The Thinker: February 2026
ThinkWell’s “pragmatic optimist” take on occupational stress and trauma
When we put these words together in a sentence we get a wide range of responses from our customers:
“workplace” and “trauma”
Talking to professionals about trauma in the workplace can be a tricky exercise. People sometimes feel that the term “trauma” is too dramatic to describe what they are experiencing at work. It is a term commonly associated with PTSD, car accidents and physical injury. For these reasons, we are conscious to work with our customers to understand that “workplace trauma” is, at its heart, a stress response that overwhelms our ability to cope and perform at our professional best. This scenario can frequently unfold when staff engage with stressed and traumatised people, or work with limited resources to meet high and intersecting needs.
Now for a slightly contentious take: at ThinkWell we also seek to sensitively highlight how these challenging things, these stressful and sometimes even traumatic things, can contribute to learning and transformative personal and professional growth when approached in a trauma-aware and responsive way.
So we often explore with our customers:
What experiences have people had on the job, both positive and challenging?
This can make people stop and think more reflectively, and be curious about how others experience things.
How can our workplace culture buffer against occupational stress?
This might be met with a pause, and an expression of uncertainty. What does this “stress” look like for different people? How do we collectively buffer against it using an intentional workplace culture?
Our customers often expect us to talk about more widely known psychological concepts like vicarious trauma, post-traumatic stress, compassion fatigue and burnout. While these are important to monitor and intervene in, there is also an emerging emphasis on nurturing vicarious resilience and post-traumatic growth in staff. This work feels hopeful, exciting and inspiring. These protective and recovery-orientated experiences are most effectively promoted in intentionally engineered, trauma-responsive workplace cultures.
For those for whom these are new concepts, vicarious resilience is the process by which professionals develop a greater sense of meaning, hope, and personal strength by observing and being part of their clients’ or service users’ journeys of overcoming adversity [1]. Post-traumatic growth involves positively adapting and enhancing one’s sense of self, relationships and life philosophy following significant stress and adversity [2].
We at ThinkWell seek to be “pragmatic optimists”, sharing this hope-filled approach with others. We never minimise the traumatic potential of occupational stress, or the collective and individual experiences of being in high demand, stressful roles. However, we also understand the unique and often overlooked potential for professional and personal growth that lies hidden and dormant in the hard stuff. This can help professionals sustain long and satisfying careers in what can be a very rewarding world of work.
[1] Hernández, P., Gangsei, D., & Engstrom, D. (2007). Vicarious resilience: A new concept in work with those who survive trauma. Family Process, 46(2), 229–241.
[2] Watson, P., Neria, Y. (2013). Understanding and Fostering Resilience in Persons Exposed to Trauma. Psychiatric Times. Vol. 30 No. 5
The brain building bit
Vicarious resilience
This downloadable resource from a Canadian training and educational institute provides some helpful information and strategies to support practitioner awareness of and ability to recognise vicarious resilience.
Your-Guide-to-Vicarious-Resilience.pdf
Article: The brain-body disconnect: A somatic sensory basis for trauma-related disorders
With the renowned “The Body Keeps the Score” author Dr Bessel van der Kolk visiting Australia this month, we thought this article, recently shared by Dr. Ruth Lanius on LinkedIn, was worth sharing with our subscribers. The LinkedIn post was accompanied by a fabulous informative carousel summarising the article’s responses to these questions:
If you’re on LinkedIn, click here to access the downloadable carousel, it’s great!
Teams who trust each other perform better than teams of “star” performers.
Ethnographer and self-described optimist, Simon Sinek’s Optimism Company has published a blog that leaders of teams may find encouraging, including this quote that Sinek regularly refers to: “teams of average performers consistently beat teams of high performers. Not sometimes. Consistently.” It’s all about building trust between colleagues and fostering a sense of collective purpose and wellbeing. That’s what gets results! Read the blog here.