Data Collectors,
One of the reasons I created the Glove Up crayon is because I learned this lesson the hard way. A couple years ago, I was contracted to work in a school setting and let me just say this now: schools are fascinating places to study human behavior. They are also breeding grounds for resentment. You have exhausted teachers, under-supported staff, impossible expectations, politics, gossip, triangulation, burnout, and people carrying around years of unresolved frustration. Put enough stressed-out adults into one building and eventually somebody becomes the emotional trash can.
Unfortunately, on this particular day, I volunteered as tribute. 🤣
I remember being called into an office. The energy felt off immediately. You know those moments where your body notices something before your brain does? Before anyone said anything, I could already feel the shift. Looking back now, that was probably my nervous system picking up cues that something wasn’t right. At the time, I ignored it. I walked in assuming we were going to have a normal professional conversation.
We were not.
Very quickly the conversation shifted into accusations. I was called unprofessional. I was called unethical. I was threatened with being reported. There was an attempt to position me as though I had somehow violated my responsibilities. The irony was that I wasn’t even employed by the school. I was a contracted provider. My role was different. My confidentiality requirements were different. My obligations were different. The very thing they wanted from me would have required me to violate the standards I was hired to uphold.
I knew that.
My supervisor knew that.
The law knew that.
My nervous system did not know that.
What fascinates me looking back is how quickly I stopped accessing the part of my brain that knew the facts. Daniel Kahneman talks about System 1 and System 2 thinking. System 2 is thoughtful, logical, analytical, and deliberate. It’s the part of the brain that gathers information and evaluates evidence. System 1 is fast, automatic, emotional, and survival-based. Guess which one was driving the bus that day?
Not the licensed therapist.
Not the logical adult.
Not the woman who knew exactly what her role was.
The scared kid.
The people pleaser.
The part of me that had spent years believing I was probably wrong.
The moment those women became emotionally charged, my nervous system shifted from top-down processing into bottom-up processing. In other words, my body started making decisions before my thinking brain had a chance to catch up. Stephen Porges’ work on Polyvagal Theory explains that when the nervous system detects threat, our ability to access curiosity, perspective-taking, flexibility, and critical thinking begins to shrink (Porges, 2011). The body prioritizes survival over accuracy.
And let me tell you, survival was in full effect.
I wasn’t asking myself, “Are these accusations true?”
I wasn’t asking myself, “Do they understand my role?”
I wasn’t asking myself, “Do they even have the authority they’re acting like they have?”
No.
My brain immediately went to:
“Oh my God, I’m in trouble.”
“What if they’re right?”
“What if I missed something?”
“What if I lose my license?”
“What if I’ve completely screwed this up?”
If you’ve ever struggled with people pleasing, you know exactly what I’m talking about. The nervous system becomes less interested in truth and more interested in restoring safety. My goal wasn’t clarity. My goal was making the discomfort stop. That is the trap.
For years I thought the lesson from that experience was about toxic workplace behavior. It wasn’t.
The lesson was about what happened inside of me when I encountered toxic workplace behavior.
Because here’s the reality. There will always be people who use intimidation. There will always be people who use shame. There will always be people who use titles, age, authority, experience, religion, education, or social status to establish dominance. Healthy people don’t need to do that. People who feel powerful don’t spend their day proving it. Most people who behave that way are carrying around their own unresolved resentment, insecurity, powerlessness, or pain. The workplace simply becomes the stage where they perform it.
That’s their shit.
The problem was I picked it up.
Barehanded.
I absorbed their certainty.
I absorbed their urgency.
I absorbed their interpretation.
I absorbed their emotional state.
Then I walked out of that office carrying a backpack full of things that never belonged to me in the first place.
When I finally called my supervisor, I was in tears. I was convinced my career was over. She listened quietly and then said something I’ll never forget.
“Savannah, they were completely out of line.”
That sentence hit me like a truck because it forced me to see how far my perception had drifted. My nervous system had become so convinced that I was the problem that it couldn’t even entertain another possibility.
And that’s the thing about not wearing gloves.
You stop collecting data.
You stop asking questions.
You stop evaluating reality.
You start absorbing.
These days, when somebody comes at me sideways, one of my favorite responses is:
“Is everything okay? You seem upset.”
Not because I’m trying to be passive-aggressive.
Not because I’m trying to win.
Because I’m placing their energy back where it belongs. On their side of the street. I spent too many years being the emotional Bounty quicker picker upper for everybody around me.
Not anymore.
The gloves taught me something I wish I had learned sooner:
Not everybody who is upset is right.
Not everybody who is loud deserves authority.
Not everybody who is certain deserves your agreement.
And not every pile of shit is yours to pick up.
🧤☕