Voices of the Vigilant EP11 | Calm Under Fire: The Psychology of Thriving in Cybersecurity
In This Episode
This episode features Sara Rabinovitch, PhD—Workplace Psychologist | Clinical Psychologist | Behavior Scientist | Co-Founder & Chief Clinical Officer, Pacific Mindful Wellbeing @ Work
You can learn more about the conversation and the guest below.
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VIDEO: Voices of the Vigilant EP11
Calm Under Fire: The Psychology of Thriving in Cybersecurity featuring Dr Sara Rabinovitch, PhD - Workplace Psychologist | Clinical Psychologist | Behavior Scientist | Co-Founder & Chief Clinical Officer, Pacific Mindful Wellbeing @ Work
About the Guest
Dr. Sara Rabinovitch is a workplace and clinical psychologist, behavior scientist, and co-founder of Pacific Mindful Wellbeing @ Work. She specializes in bringing evidence-based compassion and stress-recovery science to high-stress industries like cybersecurity, tech, and STEM. Her work focuses on developing practical, data-driven tools that help professionals regulate, recover, and sustain performance under pressure.
She leads research on stress and burnout, integrating physiological metrics such as HRV and respiratory rate to measure impact and engagement. A Harbor-UCLA–trained postdoctoral fellow in intervention development, Dr. Rabinovitch is known for transforming behavioral science into accessible, engaging, and measurable experiences. She also serves as an Adjunct Professor at USC’s Keck School of Medicine.
Full Episode Transcript
Jess Vachon: 00:33
Hey everyone, welcome back to Voices of the Vigilant.
The mission of modern cybersecurity is often defined by the demand for constant, unwavering vigilance. If I can get my words out today. But what is the human cost of that demand? What happens to our focus, our decision making, and our long-term careers when we are constantly on high alert? Today we are honored to speak with a guest who is translating the complex science of stress recovery into practical, deployable skills for professionals in the most demanding industries. Dr. Sara Rabinovitch, PhD, is a workplace and clinical psychologist, a behavioral scientist, and the co-founder and chief clinical officer at Pacific Mindful Wellbeing at Work. She focuses specifically on high stress sectors like tech and cybersecurity using her research, which even includes measuring physiological data like heart rate variability to help teams regulate, reset, and thrive. Oh, and she's also an adjunct professor of at USC Keck School of Medicine. Dr. Sara, listener, she asked me to call her that, so please don't write in, Welcome to the podcast.
Dr. Sara Rabinovitch: 01:46
Hi, hi everyone. You don't have to call me Dr. Sara. You can call me Sara. I just didn't want to make you stumble by trying to pronounce my long Russian last name.
Jess Vachon: 01:55
Oh, that's perfectly okay. I love that name. It's a powerful name. So, we should use that name.
Dr. Sara Rabinovitch: 02:01
Yeah.
Jess Vachon: 02:04
All right. So, there's a lot I want to cover with you today as I view your work as timely and critical for information security professionals. I know, I mean, I've been thinking about it all day long coming up to this podcast. So, I'm super excited to have you here. But let's jump right in.
Dr. Sara Rabinovitch: 02:20
Let's do it.
Jess Vachon: 02:21
What influences early in your life drew you to the field you work in? Did you always know that you wanted to do this type of work?
Dr. Sara Rabinovitch: 02:30
That's a really good question. You know, like I've always been someone who is more interpersonally inclined and really social and enjoys listening and engaging with people and learning about people. But I think, like, to be honest, the more, the more truthful answer is actually like I also have like kind of a voyeuristic quality, which I think honestly, probably most psychologists and behavior scientists have, where it's very fascinating for me to think about like, what makes people tick in this world? Like what helps people, what doesn't help people, what hinders people, what makes people like light up with joy? What gets people stuck? And so, I think that in conjunction with I'm a former athlete, basketball player. You can't tell though, but I'm six feet tall and you wouldn't want to mess with me. Well, in the past, not now. Now you couldn't mess with me, but I think part of athletics teaches us too, a like a skills-based approach to performance and a skills-based approach to winning and outcomes. And so, when I think about the outcome being well-being and performance in different professional spheres, I think my athletic career has tied very nicely into being a behavior scientist, along with wanting to help people and along with some voyeuristic tendencies, probably.
