Nathalie Piquionne is the founder of Deux Noix de Coco, creator of Quality of the Heart Immersion, and the force behind The JOY Creative Renegades Collective, a living cultural ecosystem where legacy becomes culture. Drawing on more than two decades as an executive in global advertising, she brings together strategic rigor, heart coherence, art, and cultural immersion to help creative leaders and founders move from overdrive and misalignment toward clarity, meaningful direction, and deeper renewal. In this interview, Nathalie explores why traditional strategy often falls short when success no longer feels true, how coherence changes the way people lead and make decisions, and why art, deep looking, and cultural connection can open a path toward more honest leadership and soul healing. Nathalie Piquionne, Founder & Lead Facilitator, Conscious Strategist What led you to create Quality of the Heart Immersion as the foundation of your work today? Quality of the Heart Immersion grew out of a very real question in my own life: what happens when the life you built no longer feels like the life you are meant to live? For many years, I worked at a high executive level in global advertising and business. I understood performance, responsibility, deadlines, and decision-making. After a tragic breaking point in my life, I could no longer move through life on momentum alone. I had to stop and ask what was actually true for me beneath achievement, expectation, survival, and the carefully curated life I had built. That experience showed me how many people are functioning well on the outside while feeling disconnected on the inside. They are successful, capable, and deeply tired. They know how to keep going, but they no longer know what they are going toward. Quality of the Heart Immersion was created as a way back. It begins with the body and nervous system, but it is ultimately about returning to inner truth, clearer choices, and a deeper relationship with one’s own life. Through perception, expansion, and unity, it opens a path toward soul healing. How did your years as an executive in global advertising shape the way you now think about leadership, strategy, and human coherence? My years in global advertising taught me how much pressure leaders carry and how quickly strategy can become disconnected from the human beings expected to deliver it. I worked in environments where decisions had financial, creative, and organizational consequences. That gave me discipline, commercial judgment, and a deep respect for structure. But I also saw how often important decisions are made while people are exhausted, emotionally flooded, or disconnected from what they actually believe. A strategy can look perfect on paper and still fail because the people leading it are not internally coherent. They may be acting from fear, urgency, image, or habit rather than clarity. Today, I do not separate strategy from the inner state of the person making the decision. Coherence does not replace analysis. It improves it. It helps a leader distinguish between what is merely impressive and what is genuinely aligned, sustainable, and meaningful. The strongest strategy is not only intelligent. It is honest enough to be lived. What does coherence change in the way a founder or creative leader makes decisions, leads others, and shapes a brand? Coherence changes the quality of the decision before it changes the decision itself. When someone is in overdrive, everything can feel urgent. They may overthink, seek constant reassurance, change direction too quickly, or remain loyal to ideas that no longer fit. Even strong leaders can lose trust in themselves when their nervous system is overwhelmed. Coherence creates enough inner space to see clearly again. A founder becomes less reactive and more discerning. They can feel the difference between an opportunity that expands the work and one that simply creates more noise. It also affects leadership. People can sense when a leader is speaking from conviction rather than performance. A coherent leader communicates more clearly, sets cleaner boundaries, and creates greater trust. The same is true for a brand. A meaningful brand is not built only from messaging. It grows from what the founder truly values, what the team consistently embodies, and what people genuinely experience when they encounter it. Where does traditional strategy fall short when a leader is outwardly successful but inwardly misaligned? Traditional strategy often begins with the question, “What should we do next?” But for someone who is deeply misaligned, that may be the wrong first question. A person can have a strong business plan, excellent advisors, and multiple opportunities, yet still feel unable to move. The problem is not always a lack of information. Sometimes they have become disconnected from their own internal signal. When that happens, more analysis can create more noise. They begin comparing, optimizing, and projecting without asking whether the direction itself still feels alive. I believe strategy must also ask: What are you no longer willing to abandon in yourself? What kind of success can your body, relationships, and spirit actually sustain? What are you building, and what is it building in you? This is where inner coherence becomes practical. It helps leaders stop solving the wrong problem. Once they reconnect with what is true, strategic choices become cleaner, more focused, and often much simpler. Why are art, deep looking, and cultural immersion central to your work rather than simply complementary experiences? Art asks something different from us. It does not always give an immediate answer. It asks us to slow down, stay present, and notice what is happening within us. That is why deep looking is central to my work. Most people are trained to scan, judge, categorize, and move on. But when we truly look, without rushing to explain, our perception changes. We begin to notice emotions, memories, resistance, beauty, and meaning that were already present but hidden beneath speed. Cultural immersion works in a similar way. It places us inside another rhythm, another story, another way of experiencing life. That can loosen the identities and habits we have mistaken for truth. For me, art is not decoration around transformation. It is one of the doors into it. It can help people reconnect with feeling, imagination, cultural memory, and the parts of themselves that do not speak through logic alone. How did JOY Creative Renegades evolve into a living cultural ecosystem, and what do you mean when you say “legacy becomes culture”? JOY Creative Renegades grew from legacy, Love, and the question of how creative work continues after the person who helped shape it is no longer physically present. My late husband, Caryl, was a curator, gallerist, producer, and writer – a cultural visionary and fiercely independent spirit who believed deeply in the power of art, cultural exchange, and creating meaningful relationships between artists, audiences, and communities. After his passing, I did not want his legacy to become something static, preserved only through memory. I wanted it to remain alive, generative, and in conversation with the present. That is what I mean by “legacy becomes culture.” Legacy is not only what we inherit. It is what we activate, reinterpret, and carry forward through new people, new gatherings, and new creative expressions. JOY Creative Renegades is evolving into a living cultural ecosystem through salons, artistic encounters, residencies, conversations, deep-looking practices, and collaborations. It is a space where art, community, thought, and inner life meet. It is not simply an audience gathered around culture. It is a living network of people who participate in creating it. What is the relationship between nervous-system reset, aligned decision-making, and the path toward soul healing? The sequence matters. When the nervous system is constantly in survival mode, it is difficult to hear anything subtle. A person may know intellectually that something is wrong, but still feel unable to pause, choose differently, or trust what they sense. The first step is creating enough safety in the body for the system to soften. From there, people can become more intimate with what is actually present instead of immediately escaping, fixing, or performing. That intimacy creates clarity. They begin to recognize what belongs to them, what has been imposed, and what they are ready to release. Decisions become more aligned because they are no longer made only from fear or external expectation. Soul healing, as I understand it, comes later. It is not a quick promise or a single experience. It is the deeper process that becomes possible when someone repeatedly chooses truth, coherence, and a more honest relationship with their own life. How can creative leaders and value-aligned brands bring more coherence into the way they lead, communicate, and create? They can begin by making sure their external message is not more evolved than their internal reality. Many brands speak beautifully about values, community, wellbeing, or purpose. But coherence is revealed in decisions: how people are treated, what is rewarded, what is tolerated, and what happens when pressure rises. For creative leaders, the first step is often to slow down enough to notice where the brand is saying one thing while the organization is living another. That gap creates confusion internally and distrust externally. Coherence means that vision, culture, leadership behavior, and creative expression begin to reinforce one another. It also means being willing to make decisions that protect meaning, even when a faster or more fashionable choice is available. A value-aligned brand should not only look good or sound intelligent. People should be able to feel what it stands for through every meaningful interaction. If someone feels successful but no longer trusts their direction, where should they begin? Begin before the next decision. Most people try to solve uncertainty by immediately choosing a new direction. But when you no longer trust yourself, the first task is not to move faster. It is to restore the relationship with your own inner signal. Create a small amount of space without performance. Sit somewhere quiet. Walk without listening to anything. Look deeply at a work of art. Notice what your body tightens around and what allows you to breathe more freely. Then ask yourself a simpler question than, “What should I do with my life?” Ask: What feels true today? What am I maintaining only because I am afraid to disappoint someone? What part of me has been asking for attention? Clarity often returns in fragments before it returns as a plan. You do not need to force the full answer. You need to become available to hear it. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Nathalie Piquionne

