Episode 33
They Called Me "Difficult". Turns Out... I Was Right!
Team Difficult: Can I Get That on a T-Shirt?
Hi, I'm Lauren Howard. You can call me L2. Like other people do. And in this episode of "Different, Not Broken"...
You know that word you’ve heard muttered under their breath after a meeting, or the one you’ve seen tossed around as an insult every time you dared to challenge a Not-So-Great Idea™ at work? "Difficult."
It’s the golden badge awarded when you stand your ground, ask questions, or refuse to shrink yourself to fit someone else’s comfort zone.
Might as well print it on a shirt and wear it as a uniform. (Actually, that’s exactly what happened—and yes, the US trademark is real. Team Difficult is officially in session.)
In this episode, I'm sharing my thoughts on the culture of workplace competition, the myth of “just be agreeable and you’ll get ahead,” and how the word “difficult” is actually code for “please be smaller so I can feel bigger.”
If you’ve ever felt like you have to play the game—even when being “game” makes you miserable—or you’ve found yourself walking a fine line between champion and challenger, this episode is for you.
If you’ve ever been told you’re “too much”—too loud, too opinionated, too different—or found yourself shrinking so someone else didn’t feel threatened, “Different, Not Broken” is here to remind you: You are NOT difficult, even when they say you are.
You’re Team Difficult—and that’s something to celebrate.
Useful stuff
Stuff that helps you become awesome even if you're different: https://stan.store/elletwo
My grown up job: https://lbeehealth.com/
Timestamped summary
00:00 "Team Difficult Origins Explained"
03:24 Gender Bias in Workplace Communication
08:13 "Collaboration Over Competition"
12:07 "Christmas Trees Have Backs"
15:42 Burnout and Starting Over
19:02 "Self-Blame in Tough Situations"
20:42 Unsustainable Burnout Amid Life Challenges
24:10 "This Might Break Him"
Mentioned in this episode:
Build Your Better course
Build your better course - https://stan.store/elletwo/p/build-your-better
Transcript
There is this idea that women have to compete against each other to be
Speaker:successful. This idea of difficult wraps into this
Speaker:idea of competition. Fine, if that makes us
Speaker:difficult. I'm difficult. Let's start Team Difficult. All right, here
Speaker:we go. I'm going to pretend I'm pushing record, because that feels right. Okay, I'm
Speaker:pressing record. Boop. Hi, everybody.
Speaker:I'm Lauren Howard. Welcome to Different Not
Speaker:Broken, which is our podcast on exactly that. That there
Speaker:are a lot of people in this world walking around feel broken, and the reality
Speaker:is you're just different, and that's fine. If you've known of my
Speaker:existence for any period of time, you might be familiar with this
Speaker:thing that is on a lot of our shirts that is actually trademarked.
Speaker:By the way, I have a us trademark on this, which is something that I
Speaker:have not said out loud yet, but I did receive my us trademark on this
Speaker:and several other things. This one is Team Difficult,
Speaker:which came from something. This is going to shock you. This
Speaker:is going to shock you. It came from something stupid I said on the Internet,
Speaker:but it stuck. I know, I know. You don't believe
Speaker:that I would ever say anything stupid on the Internet.
Speaker:Apparently L2 said something stupid on the Internet, like
Speaker:jaw droppingly stupid. It's everywhere. Wow. What did they even say?
Speaker:As if that is not what my entire brand is built on or what I'm
Speaker:doing right this very minute. But we were having
Speaker:a conversation at one point, or I was responding to a conversation at one point
Speaker:about this kind of thing that gets hurled at women as, like, an invective
Speaker:where a woman doesn't just say, yes, sir,
Speaker:whatever you want, sir. And then all of a sudden, they're difficult. And
Speaker:so I started saying, fine, if that makes us difficult, I'm difficult.
Speaker:Let's start Team Difficult. And I put a hashtag on it, and I thought it
Speaker:was funny. It was really the reason I did it. And then people started calling
Speaker:themselves Team Difficult. Yes, we're Team Difficult. Stronger than the toughest
Speaker:storm. We rise, we fight, we transform
Speaker:together. Ever bold and putting it in their bios. And I was like, oh, well,
Speaker:this is a thing that is happening. So, of course, being me, I made shirts
Speaker:and I sent everybody shirts that say Team Difficult. Because of course I did. Because
Speaker:of course I did. And people stop me all the time and ask me about
Speaker:my Team Difficult shirt. So, like, what does that mean? It's usually women.
