Mind Meets Machine is a video podcast by Avik where mental health, AI, and business collide in the most human way. Real conversations with founders, therapists, doctors, and creators. Practical tools, clear insights, and zero fluff. Learn to think clearer, work smarter, and live better in a tech-driven world.
A job can end at 6 pm, but your body might still be working at midnight. That is the quiet cost we want to name, especially when the workplace wraps it in a friendly phrase like “we’re a family here.” We sit down with trauma-informed workplace coach and HR consultant Katie Hadiaris, founder of Work Is Work Is Not Family, to talk about why that message can tighten your chest, hijack your boundaries, and keep you emotionally on call for a company that can replace you faster than you can recover.
We get specific about what is actually happening under the surface: the difference between everyday workplace stress, true burnout, and what Katie calls “absorption,” a nervous system response that makes overworking feel like safety. We talk about protective behaviors high performers often carry, how trauma is defined by impact rather than the headline event, and why the office can trigger old patterns through neurosception, the brain’s nonstop safety-scanning process. If an email, a boss’s tone, or “stop by my office” flips a switch in your body, you are not being dramatic, you are being human.
Then we move into practical nervous system regulation and somatic tools you can use without blowing up your career: small ways to discharge activation, reset after tense moments, and stop bringing work stress home to your relationships, sleep, and health. We also address the hard truth about toxic workplace culture: if your job punishes basic wellbeing, that tells you something important about the environment.
If this conversation helps you name what you have been feeling, share it with a friend who is carrying work in their body, then subscribe and leave a review so more people can find it. What is one boundary you want to try this week?
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There is a phrase that a lot of us have heard at work, like which is usually said warmly, usually meant well, like we are a family here. And and it sounds very nice, right? And until you notice that you are the one staying late, carrying everyone's stress home, lying uh kind of awake, replying a meeting, slowly handing your whole nervous system over a kind of over to a place that would replace you in a day or two weeks, if it had to. And we don't talk enough about that quiet cost, right? The way a job can live inside your body long after you have locked
off. So hey day listeners, welcome back to another powerful episode of Mind Meets Machine. I'm your host, Avake, and today we are talking about something about I mean almost everyone listening has felt, but only few have language for it. The emotion, the emotional weight of work and what it actually takes to put it down. Right? Not by quitting, not by caring less, but by stopping the slow absorption of a job into the very center of who you are. Yeah. And today, and our guest, we have a very lovely guest, knows this from the inside out. Please welcome our guest, Katie Atiuaris. Welcome to the show.
SPEAKER_03
Thank you so much for having me. I'm so happy to be here.
SPEAKER_00
Amazing, amazing. So thank you so much, Katie, for joining us today. And dear listeners, before we delve deep into the discussion, I'd quickly love to introduce you to Katie. So she's a trauma-informed workplace coach and HR consultant, and the founder of Work is Work is Not Family, which is really, really relatable, right? And after leaving a toxic corporate environment herself, she builds a framework that builds nervous systems science with the real-world work strategy, uh, helping high performers protect their energy and their mental health, obviously, without blowing up their careers. So really, really excited personally, and I believe all of you are also excited about it. So, not much of time. Let's get started. I'm really loving it. I mean, this is something which uh is very
personal to me as well. And uh yeah, I mean, I want to start with the the name uh what you built because it's almost kind of confrontational and the very best way, like work is not family, and a lot of people hear that and feel something I'd say tightened because they have been told the opposite their whole careers, right? So let me ask it kind of very simple. Like, what is the thing, what is the thing like people most misunderstand about this? Like, we are a family here, this kind of idea, the the the part that quietly does the most the damage.
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, I mean, it is such an emotional phrase for a lot of people. Like, I can even see in your face, yeah, it makes it makes me want to like know more about your background and kind of like what this brings up for you because I can see that that it does resonate with you as well, and it and it does with a lot of people. And like the funny thing to me is like you said, like it's it brings up emotion and it kind of can even feel like conflict or that it's a bad thing. And I'm the more I I do this work and the more I talk to people, I'm like, why do we jump to the fact that this is a bad thing? Like, it's just a fact. Like, your work is not your family. Now, saying we're like a family here is different than saying this is my family. But even that, like when companies say like we're like a family here, I would love for us to start saying, well, what do you mean by that? What are we going to spend Christmas together? Are we going to have heart to hearts and hug it out when we hurt each other's feelings? Are you saying that I'm allowed to stay in this family for as long as I want, regardless of how I perform here? Is that what you're saying? And I think that's a part of it. Like it's just said so often in the world of work, and nobody stops and says, like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What do you even mean by that? And I think that's that's where I want us to start like thinking differently and just like having these conversations.