Written by Meagan Hruska, Licensed Mental Health Counselor Meagan Hruska is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC) and has been practicing both in-office therapy and Equine Assisted Psychotherapy for 10 years. She currently owns her own practice and is a co-founder of Dusty Boots Barn, where she provides counseling services and innovative trainings for professionals in the mental health field. Communication is about far more than choosing the right words or mastering the right techniques, because the person behind the message shapes how it is truly received. By exploring presence, emotional undertones, and inner congruence, we can begin to understand why authentic communication starts with understanding and embodying ourselves. “I want to work on communication,” said many clients to a therapist. “Do you know how deep that work really is?” said a therapist in response. The art of communication is a journey so much deeper than what we think it is. As a therapist, I smile every time someone comes into my office saying their goal is to improve communication. It’s so vague. When I ask what parts of communication they want to improve, they look at me as though I just grew three heads. I usually laugh because they have no clue. Most people don’t really know what communication is or entails, just that they “should probably work on it.” Based on my work as a therapist, I have noticed that most men and women deeply want to communicate well with their partners, families, kids, co-workers, and communities, but they don’t know how. Most therapies will only focus on the skills and tools of communication. This is a great start, and these are great tools to have. Communication skills may be referred to as using “I feel statements,” requesting clarification, paraphrasing, open-ended questions, and asking questions about a person. In therapy, we go over all these and practice them. Then there’s listening, which also has layers. Are you listening to respond? Listening with your mind? Or are you listening with your heart and/or body? Sometimes you may hear therapy language like “active listening,” “reflective listening,” and “attunement.” However, these skills are only a small part of communication. Believe it or not, more than 90% of communication is done nonverbally, according to some research. What makes communication great has more to do with the person doing the communicating. It is your presence. The “you behind the skills.” You are the most powerful piece of communication, not the communication “skills” and “tools” you've acquired. Let me explain. Beneath the skills, there's the essence of you in the moment. How are you showing up? What’s your body saying? Your tone? Your volume? Your facial expressions? Your eyes? These are the body language and nonverbal cues of communication. It also involves your emotional state, intentions, self-concept, belief system, subconscious mind, and past experiences. What are you emotionally feeling? What did you intend? What did you believe in the moment, subconsciously? Were your words genuine or an attempt to “get” something? All of this is communicated through your presence. I define these parts as the emotional undertone, the “what’s beneath the surface.” In my opinion, the emotional undertone reflects your overall presence. There is no pretending or faking it. It always reflects exactly the level of embodiment you're currently at. It’s always online, communicating with those around you. The nervous system of others will tune into and respond to this subconsciously. It is why your presence is the most powerful piece of communication. Have you ever wondered why you can “say” the right thing and/or “do” the right thing, but it doesn’t make an impact? You might apply the “tool” or “skill” flawlessly, but it doesn’t land? This is because we miss the boat when we don’t look at the emotional undertone and the communicator's presence. I once worked with a father who had read all the updated parenting books. He was well-educated in the literature. He knew healthy phrasing, good word choices, and the healthy parenting skills suggested by the experts. He applied them well, but his kids still did not listen to him. This father was confused. He was doing what all the research suggested he do. So why didn’t his kids respond to it? It’s because his kids were responding to his presence and emotional undertone. His body was so tense with anxiety and self-doubt that you could feel it radiating off of him. His tone was shaky, and he wasn’t grounded in himself. Ultimately, he didn’t trust himself. He didn’t believe his kids respected him or that they would listen to him. He also didn’t believe he was worthy of respect or that he was capable of being a leader. He didn’t think he was “good enough.” These were deep-seated beliefs stemming from his past experiences. He didn’t even know he was communicating all this via his presence. But his kids felt it all. This is what they were ultimately responding to. If his kids’ responses and behaviors could talk, this is what they might say, “If you don’t trust yourself or feel worthy of respect, why should we trust and respect you? You’re showing us you’re not really in charge and that we aren’t safe. So we’ll do whatever makes us feel “safe” in the moment. We’ll take control instead.” This is an example with parenting and kids, but you could easily change it to “my employees” or “my partner.” However, there is a good end to this story. This father and I worked on the emotional undertone and all the aspects contributing to this type of presence. He dared to own his inner world and face his demons. When he did, he rose into a healthy man and father. His presence and the way he carried himself changed. Guess what? His kids started listening! He was shocked that parenting could be more “effortless” than he thought. Ultimately, when you can get your emotional undertone and presence to a good place, and then match it to your actions and words, you become aligned with yourself, fully embodied. You are congruent. The inner and outer worlds of you all match. Congruency is what ultimately makes someone’s presence feel truly safe. This is the real mission to improving your communication. Face yourself and become congruent. Let your presence be the ultimate communicator. Because presence is so important in communication, it's crucial for men and women to work on it. Ideally, good therapy and a good therapist will help you to begin to step into your own powerful self by addressing the emotional undertone in your life. So you want to improve your communication? Take yourself on the quest and get started with a good therapist! Then experience yourself rise into the powerful presence of the person you truly are! Your partner, kids, families, co-workers, and community are waiting for you to arrive and lead from your own empowered presence. Follow me on Facebook, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Meagan Hruska Meagan Hruska, Licensed Mental Health Counselor Meagan Hruska, MS, LMHC, is a leader and innovator in the mental health field, evolving and pushing the field forward through her insight gained from years of clinical experience practicing and providing mental health-based services in numerous settings. She also specializes in incorporating experiential learning and somatic-based practice in her work, as well as Equine-Assisted Psychotherapy, where clients experience services in the company of horses and nature. Her intention is to help people reconnect and become embodied in the essence of who they are, both personally and professionally.

Written by Rashmi Airan, Keynote Speaker, Author, Leadership Consultant Rashmi Airan is a leadership keynote speaker and former attorney who helps leaders rise through uncertainty and change in fast-moving environments. Her work focuses on making better decisions under pressure with courage and clarity while staying grounded, human, and accountable. September 5, 1995. I'm walking to my first class at Columbia Law School. My arms are full of books, my heart is full of ambition, and my mind has already written the story: I made it. As the daughter of Indian immigrants, I never felt success belonged to me alone. I carried my parents' sacrifice like a second stack of books, right alongside my own. They left India for the American Dream. Somewhere along the way, I decided it was my job to prove the decision had been worth it. Two years earlier, I had finished my degree at UNC Chapel Hill. Speech Communications and Business. Solid. Respectable. But Columbia was different. Columbia was the room where I would finally prove I belonged. I had worked relentlessly to get there. I believed that if I could succeed in this room, at this school, surrounded by these people, the belonging would follow. I walked in and took the front row. Everyone around me looked effortlessly successful. Certain. Confident. Like they had never once had to convince themselves they deserved the seat. I didn't feel that way. That is where I first started operating with the mentality that, years later, would help send me to prison: I need to do anything and everything to succeed. So I worked harder. I tried to become the person I thought everyone expected. More accomplished. More impressive. More certain. I wanted the best grades. I wanted the top of the class. I wanted proof. There was nothing wrong with wanting that. What I couldn't see was the question underneath it. Success wasn't the goal. Success was supposed to answer something much bigger: Am I enough? Enough without the title? Enough without the grade, the win, the applause? Here is what I understand now that I didn't understand then. I told myself I wanted success. I didn't. I wanted freedom. Freedom from having to earn my place in the room every single day. Freedom from a scoreboard I never agreed to play by. I just didn't have the language for that yet, so I called it ambition and chased it like it was the whole answer. When the answer to that question depends on how well you perform, ambition stops being ambition. It becomes a debt you're always paying down. Your grades aren't just grades. Your title isn't just a title. Your next promotion isn't just a promotion. They become evidence of who you are. Once your identity is something you have to keep proving, protecting it starts to matter more than questioning it. That's the trap. Not the wanting. The proving. Drift doesn't announce itself No one wakes up, drives to work, sits down at their desk, and decides, today I compromise my values. It never happens that way. It happens gradually. One deadline. One expectation. One compromise. One story you tell yourself about why this time is different. That's drift. It doesn't happen to bad people. It happens to busy people. The leader with an overflowing inbox. The executive carrying a quarterly number that can't be missed. The manager protecting her team while answering to the people above her. The high performer who spent years becoming the one who always delivers. When pressure rises, a decision stops looking like a decision. It starts looking like a threat to a reputation, a career, a relationship, or an identity built over years of proving. So we tell ourselves we'll deal with the bigger questions later. Just get through this. Just make the deadline. Just this once. That is how the distance between who we are and who we meant to be grows. Not in miles. In inches. When I stopped recognizing myself Years after that first day at Columbia, I was no longer the law student in the front row trying to prove she belonged. I was an attorney. A wife. A mother. A daughter who had made her immigrant parents proud. From the outside, I had built exactly what that younger version of me thought success looked like. What I hadn't built was the freedom I was actually after. The pressure to protect that identity never left when I became successful. It grew with me, and it moved the freedom further away with every year I protected it instead of questioning it. Eventually, I made decisions in my legal career that crossed a line I never believed I would cross. Those decisions led to a federal conviction and a sentence of one year and one day. For a long time, I tried to understand how I got there. How does the woman who walked into Columbia Law School with so much ambition become the woman who walks into federal prison? There wasn't one answer. There wasn't even one decision. There was drift. I had moved so far from the person I wanted to be that I no longer recognized her. Not the lawyer. Not the daughter, the wife, the mother. Not the life I wanted to build. The hardest realization was this: the ambition, the work ethic, and the determination I believed would protect me from failure were the same things that made it easy to stop listening to myself. That's the cost no one warns high performers about. The instinct that gets you the seat can cost you your voice in it. I spent years chasing success, certain it would hand me freedom on the other side of it. It never does. Freedom was never on the other side of proving. It was on the other side of no longer needing to. Follow me on Instagram and LinkedIn for more info! Read more from Rashmi Airan Rashmi Airan, Keynote Speaker, Author, Leadership Consultant Rashmi Airan is a leadership keynote speaker and former Ivy League attorney who helps leaders rise through uncertainty, speed, and constant change. After building a successful legal career and later serving time in federal prison, she experienced firsthand how pressure-filled decisions can reshape lives and organizations. Her writing explores ethical drift, accountability, and the power for growing and evolving through discomfort rather than avoiding it. Rashmi works with executives and teams navigating high-stakes moments where judgment matters most. Her articles challenge readers to pause, reflect, and lead with greater clarity, courage, and humanity.

