Audrey Batterham, Counsellor and Community Educator

I'm available for affordable therapy!

Audrey Batterham, Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying), Toronto, ON, M5R | Psychology Today Audrey Batterham, Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying), Toronto, ON, M5R, (647) 578-7401, You are really good at helping people with their feelings and you work hard to make a difference in your circle of influence. When it comes to yourself, you over-function, intellectualize, space out, and avo...

https://www.psychologytoday.com/profile/732189

Audrey Batterham, Toronto, ON, M5R | Psychology Today Audrey Batterham, Toronto, ON, M5R, (647) 578-7401, You are really good at helping people with their feelings and you work hard to make a difference in your circle of influence. When it comes to yourself, you over-function, intellectualize, space out, and avoid your feelings. “I’m fine,” you t...

Walking home because of yet another TTC fiasco. Honestly I didn’t hate the fresh air and exercise and setting sun in my face.

Vacation is great but so is lying in your own bed on your return. 💯

A roundup of memes about work. 😂🤣

This is what I always say but of course Trevor Noah says it better. Life/life not work/life.

Trevor Noah explains why he's leaving 'The Daily Show' and debunks 'work-life balance' His perspective is spot on.

Can’t relate 😂😝

So I found out this interesting thing after going down a rabbit hole for my class. So there’s this researcher Zimbardo. He is famous for the Stanford Prison Experiment. This was a study of power; he assigned male students roles as prisoners and guards. He played the role of the warden. The behaviour of the “guards” became abusive very quickly, and the study had to be shut down after two weeks. Zimbardo has been accused of actually instructing “guards” to abuse ”prisoners.” He denies this. The study is very controversial but is sometimes credited still as a source of knowledge on power. Zimbardo has continued to teach and research and is now a well-regarded Professor Emeritus. He continued to study power and evil. The irony of abusing power to find out about how people abuse power is obvious and confusing.

But Zimbardo is not really what interests me. What interests me is that he had a graduate student named Rachel Maslach working with him on the project. Apparently it was she that raised the alarm about the ethics of the study and prompted the study to be stopped.

Maslach went on to focus on workplace stress and burnout in her career, and I haven’t yet found a journal article on burnout that doesn’t refer to her work. I can’t help but think that her experience of working under Zimbardo may be connected to her interest in workplace stress.

Was the Stanford prison experiment a stressful time in her career? Did it cause her moral injury to be an observer while young men devolved into abusers? What were the job requirements on this project, and what did they cost her? What were the professional consequences when she resisted the power of Zimbardo as the lead researcher? How do those earlier experiences continue to inform her work?

I imagine Maslach’s work on burnout is similarly personal to the work I’m doing. We have been harmed by institutional abuses of power, and probably what motivates us is the desire to prevent and heal the harm for others.

Maslach’s work is being added to the toolbox I use to help staff teams and individuals. Reach out if you want to know more about how the research could support your or your team’s healing journey.