How to check on someone without making them tell the story again
This post is for HR leaders and managers, the people who find out someone on their team is going through something hard and then have to decide what to say. If you don't manage anyone, keep reading anyway. Everything here works just as well with a friend or a family member as it does across a desk.
I've told the story of my assault at home that night, to a nurse, to a detective at the hospital and another at the police station, to a prosecutor, to a lawyer, and in a family meeting. After that came extended family, dozens of friends, and dozens of coworkers.
A handful of those conversations were required. The rest were people I chose. Very few co-workers asked me anything that made me relive it; most of them were in shock too. The hardest part was everything that came before each conversation.
What's the difference between a well-being conversation and a retraumatizing one?
A well-being conversation asks how someone is doing now and lets them decide how much to say. A retraumatizing one asks them to go back through what happened, usually because someone else needs the details.
When I talk about this in interviews, I describe conversations of well-being as the ones that come from a place of love. Retraumatization is the police report, the forensic exam, the prosecutor, and every other step of a legal process where you tell the story over and over to people who need it for their part of the job. A case can't move forward without some of that.
Most of the people in a survivor's life never need the details, though, and that includes the people they work with. A manager can't do anything with them, and HR rarely needs them either. What the person at work needs is harder to see, because a lot of it happens before anyone says a word.
Why can telling people hurt even when nobody asks the wrong question?
Telling people is work, and the person carrying it does almost all of it alone: deciding who to tell, when, and how much.
I told my boss first, because I knew I couldn't come to work the next day. Then I told the people I was closest to, one at a time. I also told our HR manager, because X's dad was a local law enforcement officer and I was afraid he might show up at work. I didn't feel safe in general, and her office sat next to the reception area. I felt like she could be a barrier if something happened.
Rationalizing who to tell and when was part of how I regained control of my story. It was also how I figured out who I felt safe around. Before some of those conversations, I had to psych myself up and run through how that person might respond. I prepared for the questions they might ask and tried to give them enough information without giving them too much.
If someone on your team tells you, they've probably done that same work before they walked in. Protect the choices they made. Don't pass it along, don't ask a coworker what's going on, and let them decide who else knows.
What does a well-being conversation sound like at work?
A well-being conversation asks about the person before the circumstance, and it gives them an easy way to tell you when it's too much.
About a month after I went back to work, one of my co-workers stopped by my desk to say hello, the way he often did. Partway through, his face changed. He asked if I was okay, and I'm pretty sure I said "fine." I don't remember his exact words after that, but they were close to this: "You don't seem okay. Do you want to go to my office to talk?" He didn't need to know what was wrong to ask. In his office, with the door closed, I told him.
In my own working relationships, when someone tells me they're going through something hard, I listen. I ask how they're doing before I ask anything about the situation. I make a note to check in, and when I do, I tell them to let me know if I'm checking in too often or if it's causing more pain. That last part is so important, because it leaves them in charge of my care for them, too.
A line you can borrow: "I'm going to keep checking in on you. If that's too often, or it makes things harder, tell me and I'll back off."
The opposite mistake is silence. For years, a lot of my friends and family didn't ask how I was doing. They didn't want to rock the boat, and some of them weren't sure if I'd fly off the handle. Silence often starts as respect and quietly becomes distance. From the other side of the desk, it's hard to tell apart from not caring.
What can HR do so the employee isn't carrying it alone?
HR can handle safety and flexibility without needing the story to do it.
My HR manager didn't need details to be useful to me. She needed to know I was afraid and why, and her office was in the right place. Later, I worked for a company that had a flexible office policy when I needed to take calls or go to appointments. They knew why, but flexibility was already part of how they worked, so my situation didn't have to be the exception.
When flexibility already exists for everyone, nobody has to explain why they need it. If your leave, scheduling, or accommodation process requires a person to tell the story to get help, it's worth a hard look.
Support won't always keep someone. I'd been at that first company for seven years, and I stayed about seven months after the assault. The company didn't do anything wrong. Mostly, it was about me. I couldn't go back to being the person I was before, and the job fit someone I wasn't anymore.
So if someone on your team leaves after a hard season, don't read it as a verdict on how you supported them. They may just not be that person anymore, and the kindest thing you can do is let them go without making them explain why.
Who else on your team might be carrying it?
The spouse, parent, or partner of the person it happened to is often carrying it too, and almost nobody checks on them.
I wish more people had asked about my husband, Chad. The people who showed up for us focused on me or on taking care of the kids, and that weighed heavily on me. I couldn't care for him because I couldn't care for myself.
The person on your team going through something might not be the one it happened to. They might be the one holding someone else up, and they need the same question.
Of everyone on that list at the top of this piece, the coworker who stopped by my desk was one of the first people I chose to tell. He asked how I was before he knew anything, and he didn't need the story to ask. When I left that company, I followed him to his next one, and we shared an office just big enough for two people. He'd made me feel that safe.
The people on your team who are carrying something are deciding, quietly, who is safe to tell. They decide by the questions you ask before you know anything, and by whether you keep asking after the first answer is "fine."
Jessi Bixler is an entrepreneur, marketing strategist, and the author of The Story We Share (Next Thing Press, 2025), a memoir about the ripple effects of sexual assault through a family and the systems that respond to harm. She speaks to leadership audiences and advocacy organizations on what people carry and how it shapes how we lead.
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