Written by Kim Lackie, Transformational Guide and Alchemist Kim Lackie is a retired Canadian law enforcement professional with 27+ years of service, a Master Practitioner in Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP) / Time Line Therapy® (TLT®), NLP Coaching and Hypnotherapy, and founder of Sovereign Path Alchemy, guiding women through navigating the major life transitions of midlife. You have stepped back from your life, and part of you feels relieved. But quiet does not always mean healing. Sometimes it means hiding. Here is how to tell which one you are actually doing, and why your nervous system already knows the answer before your mind catches up. Are you resting or retreating? How to tell the difference You have stepped back, and part of you is grateful, but how do you know if you are actually resting, or simply avoiding your own life for a while? It is a harder question than it sounds, and I did not have a real answer to it for a long time. During the early years of raising my triplets, while working a demanding career and running a household, there were a couple of times I got away for a few days on my own. I told myself, and everyone else, that I simply needed some peace and quiet. That was true. I did need the quiet and physical rest badly. Though, looking back now, twenty years later, I can see that was not all that was happening in those getaways. I was also, without fully realizing it, sitting with loss I had not given myself permission to feel. A loss over a version of my life I had quietly and quickly let go of. A grief where my own needs had been sitting untouched for years. Grief over a career that had shifted in ways I had chosen for convenience and practicality. The slow loss of connection to people, simply because the relentless cycle of family and work had left no room. Even the loss of unfulfilled expectations and an overwhelming sense of sadness when I should be grateful and happy. Or, so I told myself. The quiet solitude I was seeking was the type of rest for both my physical and mental states. However, it was also, at the very same time, a kind of retreat. A distraction from the loss and sadness that I could not rationalize nor understand at the time. Both things were true at once, and for years I could not have told you which one I was actually in. When rest is actually withdrawal I do not think this means the getaways were wasted. The time alone genuinely restored the energy within me each time. Though I have come to believe both things can be true in the same stretch of days, real rest and a very quiet form of avoidance, sitting side by side. Rest, the kind that actually restores something, tends to have a quality of return to self. To step forward as something in you slowly comes back online. Energy returns. A small appetite for the world returns with some small adjustments to carry on with eagerness and excitement. However, retreat has a different quality. It does not return anything on its own. It simply pulls a curtain to whatever is too tender to look at yet. Like the grief that I carried, not knowing what it was, it sat there completely unmoved once the quiet ended, unresolved. The quietness never actually addressed it. The feeling of heaviness stayed, always present. Years later, when the curtain could no longer keep it hidden, I had to face the accumulated effect. The energy it took to keep it hidden and not address the issues for years had me in a cycle of depression, anxiety, and physical pain for years. It was in 2020, when we all experienced an unprecedented shift in the world, that I noticed my inner world was mirrored in what was happening in the external one. I started to take stock of the areas of my life I had been avoiding, the conversations I was too nervous about the outcome to even begin to voice, the small actions I needed to take to improve my health, and even the emotions that rose up without warning. I started to pay attention and sat with them. What I realized, in my own inner dialogue, was that if I truly wanted to be happy, I had to take steps to make that happen. The way things were going was not sustainable any longer. So began a more honest conversation with myself, one that meant taking accountability for my decisions, making daily time for my own needs, and saying no without guilt. This was not an overnight solution. It has been a journey of self-discovery over the past six years. This has brought me to a place of seeking to know more, to share more, to improve and grow personally, as well as releasing the need to control the outcome of things by trusting the path I am on, which has me sharing the difference between these two parts of myself. For as I continue to practice genuine rest, the kind that connects me to a deeper level of myself, I have started to feel a surge of new energy and rejuvenation, well beyond what a trip to the spa ever gave me. My practice has given me the courage to pull back my curtain and ask the questions. It has given me the awareness to honour the answers that surface, be grateful for the wisdom, and take action in small ways toward a more peaceful and joy-filled life. Why this is so easy to miss Part of what makes this so hard to see in ourselves is that both experiences can involve the exact same activities, long walks, quiet mornings and evenings, time alone, diving into passion projects. These activities are not what separate healing from hiding. What separates them is the direction of movement underneath, the intention behind the getaway, the time for self. Healing tends to move toward something, the safe and connected state, even without a clear destination yet. There is a felt sense of thawing, of something in you loosening its grip. Hiding tends to move away from something, and only away, as in flight, shutting down, bracing, or numbing. Like the avoidance of a decision that needs to be made. Away from an emotion that has not yet been allowed to move through fully. Yes, time away for rest can feel like peace for a while. Though it can be closer to distraction than to peace, where the numbness tends to suppress the need to move through the emotions that arise. This process will eventually stop working. Whatever was being avoided will show up as signals in the body, as dis-ease, dis-comfort, or destruction. This is rooted in how our bodies, specifically our nervous system, distinguish between threat and safety. When we are in a state of avoidance, the nervous system remains in a protective, slightly heightened state, what neuroscientist Stephen Porges calls sympathetic activation. Research on the polyvagal theory shows that the nervous system has three states. Ventral vagal, safe and connected. Sympathetic, fight or flight. Dorsal, shutdown and freeze. When we genuinely rest, the vagal tone shifts, allowing the nervous system to move into what is called the social engagement system, a state where true restoration becomes possible. Rest tends to move you toward something. Curiosity, appetite, a small want returning. It is a slow opening. Retreat, by contrast, only moves you away, away from a decision, away from grief or another emotion, away from the parts of your life that feel too tender to face. The question worth asking Ask yourself right now, when you picture your quiet days, does it feel like you are moving toward something, or only away from something? Notice how your body reacts. The distinction alone can tell you most of what you need to know. You do not need a tidy answer immediately. Sometimes it takes time to gently ask before the honest answer surfaces, time to allow your nervous system to shift out of whatever state it is in and truly feel safe. This takes time because thinking alone is not enough. The willingness to ask the question and to sit with the silence is often the first sign that you are already closer to healing than to hiding, because true avoidance rarely wants to be questioned. What actual rest tends to ask for I am not suggesting that we turn rest into another task to perform correctly. It is about noticing, honestly and without judgment. Does your version of slowing down have a pulse? Are you quietly stirring back to life underneath the time you scheduled, or are you closing the curtain to your own kind of avoidance? If you are not sure which one you are in right now, that uncertainty is not a failure. It is simply worth staying curious about. Five ways to tell the difference If you want something more concrete to check yourself against, these are the markers I have come to trust most. Ask if the quietness was chosen or collapsed into: Intentional silence restores. Collapse from exhaustion rarely does on its own. There is a significant difference between stepping back on purpose and collapsing because you have nothing left to give. One feels like a choice. The other feels like surrender because you are too depleted to do anything else. Both can look identical from the outside. Only you know which one is true. Check what is still there when the quiet ends: If the same thought, the same decision, the same emotional knot is sitting exactly where you left it, untouched, unresolved, something may likely be avoided rather than healed. Genuine rest changes something. It does not resolve everything, but it changes the pressure of what you are carrying. If your quiet time ends and you are holding the same weight or dread upon returning, that is worth noticing. Not with judgment, as the rest was not wasted. It simply means there may be something underneath that needs a different kind of attention. Having this awareness can begin a path to addressing your real needs. That is worth exploring more. Ask yourself plainly, am I resting or am I hiding? The honest answer tends to surface faster than you might expect if you are willing to sit with the question. Not to judge yourself. Simply to notice. Is this time bringing something back to me? If yes, that is rest. Is this time only taking me further away? If yes, that is retreat. You do not need certainty. You only need honesty and an openness to be curious about what comes up. Notice what your body is telling you: When you ask yourself these questions, notice your body's response. Are you bracing, jaw tight, shoulders drawn up, holding your breath? Or do you soften, shoulders dropping, chest opening, breathing deepening, maybe even a release of emotion? Shallow, rapid breathing usually signals the nervous system is still in a protective state. Long, deep breaths signal that your body feels safe enough to genuinely rest. Sleep that leaves you unrested is another signal worth noticing, often a sign that avoidance, not rest, is what is actually happening. Learning to create a dialogue with your body and the sensations and signals it offers is the beginning of understanding what you truly need. Return to these questions gently and often: Give yourself space and time to ask and receive what surfaces. You do not need to arrive at a perfect answer or be quick in making big moves. It is the willingness to ask the question over time that is in itself a sign that you are already moving toward genuine restorative rest rather than away from it. Trust the process. Moving forward Today, I can feel the difference clearly. I have finally experienced the other version of myself. My days have an intention behind the stillness. A daily choice to begin the day differently by honouring my body, mind, and spirit, to listen in the quiet for more clarity and discernment. This version of quiet acknowledgment was for my needs alone and resulted in the daily physical pain I had for years disappearing. Looking back, I can clearly see I was doing both. Resting for the physical body and mental overwhelm and lack of sleep, as well as retreating for what I did not have the energy or clarity of mind to understand or contemplate. When I was attempting to find relief in my life, I was stepping away from myself. I did not have the capacity or the resources to understand what was happening or what I needed deeply. The wisdom that has risen since 2020 has allowed me to dig deeper and find the quietness I require. Only now can I see it was more than just a few days a year. Now, I am able to have stillness as a daily practice. It still looks similar from the outside. The same daily walks, time alone, and need to just be quiet. Though the intention underneath is very different. I did not always know how to tell the difference between these two states in my own life. I only know it now because I have lived both versions. My mission, in the work I do now, is to help others recognize this distinction sooner than I did. Everyone deserves to know the difference. Rest is not something you have to earn. It is something you deserve to give yourself and something you are worthy of having every day. Ready to explore this deeper? If you would like to explore this distinction more deeply in your own life, to understand whether your rest is truly restoring you or whether there is something underneath that needs a different type of attention, I invite you to a Path Clarity Conversation with me. Visit here to book a free session. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Kim Lackie Kim Lackie, Transformational Guide and Alchemist Kim Lackie is the founder of Sovereign Path Alchemy and the creator of the Sovereign Embodiment Method, a clinically grounded framework for identity transformation designed for women navigating the major life transitions of midlife. After more than 27 years in Canadian law enforcement and raising triplets, she knows firsthand what it means to lose yourself inside the demands of a life built for everyone else. She works with women through some of life’s biggest transitions to reach the identity wound underneath, not just the surface adjustment. She holds Master Practitioner certifications in Neuro-linguistic Programming / Time Line Therapy® and Hypnotherapy. She writes from her own lived experiences and clinical depth. Citations: Porges, S. W. "The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation." W.W. Norton, 2011. Murphy, Jamie. "Polyvagal Theory Explained Simply: Your 3 Nervous System States." StillMind, May 18, 2026.

