Fight, Flight, or Freeze Releasing Organizational Trauma Matty Stratton @mattstratton linkedin.com/in/mattstratton WTF is SRE Conference 2021 Sponsored by Cisco

Content Warning: Discussion of trauma and posttraumatic stress @mattstratton

I am a trauma survivor I am not a mental health professional @mattstratton

Humans are not zebras @mattstratton

“Animals in the wild are not traumatized by routine threats to their lives, while humans, on the other hand, are readily overwhelmed and often subject to the traumatic symptoms of hyper arousal, shutdown and dysregulation.” – Dr. Peter Levine @mattstratton

Nuanced @mattstratton

• Trauma occurs when one’s solution (active response to threat) does not work • Trauma can result from real or perceived threats • Trauma is subjective and relative @mattstratton

How does this apply to an organization? @mattstratton

Hyperarousal fight or flight @mattstratton

Hypoarousal freeze @mattstratton

Inappropriate response @mattstratton

@mattstratton

Identify your organization’s window of tolerance @mattstratton

“Resilient organizations are not traumatized by routine threats to their mission or business. Non-resilient organizations are readily overwhelmed and often subject to the symptoms of overreaction, shutdown and lack of regulated effort.” – Matty Stratton (Not a doctor) @mattstratton

Regulate @mattstratton

Organizational somatic experiencing @mattstratton

“contributing factors” “root cause” @mattstratton

Game days @mattstratton

Planned failure injection @mattstratton

Process failure @mattstratton

Cognitive distortions @mattstratton

Polarized thinking @mattstratton

Overgeneralization @mattstratton

Fortune telling @mattstratton

Control fallacies @mattstratton

Self-care @mattstratton

Context switch @mattstratton

Allocate mental bandwidth @mattstratton

Treat yourself @mattstratton

“The weeks that I am on-call, I schedule wine with my girlfriends or plan to go out for my favorite dinner…this can be a really rough week, but I have something to look forward to” –Ana Medina, Gremlin @mattstratton

Stay healthy @mattstratton

Tips from the twittererverse @mattstratton

And if all else fails… @mattstratton

“Resilient strength is the opposite of helplessness.” –Dr. Peter Levine @mattstratton

https://speaking.mattstratton.com @mattstratton