If you want to know more about enactive thinking and risk, you can register for the free online workshops run on 8, 15, 22, 29 September 9am Canberra time with Prof. Rob Long, register here: admin@spor.com.au

Registrations close 28 August

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One of the first things you learn in counselling is the inter-connectedness of all things.

When someone walks through that door and reveals what has been happening to them, we quickly realise the inter-related and inter-affected nature of human living. And, when trauma visits, The Body Keeps the Score. (https://ia601604.us.archive.org/35/items/the-body-keeps-the-score-pdf/The-Body-Keeps-the-Score-PDF.pdf).

When people begin telling their stories of injury and harm, we quickly see and hear, and they soon realise, what this has done to their bodies.

It doesn’t take long to hear about: sleep dysfunction, dietary problems, respiratory problems, blood pressure, relational/social issues, stressors, distress, family harm, moral injury, emotional harm, mental health and a host of assorted somatic by-products associated with the effects of trauma.

What sometimes starts with bullying in the office can easily lead to a trail of extraordinary harm that flows in a cascading effect.

All of this has very little to do with the brain. More so, sometimes people are not even cognitive of the fact that they are injured and harmed.

When someone has been harmed in these ways, it seems absurd to think that resilience could be found in some bizarre theory of ‘brain gym’ or brain reprogramming.

Indeed, common metaphors and semiotics regarding resilience are absurdly focused on the brain when resilience in response to trauma and harm is profoundly social (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/everyday-social-resilience-being-in-risk/).

It is even insulting, to see all these models, metaphors and semiotics of: heroes, ‘rewire your brain’, ‘bounce back’, ‘mental fitness’, ‘warrior mindset’ and psychosocial ‘hazards’. None of this language connects to anyone who has been harmed psychosocially.

When in trauma, suffering, harm or pain, the last language you want to hear is about: ‘grit’, ‘tenacity’, heroics’, ‘mental stamina’ or ‘fighting’. Or, Zero!

I look at the language of many of the ‘Managing Psychosocial Hazards Codes of Practice’ floating about safety and they are a joke. Most read like a game of what to avoid in discourse.

I know, let’s talk about everything that surrounds distress, mental health, anxiety, stress and depression but not mention anything about any condition or its complexities.

The moment Safety decided to use the language of ‘hazards’ as applied to psychosocial harm; it ensured its on-going irrelevance to the world of work (https://safetyrisk.net/what-is-psychosocial-safety/).

This is also coupled to no change in the safety curriculum and nonsense applications of the Hierarchy of Controls as if psychosocial factors and physical hazards can be tackled with the same paradigm??? Most in safety would not know that psychosocial harm is an enactive risk (https://safetyrisk.net/psychosocial-harm-as-enactive-risk-free-workshops/). Only enactive methods are suited to enactive problems.

Do an image search for Hierarchy of Controls and psychosocial harm and have a laugh. It’s mind boggling.

However, there is a much deeper problem. Most people working in the industry of safety have no expertise to begin to tackle the problems and complexities of psychosocial harm. What this legislation and codes of practice do, is foster more dangerous epistemic trespass (https://safetyrisk.net/epistemic-trespassing-and-safety/). Didn’t you know a safety diploma or engineering degree makes one a surgeon, anthropologist, ethicist, cultural master, linguist and psychologist!

What we often see in all this discourse from the safety industry about psychosocial hazards is simply dangerous ignorance packaged in new marketing.

More so, most of the goop that is being circulated is individualist, behaviourist and brain-centric. In other words, it’s completely irrelevant, using the same old safety methodology trying to tackle a problem it doesn’t understand with methods that don’t fit.

Without an enactive holistic approach to personhood, ethics and Socialitie, it will be more safety noise amplifying what doesn’t work and then wondering why there is no change.

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If you want to know more about enactive thinking and risk, you can register for the free online workshops run on 8, 15, 22, 29 September 9am Canberra time with Prof. Rob Long, register here: admin@spor.com.au

Registrations close 28 August