Written by Sarah Maynard, Wellness & Health Coach for Moms Sarah Maynard is a Beroepsvereniging Gewichtsconsulenten Nederland-certified lifestyle coach for tired and overwhelmed mothers. She is the founder of Body & Mind in Harmony and creator of a group program, built on her belief that nervous system regulation comes before any other wellness goal. Have you ever asked any mother whether she struggles to say no? You probably didn't get a simple answer. You'll get a story instead, about the playdate she agreed to when she was already running on empty, the extra school committee she joined out of obligation, the doctor's appointment she canceled because someone else needed her more. Boundaries aren't really a lack of skill for most mothers. They know what a boundary is. What stops them is what comes right after, the guilt. As a Beroepsvereniging Gewichtsconsulenten Nederland-certified lifestyle coach who works with overwhelmed mothers every week, and who has lived this exact pattern herself, I want to untangle boundaries from guilt, so saying no can finally feel less like abandonment and more like the maintenance it actually is. Why mom's guilt is such a common feeling If you feel guilty almost every time you consider your own needs, you're in very good (and very large) company. A widely cited BabyCenter survey found that 94% of mothers report experiencing parenting-related guilt, which makes it less of an occasional feeling and more of a near-universal baseline of modern motherhood. That guilt doesn't stay confined to parenting decisions. It follows mothers straight into their own self-care. Kelton Global's self-care survey found that 39% of parents feel guilty when they do take time for themselves, compared to 26% of adults without kids, and 21% avoid self-care altogether because of that guilt. This isn't a personal failing, and it isn't just in your head. A study on self-compassion and maternal health behaviors found that guilt directly determines whether mothers engage in health-promoting behaviors like exercise, nutrition, and sleep. In other words, guilt doesn't just sit there uncomfortably in the background. It actively decides whether you take care of yourself at all. 1. Understand where the guilt actually comes from Before you can hold a boundary without guilt creeping in, it helps to know what is going on. Mom guilt isn't random, it's conditioned. It comes from decades of messaging that ties a mother's worth to her self-sacrifice, from the "good mother" ideal that quietly says your needs come last, and from a nervous system that has learned to link your own comfort with someone else's disappointment. Just naming that out loud, "this guilt isn't proof I'm doing something wrong, it's proof of conditioning," is often the first boundary a mother needs to set, a boundary with the guilt itself. 2. Reframe the boundary as regulation, not rejection Most mothers experience a boundary as something they're taking away from someone else. In reality, it's something you're giving to your own nervous system. When you're stretched past capacity, overcommitted, touched out, running on no sleep, your body sits in a state of chronic stress, and every small demand lands like one demand too many. A boundary interrupts that cycle before it hits a breaking point. It's not a rejection of your family. It's regulation. A regulated mother has far more to give than a depleted one. 3. Start with small boundaries Boundaries don't have to start big, and for most overwhelmed mothers, they shouldn't. A sweeping new set of limits is hard to sustain and easy to feel guilty about breaking. Start small instead, not answering messages after 8 p.m., saying no to one extra activity this week, asking your partner to take bedtime one night so you get twenty minutes alone. Small, repeated boundaries build the muscle and give you proof that the world doesn't fall apart when you hold one. 4. Use language that doesn't invite guilt back in How you say a boundary matters almost as much as the boundary itself. Over-explaining or over-apologizing often signals to your own nervous system, and to the other person, that you don't quite believe you're allowed to say no. This reopens the door for guilt. A few simple, low-drama phrases can hold a boundary firmly without triggering a spiral, "That doesn't work for us this week." "I can't take that on right now." Or just, "Let me think about it and get back to you." You're not going for cold. You're going for calm and certain, because calm and certain is much harder to argue with than a boundary wrapped in three paragraphs of explanation. 5. Remember, self-care is a boundary too One of the most overlooked boundaries a mother can set is with herself. It's one thing to hold a boundary with a demanding friend or an overloaded school schedule. It's another to hold one against your own instinct to keep going, keep giving, keep proving your worth through exhaustion. Self-care isn't a reward you earn once everything else is done. It's a boundary that says your needs don't move to the back of the line indefinitely. This is the foundation everything else in your life stands on. Your patience, presence, and ability to actually enjoy the motherhood you're working so hard to hold together. This is exactly why regulation comes before every other wellness goal in my coaching practice. You can't parent from an empty nervous system, and no amount of guilt is going to refill it for you. The takeaway Boundaries and guilt tend to show up together for mothers, but they don't have to stay tangled forever. Once you understand where the guilt comes from, reframe boundaries as regulation instead of rejection, and start practicing in small, repeatable ways, the guilt loosens its grip. This is not because you've stopped caring about the people you love, but because you've finally included yourself in that care. If this resonates, I'd love to see you at The Mom Reset Morning, a self-care event on August 23rd in Amsterdam. It's a space built for exactly what this article has been about. Giving yourself permission to pause, be held, and regulate, alongside a small group of mothers who get it. Spots are limited, so if you've been telling yourself you'll prioritize this "someday," consider this your sign to make it today. You matter too. Follow me on Instagram and visit my website for more info! Read more from Sarah Maynard Sarah Maynard, Wellness & Health Coach for Moms Sarah Maynard is a BGN-certified lifestyle coach who helps overwhelmed mothers reconnect with themselves before trying to fix anything else. After navigating motherhood without a nearby support network and drawing on 8 years as a youth care facilitator, she built her practice around one contrarian idea. Nervous system regulation has to come first before diet, fitness, or any habit change can stick. She founded Body & Mind in Harmony to guide mothers aged 25-45 through this shift, offering 1-on-1 coaching, a group program, and in-person community events. Her message to every mother she works with is simple. You matter too.

