Who were you before?

Welcome to the first episode of Wild Child Summer, a 15-part series exploring how the social structures in our world (family, school, work, and media) have shaped the person you've become—and what parts of your authentic self may still be waiting beneath years of expectations, achievement, and adaptation.

In this episode, Kim explores the psychology of authenticity, identity, and belonging, asking why so many adults feel disconnected from the uninhibited, curious child they once were. Drawing on research from Michael Kernis, Brian Goldman, Susan Harter, John Bowlby, Dan McAdams, Carl Rogers, Robert Kegan, and Carl Jung, this conversation examines how our earliest relationships, family dynamics, and social environments quietly teach us which parts of ourselves are acceptable—and which are hidden away.

Rather than romanticizing childhood, this episode offers a thoughtful investigation into how personality develops, why adaptation is necessary for survival, and where adaptation can become self-abandonment. It invites listeners to begin an "archaeology of the self," uncovering the difference between living authentically and simply performing the version of ourselves that earned approval.

In this episode:

• Why childhood photos can evoke a surprising sense of loss
• The psychology of the "true self" and authenticity
• How attachment and belonging shape identity
• Why adaptation often becomes mistaken for personality
• The stories we tell ourselves—and how they define us
• The hidden cost of people-pleasing and performance
• Why becoming yourself may require subtraction rather than addition
• Three reflective questions to begin reconnecting with your authentic self

Reflection for the week:

Pay attention to the moments when you feel most like yourself—not when you're performing, achieving, or managing other people's expectations, but when you feel relaxed, present, and genuinely alive. Those moments may reveal more about who you are than any personality test ever could.

3 Questions to sit with:

This week's episode invites you to sit with three simple—but revealing—questions:

1. What did you naturally love to do as a child? Before it had to be useful, productive, or impressive, what genuinely captured your curiosity and imagination?
2. When did you first learn that part of you was "too much" or "not enough"? Can you remember a specific moment that taught you to edit, suppress, or change yourself to fit in?
3. What part of yourself has never gone away? What instinct, longing, or way of seeing the world has quietly stayed with you, even if you've spent years trying to ignore or outgrow it?

These questions aren't about finding definitive answers—they're an invitation to begin noticing the layers of conditioning that shape your identity and reconnecting with the parts of yourself that have always been there.

Next episode: When Did You Stop Playing? Exploring why play matters far beyond childhood—and what we lose when we leave it behind.

Welcome back to The We in Work. After six episodes exploring what it means to be seen, perform, belong, and feel safe, this bridge episode looks back at the questions that shaped Season One and introduces what's coming next: Wild Child Summer, a 15-episode limited series beginning June 17.

In This Episode

We revisit the central themes of Season One:

• What does it mean to be truly seen?
• How much of our social life is performance?
• What does vulnerability actually require?
• How does emotional labor shape our relationships and work?
• Why is loneliness rising despite unprecedented connectivity?
• What does it mean to feel safe?

Looking across all six episodes, a common thread emerges: the gap between our interior selves and the versions of ourselves we've learned to present to the world. Season One explored that friction and the costs of shrinking, performing, and adapting ourselves to fit external expectations.

Introducing: Wild Child Summer

This summer's series asks a different question:

What happens when we stop editing and embrace our inner wildness?

Drawing on research into adult play, creativity, positive emotion, and self-expression, Wild Child Summer explores what it means to take up more space, reconnect with curiosity, and live with greater authenticity—without abandoning thoughtfulness or care.

Across 15 episodes, we'll explore topics including:

• Who were you before you learned who you were supposed to be?
• When did you stop playing?
• What stories did you inherit?
• Why do we abandon ourselves?
• How did we learn self-doubt?
• What lives in swallowed words?
• Why are we afraid of being "too much"?
• What is the grief of an unlived self?
• What does authenticity actually mean?
• What does it mean to have permission to take up space?
• How do we come home to our body?
• What it means to be wild?