Speaker:And I'm like, oh, well, have you ever been called difficult at work? And they're
Speaker:like, oh, yes, I have. Almost universally. Absolutely. I
Speaker:have. And I was like, if they're going to call us difficult, we're going to
Speaker:be difficult. We were up in New Hampshire once, and I had dropped the dog
Speaker:off a daycare. Mind you, my children never went to daycare, but
Speaker:my dog went to daycare. Just if you want to know what the hierarchy of
Speaker:living things in our house is. Anyway, so I was driving back from
Speaker:dropping my dog off at daycare, and I, of course, had to stop at this
Speaker:gas station that has the crispiest Cokes. And
Speaker:I was wearing my Team Difficult shirt, and I walked up to this woman behind
Speaker:the counter, and she said, what's Team Difficult? And
Speaker:I explained this to her, and she looked at me, and she goes, oh, my
Speaker:God. Oh, my God. That happened to me at my last job. Somebody was stealing,
Speaker:and I told them that the person was stealing, and instead of
Speaker:listening to me, they told me I was being difficult. They fired
Speaker:me. They kept him, and now he's in jail. And I
Speaker:was like, are you in jail? And she was like, no, I just work at
Speaker:a gas station. And I was like, that sounds better than jail to me. Good
Speaker:for you. I'm proud of you. When I went to drop off the dog the
Speaker:next day, I stopped at the same gas station. I brought her a shirt and
Speaker:a mug that said team Difficult. And I was like, you're one of us, baby.
Speaker:She was like, this is so nice. And I was like, we're forever friends now.
Speaker:But anyway, I mean, it came from my own experience and feeling like if I
Speaker:said anything in this meeting or if I responded to the way that somebody responded,
Speaker:that they were going to think it was just me being a problem and not
Speaker:that there was an actual issue that they needed to resolve. And it got so
Speaker:bad that at one point, I was having a
Speaker:male colleague go share my ideas in
Speaker:meetings. I know you already have a stack of proposals, but these are the ones
Speaker:I think will move the needle. All right, let's hear him. Because they would accept
Speaker:it from him with no problem. But if it came from me or one of
Speaker:the other women on my team, it always represented conflict. Always.
Speaker:But if he brought it to them, they were fine with it. If we convinced
Speaker:our boss it was his idea that would work. I made myself
Speaker:so insanely small because I was so
Speaker:scared they were gonna hurl this word at me again. And I will never forget
Speaker:the first time I heard it in that context. I had a friend who I
Speaker:worked with. She was actually the person who got me hired. And our boss
Speaker:had come up with a spectacularly stupid
Speaker:idea. Like the kind of idea that could cost us clients and make us
Speaker:look so wildly unprofessional and unprepared.
Speaker:And we were talking about it, and I was like, well, let me just call
Speaker:him and tell him that this is a bad idea. And she was like, I
Speaker:don't know. I wouldn't do that. And I was like, why not? This is a
Speaker:bad idea. This is gonna cost us clients. And she goes, you might just have
Speaker:to let him do it. And I was like, but why would we do that?
Speaker:It's gonna cost us clients. And she goes, listen, they.
Speaker:They think you're difficult. It was like I had been stabbed in
Speaker:the heart. I had no idea what she could possibly be talking about,
Speaker:because in my estimation, all I had ever tried to do
Speaker:was make sure that they didn't do the stupid things like he wanted to do
Speaker:that was gonna create a massive problem. Somehow that got me
Speaker:branded as difficult. I went from being
Speaker:so secure in not so secure. It had taken me a while to get
Speaker:secure, but secure that they trusted my
Speaker:expertise. They knew that I knew what I was doing, that they had faith in
Speaker:me to worrying about every single
Speaker:word that came out of my mouth. I stopped speaking up in
Speaker:meetings. They made a couple of really, really bad hires that I just let them
Speaker:make that I normally would have said something about. One of
Speaker:them lasted, like, all of three weeks. And I remember one of my bosses
Speaker:saying, like, I can't believe you didn't call this one out during the hiring process.