SPEAKER_00
Exactly. I mean, it's it's really uh the one, I mean, that part you have actually, I'd say, kind of touched it because this is this is the most important. Obviously, the line, the name that you have chosen, it is actually relates with a lot of people, like I I believe. And I believe people who are listening right now, they're also nodding their heads. Yes. So so so when someone finally sees through it, I mean, what is the first thing that tends to shift
Yeah, I mean, when you start to realize that work is not family, and and look, let's even back up a little bit more. When when we say family, most of the time we mean healthy family. So I certainly have people that comment and say, well, actually, my work is very much like a dysfunctional family. That's not what we're talking about. That's not what workplaces really mean. They don't mean we're a dysfunctional family here. They mean like we are a healthy family. And really, healthy families and healthy workplaces are are not the same dynamics. So that's really just even where we start is like, well, what do we, what is a healthy family dynamic? And what is a healthy workplace dynamic? Healthy families are built on unconditional love and support and emotionally supporting each other and you know, meeting each other's needs and caring about each other and sacrifice for the good of the unit. Like that's what happens in a lot of healthy families. Healthy workplaces, that's that's actually not that stuff doesn't make a healthy workplace. Healthy workplaces are built on very clear roles and responsibilities, very clear understanding of what the actual agreement is. Like when I think about work, work is an agreement. You are agreeing to do the things on your job description, and your employer is agreeing to pay you for doing those things.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
SPEAKER_03
Like that's actually what you're deciding. So clear roles and responsibilities. Everybody should know how they are being how their performance is being assessed, what are the consequences if they do not meet expectations? How are people going to be held accountable? Everybody should be treated, you know, fairly. That that's a very different dynamic than healthy workplaces. And so when you than healthy families, so when you really start to go like, whoa, these are two different things. Work is just a contract, it's an agreement that I made. I would do these things and they would pay me, and I've done them and they've paid me. Either party can end the contract at any time. Even just thinking about that can really start to separate your identity and your worth from the job that you do.
SPEAKER_00
I I really love it because there is something that you said is about kind of being belonging. Like, I mean, definitely, because it is not the that people are naive, it's it's longing to belong, which is real and good, definitely. And it's I mean, obviously, uh, it gets borrowed by a workplace that cannot actually return it, right? So I think uh definitely, I think a lot of people listening just now, or maybe they will be listening later as well, uh, they'll definitely feel something that they couldn't name before they get named. So also, if you get a bit deeper underneath the surface, you work at the nervous system, I mean on the nervous system and the workplace part, so which definitely uh most people never connect together. So and at the same time, we tend to think that work stress is a kind of scheduling problem, like a workload problem and other things. But what you said is like I mean, what you're pointing is uh kind of deep which is happening inside our body.
So, what is actually going on in that surface? Like when a job starts to take over someone's whole inner street, kind of the freedom.