Written by Joseph C Pledger, Jr., EdS., Educational Specialist Joseph C. Pledger Jr., EdS, is an accomplished master of the storytelling adventure. Though shunned by world affairs dinner table guests, it became his civic innovation that was sought and bought by justice reform. Thus, “The Microchip” appreciated the wrongfulness of his actions. A Microcomputer Systems Manager, AI Scholar, and JEDI Developer. To Pan Asia and The United States of Africa's Children Under The Stars: Afro-Americans are The Dark Occupiers of the Motherland. Stay tuned for Kunta Kinte Kumbaya! In today's world of ultimatums We are The KKK, Negro Rulers of America Law. I communicated strategically with producers of WEWS Spotlight 5 to interview me in a paid on-air segment. Because of Life Surge 2026, there was a local live event happening at Rocket Arena. Though my appearance on Spotlight 5 concerned spreading word of mouth, the Annual Anthem Awards call for submissions ended last month. So my submission involved distributing bills to acknowledge industry recognition for its support. I missed general audience voting, which begins in October 2026. Yet, by having featured me in 2016's "Comic Book Gaming Adventures" and 2021's "Shopping App" business infomercial segments, WEWS Spotlight 5’s "Claiming Kingdom Riches and Glory Give A Way" segment programming was to feature America's Million Dollar Bill Treasury Note Card and "How To Get Out of County Reach". American Million Dollar Trees fight against blight and the blight flight syndrome Cited by the Case Western Reserve Appreciative Inquiry Commons, Communities of Practice work establishing real values. "The Appreciati dot org" tables the effect and effectiveness of each node on their networks to brand industry and enterprise while utilizing DUBIT'S downloadable spreadsheet subscription and infographic service. However, WEWS TV producers ceased scheduling my on-air segment. Due to snitching. Revealed in my Brainz article on "Trafficking little girls lost along the Avenue at Tower City", Spotlight 5 Host Sarah Carnes made it rain on my parade. Ms. Carnes is a contributing local magazine columnist on family and community living enrichment topics. In my announcement follow-up entry submitted to The 2nd Annual Anthem Awards, answering the black progress question, "How do we win?" Any Who's Who Can Claim America Gives Away Millions and Gets Out Of Jail Free Cards for her appreciation. I got mine so you can get yours. As a Marquis Who's Who distinguished american, I crafted "How to Claim America’s Million Dollar Give Away and Get Out of Jail Free Card" tokens of appreciation. Upon the anthem "Summoning the Disciples of the Internet," Netizens will be claiming the Million Dollar Give Away and Get Out of Jail Free Card. The Annual Anthem Awards afforded me the opportunity to complete distribution of ducat coins and upvotes for its "Thought Leadership Category". Because only my disciples of the internet can trap "The Wealth Gap". Instructions published online show how to deposit The United States Treasury’s Million Dollar Bank Note into their own Brands of Community Trust. Then, DUBIT raises their trading desk and is responsible for their Community of Practice’s progress and enterprise. Thus, these disciples of the internet have considered "owning their own industry through community practices." Since only these enterprising owners (EO) will utilize appreciative inquiry (AI) Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is a method of organizational development that focuses on strengths and successes to envision and create a positive future. Instead of solving problems, AI identifies what is already working and uses those strengths as a foundation for strategic planning and change. The process typically follows a five D cycle: define the topic, discover positive experiences, dream of what could be, design the ideal future, and deliver on the design. Currently, I work as an executive contributing writer who submits paid work evaluation insights to define their contribution in Winkvist Group’s Brainz Magazine digital edition. "The Microchip", as I refer to myself, reflects further into global discovery of narratives and dreams of what civic development could engage. I have designed the ideal future and have since delivered on its design. Regarding earning a living within "United Hemispheric Ultimatums for Racial Unity" Brian Tracy Legacy Book Publishing will consider their review of my Prelude2Cinema web series, "Visit Eden", for potential Amazon best seller publication in audiobook formats. So, consider purchasing Joseph Pledger's legendary scripted proposal, given its dust-covered listing in Lulu's book storage. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Joseph C Pledger Jr, EdS Joseph C Pledger, Jr., EdS., Educational Specialist Cited for his Strategic Expertise, "The Microchip" appears distinctly listed within the 76th edition of Albert Marquis' Who's Who in America for 2023. He trades business licenses with those who purchase and browse such periodicals and literature to pick his brain.

You scaled past your support team, and now the tickets, the after-hours calls, and the seasonal spikes are eating the hours you should spend building the business. Founders who hit that wall keep arriving at the same question: who handles this well, and at a cost that still makes sense? For a growing share of healthcare, SaaS, and e-commerce companies, the answer points to one country. The strongest Philippines call center companies now pair fluent, US-aligned agents with compliance infrastructure and AI tooling that used to sit behind enterprise budgets. Why founders keep landing on the Philippines The Philippines runs the largest customer support workforce on the planet, and the numbers keep climbing. Its IT and business process management sector earned roughly $40 billion in export revenue in 2025 and employed about 1.9 million people, with the industry body projecting $42 billion in 2026 (IBPAP). Demand from US healthcare and financial services drove much of that growth. Three things make the country a default for English-speaking markets. Labor costs run about 50% to 75% lower than comparable US onshore roles. English fluency is widespread, with the Philippines ranking second in its region on the EF English Proficiency Index 2025. And night-shift teams cover US business hours while founders sleep, which keeps support live around the clock. How to choose a Philippines call center partner Pick a provider the way you would hire a department head: judge fit, not size. Weigh five things in order: industry experience, compliance and security, scalability, English and time-zone coverage, and how the provider uses AI. The right partner already runs teams in your vertical and can prove quality with numbers. Vertical fit. A healthcare provider needs HIPAA-trained agents who know EHRs and insurance verification. E-commerce needs peak-season ramp and returns handling. SaaS needs tiered technical support that can read a stack trace. Compliance and security. Match the certifications to your data: HIPAA for patient information, SOC 2 for systems, GDPR for EU customers, PCI DSS for card payments. Scalability. Ask whether they can move from a 5-seat pilot to 100-plus seats without the quality slipping that often follows fast hiring. Language and coverage. Confirm English fluency, US-hours staffing, and whether they offer 24/7 or follow-the-sun coverage. AI and tooling. Look for agent assist, QA automation, and clean integrations with Zendesk, Salesforce, or your help desk, then judge how the provider deploys them. The 8 top Philippines call center companies for 2026 1. Helpware CX Best for: Mid-market healthcare, SaaS, and e-commerce teams that want compliance depth and a long-term partner. Helpware CX, founded in 2015 and headquartered in Lexington, Kentucky, runs its Philippine teams from Manila and Cebu inside a 19-location global network that supports 45-plus languages. It focuses on mid-market healthcare, SaaS, e-commerce, and fintech companies that need operational and compliance depth alongside cost savings. The teams hold SOC 2, HIPAA, and GDPR certifications and Helpware reports 92% CSAT and 86% employee satisfaction, with client partnerships averaging five years. Where the largest providers compete on volume, Helpware CX competes on industry depth and retention, scaling from small pilots to enterprise operations without the quality drop that often follows fast growth. 2. Teleperformance Best for: Enterprises that need global scale and deep compliance. Teleperformance is the largest customer experience company in the world, with operations spread across many Philippine cities. It handles banking, healthcare, retail, and e-commerce at high volume, backed by mature security and compliance programs. For a company processing millions of interactions, its scale and global footprint are the draw. 3. Concentrix Best for: SaaS and e-commerce brands that want digital CX at scale. Concentrix pairs a large Philippine workforce with strong technology and retail practices. It leans on intelligent automation and analytics to run omnichannel support for software platforms and online marketplaces, which suits brands that want both volume and a digital-first operating model. 4. TaskUs Best for: High-growth SaaS and digital platforms. TaskUs built its name serving tech startups, and that DNA still shows. With more than 28,000 employees globally and hubs in Metro Manila and Pampanga, it specializes in digital customer experience, trust and safety, content moderation, and AI data services. Its investment in agent wellbeing matters in high-intensity work where burnout becomes an operational risk. 5. TTEC Best for: Healthcare and regulated CX that needs technology baked in. TTEC, a pioneer of the Philippine BPO sector, blends CX technology with managed services. Its healthcare practice supports payers and providers, and it also serves telecom, finance, and retail. Companies that want automation and analytics wrapped around regulated support tend to shortlist it. 6. Sutherland Global Services Best for: Healthcare and back-office digital transformation. Sutherland has run business process and technology services for more than 35 years, with Philippine sites in Metro Manila, Clark, and Davao. Its healthcare practice and back-office strength, from finance and accounting to claims, fit companies that want process redesign alongside day-to-day support. 7. Cloudstaff Best for: SaaS companies and startups building dedicated offshore teams. Founded in 2005 and based in Clark, Cloudstaff runs more than 6,000 staff and builds managed remote teams across support, engineering, finance, and marketing. Its model fits a startup that wants to stand up a whole function rather than buy seats by the hour, and it carries a 4.7 Glassdoor rating from staff. 8. SuperStaff Best for: Mid-market healthcare and e-commerce brands. SuperStaff, founded in 2009, runs offices in Makati and Clark plus delivery in Colombia and the US. Its HIPAA-compliant healthcare practice grew out of a parent company in healthcare and biopharma, and it also supports e-commerce and logistics. A reported 92% employee retention rate points to stable teams, which keeps training investment from leaking away. The table below lines up all eight so you can narrow the list before booking calls. Provider Founded Main PH hubs Strongest vertical fit Best for Helpware CX 2015 Manila, Cebu Healthcare, SaaS, e-commerce Mid-market, compliance-ready, long-term Teleperformance 1978 Multiple PH cities Healthcare, e-commerce, finance Enterprises needing global scale and compliance Concentrix 1983 Metro Manila, regional SaaS, e-commerce, healthcare Digital CX and automation at scale TaskUs 2008 Metro Manila, Pampanga SaaS, digital platforms High-growth tech, trust and safety TTEC 1982 Metro Manila, regional Healthcare, finance, retail Tech-led, regulated CX Sutherland 1986 Manila, Clark, Davao Healthcare, back office Healthcare and process transformation Cloudstaff 2005 Clark, Manila, Cebu SaaS, startups Dedicated offshore teams for SMEs SuperStaff 2009 Makati, Clark Healthcare, e-commerce Mid-market HIPAA-ready support Key takeaways The shortlist above gets you to a handful of names. These five rules get you to the right one and keep the engagement healthy after the contract is signed. Match the vertical, not the logo. For compliance-heavy work, a healthcare-trained mid-market provider often beats a giant generalist that treats your account as one of thousands. Treat compliance as a gate. In healthcare and fintech, no HIPAA or SOC 2 means no shortlist, whatever the per-seat price. Pilot before you scale. Run a 30-to 60-day pilot and watch CSAT and ramp quality before you commit to 100 seats. Weigh retention, because switching is the real cost. Agent turnover resets your training investment, so ask for attrition and retention numbers, not just headcount. Assume AI is table stakes. Agent assist and automation now sit inside most strong providers, so judge how a partner deploys them, not whether they exist. Frequently asked questions How much does it cost to outsource a call center to the Philippines? Costs run about 50% to 75% lower than comparable US onshore roles, but no provider quotes a flat rate. Price depends on the number of seats, contract length, agent skill level, hours of coverage, and add-ons such as QA or analytics. Define your scope first, then compare two or three providers on the same brief. Can Philippines call centers handle HIPAA-compliant healthcare support? Yes. Several Philippine providers run dedicated healthcare teams trained on HIPAA rules, medical terminology, and insurance workflows. Ask any shortlisted vendor to show current SOC 2 and HIPAA documentation and to describe how agents handle protected health information before you move sensitive work offshore. Which providers fit SaaS versus e-commerce best? SaaS support needs tiered technical help, so TaskUs, Cloudstaff, and Concentrix tend to fit. E-commerce needs seasonal ramp plus order and returns handling, where SuperStaff, Teleperformance, and Concentrix do well. Several providers cover both, so weigh which vertical drives most of your tickets. How many agents should I start with? Start small. A 5–10 seat pilot over 30 to 60 days lets you test agent quality, ramp speed, and reporting without overcommitting. Scale once CSAT holds steady, and the provider proves it can hire to your standard, not just to a headcount target. Onshore, nearshore, or offshore: which model wins? Offshore in the Philippines wins on cost and English fluency for most English-speaking markets. Some companies blend it with nearshore or onshore seats for premium accounts or real-time escalation, an approach often called hub and spoke. Pick the mix that matches your customers and your budget.