Jess Vachon: 03:51
Nice. So, let's discuss the heart of your work. You often talk about bringing evidence-based compassion into high stress industries like cybersecurity and tech. What does that look like in real life? And why is compassion, in your opinion, such a powerful performance tool?
Dr. Sara Rabinovitch: 04:08
Yeah, that's a great, I love the second part of that question and the first part. You know, like there's so many, and I know Jess, you'll share the resource by app that are micro mini modules of skills for learning how to take care of ourselves and manage stress and well-being. But there's such an influx of apps out there. And I really have been conceptualizing this work more in line with this sort of high tactile digital hybrid, where I really do think that facilitating belongingness, getting really intricately, intimately, viscerally connected with tools that help us thrive in these environments is so important. And so, I really view my work as, and I think the face-to-face interactions are everything. And, you know, we get a lot accomplished over Zoom and digital platforms. And like, I just think when I go to many conferences a year, maybe 10, where I'm supporting conference attendees with on-site, on-call, mental health, little mini skills that people can reach out to me. And, you know, it is like it is so illuminating and so inspiring. And I especially in cybersecurity, where many folks are remote, and also many cybersecurity folks experience this kind of masking of emotions that happens over time, whether it's through childhood experiences or in the present, where we actually might learn to like almost disconfigure the evolutionary function of emotions, which really one of the functions is to communicate how we're feeling. And it can get really hard to do that, especially when you're socialized to be tough, to be impersonal in some ways, to have it all together, to portray your confidence and competence alongside a more kind of temperamental, overcontrolled kind of set of bio biological workings. And so, I think that in-person component, in addition to the tactile, with a lot of compassion-based practices, is really vital in cybersecurity.
Jess Vachon: 06:24
Oh, I feel so seen. I mean, you talked about a whole bunch of questions I want to ask you. And now I'm thinking I want to go in a whole different direction. Well, I'll go anywhere. So, you talked a little bit about in-person, and then you talked about remote work. And in your professional opinion or in your professional experience, that that disconnect that that hiding of our emotions, do you see a difference between people who are in office working and those who are remote? Or do you see across cybersecurity that both men and women in the industry are doing this masking because that's what they believe is expected? And when you reach out to them and you're having these experiences with them, how do you see them change when they're using your methods, your tools, your recommendations to actually get back to feeling like a person?
Dr. Sara Rabinovitch: 07:19
Yeah, those are such good questions. And, you know, like, I don't know, I just want to normalize too that it's actually probably really adaptive in some ways to mask emotions and thinking about the reinforcement that's cultural, thinking about the reinforcement of the tech field and cybersecurity, family or family of origin. And so you and others are so human and are such a person, and like it can feel really disconnecting to fall into some of these traps of masking and isolating that it are really kind of common in both remote workers and also folks who are hybrid or in person, probably more for remote, but I do see it a ton in cybersecurity. And I do think that there's thinking about the interventions that I've developed that are, you know, experiential and also digital, they're very much based on this some theories, one of which is polyvagel theory. And polyvagel theory is really this the kind of undergirding of human experience, that how our minds and our bodies are intricately connected, and how we need certain cues around us to feel safe enough to show up as our true selves. Our mirror neurons, which you probably have heard that before, when we communicate with someone else, like you and I communicating now, which is a little harder than in person, you know, my neuron, my mirror neurons are firing, and yours are actually trying to sync up with mine and fire in a similar way because we're trying to understand each other, especially because our goal here, the outcome is to, you know, support the community together. An outcome, you know, might be to patch a breach, who knows, whatever the outcome is, but we're wired to kind of have to communicate in these very subtle ways, tone of voice, the flatness or expressiveness of our of our faces. This is a kind of a disclosure, but after I get Botox, like in four months, I feel like when I look in the mirror, there's like a slight bit of, I almost, I feel almost like a slight, not coldness towards myself, but a little disconnect because I'm looking at my own face that is less moving, especially in the beginning when it's like stronger and then it wears off, um, less moving than usual. And it gives me a visceral reaction of kind of a little bit of self-alienation and for foreignness. And so, when we think about how this translates in the field of cybersecurity, interacting with one another, the in-person component is so, so important. And when I meet with folks, you know, they're often in a really stressed place. Cybersecurity conferences are really stressful, big expos, and folks reach out and often are very nervous to reach out. Some, you know, some participants might say, “Hey, can you just meet me at the bar?” And I'm like, “Yeah, sure”. We'll meet you where you're at. It doesn't matter. And we might be just sitting, you know, I kind of a lot of the tools that I use are about like not making direct eye contact if someone's giving you signals like, hey, stay away, I'm in this place of hyper-arousal, but using some of the tools from polyvagal theory to activate my own social safety signals, to activate the other person's social safety signals and doing this strategically again and again and transparently, and teaching cybersecurity people how to both cue safety for themselves to be able to be in the moment and feel embodied, but also to cue safety in their colleagues as they check in on burnout, especially for managers, to really develop a fundamental sense of psychological safety and physical and emotional well-being.
