AIBU to not discuss my life story at work?

[HangryBerd]

My work is conducting training which tells us that we need to share our life stories, disclose what makes us "us", be vulnerable, share our emotions. If we don't, we are told that we're being anti-inclusion. My colleagues and manager are therefore having a go at me for being too private.

I'm finding this really upsetting as I'll chat to anyone about many things but there are aspects that are very difficult to talk about. They're nothing to do with work and quite frankly nobody else's business.

AIBU to stand my ground?

What training has your management had in dealing with extreme trauma? They are on a sticky wicket if someone had a breakdown after this sort of prodding.

What a bunch of complete idiots.

I remember a training session where a much loved staff member who had just lost her husband attended and the trainer started asking really personal questions of the gathered team, and she had put us in an uncomfortable horseshoe circle so no desks to hide behind and when she started on our much loved team member she broke down in front of all her colleagues. There was honestly no need to probe people for the actual course. I'll never forget it. I had to tell her to pipe down with the probing questioning. Still angry about it.

I actually once worked with a Martin in IT 😃

He was ace though. He would have probably told them to fuck off and happily taken the disciplinary 🤣

OP YA(so)NBU! Utter wankery.

I had an employer like this too… trying to constantly force fun, cliquey, woke bullshit. Mandatory personality testing (seriously). I joined in maybe once a month with the social stuff just to make an effort even though I couldn’t stand my colleagues and my boss said she thought I was autistic because I didn’t want to socialise…

No love, I just don’t need a clinical diagnosis to think that you’re a cunt…

I walked out of that job soon after and it’s the best thing I ever did!

It's so intrusive. I'll never forget in my work as a Teaching Assistant I was playing a social skills game with a boy where you turn over cards asking personal questions (not a good idea as I found out). To encourage him to get involved I said I will go first and turned over a card asking about "something that recently upset me". My mum had just died. I just froze and sat there in silence and would you believe? This boy I was working with (very autistic, supposedly struggled to empathise) said to me quietly, " you don't have to answer".

The thing is, what can they do if you refuse to share information about your personal life? Or how you feel about certain things?

Sack you because you don’t want to speak about your personal life to colleagues?

It’s absolute madness. What happened to just doing the job you are paid to do?

That sounds dreadful and like they've misunderstood

My boss is part of an inclusivity training programme at the moment and I had to give some confidential feedback. I was asked about whether she was vulnerable and what they meant was in a situation where someone found something difficult because of who they were, how good was my boss at listening to hard stuff they may not have experienced and challenging their own reactions. In the context of being a leader at work only!

As an example if you are a man and your female direct report is struggling with some female health issue which is distressing her and impacting her at work, you feel uncomfortable but make yourself vulnerable to these feelings as you need to to be able to help her.

It is not to tell her about your septic pile so she knows you have a personal health thing too.

Probably a bad example but we were told absolutely that it was only about stuff which impacted on work behaviour.

Absolutely this.

It could be hugely triggering for the person concerned or for other people hearing the stories. Do they have qualified mental health workers on hand to deal with the fall out?

I have seen people literally break down in these kind of events but these were in controlled conditions with trained people on hand and everyone shared things on a voluntary basis. In your scenario, not a chance. Stick to your principles OP.

Incidentally I'm a bit of an oversharer but I'd hate this too. Anything you share should be voluntary and only with people you feel safe with.

Years ago staff member really got into mindfulness and even convinced management to pay for her training, and then have these group sessions.

I was the second person to be chosen because they didn’t know anything about me. I showed them some of my scars and said along the lines better these are on me than other people, downside of my personality disorders they are linked to serial killers. Fucking pisses me off that when I decide to take it out on colleagues because they are too bloody intrusive I will then be the stereotype of my childhood.

That was the end of the sessions as staff member realised they were out of their depth.

I had raised concerns beforehand that it could easily open a can of worms no one was prepared to hear. Management knew about my mh because I disclosed during the health part of the application and had a meeting with occupational health before I started, along with a couple of sessions over the years I was working there.

As an introvert I would find this absolute torture. Everything seems geared towards groups and the extrovert these days and attempting to turn us introverts into being “one of them” when in fact introversion is where we feel happy. This has nothing to do with inclusion and seems more to do with guidance received by the instigator at some half baked management team building workshop they’ve attended, more theoretical than realistic, that ignores peoples feelings about vulnerability and indeed the psychology behind why we create boundaries to protect our vulnerability.

I doubt you are the only one who feels unhappy with this proposed process. In your shoes I just wouldn’t go, perhaps writing a brief note beforehand explaining why in the most general way. Chances are you’ll not hear anything further, chances are the session will be a disaster and the idea will be quietly dropped.

It really is a minefield. Some people have to compartmentalise strongly in order to deal with what they have experienced in their lives. What kind of safety net is there for people who find this kind of disclosure deeply traumatising? What is there for collleagues who could in turn be traumatised by hearing others describe horrendous, painful events? It is absolutely playing with fire.

It would be so tempting to play up and say that I was gagged by the official secrets act or a NDA, but really the whole premise needs to be challenged and dropped.

Send them a link or print off this thread. Show them the downsides.

How will people be debriefed afterwards or will they shut people down if the issues start to be dark?

TWS triggers warning. Some examples of things I have come across directly or indirectly over my life.