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, I mean, I think you even said that started to talk about it when you say that we want the sense of belonging, right? Because this is the agreement, I do this, you pay me. Well, where does the sense of belonging come? Because we are humans and we are driven to belong and feel connected to other people. And then we go to work and we spend more time with our coworkers a lot of time than we do our actual family. And so we are humans at the same time navigating the system. That doesn't make work a family, but it can help us look and say, like, okay, well, what is going on inside of me? What do I really need? Am I longing for connection? Am I longing to belong to a group? And am I looking to my employer to meet that need versus looking other places in my life where I could meet that need? And, you know, back in the day, we used to have a lot more opportunities for connection and community before this digital world that we now live in. You know, there were a lot more communities that people were a part of. And now it's sort of transitioned, and so we mostly are just doing work. And so we've sort of put those expectations on our employer to meet these emotional needs. But the way I like to look at it from the nervous system level is kind of talking about the difference between stress, burnout, and absorption. So, stress, like you said, like we all kind of know what it's like to be stressed. It's really just the sense of like, there's just too much. There's too much to do, too much on your plate, too much responsibility, and there's just not enough time to do it. And you feel this like sense of urgency that you have to get everything done and you don't have time to do it. That creates stress. But if you take some of that work away, you take some of those responsibilities away, then some of the stress goes away. What happens is when that stress doesn't go away and we live in that sort of stressful state for a long time and it goes unmanaged, that can lead to burnout. That's when our bodies are like, all right, instead of having too much, now I don't have enough. Like, I just don't have capacity for this anymore. I am depleted. I have been living like this for too long. It is not sustainable. I just don't have it in me to do this anymore. I'm burnt out. I need a change. Also, a very real thing that happens to a lot of people. The work that I do at the nervous system level isn't really about stress or burnout, it's more about absorption. So when I say absorption, that is a nervous system response that your body does as a way to make you feel safe. So, for a lot of high performers, they learned in childhood to perform, to overachieve, to be responsible, to be competent, to be the problem solver, to people please, to not cause any problems, to follow rules, all of these things that people can learn in childhood to do, either because they weren't getting their needs met or their interpretation of what was happening to them caused them to figure out what they needed to do to feel safe. I call they're called protective behaviors. And so once we figure out what we need to do to feel safe as a child, we're gonna bring those behaviors with us into adulthood. And so we bring them with us into the world of work. And the workplace is going to love these behaviors. Like, why wouldn't they? They benefit from them. And so we end up getting rewarded for these behaviors. It starts to become a problem though, because we're not actually just doing these things based on strategy, because we're, you know, on we are in our thinking brain and we're doing them on purpose. It's more as a nervous system pattern because we are perceiving threats around us, the nervous system is shifting and it's triggering these responses. And then the workplace rewards them. So we can get caught in this cycle. And over time, that starts to take a toll on us because the body is really living in this dysregulated nervous system state. Your cortisol's going, your adrenaline's going, you're perceiving threats all the time. That's why people feel anxiety and they have upset stomachs, and it leads to all these physical manifestations in your body. And so just over time it starts to take a toll. And that is different than just stress or burnout.
mean, if you can just uh say more about like, was there a moment in your own story where you realized that your body had been carrying it whole time?
SPEAKER_03
Yes. So my story was that I was carrying trauma in my body for most of my life, as we all are, right? Like when we when I talk about trauma, like most people think of trauma as the car accident or the war or something like that. But trauma is not actually the event, it is the impact of that event on you. So it's when you experience a distressing situation that is difficult to cope with, and it leaves a wound in your nervous system. So I mean, I don't know about you, but I don't know anyone that has never been through a distressing situation that's been difficult to cope with. So I think it's a very common human experience to have trauma that we are all carrying around with us. And I was. What I didn't realize was that things could happen in my adult life in a professional environment that could trigger this old trauma and bring it up, and bring it up in a very real way in the middle of a workday. So that is what I have learned over time from my own experience and from working with other people. We all carry around this unhealed trauma. And the workplace is actually a really good place where we get triggered all the time, but we are also expected to meet these professional standards. And so it creates a lot of internal conflict in our body, and again, it comes out in these physical sensations.