Speaker:And I just was like, oh, I must have missed it. And I'm thinking, like,
Speaker:would you have listened? Of course I knew this person was going to suck. But
Speaker:you've hired other people who sucked. You've had lawsuits on your
Speaker:plate because of other people you hired who sucked that people told you
Speaker:not to hire. Now you're wondering why I didn't catch it. Of course
Speaker:I caught it. I'm not going to give you that information. You misuse it.
Speaker:So she said this to me, and first I was mad at her. She was
Speaker:not the person to be mad at, even though I
Speaker:think we both had a lot to learn about what was actually
Speaker:happening in that workplace. To this day, I think she still plays the
Speaker:game a whole lot more than I am capable of, and I have never been
Speaker:capable of it. Never. I can play it, but I'm miserable the
Speaker:whole time. She's not miserable when she plays the game. This idea of the
Speaker:difficult woman at work creates two kind of workplace Archetypes. And I think
Speaker:we are evolving beyond this in some environments, but in some environments
Speaker:not. There's like two women in the
Speaker:workplace. Two stereotypical women in the workplace. There's the one who shrinks to
Speaker:fit. She keeps her mouth shut and she stays out of trouble and she stays
Speaker:out of the middle of conflict and she doesn't speak up unless it's
Speaker:something that she's very confident in. And she just kind of lets things happen.
Speaker:She shrinks to fit. She makes herself small to fit the environment so that she's
Speaker:not disruptive, so that she doesn't get labeled something so that she can survive in
Speaker:that environment. And then there's the other side of
Speaker:the woman who like strikes to kill. This woman will
Speaker:eat anything in her path so that she can be
Speaker:considered one of the boys or have the same consideration that
Speaker:some men get in the workplace. And those seem
Speaker:like two very different things. And I think they're exactly the same. I
Speaker:think those are both survival mechanisms. Now, are
Speaker:some women really just awful to work for and with? I'm sure.
Speaker:But is so much of it probably learned behavior? Because
Speaker:so many of us were taught as we were coming up that there can't be
Speaker:two women in leadership. So you better eat everybody for
Speaker:dinner or you aren't going to succeed or you aren't going to get to progress.
Speaker:There is this idea that women have to compete against each other
Speaker:to be successful, to be individually successful.
Speaker:Competition is a myth that exists to stamp out community.
Speaker:Because community is a problem for them. If you and I support each other
Speaker:and have each other's backs and don't let them divide us.
Speaker:And this is more than just in workplaces. This is in kind of every
Speaker:fraction of humanity. But if we let them, let us believe
Speaker:competition is the only way to succeed, that we
Speaker:have to compete against each other and be better than each other, then
Speaker:we'll never have community. So our ability to grow is
Speaker:greatly stamped out. It's greatly
Speaker:reduced. Whereas if we stop looking at each other
Speaker:as competition and look at each other as a resource
Speaker:and start lifting as we climb, then we aren't looking
Speaker:at one leadership position for five women. We're looking
Speaker:at replacing the whole board with women or women and non binary individuals
Speaker:and non white men and whatever of people who have
Speaker:not historically been there. This idea of difficult
Speaker:wraps into this idea of competition. It's all
Speaker:the same thing. Make you small, make you quiet,
Speaker:make you distrustful of the people in your environment.
Speaker:So that you don't form bonds strong enough that they can't break
Speaker:them. That's what they're designed to do.
Speaker:I support the woman who strikes to kill just as
Speaker:much as I support the woman who shrinks to fit because it comes from the
Speaker:same thing. One of them seems more harmful.
Speaker:One of them is like aggressively more harmful. But they are both the
Speaker:same thing. They keep other women small either by setting the example
Speaker:or shutting them up. And I say women in this environment, but that is
Speaker:really. It's not unique to women. That is my experience. It is not unique to
Speaker:women or it is unique to everybody who is not a 45 year
Speaker:old white male who the workplace was built for. You are
Speaker:not difficult. You are not a
Speaker:problem. You are not too much. They're not enough.
Speaker:You are not difficult. You are team difficult. And those are
Speaker:two separate things. Last weekend my husband
Speaker:and I did something we don't do very often.
Speaker:There's this club in town and we are very old
Speaker:people. So even saying those
Speaker:words in any order is just terrifying. But it's one of those
Speaker:clubs where there's like a long
Speaker:line to get in and it's members only. Like you have to have like a.
