top of page

In the Abyss: What Happens When You Don't Have Anyone at Work You Trust — and Why It's Even Harder When Race Is in the Room

Gallup has spent decades studying what makes employees engaged and productive at work. After surveying millions of workers across industries and countries, they landed on something deceptively simple: people do their best work when they know what is expected of them, have the resources to do it, are recognized for doing it well — and have a best friend at work.

That last one catches people off guard. A best friend? At work? In a professional setting? Yes. And it turns out it matters more than most leaders want to admit.

7×

More likely to be fully engaged. Employees who have a best friend at work are 7 times more likely to be fully engaged in their jobs — one of the most powerful predictors of performance across 100,000+ teams globally.

43%

More likely to report being recognized. Employees with a close workplace friend are 43% more likely to report having received praise or recognition in the past week — meaning connection and visibility travel together.


More productive, more innovative, and less likely to leave. The data is consistent across industries: belonging is not a soft outcome. It is a business outcome.

But here is the question Gallup does not ask loudly enough: What happens when you don't have someone at work you trust?

"Isolation. That is being in the abyss — alone — where it can be dark and lonely. And for some of us, that darkness has a specific name."

When Isolation Has a Racial Address

General workplace isolation is hard enough. But racial isolation — being the only one, or one of very few, in a space — carries a weight that the standard engagement research does not fully account for.

Studies find that racial isolation is strongly associated with heightened anxiety, hypervigilance, and depressive symptoms. It is not simply the discomfort of being outnumbered. It is the chronic, exhausting work of navigating environments that were not designed with your full humanity in mind. It is monitoring every room before you enter it. It is recalibrating your voice, your presence, your opinions — sometimes before you are even aware you are doing it. It is the emotional labor of wondering, after every meeting, whether that comment was about race, whether that look meant what you think it meant, whether you are being too sensitive or exactly sensitive enough.

That labor is real. And it costs more than anyone who has never done it can fully understand.

The research confirms what many Black women already know in their bodies: isolated employees are significantly more likely to leave their organizations. Not because they lack ambition. Not because they are not committed to the work. But because at some point, the cost of staying becomes higher than the cost of leaving. And that is a leadership failure — not a personal one.

So What Can You Do? Three Things — Starting Today.

I want to be honest with you: individual strategies are not a substitute for organizational change. The fact that we have to be this resourceful just to survive is itself evidence of the problem. And yet — here we are. So let's talk about what you can do right now, while we keep pushing for what should change.

1

Build Significant Community Outside Your Institution

If the belonging you need is not available inside your workplace, you have to build it elsewhere — and protect it fiercely. For me, that looks like my faith community, my sorority, my book club, and national communities of women of color like Hello 7 and Women & Words. These are not extras or hobbies. They are survival infrastructure. They are the spaces where I can put down the armor, be fully known, and remember who I am outside of any institution's definition of me. Find your people. Show up for them. Let them show up for you.

2

Call a Thing a Thing

It is important — essential, actually — to call racial stress, bias, discrimination, and oppression exactly what they are. Do not gaslight yourself. Do not tell yourself you are being too sensitive, or that they did not know any better, or that it was just locker room talk, or that they did not mean it that way. Whether or not it was intended — it was hurtful. It was mean. It was wrong. And you are allowed to name it. Naming it is not weakness. Naming it is how you stop internalizing harm that was never yours to carry. Call the thing a thing. Say it out loud. Write it down. Tell someone who will believe you. The truth of your experience does not require anyone else's validation to be real.

3

Get Them Off Your Nerves — Physically

Rest is resistance. I mean that literally. The Nap Ministry has been saying it for years, and the neuroscience agrees: you cannot pour from an empty vessel, and you cannot fight what you cannot see clearly. Chronic racial stress keeps your nervous system in a state of high alert — and a body running on threat response cannot think, create, or lead at its fullest capacity. Rest is not laziness. Sleep is not surrender. It is physiological maintenance for a nervous system that is working overtime. Nap so you can be woke enough to fight. Move your body. Breathe on purpose. And when someone asks why

you are not at the optional after-work event — you do not owe them an explanation.

A Word Before You Go

Isolation is not a joke. Feeling alone — truly alone — in spaces where you are supposed to belong is one of the heaviest things a person can carry. If you have been carrying it quietly, I want you to know: I see you. The research sees you. And the community of women who understand exactly what you are navigating is larger than you may know.

You were not built to survive indefinitely. You were built to lead. And there is a difference between those two things that we have been asked to forget.

"You cannot belong where you cannot be yourself. And you cannot be yourself where your identity is a liability. That is not your failure. That is a design flaw — and design flaws can be named, and addressed, and refused."

The work of moving from isolation to belonging is not easy. But it is possible. And you do not have to do it alone.


Ready for Support?

You Don't Have to Navigate Racial Isolation Alone

If this resonated — if you recognized yourself in these pages — I would love to connect. Whether you are an individual leader looking for community and strategy, or an organization trying to understand why your retention numbers keep telling the same story, I can help. Let's talk about what racial isolation is costing you, and what it could look like to lead from a grounded place instead.



© Dr. Stacey Pearson-Wharton · All rights reserved · drstaceyinspires.org

 
 
 

Comments

bottom of page