SPEAKER_00
Exactly. Exactly. And like you said about this, uh I'm genuinely curious about one thing that uh like our everyday version or the employees' everyday version, not in a kind of dramatic way, but I mean the ordinary signs that happens. Like suppose if we say the Sunday night, right? Right, the email that wins a dinner or maybe uh discussion with a partner or family, right? The way someone's shoulders kind of climb up towards their ear, and the second the name appears on their screen. So for this kind of situation, like for the listeners who is not in that crisis but knows something's off, where does this absorption first show up in
Yeah, so the brain does this process called neurosception, where it is constantly scanning the environment 24-7, trying to figure out if you're safe or if you're in danger, right? So the brain's number one job is to keep us safe and away from pain. It's the only thing it cares about. It doesn't care if you're respected, it doesn't care if you're fulfilled, it doesn't care if you're, you know, living your passion. The brain doesn't care about anything else. It just wants you to be safe. And so it does that by constantly scanning the environment, being like, okay, what's going on around here that's going to tell me either this is a safe situation right now or there's a possible threat. And how it determines that is it scans all of your past lived experiences. So everything that you've ever been through in your life, like we can't keep all of those experiences in our conscious brain. It's way too many things. So it kind of gets filed away. And so the brain is comparing what's happening in the current moment to everything that you've ever gone through in your life to say, like, hey, are we safe or is there a threat here? And if it picks up on anything, even like a small flavoring of something that reminds it of something you went through in your past that was not safe for you, it needs to alert you. And so, like you said, the seeing the name on the email, getting a text from your boss or your boss saying, Hey, stop by my office, all of those little things, we're not actually in danger of dying. But our body goes, This reminds me of something that we went through in the past and it wasn't great for us. And so we need to prepare ourselves for that. And it does that through sending a signal through your nervous system, shifting your nervous system state. So if it shifts into what's called the sympathetic nervous system state, which is most what most people think of as fight or flight, that is really mobilizing you to either fight that threat or to get away, get away from it. And it does that through creating these physiological changes in your body. So your pupils dilate so you can see better. Your middle ear disengages so you can hear like lower level frequency sounds. Because if you think about it, if you were like in the jungle back in the day and there was ruffling in the woods, like you would need to tune everything else out and be able to listen to that. Your face doesn't have as much like movement, your voice is flatter, your heart beats faster so that blood goes to your extremities so that you can run faster. Your body does not put energy towards anything nonessential, including digesting your food. So that's why people get a nervous stomach. Like there's all of these physiological changes that are happening in your body because your neurosception picked up on a potential threat and it needs to mobilize the body to be able to protect itself. So when you even say like shoulders up, if you think of like bracing, you know, like the clenched jaws, the shoulders up, like the just tension, that's what you would do if somebody was actually going to like physically attack you. You would harden yourself. The problem is our bodies do that because of an email now, not because there's actually a lion chasing you in the jungle. And so that's the part where we have to start to learn about what's going on inside of us and go, oh, actually, this isn't even about what's happening in the current moment. The current moment is just reminding my body of something that I went through in the past that needs some attention and needs some healing. And that's the actual work to do.
SPEAKER_00
It's, I believe, that internal fear which gets connected with our past experiences that we had. And I mean, it's my thought. I mean, yeah. And if what do you think, Kevin?
SPEAKER_03
Can you say that again?
SPEAKER_00
I mean, uh, it is my thought process that these things happen because there is some fear inside us attached to those kind of situations that happened with us uh back.
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, I mean, fear is associated with a threat, you know. So if I were coaching you, I'd probably want to dig down a a little bit more there, like fear of what? Is it really fear?
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
SPEAKER_03
Or is it sadness? Is it disappointment? Is there something else that your body is trying to protect you from? Like that's the, you know, I don't know. That's the work that I do with people of, but it is about like there is something underneath the
surface that's coming up for you and triggering this response.
SPEAKER_00
So so in that exact moment, what would you say to the listeners, like who is facing these kind of situations?
SPEAKER_03
One small thing that they can I mean they can do to start giving themselves back to the work that I always start with people is things that you can do from a somatic per, you know, from a somatic standpoint. So somatic just means in the body. And so if you have this rush of energy where your body is really mobilizing you to fight or get away, then you need to release some of that energy. So that's what crying is, that's what screaming is, that's what, you know, even sighing is. Like there's all these things that our body does naturally to release energy and regulate itself. And that's the interesting thing is like in a workplace, somebody somewhere decided some of these things were okay for the workplace and some of them aren't. Like you're not supposed to cry at work. Okay, well, I've cried at work several times. I know a lot of people who cry at work at, you know, a lot, but that's not considered a professional standard. So you're not supposed to do that. And I even think about like sighing. Like if I were to go, that would be me releasing energy. How many times a day do you think it's okay to sigh in a workplace before you're gonna get feedback? What do you think?
SPEAKER_00
I don't It it it actually takes time. I mean for me if you if you tell me like uh I'll take some time, obviously some good amount of time to settle with that.