Written by Swati Mukherjee, Relationship Coach & Corporate Trainer Whether at the dinner table or in the boardroom, relationships run on the same patterns. Swati Mukherjee is an International Coaching Federation (ICF)-certified Relationship Coach and Corporate Trainer who spent 15 years in Human Resources (HR) and psychology before founding Resilient Relationship, helping couples and organisations trade conflict for trust and honest communication. For three months, I told myself she was just someone who liked to stretch her legs. That was the story I built to explain why one of my brightest team members was away from her desk so often, a few minutes here, ten there, several times throughout the day. It was a convenient story. It let me look away. Then one evening, staying late long after everyone else had gone home, I heard something through a closed door that made the convenient story impossible to believe anymore. What does depression actually look like at work? Most of us are looking for the wrong signs. We expect depression to announce itself: someone missing deadlines, snapping at colleagues, showing up late, falling apart visibly enough that HR gets involved. Sometimes it does look like that. But often, it doesn't. The World Health Organization estimates that 15% of working-age adults were living with a mental disorder in 2019, and that depression and anxiety together cost the global economy an estimated 12 billion working days and US$1 trillion in lost productivity every year. Mental health struggles do not always mean someone has stopped functioning. Some people are still at their desks, still hitting their numbers, still showing up to every meeting. Psychologists sometimes call this "high functioning depression." It isn't an official diagnosis, but it describes something real: a person who is quietly struggling while still managing to hold down a job, keep their home in order, and pay the bills. Cleveland Clinic compares it to a duck gliding across a pond. On the surface, everything looks graceful and effortless. Underneath, the legs are working furiously just to stay afloat. That was her, and I nearly missed it entirely. The girl who was always away from her desk She was one of those employees who made a manager's job easy. Sharp, likeable, always early with her deliverables. If you'd asked me to name our most reliable person, she would have been near the top of the list. The absences started small enough that nobody noticed them as a pattern. She'd step away mid-meeting, mid-afternoon, sometimes twice within the hour. Someone joked once that she must be the most restless person on the floor, always up and moving. She laughed along with it. So did I. It became one of those harmless team observations, the kind that gets mentioned and then forgotten, filed away as personality rather than information. Looking back, that is exactly how it survives. Because nobody notices, but because everybody decides, individually and without discussing it, that it isn't significant enough to mention. The evening I stayed late I was in the office past nine one night, finishing a report that couldn't wait until morning. The building was empty except for the cleaning staff and, apparently, her. I heard it before I understood what I was hearing: someone crying, trying hard not to be heard, in the washroom down the hall. I didn't go in. I didn't know what I would even say. A few minutes later, the door opened. She washed her face at the sink, checked herself in the mirror, and walked out. If I hadn't heard her a few minutes earlier, I would never have known. Her face gave away nothing. Her walk back to her desk was completely ordinary. She picked up exactly where she'd left off. That is the part that stayed with me longer than the crying itself. Not that she was struggling, but how completely she could put it away. Why I didn't say anything the next morning I want to be honest about this part, because I think it's where most well-meaning managers get stuck. I did not march into her office the next day and ask if she was depressed. I didn't have that right, and frankly, I didn't have that certainty. What I had witnessed for thirty seconds through a closed door was not enough to build a conversation on, let alone a diagnosis. So instead, I watched. Over the following weeks, I started noticing the things that had been there all along, once I knew to look. She was still delivering excellent work, but she'd stopped joining the team for lunch. Her jokes had a slightly rehearsed quality, arriving a beat too quickly, as though she'd learned which moments called for humour and was performing them on cue. She looked tired in a way that no amount of concealer quite covered. The time away from her desk, once I understood what I was actually looking at, read less like restlessness and more like someone searching for the only place in the building where she could stop performing for a few minutes. None of these signs, on their own, would have told me anything. Together, over time, they told me almost everything. The trap of the label Here is the part I think about more than any other, and the reason I never once said the word "depression" to her directly in those early weeks. We live with labels more than we realise, and once a label attaches itself to us, it can become remarkably difficult to live outside it. Researchers who study this sometimes refer to labelling theory: the idea that mental illness labels can influence how people see themselves and how they expect others to see them. A 2025 paper reviewing existing research on self-labeling proposed that, once people begin to see themselves through the lens of a diagnosis, that label may influence perceived control, self-blame, and other factors linked to clinical outcomes. I have watched this happen to people I care about. Someone gets told, or tells themselves, that they are "the anxious one" or "the depressed one," and the label stops being a description of a season they're moving through. It becomes an identity they start organising their life around. They stop trying certain things because "that's not something I do, I get too anxious." They stop reaching for certain relationships because "I'm too much when I'm like this." The label, meant to explain a difficulty, quietly becomes a cage. That is precisely why I was so careful with her. I worried that the moment I said the word out loud, especially as her manager, it would stop being my observation and start becoming part of how she saw herself. I did not want to risk handing her a label she might spend years trying to climb out of. I wanted to be the person who gave her room to name it herself, in her own time, if she ever chose to name it at all. What I did instead of diagnosing her I asked her for a coffee, framed around nothing more specific than "I wanted to check in." I told her, honestly, that I'd noticed she seemed tired lately and that I wasn't asking her to explain anything, only that I wanted her to know I'd noticed. Then I stopped talking and let the silence sit there long enough for her to decide what to do with it. She didn't tell me everything that day. Nobody does. But something in the way I'd approached it, without a clipboard, without the word "depression," without treating this as a problem to be solved in one conversation, seemed to tell her the door was open rather than closing in on her. Over the following weeks, in pieces, she told me more. About the exhaustion that never lifted, no matter how much she slept. About feeling numb through things that used to make her happy. About the washroom being the only place she could let her face fall for a minute before putting it back together. We adjusted what we could. Lighter days when she needed them. No penalty for the washroom trips that had never actually been the problem. A quiet, standing invitation to talk, with no expectation attached to it. Gently, a suggestion that she speak to someone qualified to actually help her carry what she was carrying, because compassion from a manager is not treatment, and I never wanted her to mistake one for the other. Five quiet signs someone on your team might be struggling 1. The frequent disappearing act Regular, unexplained absences from the desk, whether to the washroom, the stairwell, or the car park, are sometimes exactly what they look like. Sometimes they are the only privacy a person has left in an eight-hour day. 2. A performance that feels a little too polished Someone who has become suspiciously unbothered by everything, who never seems to have a bad day, is not always thriving. Sometimes they have simply gotten very good at not letting it show. 3. Humour that arrives a beat too fast Jokes and reassurances that come slightly too quickly, before you've even finished asking how they are, can be a sign someone has a rehearsed answer ready because the honest one isn't available for public use. 4. Sudden, almost eerie efficiency A person who becomes unusually productive, taking on more, staying later, saying yes to everything, may be using work as the one place they still feel in control of anything. 5. Small physical tells Changes in appetite, sleep, energy, or appearance can be worth noticing, even when the person insists they're fine. What colleagues can actually do Do not lead with a diagnosis, even one you're fairly confident about. Naming someone's struggle for them, before they've named it themselves, risks handing them a label they didn't ask for and may not be ready to carry. Create small pockets of unstructured time. A coffee, a walk, staying five minutes after a meeting ends. Most of the moments that matter don't happen in scheduled one-to-one meetings. Ask twice. "How are you?" gets a reflexive answer. "How are you, really?" asked with genuine patience for silence afterward, sometimes gets a true one. Point toward real support rather than trying to become it yourself. Your job is to notice and to care, not to treat. Knowing where your organisation's support resources sit, and mentioning them without pressure, matters more than having the right words. Follow up more than once. A single conversation rarely changes anything on its own. Consistency is what tells someone the door is still open next week, and the week after that. The space between noticing and naming We are still in touch today, even though years have gone by, I have since moved to another country, and neither of us works at that company anymore. I don't know if she would call what she went through depression, high-functioning, or otherwise. I have never asked her to use that word, and I don't intend to. What I do know is that the version of that story where I opened the file for a Performance Improvement Plan instead of staying late that one evening is a version I think about more than I'd like to admit. That is the part nobody tells you about noticing someone properly: the bond it creates does not expire when the organization chart changes. Job titles end. Companies get left behind. Cities change. But she still messages me on hard days, and I still ask. Whatever else that evening cost either of us, it also built something that outlasted the workplace that prompted it. Somewhere between noticing that someone is struggling and deciding what to call it, there is a space most workplaces rush straight through. That space is where the actual care happens. Naming things too quickly, especially with a word as heavy as "depression," can close a door that a little patience would have kept open. Sometimes the most useful thing a colleague can offer isn't a diagnosis or a solution. It's simply proof that someone noticed and stayed close enough to keep noticing. If you are trying to navigate this in your own team, or wondering how to have these conversations without doing more harm than good, let's talk. Book a call with me, and together we'll look at what's really happening beneath the surface, for your team and for you as the person leading it. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Swati Mukherjee Swati Mukherjee, Relationship Coach & Corporate Trainer Swati Mukherjee is an ICF-certified Relationship Coach and Corporate Trainer based in London, working with couples on the edge of separation and workplaces where good people quietly become poor managers. After 15 years in HR and psychology watching the same story repeat in exit interviews, she noticed that people leave relationships, not organisations. That insight became Professional Proximity, her framework for rebuilding trust and communication before they break down completely, taught through Resilient Relationship. Her work continues in Proximity, her newsletter on the relational side of work, and her podcast, Relationship Ironies of the World We Live In.