New This Season: The Pod Journal Club

We're introducing the Pod Journal Club—a simple way to turn listening into conversation.

Gather a few friends, colleagues, family members, or thoughtful strangers. Listen to an episode together, discuss the questions it raises, and explore how the ideas connect to your own lives. The goal isn't agreement—it's deeper conversation and shared reflection.

The Wild Child Summer Workbook

To accompany the series, we've created a digital workbook featuring:

• Reflective journal prompts for every episode
• Creative, hands-on activities
• Small rituals designed to carry each episode's question into daily life
• Discussion prompts for Pod Journal Club gatherings

The workbook is designed for both group participation and solo reflection.

Key Takeaway

Season One helped us name the friction between how the world works and how humans actually think, feel, and relate. Wild Child Summer asks what comes next.

Not a roadmap. Not a prescription.

An invitation to explore the parts of yourself that have been waiting patiently beneath performance, compliance, and self-editing—and to see what becomes possible when they are finally given a little more room to breathe.

Wild Child Summer begins June 17. Until then, take care, stay true, and into the wild we go!

Welcome to Season Two of The We in Werk.

This season is called Wild Child Summer—a fifteen-episode exploration of the parts of ourselves that existed before expectations, performance, and social conditioning quietly shaped who we became.

Over the next fifteen episodes, we'll slow down and examine the forces that influence how we think, feel, work, relate, and move through the world. Together, we'll explore the tension between who we are and who we learned to be.

Drawing on psychology, neuroscience, sociology, philosophy, and lived experience, Wild Child Summer asks:

-Who were you before the world told you who to be?

- What beliefs, expectations, and systems shaped you along the way?

- Which parts of yourself were adapted for survival, belonging, or approval?

- And what might it look like to reconnect with the person underneath it all?

This season offers thoughtful research, honest reflection, and plenty of curiosity as we investigate the stories we've inherited and the identities we've constructed.

Because sometimes the most important journey isn't becoming someone new.

It's remembering who you've been all along.

In the Season 1 finale of We In Work, Kim explores the concept of safety as more than the absence of danger. Drawing on Polyvagal Theory, psychological safety research, and personal reflection, she examines how felt safety shapes our ability to connect, learn, create, and grow.

Key topics include:

• The difference between objective safety and felt safety.
• Dr. Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory and the role of the autonomic nervous system.
• Neuroception: how the body unconsciously scans for safety and threat.
• The impact of chronic unsafety, hypervigilance, and past experiences on present-day relationships.
• Co-regulation and the importance of supportive, predictable relationships.
• Psychological safety in the workplace, including the work of Amy Edmondson and Google’s Project Aristotle.
• Why meaningful growth requires both safety and vulnerability.
• Practical reflections on conducting a personal “safety inventory” and creating safety for others.

The episode concludes by tying together the season’s themes—being seen, vulnerability, emotional labor, isolation, and safety—and introduces the upcoming Wild Child Summer series.

Key Takeaways

• Safety is a biological state, not merely a rational decision.
• The nervous system requires felt safety for curiosity, creativity, and connection.
• Psychological safety enables honesty, learning, and better decision-making.
• Healing often occurs through repeated experiences of reliability, trust, and co-regulation.
• Growth requires balancing security with the willingness to take meaningful risks.
• Small, consistent actions build safety more effectively than grand gestures.

References:

Edmondson, A. C. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383.

Fromm, E. (1941). Escape from freedom. Farrar & Rinehart.

Google re: Work. (n.d.). Guide: Understand team effectiveness. Google. Retrieved June 13, 2026, from https://rework.withgoogle.com/guides/understanding-team-effectiveness

Porges, S. W. (2011). The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation. W. W. Norton & Company.

Porges, S. W. (2021). Polyvagal safety: Attachment, communication, self-regulation. W. W. Norton & Company.

Episode Summary:

Why do we feel isolated even when surrounded by people? In this episode, we explore the difference between being alone and feeling disconnected, the evolutionary roots of loneliness, and why modern life may be making meaningful connection harder to find. Drawing on neuroscience, psychology, and public health research, we examine isolation as both a personal experience and a societal challenge—and consider what it might be trying to tell us.