SPEAKER_03
So But it's interesting, right? Like if I sighed once a day, nobody would think anything of it. If I sighed twice a day, fine. Okay, but what about five times a day? What about 10 times a day? Like if I'm sighing 20 times a day, then people are gonna be like, what is her problem? Like, shh, you know what I mean? And so who decided what that number was? So there's just all of these like these norms, these cultural norms that come into the workplace. And in a workplace, those can actually hurt you. If that can be, if I'm sighing too much and the workplace wants to say, interpret that as me being negative or me complaining about my work, then that's going to negatively affect my job. So I just I don't I think it's fascinating and I I love that we're talking about it because it's the body's natural way of regulating itself. And sometimes work doesn't allow that. But what I help people do is like, okay, well, then let's figure out things you can do to release some of that energy which are appropriate for the workplace. So maybe that means excusing yourself and just going to an empty bathroom and silent screaming and just trying to release it that way. Maybe it's going for a quick walk outside. I have a lot of people that I have like shake, like after they have a meeting or something, they may need to just like shake it.
SPEAKER_00
Or even even you can use the dart as well. So just pull it down.
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, I love that. A lot of companies have dartboards now, so maybe that's something to do. You know, so there are things that we can do, and that's where I like to start with people is just some like physical things that we can do during the day that sends signals to our nervous system that we're safer than we thought, and we start to calm down a little bit.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I I said dart because I I did it. So it's uh it's a common space where we have the dart and other other things as well. So it's always, I mean, you cannot fight, right? So you have to need you need something. So dart is like not happening. So so you you pull out those things. So yeah.
SPEAKER_03
I mean well, again, like that's fascinating to me. Like, we decided you can take uh like metal spike in the workplace and throw it against the wall around your coworkers as hard as you can, and that's okay, but crying isn't.
Lovely. And so if you if you take an example here, like so suppose uh you're you're sitting with uh kind of very high performer who's kind of exhausted, but cannot use just walk away. For them, like what is the way through you would point then to it?
SPEAKER_03
So the work that I would start doing with them is getting in touch with those bodily signals because there is a difference between like just being annoyed or frustrated. Like we're always gonna have frustrations in the workplace. That is different than being emotionally activated. So, whatever. If you're just stressed because you have a project, but it's coming up, coming to an end soon, and then you feel fine, you're not really carrying it in your body. You're still being present at home with in your marriage or with your children or with your friends or your social groups, you're still participating in that. You don't have a hard time getting out of bed. Like, that's fine, you know. Like I don't, that's pr pretty normal. That's not, you know, I don't really feel any absorption there. But the work that I do with people and the high performers that I work with aren't usually experiencing that. They are having a lot of these physical symptoms. When they are home after work, they have a hard time disconnecting. They're probably still checking emails or working up until the middle of the night, waking up at two o'clock in the morning and making a note for themselves on their phone so that they don't forget to do something. Which also means that they're not as present with their actual family. They may be there physically, but emotionally they're some, they're somewhere else. And it takes so much of their energy that now they're not exercising as much as they want to. They're not, you know, eating as well as they want to. They're so tired on the weekends that between, you know, going to the kids' sports and making dinner and catching up on house chores, all they want to do is crash out and now they're just on TikTok for three hours a night because they need to just disconnect while also getting dopamine hits. Like if that's the life that you're living and you don't want to be living that way, then there's some, it's deeper than just stress or burnout. There, you're there's something else going on where you're absorbing all of this work stuff around you. And we need to figure out like what actually is coming up for you. What are these protective behaviors? Where do they come from? And then you can do that work to reconnect with yourself, and then you can figure out what you need to change.
SPEAKER_00
Exactly. Exactly. And in that sense, I mean I totally totally get you about this. I mean, it is it is really, really the relative, but also at the uh opposite side as well. So suppose the person who hears this and they think that I'd love to, but my workplace would punish me for it. So, I mean, what do they actually start then? I mean, where do they should start?