Speaker:I don't know, there's like some. I don't even actually know how that works. People
Speaker:actually ask us if we're members all the time, which is kind of weird. I
Speaker:don't know why it comes up so often. I also can't believe that we can
Speaker:say we're members. But that's. That's like a whole nother thing that came
Speaker:from like a whole nother thing. But like there's a line to get in.
Speaker:You have to go at specific times. It's a
Speaker:little hit or miss. It's even wild to say this.
Speaker:People go there literally to get drugs.
Speaker:There's actually a line to get out, which is also weird.
Speaker:Especially if you're like me and don't like being around a lot of people.
Speaker:They do have like specials and stuff inside, which I sometimes have
Speaker:to get acclimated to. We certainly don't go on weekends very often.
Speaker:I feel like he probably goes more often than I do. Like a lot of
Speaker:our life is built around this. And that is
Speaker:very midlife of us. Like very midlife of
Speaker:us. Like exclusive club built around this. Don't go on
Speaker:weekends anyway. It's Costco. And we
Speaker:went last weekend and
Speaker:I regretted it so much
Speaker:that I was literally willing to take an entire day off this
Speaker:week if we needed something. So I would never have
Speaker:to go on a weekend again to be Clear. That is the
Speaker:only club that you are catching my husband and I in 100%.
Speaker:My husband was a much cooler person in his youth than I was at
Speaker:the same age. Even though, to be clear, he is ancient
Speaker:compared to me. He is like 150 years older than me. Not
Speaker:exactly, but close. When he was enjoying his
Speaker:misbegone youth, I was in middle school.
Speaker:There's a story that his family tells about a time
Speaker:that there was this giant family disagreement over a Christmas tree. Because
Speaker:that's apparently something the gentiles argue about. I don't fucking know.
Speaker:We're getting to the part of the year where I have to have the conversation
Speaker:with fellow Jews about the fact that Christmas trees have backs.
Speaker:To this day, I've been married to a Gentile for 15
Speaker:years, and I still cannot wrap my brain around the idea that Christmas trees
Speaker:have backs. That cannot be true. It can't be
Speaker:true. Anyway, I forgot where that was going
Speaker:because I got distracted by the world's most confusing
Speaker:principle, which is that Christmas trees have backs.
Speaker:But I was very willing to take, like, an entire
Speaker:day off work if we needed to go to Costco because
Speaker:there wasn't parking. The parking lot was
Speaker:full. Not like we had to park in the back, which
Speaker:is fine because we park in the back anyway. Because if anybody touches my husband's
Speaker:car, I have to bail him out of jail, and I don't want to do
Speaker:that. So we park in the back. That's fine. There was no parking
Speaker:in the back. There was an overflow lot.
Speaker:That had no parking. So, listen, I
Speaker:get that they have a $50 hot dog and
Speaker:soda. I am
Speaker:deeply, deeply appreciative of an inexpensive hot dog
Speaker:and soda. Deeply appreciative of it.
Speaker:But I should not have to park in an overflow lot
Speaker:to go to Costco. And that, to me, seems like
Speaker:a strong indication that you need another
Speaker:Costco. And to be clear,
Speaker:Sam's is not Costco. Sam's will do in a pinch,
Speaker:but Sam's is not Costco. I think if you wanted to really,
Speaker:really make me, like, endlessly happy for at
Speaker:least a couple hours, because that's about as much
Speaker:unabashed happiness you're probably gonna get outta me. I am Jewish, by the way. But
Speaker:that's. It's just not. We're not effusive people, but if you could clear out a
Speaker:Costco and just have it be me walking
Speaker:around with the little snack ladies and not be
Speaker:judged for eating all the samples as I walk around my
Speaker:very Quiet, very giant Costco. That would make
Speaker:me really happy. So I'm just saying those are my goals.
Speaker:Is enough Costcos that I don't have to park in the
Speaker:overflow, overflow lot or a completely empty Costco
Speaker:just for me with like a parade of snack ladies.
Speaker:Snack men are fine too. Snack. They's are fine. I'll take them
Speaker:all the she's, they's gays of the snacks. I'm
Speaker:here for them. Bring me all the snacks on
Speaker:little toothpicks. Anyway, that is the only club that you are going to catch. My
Speaker:husband and I ate and even that is becoming too raucous
Speaker:for me in my old age. It's too much.
