violations, and fatal shootings by federal agents.
The truth is, despite the buzz around “employee well-being” and “the future of work,” we can’t talk about either concept without examining the expectation that we separate work from the outside world… and what it’s costing us.
The Costs of Pretending
Research on cognitive load shows that our brains have limited processing capacity; what we spend on one task is no longer available for another. If we’re managing fear, anxiety, or grief about real concerns, we can’t actually seal off that experience… and the effort to do so uses significant mental and physical resources.
Compartmentalizing is often seen as a form of professionalism, but it’s also a form of suppression. And no one—no matter how intelligent or passionate—can suppress what they know and feel without some cost to their creativity, problem-solving, and engagement… and ultimately their health. In short, suppression’s supposed to improve focus and productivity, but it often does the opposite.
Workplaces are where most of us spend the majority of our waking lives. When we spend that time suppressing what we know and feel, we become trained in self-alienation. Over time, this can erode our capacity—even beyond work—for mindfulness, connection, and truth-telling.
When Workplace Wellness Isn’t Enough
Meanwhile, organizations are investing billions annually in workplace wellness. They track program engagement, promote work-life balance, and lament burnout and turnover. Many have made meaningful strides, offering generous leave policies, flexible work arrangements, and expanded mental health supports.
But when the underlying expectation is, “Leave your context at the door,” it’s like saying: “You’re not allowed to know what you know or feel what you feel while you’re here… but we’ll try to mitigate the damage that causes.”
Workplace policies often address context on an individual, time-bounded basis: major loss, health emergency, difficult season. What we’re less equipped to address is the ongoing weight of our broader, collective contexts: political upheaval, climate disasters, humanitarian crises, economic precarity, community tragedies. And whether we realize it or not, these contexts are always shaping the organization, its operations, and its people’s capacity and performance.
In response, some leaders double down on the illusion, insisting everyone compartmentalize harder. But this isn’t strong leadership; it’s magical thinking—hoping that if we all agree to ignore reality, it will stop affecting us.
An Alternative: Reality-Based Leadership
Reality-based leadership understands that organizations can only succeed in the world as it actually is. It acknowledges that humans arrive at work shaped by what’s happening in their families, their communities, their governing bodies, and the wider world.
The pressure to pretend otherwise presents a form of workplace gaslighting that compromises work, decreases well-being, and leaves leaders unable to see what’s actually happening.
Reality-based leadership doesn’t mean constantly discussing external events, though discussions are sometimes essential. It doesn’t mean tying every task to larger themes. It doesn’t mean workplaces should become sites for emotional processing; that’s rarely their role.
It does mean removing the requirement to act as if our larger contexts don’t exist, or that they’re comparatively unimportant. It means cultivating workplaces where people are expected to be whole humans who are navigating vast, complex lives and dynamic sociopolitical landscapes… because that is what we are.
In practice, this involves:
Leaders modeling transparency about their own contexts. When leaders share that they need time to process difficult situations—or that they’re figuring out how to lead well while caring about what’s happening beyond work—they shift what’s considered normal. They give permission to show up as fully human.
Examining the organization’s actual effects on the larger world. Every organization contributes to or detracts from community well-being, supports or limits people’s ability to care for their families, and creates or hinders needed solutions. Reality-based leaders courageously and iteratively examine whether their organization’s effects are something they—and their employees—can be proud of.
Addressing root causes (not just symptoms). When the world seems like it’s on fire, it’s difficult to put in meaningful effort at work. But if employees see their work as feeding that fire, or as meaningless and irrelevant in the face of it, the strain compounds.
Put bluntly: All the wellness innovation in the world can’t make up for the health consequences of spending 40+ hours a week on work that feels meaningless or harmful. If that’s the perception an employee has of their work, their well-being will suffer. Ignoring this factor while investing in “wellness” is like bailing water out of a ship full of holes.
Sometimes, the best wellness innovation that leaders can offer is radical change to their work, systems, industry, sector, or definition of success. Doing no harm, building up meaning. Such changes require clarity, courage, and the creative capacity to drive success via better paths.
Why This Matters Now
We must be able to know what we know and feel what we feel. When the world seems broken, as it often does, the answer is not to expect people to downplay or forget it. The answer is to face reality, become an active part of making it better, and forge clear pathways for others to do the same.
For some organizations, this will mean changing fundamentals of what they offer, how they operate, and what they support. Others will find ways to connect employees’ work to meaningful advocacy or community impact. What matters is the ability to work with reality—rather than shutting it out.
Reality-based leaders go beyond “wellness interventions” by acknowledging and improving the larger world. By doing so, they build well-being, while also improving innovation, retention, results, and the possibility of creating work we’re truly proud of.
The question for leaders isn’t, “How do we get people to ignore the wider world so they focus on this work?”
The question is: “Why should people care about this work, given the world we’re living in?”
The “future of work” belongs to those who can answer this question without flinching.