SPEAKER_03
Well, like work's not a family, right? Like that, and that's but that's what I'm saying. It's like if you are saying that this job is negatively affecting my mental health and my physical health and my relational health, and I'd like to make some positive changes
so that I can have greater well-being in my life, and your job is going to punish you for that, they don't really care about you. They don't care about you. And so I that's number one. So start thinking of it like that. Like, what are you sacrificing your own well-being for for a company that literally will punish you for taking care of yourself? Is that what you want to keep doing? So I think that's part of it. Um, but the other part is really just just really starting to think about like how you are, how you are showing up there and what you want to do. Now, when I say work is not a family, a lot of people assume that means stop caring, don't do a good job, quiet, quit, do the bare minimum. That's actually not what I believe at all. I believe you can start seeing work as a contract and as an agreement. You can do this inner work on yourself and you can learn to regulate yourself and you can stay effective and you can still be considered a good employee. But you're not going to get as emotionally activated. Like you don't have to be triggered all day at work to be a good employee. And so that's the difference. Like, I want people to still like their jobs and stay effective. And if you're staying effective, what would your employer have to be mad at you for? You know?
SPEAKER_00
Yeah. And also one more part is like, so suppose I'm in here's that nobody puts in the LinkedIn post, right? Kind of the backside. Like someone does the work, reclaims their energy, feels like themselves again, and then kind of quarter comes, a new quarter comes basically, or maybe a new manager uh arrives and plays, and then they are right back to that old pattern, like absorbing everything and all. So, how do you help them who is in that kind of situation, who who's holding their ground over a long haul? So when the when the workplace itself keeps pulling them back.
teaching them a framework that just becomes your new operating system. So, similar to like when you work with a nutritionist or a personal trainer, and they, you know, give you your macros, they give you your diet, they tell you what to do for a workout. That is not just to do with them for six weeks, and then you're gonna be healthy and you're never gonna have to do it again. Like the nervous system work that I teach people how to do for themselves is going to be something that you're going to have to do for the rest of your life. But here's the thing: like you will want to because it will make you feel better. So I have been doing what I call nervous system work for about three years now. Every single time I get triggered, every single time I feel this nervous system shift, I pause and I go, okay, what's going on here? What's coming up for me? Is this really about what's happening in front of me? Or if there is there something from my past that this is that this is reminding me of? And if there is, what is there that needs to be healed? And honestly, I have done so much healing in so many areas of my life. And all it does is it creates this path of living an aligned life, which feels good. I feel regulated, you know, like I just feel really good. So I love doing this work. So I mean, for your question, you you can't just, I mean, to do this and get yourself under control and then get a new boss and be like, okay, well, I'm not gonna do it anymore. Like that really wouldn't work. Now, at the same time, you may get a new boss who is completely abusive.
SPEAKER_01
True.
SPEAKER_03
Abusive bosses exist. There's a lot of them, you know, and so realizing that too, getting a new boss or or working for a toxic employer that's actually creating new trauma on top of this old trauma, sometimes that happens too. And the best choice for you may be to leave that company.
I would say. And I am really personally very feeling very happy. And I believe a lot of uh listeners are also feeling the same. So if listeners want to connect with you, what would be the great medium to connect?
SPEAKER_03
The best way to connect with me is just go to my website, which is workisnotfamily.com. And so I have all my stuff there. I talk about my one-on-one work that I do with my clients, but I do also offer a free training. So for these high performers who are really absorbing everything and bringing their work home with them, I offer a free weekly training called How to Leave Work at Work, where I get into like this into a lot more detail and go over some strategies of things that you can do to start feeling better immediately. So you can sign up for that on my website.
SPEAKER_00
Amazing. So, dear listeners, what I'll do is I'll put all the links and the details into the show notes for your easy reference. And definitely, thank you, Katie. I mean, it's it's it's it was needed actually, I'd say, uh, here. And uh for all of you who are listening right now, maybe you'll be listening later as well. So if your job has quietly become the very loudest thing in your body, then notice that calmly today. And you don't have to quit, you don't have to fix everything altogether this week. Just speak once, or maybe the small one, just a small moment uh for tomorrow to come back to yourself, breathe a real lunch, a closed laptop at the desert hour. And remember that the work will always ask for it. It will go and go and go on and on. Your life is a thing that is worth protecting. Your life is much more important than everything else, right? So, with this, hope this is your host awake, and this is my meets machine. We'll see you next time. Thank you so much.
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