Ask them how will they deal with it if someone talks about sexual/physical abuse as an adult/child?

If they witnessed the murder of one/both parents?

Someone talks about the heartbreak they have experienced ttc. And another talks about how hard it is being a parent and
they find it hard to stay in control.

Or their childhood friend was burnt and eventually died in a house fire?

Actually, I would suggest that you might find it triggering listening to other people talking about their trauma. So you can't attend at all, let alone go yourself.
I was subjected to this twattery 20 years ago. I suspect it was a bosses amateur psychologist mate.. he did an exercise about imagining your own funeral. I had not long buried my Dad far too young but had managed to hold myself together at work. Utter fuckers.

Nope, I don't do sharing at work.

I work with 3 of the biggest gossips in town. I know because they all "confide" each others secrets in me. So anything that is out there will be spread.

I work to make the money to pay for my private life. Then I go home and live it. Don't need to live it at work too, and would defend my right to privacy up to and including any constructive dismissal claim.

but we were told absolutely that it was only about stuff which impacted on work behaviour

Check if this is the case OP. Professional feedback can be good and may lead to improvement. See if you are comfortable with the answer but….

personally I was involved in this many many years ago through my workplace. Colleagues gave written feedback on what they thought about each other. I was new to the company and what I received was literally their first impressions. I found it very damaging to my self confidence and while we were supposedly given this feedback by a professional, I later found out this person was only qualified in HR and was by no means, qualified as a psychologist let alone an experienced one.

What she was doing was extremely dangerous and having colleagues critique each other was damaging beyond words. It lived with me for many years and when my confidence was particularly low, I would think of the words I had memorised and burn with shame and humiliation.

I would never participate in something like this again.

I particularly hate it when ill thought out initiatives like this are done in the name of promoting ‘diversity’.

If anyone in OPs workplace spent a minute thinking about what respecting diversity actually means, surely it means respecting the fact we are all different, and therefore something like the proposed sharing session is not for everyone. And the fact that not everyone will want to do it should be respected in the name of diversity.

But so often terms like diversity and EDI are just trotted out to mean ‘we are doing this fashionable new initiative and if you don’t like it you’re not a good culture fit for this organisation’. A truly diverse workplace would embrace introverts, non-sharers, etc. And, counterintuitively should also embrace those who don’t like diversity, because otherwise it’s not diverse it is?

Mandatory personality testing (seriously).

You can just manipulate those so you look like Hannibal Lecter.

Hah true 😂

what kind of company thinks this is a good idea 😵‍💫

If you are a different sex to your manager, raise a complaint of sexual harassment, that he is repeatedly asking for information about your personal life, your relationship (subtext: sexual) history and won't take no for an answer.

Actually thinking about it, it works fine if you are the same sex.

The best head teacher I ever had once advised me that if someone asks you something that’s none of their business, you are under no obligation to tell them the truth. It’s sound advice.
There’s an ignorant privilege built in to a lot of these conversations that ignores the pain that seemingly simple questions can cause for people who don’t have simple answers to them.

Perfect opportunity to regale them with your childhood as Princess Anastasia, no matter how incorrect it will be, just tell a famous BS story to get the point across of how stupid this trend is.

I think Domino's idea about making something up is a great idea. You could say something really outrageous/ridiculous. You could tell them you have weekly sex parties in your home dungeon, that would be an icebreaker.

If it were me, I would say loudly that nothing of any interest has ever happened to me. I've had a charmed, easy life with no trauma, and therefore nothing to tell.

Very true. My go-to method of not talking about myself is to get other people onto the subject of themselves, and this is usually not difficult. I've perfected the skill of being a good listener; I don't like people at work knowing all about my personal issues. Those are my business.

I could monologue on something I'm passionate about: perhaps a love of the great outdoors and spending time on the coast with my grandfather who taught me to recognise all the different birdsong. Something banal like that, that's probably of interest to no one other than me.

But part of me thinks it's important to take a stand on this encroaching intrusiveness, and that a hard 'NO' is more appropriate. The way people are pushing so hard on this kind of thing lately bothers me. I'm thinking of that quote from Orwell's 1984 - 'Nothing is your own, except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull'.

IME, problems at work can begin the moment you let someone see where you're vulnerable. And women, as ever, are at a particular disadvantage. Don't ever let them see where your weak spots are as they can be used against you (my organization pushes Occupational Health hard and it's been known to disadvantage the people it's professing to help. Some colleagues see OH as surveillance).

People are NOT entitled to intimate information about us simply because they ask for it.

Ask HR what risk assessment has been done; if it is policy and mandated for employees to engage; and if they could explain the data protection implications.

OP, this is way out of order for your job to pressure you like this. Way out of order and very inappropriate. I would strongly suggest you speak to HR and say that this could traumatise/re-traumatise people, and workplaces are not the place to do these things, the request is unprofessional and inappropriate, your private life should be left at the door, and you have no intention of making yourself vulnerable, you are a private person and you wish that to be respected.

This is something I absolutely hate as well. When colleagues are expecting a breakdown of what your weekends entails, why you booked annual leave, where you're going, who with, details about your partner and children.

I don't mind having a lighthearted laugh with colleagues but my personal life is MY personal life. It's so exhausting. Sometimes I wish I could work from home all 5 days!