Risks, Rewards, and Self-Care in Authentic Evaluation: Skills for showing up as your whole self in a fragmented world.

Abstract Information: There is a widespread myth that says people should show up in the workplace as "ideal professional seves,” devoid of influences and impacts from their personal lives. This silences the voices of individuals with diverse identities and experiences. Evaluators who re-write this harmful script in professional interactions by showing up as authentic, whole individuals serve a critical leadership role. They can help to model real-life examples of how diverse identities come with different strengths and challenges, and research has shown that this decreases stigma and creates space for meaningful dialogue about equity. This kind of vulnerable whole-person participation in the workplace comes with amazing rewards as well as risk. This workshop presents concrete techniques and skills for authentic, trauma-informed identity expression within the workplace, as well as evidence-based methods of self-care to deal with the resultant stress. The ideas and techniques shared in this session are based on the presenter’s own experience, and ideas from the fields of sensorimotor psychotherapy, trauma informed care, somatic experiencing, risk-aware consensual kink, and evolutionary neurobiology.