Key Topics

• Why isolation is more than simply being alone
• The evolutionary purpose of loneliness as a survival signal
• How modern technology can increase connection while reducing belonging
• The difference between social interaction and meaningful recognition
• Performance, vulnerability, and the hidden costs of hiding our authentic selves
• The health impacts of chronic loneliness and social disconnection
• The “loneliness loop” and how isolation can reinforce itself
• Why young adults report some of the highest levels of loneliness
• Adult friendships and the structural challenges of modern life
• Social media’s complex relationship with connection and belonging
• Isolation as a systemic issue, not just a personal one
• What isolation may reveal about our relationships, communities, and ourselves

Key Takeaway

Isolation is not simply the absence of people—it is the absence of meaningful connection. Rather than viewing loneliness as a personal failure, we can understand it as a deeply human signal that points toward unmet needs for belonging, authenticity, recognition, and connection.

What's Next

Next week's episode asks: What does it mean to feel safe? Not just physically safe, but safe in the nervous-system sense—the kind of safety that allows us to truly exhale.

Season 2 launches June 17: Wild Child Summer — a limited series exploring what it means to live more authentically, take up space in your own life, and stop performing for an audience that isn't paying as much attention as we think.

References

American Psychological Association. (2025). Stress in America™ 2025: Social connection and emotional support findings. American Psychological Association.

Cacioppo, J. T., & Patrick, W. (2008). Loneliness: Human nature and the need for social connection. W. W. Norton & Company.

Cacioppo, J. T., Hawkley, L. C., & Thisted, R. A. (2010). Perceived social isolation makes me sad [...]. Psychology and Aging, 25(2), 453–463.

English Longitudinal Study of Ageing. (n.d.). Research on social isolation and loneliness among older adults. University College London.

Gallup & Meta. (2022). The global state of social connections. Gallup.

Matthews, T., Danese, A., Caspi, A., Fisher, H. L., Goldman-Mellor, S., Kepa, A., Moffitt, T. E., Odgers, C. L., & Arseneault, L. (2019). Lonely young adults in modern Britain [...]. Psychological Medicine, 49(2), 268–277.

Murthy, V. H. (2023). Our epidemic of loneliness and isolation: The U.S. Surgeon General’s advisory [...]. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Surgeon General.

Spreng, R. N., Dimas, E., Mwilambwe-Tshilobo, L., Dagher, A., Koellinger, P., Nave, G., Ong, A., Kernbach, J. M., Wiecki, T. V., Ge, T., Li, Y., Holmes, A. J., Yeo, B. T. T., & Turner, G. R. (2020). The default network of the human brain is associated with perceived social isolation. Nature Communications, 11(1), Article 6393.

United Kingdom Government. (2018). A connected society: A strategy for tackling loneliness – Laying the foundations for change. Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport.

What Does It Mean to Perform Emotional Labour?

There’s a kind of exhaustion that rarely leaves visible evidence.

No one sees the effort it takes to monitor a room before speaking, soften criticism to protect someone else’s feelings, manage tensions, anticipate needs, smooth over conflict, or balance the emotional temperature of a workplace, family, or relationship.

In this episode of The We in Werk, we explore the concept of emotional labour: what it is, where the term came from, why it matters, and what it costs the people who perform it.

Drawing on the work of sociologist Arlie Hochschild, we trace the origins of emotional labour from service industries like aviation and customer service to its modern use in conversations about relationships, caregiving, domestic life, and gender expectations. Along the way, we examine research on burnout, emotional suppression, mental load, invisible labour, and the hidden emotional infrastructure that keeps organizations, families, and communities functioning.

We also ask some uncomfortable questions:

• Is all emotional management a form of labour?
• When does care become exploitation?
• What happens when emotional regulation is performed for survival rather than choice?
• And how much of our social stability depends on invisible work that goes largely unrecognized?