Angel L. Torres Jr., author of Win Before They Arrive, released June 14th, 2026. is a practical and inspiring guide for hospitality professionals, leaders, and anyone passionate about service excellence. Drawing on over 25 years of experience in hospitality, team development, and coaching, Angel reveals how preparation, anticipation, and a championship mindset can transform guest experiences and build high-performing teams. This book offers actionable strategies, real-world insights, and motivating stories to help you elevate your service, empower your staff, and create winning moments, before your guests even walk through the door. “This isn’t just a book about providing great service, it’s about understanding the power of preparation and what truly sets exceptional teams apart,” said Torres. “I wanted to honor the dedication of those who go above and beyond, anticipating needs and creating unforgettable experiences before the first guest even arrives.” Set in the fast-paced world of hospitality, Win Before They Arrive follows Angel as he shares real-life stories and lessons learned from decades of leading teams and elevating guest experiences. Through practical strategies and inspiring examples, readers discover that true excellence begins with preparation, teamwork, and a genuine commitment to service. It's an essential playbook for hospitality leaders and a motivating guide that will empower teams to deliver unforgettable guest experiences. Win Before They Arrive is available in hardcover, paperback and eBook formats on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. For more resources, insights, and updates, visit here. About the author Angel L. Torres Jr. is a dynamic leader with over 25 years of combined experience in hospitality management, football coaching, and team development. Known for his passion, integrity, and empowering leadership style, Angel has worked with leading brands like Hilton, Marriott, and private resorts, transforming teams into high-performing champions both on and off the field. His unique approach blends the discipline of sports coaching with the art of exceptional guest service, inspiring others to anticipate needs and deliver memorable experiences. Angel is also a dedicated mentor, Special Olympics coach, proud father, and community advocate, committed to helping individuals and organizations reach their fullest potential. Media contact Ashley Bumbrey Media Relations Manager 540-419-1129 Email

Fowler Counseling, a Texas-based virtual counseling practice dedicated to making mental health education more accessible, has launched the Busy Bee Brain Toolkit, a therapist-created printable workbook available through the Fowler Counseling Shop here. Using an original hive-inspired framework, the Busy Bee Brain Toolkit helps teens and adults better understand emotional overwhelm while building emotional awareness, self-compassion, and practical coping strategies that can be applied in everyday life. "As a therapist with ADHD, I wanted to create a resource that helps people approach their minds with curiosity instead of criticism," said Lilyan Fowler, M.S., LPC-Associate, NCC, and founder of Fowler Counseling. "The Busy Bee Brain Toolkit encourages people to understand how their 'hive' works so they can learn to work with their brain instead of against it. I hope that this workbook helps people recognize when their hive becomes overwhelmed and gives them practical strategies to support their emotional well-being, rather than relying on willpower and caffeine just to get through the day." The Busy Bee Brain Toolkit combines guided reflection, emotional regulation activities, and personalized planning tools through an original hive-inspired framework that makes complex mental health concepts easier to understand and apply. Designed for teens and adults, the printable workbook can be used independently, alongside therapy, or as a supplemental resource for mental health professionals supporting clients. Rooted in neurodiversity-affirming, emotionally focused principles, the toolkit emphasizes self-understanding, emotional awareness, and practical coping strategies over self-judgment and perfectionism. Through engaging activities and compassionate guidance, users learn to recognize patterns of overwhelm, strengthen emotional resilience, and develop personalized strategies that support their unique needs. The Busy Bee Brain Toolkit is available now through the Fowler Counseling Shop, where visitors can learn more about the resource and purchase the printable digital workbook. About Fowler Counseling Fowler Counseling is a Texas-based virtual counseling practice founded by Lilyan Fowler, LPC-Associate, dedicated to providing accessible, neurodiversity-affirming mental health care. Specializing in working with teens and adults, Fowler Counseling helps clients navigate attachment, trauma, ADHD, LGBTQIA+ identity, anxiety, grief, and life transitions through evidence-informed, emotionally focused care. In addition to therapy, Fowler Counseling creates practical educational resources that empower individuals to understand themselves better, strengthen emotional resilience, and build meaningful, lasting change. Learn more here. Contact Lilyan Fowler, M.S., LPC-Associate, NCC Founder 945-238-0148 Email

Written by Genna Barbara Zimmel, Founder of Torus Solutions Genna Barbara Zimmel is an AI implementation strategist, Technical Project Manager, and founder of Torus Solutions, a company that builds intelligent AI systems, CRM automation, and conversational AI products. She is also the creator of Sibyl, an AI companion designed to enhance human self-understanding and relationships. There are some conversations most people never have, not because they do not matter, but because they are difficult to admit, even to ourselves. The attraction you cannot explain. The relationship you cannot let go of. The message you keep rereading. The loneliness that hides behind being “busy.” The fear that you are asking for too much or settling for too little. These are not questions that can always be answered with generic advice or ten-step relationship guides. They require reflection, curiosity, and honesty. That is why we built Sibyl, not as another AI chatbot, but as an AI companion designed to help people explore the emotional patterns, relationship dynamics, and internal conflicts that shape their lives without judgement or a filter. That is Sibyl’s job. More than a chatbot Sibyl does not pretend to be human. She is not a therapist, an AI girlfriend, or someone who is here to tell you what you want to hear. Instead, she helps you slow down, look beneath the surface, and understand what may be driving the situation you are experiencing. Every conversation begins with one question: “What is on your mind?” Whether you are navigating dating, long-term relationships, attachment, desire, communication, rejection, self-worth, or uncertainty, Sibyl looks beyond the immediate problem to explore the emotional patterns beneath it. People rarely struggle with the event itself. They struggle with what it means. Designed around emotional intelligence Every conversation with Sibyl follows the same philosophy. She observes before she interprets and looks for patterns before offering perspective. She challenges assumptions rather than reinforcing them and encourages curiosity instead of certainty. The goal is not to provide answers. It is to help you ask better questions because the conversations that change us are rarely the ones that give us certainty. They are the ones that help us see ourselves more clearly. Built with modern AI Behind every conversation is an evolving AI platform that combines carefully engineered prompts, contextual memory, behavioural design, and conversational architecture. Sibyl is not simply responding to messages. She is being designed to understand context, recognise recurring emotional patterns, maintain continuity across conversations, and create an experience that feels thoughtful rather than transactional. Every feature is guided by one simple belief: AI should help people understand themselves better, not replace genuine human connection. This is just the beginning Today marks the public launch of the Sibyl web app, and what you are seeing today is the foundation of a much larger vision. Over the coming months, we will continue expanding Sibyl with richer conversational memory, deeper contextual understanding, Founder Memberships, community experiences, and new capabilities that help people better understand themselves and the relationships that matter most. Alongside the product, we will also be documenting the entire journey publicly, from prompt engineering and AI architecture to product strategy, automation, memory systems, and what it really takes to build a modern AI companion from the ground up. Sibyl is not a finished product, though she is pretty damn good as she is. She is an evolving conversation, one that will continue to learn, improve, and grow with the people who choose to be part of it. If you have ever wished there were somewhere to untangle your thoughts without judgement, wanted to understand your relationships more deeply, or simply felt curious about what emotionally intelligent AI can become, we would love to meet you. Start your first conversation today here. Your first 10 messages are free. Follow me on LinkedIn and visit my website for more info! Read more from Genna Barbara Zimmel Genna Barbara Zimmel, Founder of Torus Solutions Genna Zimmel is the founder of Torus Solutions and creator of Sibyl, an AI companion built on the principle of Support Over Dependency. She designs and implements conversational AI systems, CRM automation, and multi-agent workflows for organizations navigating the next generation of AI adoption. Genna builds in public, documents the real work behind intelligent systems, and is currently completing formal training in Cloud Computing and Python for AI.

