According to research conducted by Aon, ‘83% of employees feel they are not heard ‘fairly or equally’ while just under half (46%) believe underrepresented voices are not effectively listened to. A further 60% believe their views and opinions are ignored in the workplace’.

There’s no doubt much of this is due to systemic and structural issues in work environments, but there’s a side to ‘not being heard’, the awareness of which is a vital first step to each individual’s ability to express themselves and be heard both at work and outside of it – at home, with family, friends and other social groups. Let's unpack this a little. Do you, for example:

·      Avoid potential conflict or disagreement?

·      Struggle to be assertive, speak up or step up?

·      Feel that what you have to say is inferior to others’ opinions, or

·      Have difficulty stating your needs or desires – asking for a well-earned promotion, for example?

Or is the case for you better described as speaking up and yet feeling you’re:

·      Not taken seriously?

·      Not listened to or

·      Not valued?

One high-achieving young client found standing up for herself and what she believed highly stressful in the face of irate, sometimes verbally aggressive clients and stakeholders. She came to work with me on the recommendation of her GP for seemingly unrelated issues she was experiencing, some physical, some emotional. You can read her story in her words here.

Why was this highly intelligent, motivated person unable to overcome her fears, stress and physical symptoms? Because we can’t think or work our way out of instinctive, survival responses. Sure, we can think ourselves into managing symptoms (breathing techniques, meditations, exercise, yoga etc.), but not resolving them.

This client’s symptoms were indicative of her childhood conditioning and the challenges posed by it, carried into her adult life. Once the issues were addressed in her subconscious mind, she was able to remain confident, calm and quietly assertive in situations which, in the past, would have been highly distressing. Even if we’re aware of our conditioning (and it’s often difficult to be objective about this because it feels like ‘us’ – our normal), unless we address it in the subconscious aspect of our mind, which also encapsulates our survival drive, we’re as good as helpless. If every part of our internal need for safety is screaming ‘NO! It’s not safe for me to be heard, stand out, be assertive. NO! It’s not safe for me to step up or express what I need or want!’ we will be beset by subconscious self-sabotage. Remember, indicates that our subconscious mind is estimated to be a million times more powerful than the conscious mind as an information processor.

Symptoms of this subconscious self-sabotage can look like the dot points above. The problem is not always with structures, people, and the environment around us. It’s so often an expression of what our subconscious believes and its resultant effort to protect us, or the subconscious creating what it believes to be the truth. If it believes as a result of your childhood experience,  ‘what I have to say doesn’t matter’, for example, well, you’ll struggle to be heard.

Too many people are stuck in this state with all its fallout – not expressing their potential, not fully contributing, leaving one workplace where they feel unheard or undervalued, to simply find themselves in the same situation somewhere else… If we want to be heard, our internal programming needs to align with this.

If you or your team need help, please get in touch to discuss one-to-one work, presentations, workshops or retreats to help people BE HEARD.

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