This conversation isn't about offering easy solutions. It's about making the invisible visible—and considering what changes when we finally acknowledge the emotional work happening all around us.

In This Episode

• The origins of the term emotional labour and the work of Arlie Hochschild
• Surface acting vs. deep acting: the psychology of emotional performance
• Why emotional labour is linked to burnout, stress, and emotional exhaustion
• The relationship between emotional labour, mental load, and invisible labour
• Gender expectations and the unequal distribution of emotional management
• The hidden emotional work performed in workplaces, families, and relationships
• Emotional labour as a survival strategy
• The connection between emotional labour and childhood adaptation
• Why acknowledgment can reduce burnout—even when workloads remain unchanged
• Individual responsibility versus systemic design

Key Takeaway

One of the reasons emotional labour is so exhausting is not simply the effort itself—it's the invisibility.

Research suggests that when emotional work is acknowledged and validated, people experience lower levels of burnout, even when the demands themselves remain unchanged.

Noticing emotional labour does not solve structural inequity. But recognition can transform the experience of carrying a burden alone.

Questions to Reflect On

• What emotional work do you perform so routinely that you no longer recognize it as work?
• Who in your life quietly manages the emotional temperature of the room?
• Where have care and obligation become difficult to distinguish?
• What systems in your workplace, family, or community depend on invisible emotional labour to function?

Books & Thinkers Mentioned

• The Managed Heart — Arlie Hochschild
• Nel Noddings and the Ethics of Care

Connect

If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who carries more emotional labour than anyone realizes.

And if you're enjoying The We in Werk, please consider following, rating, and reviewing the show. It helps more thoughtful humans find these conversations.

Vulnerability is often celebrated in theory and avoided in practice. In this episode, we explore why.

What does it actually mean to be vulnerable in a culture organized around performance, optimization, and emotional control? Why do humans crave intimacy while simultaneously fearing exposure? And what happens to individuals, relationships, and institutions when honesty becomes unsafe?

This conversation examines vulnerability not as confession or oversharing, but as exposure to uncertainty — the emotional risk that exists wherever something meaningful is at stake. Through psychology, neuroscience, organizational research, and cultural analysis, we explore the hidden relationship between vulnerability, shame, safety, belonging, performance, and dignity.

This episode also considers:

• Why vulnerability is biological, not just emotional
• The relationship between shame and connection
• How perfectionism, people-pleasing, and hyper-independence can become forms of emotional armor
• Why psychological safety matters in relationships and workplaces
• The difference between authenticity and performative disclosure
• How systems and environments shape our willingness to be honest
• Why vulnerability does not always lead to connection — but often leads to clarity

This is not an episode about “being more open.” It is an invitation to think more carefully about what humans need in order to feel safe enough to be real.

Key Themes

• Emotional risk and uncertainty
• Shame and belonging
• Psychological safety
• Nervous system responses to social threat
• Performance versus authenticity
• Emotional labor and self-protection
• Trauma and adaptive defenses
• Vulnerability in modern culture and online life
• Courage, dignity, and relational honesty

Questions Explored

• Why does vulnerability feel dangerous?
• What conditions make honesty possible?
• How do humans learn emotional self-protection?
• Can vulnerability exist without safety?
• What happens when we perform ourselves instead of living honestly?
• Is vulnerability always rewarded?

In this episode, Kim introduces the deeper intention behind We in Werk and explores performance through psychology, sociology, neuroscience, and medical science. From brain activation under observation to the long-term effects of chronic social evaluation, this episode reframes performance as a deeply human, relational, and biological experience.

Key Themes:

• Performance as social evaluation
• Stress and cortisol responses
• Brain systems involved in being seen
• Goffman’s dramaturgical framework
• Emotional labor and burnout
• Allostatic load and chronic stress
• Alignment vs. strain in performance

Reflection Questions:

• When do I feel most “on” or performative?
• Do I experience being seen as energizing or threatening?
• Where in my life do I have space to not perform?