Speaker:So this is kind of a new experience. But I was at an event a
Speaker:couple weeks ago and somebody came up to me with basically a live small
Speaker:talk. I had just gotten done speaking at the conference
Speaker:and she cornered me. Seems aggressive. She was very nice.
Speaker:She was not aggressive at all. But she found me, I guess is a better
Speaker:way to put it afterward. And she was like, I follow you on LinkedIn and
Speaker:I need to ask you a question. And I was like, go for it. And
Speaker:so she basically looked at me in the face and was like, what do
Speaker:I do if I'm buried under burnout and there's no way for me to get
Speaker:out of it? I was like, that is a big
Speaker:question, but a really good question.
Speaker:She basically asked, you know, what does she do
Speaker:to get herself back after being in burnout for so long? That's really what
Speaker:she was asking. So we started talking
Speaker:and she did a thing that a lot of women do when I talk to
Speaker:them. She basically recounted a
Speaker:horrific several years, including
Speaker:having a new child under really horrible circumstances, where she got personally
Speaker:ill, where she had long term complications from it being the breadwinner for her
Speaker:family, having some interpersonal issues within her family that are a problem
Speaker:and a challenge. I mean, the things that she recounted
Speaker:were in no way shocking because I hear about them all the time,
Speaker:but they certainly weren't okay.
Speaker:She works at a job that she really likes, but it's a small company
Speaker:and so they can't give her all the benefits that she would have at a
Speaker:bigger company, but she's worked at bigger companies before and that was really awful too.
Speaker:And she has a partner, but she's the breadwinner and her
Speaker:partner hasn't been able to move up in his job and. And she
Speaker:still does the lion's share of the stuff at home, even though she has a
Speaker:partner who has more free time than she does, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
Speaker:blah. And she was like, well, how do I get through it?
Speaker:And I was like, I mean, is anything going to change?
Speaker:And this is not an unreasonable question. She was asking,
Speaker:how can I make this life that I'm living more
Speaker:manageable without changing anything? Not because she doesn't want to change anything,
Speaker:but, like, what are her options? She doesn't have that many options in front
Speaker:of her. I don't want to set an expectation that that was an unreasonable
Speaker:question. She should want better. She is buried in a whole lot of shit.
Speaker:But also this expectation
Speaker:that there's something that she can change to
Speaker:undo all of the things around her. That's not how
Speaker:it works. And so I said to her, if you weren't
Speaker:burned out, I would be really concerned.
Speaker:That is an unsustainable amount of stuff that is piled on you,
Speaker:and you're asking how to not be burned out instead of how to get more
Speaker:support. I was like, do you have any help?
Speaker:And she has a partner who is helpful. And first off, her partner shouldn't
Speaker:be helpful to her. Her partner should be doing his fair share. I'm not saying
Speaker:that he's not, but I'm saying that language and of itself, and you see how
Speaker:quickly IG faulted to it, that language is harmful in and of itself.
Speaker:That's not the babysitter. That's her partner. That's the
Speaker:person who is responsible for 50% of their burden
Speaker:and depending on the time, sometimes more. And
Speaker:so, you know, she rattles off the list of support, quote, unquote, support that she
Speaker:has, but it's clear that she either isn't maximizing it, doesn't feel like she can
Speaker:maximize it, or it's support in name only.
Speaker:She makes a bunch of excuses for the job. You know, we don't have a
Speaker:lot of funding, we don't have a lot of money. And so they can't give
Speaker:me more support at work. They can't promote me, they can't pay me more. They
Speaker:can't do this so that I can afford more at home. They can't, they can't,
Speaker:they can't, they can't, they can't. And all of that boils down to
Speaker:what does she have to do to fix it. She's responsible
Speaker:for fixing all of these things where people around her are just abjectly failing
Speaker:her. I literally asked her, I was like, so who are you failing? And she
Speaker:was like, no one that I know of. And I was like, Bingo. What's
Speaker:the point? So I didn't really have any
Speaker:super advice for her except to say,
Speaker:you are taking on a whole lot of onus for being in a really shit
Speaker:situation and not expecting
Speaker:anybody else to do anything to help.