Written by Barbara Suigo, HR Consultant, Author & Independent Researcher in Organisational Behaviour Barbara Suigo is an Italian-French author, HR consultant, and independent researcher specialising in power dynamics and organisational behaviour. She is the author of five books and explores topics including charisma, organisational psychology, and the abuse of power in the workplace through articles, podcasts, and books. In organizations, something that appears difficult to explain can happen more often than we might think: a manager begins to create problems, the people around them notice, the signals become increasingly difficult to dismiss over time, and despite this, those with the power to intervene continue to support them. The most immediate explanation is that senior leaders simply do not know what is happening. Sometimes that is certainly the case, but not always, because there are situations in which the information reaches them, is heard, and yet fails to produce the change one would expect. This is the aspect I want to explore here. I have already written extensively about the behavior of toxic managers and the consequences they can produce. This time, I would like to shift the focus to the other side and try to understand what happens in the minds of those who protect them. Because recognizing that you are dealing with a bad manager can mean something far more difficult, especially for the person who chose them: recognizing that you were wrong. When a first impression becomes a conviction One possible starting point is the halo effect, described by psychologist Edward L. Thorndike as early as 1920. The principle is well known: a positive judgment about one characteristic tends to influence the overall judgment we form about a person, and it is something that can happen to any of us. In a company, this can carry considerable weight. A senior manager who is initially perceived as brilliant, reliable, or particularly effective does not simply receive a positive evaluation. A reputation gradually begins to form around them. Reputations have an interesting quality: once they have been established, they are not necessarily reconsidered every time new information appears. The issue, then, does not concern only the initial impression, but what happens afterward, when evidence begins to emerge that no longer fits that image. Admitting that we were wrong is harder than we think In the 1950s, American social psychologist Leon Festinger, then a professor at Stanford University and regarded as one of the most influential social psychologists of the twentieth century, developed the theory of cognitive dissonance. According to Festinger, when we are faced with beliefs or information that are incompatible with one another, we experience psychological tension that we tend, in one way or another, to reduce. In 1959, Festinger and fellow social psychologist James M. Carlsmith carried out an experiment that became a classic in the study of cognitive dissonance. Participants were assigned deliberately monotonous and tedious tasks. Some were then asked to convince the next participant that the experiment had actually been interesting and enjoyable. One group received 1 dollar for doing so, while another received 20 dollars, a considerable difference at the time. The most interesting result concerned those who had received only one dollar: afterward, they rated the activity as more enjoyable than those who had received twenty. The explanation proposed by the researchers was that 20 dollars provided sufficient external justification for saying something they did not believe, whereas a single dollar did not. This created greater dissonance between "the task was boring" and "I told someone else it was interesting." One way of reducing that tension was to alter, at least partly, their own attitude towards the experience. Now consider someone who has personally supported a manager's career for several years. They chose that person, backed them, and probably defended them through difficult moments, perhaps even presenting them as one of the strongest people in the organization. Then different information begins to emerge: some employees describe troubling incidents, while others question the way the manager leads the team. At that point, the information no longer concerns only the manager because it inevitably begins to involve the judgment of the person who selected them. Taking it fully seriously may require revisiting a decision in which a great deal has already been invested, perhaps on a personal level as well. This is precisely when we may begin, often without realizing it, to look for explanations that are less destabilizing. A conflict that initially appeared to reveal a management problem may be reinterpreted in light of the employee's personality, or questionable behavior may be treated as an isolated incident, not significant enough to alter the overall judgment formed over the years. In this way, the original conviction remains largely intact, while the new information is gradually adjusted until it becomes compatible with what was already believed. Another particularly interesting psychological mechanism comes into play here. In the 1990s, Ziva Kunda, a social psychologist and professor at the University of Waterloo, published a study that became a key reference in the field of motivated reasoning. Kunda showed that the way we reason is not always independent of the conclusion we would prefer to reach. When we have an interest in believing that a certain conclusion is true, we may become more receptive to the arguments that support it and more demanding towards the information that challenges it. This does not necessarily mean consciously distorting reality. We may continue to see ourselves as entirely rational because the conclusion we reach still has to appear justifiable to us. Applied to this case, motivated reasoning helps explain why someone who has supported a manager for years may not assess all the information concerning that person by the same standard. Information consistent with the positive judgment built over time may be accepted relatively easily, precisely because it confirms something already believed to be true. A negative report, by contrast, challenges that conviction and may be examined much more severely: greater attention is given to its reliability, to the circumstances in which the problem arose, or to the credibility of the person reporting it. This is exactly what makes the phenomenon so interesting: we can be entirely sincere while finding excellent reasons not to change our minds. Protecting a manager or protecting a decision? In the 1970s, organizational behavior scholar Barry Staw began studying a phenomenon that would become central to research on decision making: escalation of commitment. The concept describes the tendency to continue investing in a decision already made even when evidence begins to suggest that it should be reconsidered. The issue becomes even more interesting when the person deciding whether to continue is the same person who supported the original choice. In the years that followed, social psychologist Joel Brockner expanded the literature on escalation of commitment, focusing in part on the role of self-justification. Abandoning a decision in which we have invested does not simply mean giving up what we have built. It may also mean admitting that our initial judgment was wrong. Applied to managerial careers, this mechanism takes on particular significance. An important promotion rarely depends on one isolated decision. Over the years, a person may be selected for increasingly important roles, supported through successive career steps, and presented as deserving of further trust. Each advancement strengthens the previous one and at the same time, draws in the credibility of those who approved it. When serious concerns later emerge about that manager's behavior, removing them means more than replacing someone who is not working out. It may require acknowledging that a choice supported over time should have been questioned earlier. This is where escalation of commitment becomes particularly useful to our argument: continuing to defend the manager may become, at least in part, a way of continuing to defend the decision to believe in them. "They have always behaved perfectly well with me" There is a phrase that often appears when problematic behavior is reported about people who enjoy an excellent reputation: "It has never happened with me." The fact that someone behaves appropriately with a person who holds more power does not necessarily tell us how they behave with those who hold less. The unequal distribution of power should, in fact, make us cautious about generalizing from personal experience. A superior may know a very different version of the manager from the one known by that manager's employees, without either experience necessarily being false. If, however, the person responsible for judging the situation gives greater weight to their own direct experience, "I know them well," accounts coming from lower levels of the organization risk being treated as exceptions to the person they believe they know. This is how a reputation can become surprisingly resistant to evidence. When bad news travels up the hierarchy There is another issue to consider: negative information does not always circulate within an organization as easily as positive information. “In social psychology, this is known as the MUM effect, or keeping mum about unwanted messages.” It describes the reluctance to communicate bad news, particularly when doing so may have unpleasant consequences for the person delivering it. Later studies observed the same mechanism within organizational hierarchies, where the difference in power between the person holding the information and the person meant to receive it can influence how that information is communicated. This becomes especially relevant when the problem concerns a manager who already enjoys a strong reputation at senior levels. What employees experience every day may travel up the hierarchy in increasingly cautious language, reaching the top in a much more diluted form. The process can unfold without any deliberate attempt to conceal what is happening because the person delivering the bad news knows they are speaking about someone more powerful, perhaps someone supported by the very person to whom the problem must be reported. That alone may be enough to shape how the situation is described. A curious distance then begins to emerge: what is already regarded as an obvious problem at lower levels may appear far less serious as it moves upward through the hierarchy. If that softened information then clashes with a positive judgment built over years, we return to the motivated reasoning discussed earlier. It becomes easier to understand how the same manager can be perceived in radically different ways depending on the position from which they are observed. What if the problem also lies with the person who made the choice? This brings us to an issue that receives far less attention in discussions of toxic leadership. When an organization keeps someone in a position of power despite repeated problems, concentrating all attention on that manager's characteristics risks making us overlook an important part of the story because, sooner or later, we also need to examine those who continue to support them. When an organization protects a manager it has many reasons to question, it may not be protecting only that person. It may also be protecting the belief that choosing them was the right decision. This is probably one of the hardest aspects to recognize because it shifts the problem from the behavior of one individual to the organization's ability to revisit its own decisions. Identifying a problematic manager is relatively simple when we observe them from the outside. It becomes far more difficult when that person was selected, promoted, and supported by the very people now expected to judge them. Ultimately, the quality of an organization is not measured only by its ability to choose the right people. It is also measured by the freedom it preserves to recognize when a choice was wrong and to correct it before the most competent people are the ones who pay the price. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Barbara Suigo Barbara Suigo, HR Consultant, Author & Independent Researcher in Organisational Behaviour Barbara Suigo is an Italian-French author, HR consultant, and independent researcher specialising in power dynamics and organisational behaviour. She is the author of five books. Her work explores charisma, organisational psychology, manipulation, and the abuse of power in the workplace, making complex international research accessible through books, articles, interviews, and podcasts.