Stigma

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After the Unthinkable: Workplace Suicide Postvention, the First 48 Hours & Peer Support with Dr. John Gaal

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After the Unthinkable: Workplace Suicide Postvention, the First 48 Hours & Peer Support with Dr. John Gaal

When a suicide, overdose, or traumatic death happens in the workplace, the response in the first 48 hours can either stabilize the organization or unintentionally increase harm.

Yet most workplaces have no clear postvention plan.

In this Headspace for the Workplace conversation, Dr. John Gaal brings together lived experience, labor leadership, and research to explain why postvention is the missing leg of the three-legged stool of workplace mental health: prevention, intervention, and postvention.

Drawing from decades of workforce development, construction industry data, and peer-reviewed research, this episode explores:

  • What actually helps people in shock

  • Why EAPs are often underutilized in crisis

  • How trained peer supporters serve as “mental health first responders.”

  • Why partnerships — not silos — save lives


We talk about what leaders must do when the unthinkable happens.

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Trauma, Work, and the Courage to Stay Connected: Building a Trauma-Informed Workplace with Eli Embleton | Ep 69

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Trauma, Work, and the Courage to Stay Connected: Building a Trauma-Informed Workplace with Eli Embleton | Ep 69

We don’t always recognize how trauma shows up at work. Sometimes it is hiding in the shadows. The quiet withdrawal. The anger that simmers just below the surface. The exhaustion that no amount of sleep can fix.

In this moving and honest episode, Eli Embleton shares his story of how a life-threatening trauma in his family sent him down a path of depression, rage, and emotional disconnection. Work became his survival strategy, a place to avoid the pain, to push through, to appear “fine.” But under the surface, he believed he was a burden.

What saved him wasn’t just time or treatment; it was connection. Through storytelling, community, and purposeful work, Eli learned the art of what he calls “muscular vulnerability” -- the ability to share pain with strength. Today, as Dream Manager at Zachry Construction, Eli walks alongside others with similar stories, helping people reach instead of retreat.