Speaker:You're not asking more from your job, you're not asking more from your partner, you're
Speaker:not asking for support from your community, you're not trying to build a bigger community,
Speaker:you're not looking for additional childcare, you're not, you're not, you're not that. And again,
Speaker:that's not putting the blame on her for those things. She's putting the blame
Speaker:on herself that she can't make this completely untenable situation work.
Speaker:It's untenable for a reason.
Speaker:She looked at me and she said, sorry, are you basically saying like that this
Speaker:is the way it's supposed to be? And I was like, no, it's definitely not
Speaker:the way it's supposed to be, but it's that way for a reason.
Speaker:You're not gonna wake up one day and be able to juggle 47 things
Speaker:better. That's not the way we were supposed to exist.
Speaker:Reminder that this person is the primary breadwinner
Speaker:and primary caretaker for a human
Speaker:with all of the responsibilities that she has to take care of outside of work.
Speaker:She also works a more than full time job. She also is not
Speaker:probably compensated as she should be for that full time
Speaker:job. And when I say compensation, I don't mean necessarily her take
Speaker:home pay. What support does she have through work? What benefits does she have
Speaker:through work? Are there caregivers, supports, Are there additional time off? Does she
Speaker:have the ability to take paid time off? My recollection is that she said she
Speaker:wasn't even paid for maternity leave, so like going out on another leave is not
Speaker:an option. And so not only does she have this
Speaker:historic backlog of deeply difficult things that happened,
Speaker:but now she's trying to exist in a more day to day world,
Speaker:carrying that where she has done no recovery
Speaker:from that or insufficient recovery from that, and
Speaker:piling more on top of it as she tries to exist through this very difficult
Speaker:situation currently. And the only answer I had was
Speaker:this isn't sustainable. You're looking for you to
Speaker:fix a situation that is not sustainable in the
Speaker:current incarnation. It's not fixable unless you're just going to keep existing in
Speaker:it. And that's not even fixing it, that's just muddling along.
Speaker:Burnout is often related to a set of circumstances
Speaker:that are completely out of our Control, meaning
Speaker:a work situation that's really bad, a personal situation
Speaker:that's really bad, a caregiver situation that's really bad, sometimes many of
Speaker:those things all at once. And
Speaker:yes, we should turn inward to see if there's things that we can change to
Speaker:fix them. But if you look at me
Speaker:and say I need to take time off, but I don't
Speaker:have that ability through my work because it's a small startup and we don't get
Speaker:that benefit, that's not on you.
Speaker:That's a bad situation, that's a shitty situation that you were put in by your
Speaker:employer. And I get it. I run a small startup, I know how hard it
Speaker:can be. But looking for a
Speaker:solution to a whole bunch of external things
Speaker:internally. First off, that's the thing that a lot of women and femmes do, where
Speaker:we think that we're the problem when we've really been thrown into the deep end
Speaker:of just a terribly shitty situation. She was nothing
Speaker:that she said to me sounded like she had control over any
Speaker:of the situations that were burning her out. And the first thing to
Speaker:do was recognize that was the reality.
Speaker:Burnout is a reasonable response to the sheer
Speaker:number of stressors that were punching her in the head daily. And to stop
Speaker:feeling guilty for not being able to do it all. None of
Speaker:us are superhuman. And also, there's no medal.
Speaker:You don't get a medal for shouldering the burden of everything and not
Speaker:asking for help, and worse, not getting help if you
Speaker:do ask. The only victory that you get at the end of that is
Speaker:feeling disconnected from your whole life because it feels like everybody is taking
Speaker:from you and no one's putting back in. It's just something to keep in
Speaker:mind as you are working through burnout is that if you are put in
Speaker:a bunch of really bad situations, sometimes the
Speaker:solution for burnout does not come from inside. It comes from
Speaker:fixing a bunch of things that are happening externally, getting out of
Speaker:situations, changing living arrangements, getting additional help,
Speaker:finding a new job, whatever. Because
Speaker:you are in an environment that if you weren't burned out, I would be
Speaker:concerned. Thanks for being here, guys. Have a good day. Love
Speaker:you. Mean it.
Speaker:I have been waiting for that reaction since this occurred to
Speaker:me last night. I loved
Speaker:it. That is great. I was like, this one might actually break him.
Speaker:This one might actually break him.