Jess Vachon: 10:59
So that's a great segue to my next question for you. So, cybersecurity professionals such as myself were constantly living in a state of alertness. It's really hard to turn that off. And you talked a little bit about tools for that. But how do I and other professionals who are constantly living in this state, how do we start to recognize when we cross that invisible line from focus into fatigue?
Dr. Sara Rabinovitch: 11:26
I think you're talking about two really important pieces. Like one, the exhaustion that comes with trying to maintain that level of vigilance. And then two, one um challenge that I see often is this hyper-focus where we get locked into a task and it's really hard to like step out of it. And it feels like I just need to get this done. And so, and they go hand in hand. If we're hyper-focused in a vigilant state, it's cognitively very effortful and taxing and obviously emotional too, but also there's social ramifications, feeling more disconnected at home, losing track of broader organizational priorities and sort of overfocusing on one aspect. So, how to reduce some of this vigilance? This is a really, really interesting question. And I posted something on LinkedIn yesterday. I'm doing a little research, I think for a research consortium on the neurobiological benefits of play, of adult play, like playing like kids. And I think there's something so powerful about playing and engaging in our in our lives in a different way that directly combats this hypervigilance that's adaptive in many contexts in cybersecurity, but becomes really unhelpful in others. You mentioned this line, and there is this line. And teaching cybersecurity folks how to recognize line, the line's different for all people. Not everyone wants to have a family, not everyone wants to be social and eff it. I don't know, like that's your values and your goals. There's no agenda that needs to guide anyone. It's you knowing your personal values and being able to recognize for you what those signs and symptoms are that you've fallen into a place of kind of hypervigilance, activation, burnout, exhaustion.
Jess Vachon: 13:16
You mentioned that post about play the other day, and I read that and I had some thoughts about it. But what types of play are you describing for people?
Dr. Sara Rabinovitch: 13:25
Yeah, well, they're actually built into my interventions. So, when I think about play, I think about like how we get ourselves, and it's it play can feel very stressful. So, I don't often use the word play, I use like the word like experiential stress recovery because play can feel overwhelming. Like I don't want to be silly. I'm at work and I have all these, um I have all these metrics to meet, you know. So, play really is you could call it whatever you want, but a lot of mental resilience interventions that I lead are based in play. So, one of the cool ones, these uh, where did it go? Oh, cyber calming toolkit that I developed is really I'll show you what it looks like. It's like a little tactile, and we've I thought we've sold like 14,000 of them is crazy. And like so, people are and people are really using them. They're basically these tactile digital stress recovery toolkits that are, and you know, I don't quite know why people are or why they they've become so popular, but I think it has something to do with the tactile nature, the playful nature, and like there's something special about them. So, like thinking about an example of play. Let me see. We've got oh yeah, so like and science-based play, not just like fluffy play. So, this here, if you can see it, is a little, it's called a stress straw. And it's just like a I have a gentleman here who makes them for me in bulk. They're eco-friendly kind of bamboo stress straws that with a little, you know, you put it on a key or something, keychain, that actually like the width of them, they're a little less than eight millimeters. The width of it helps you when you breathe through it, breathe in and breathe out. Normally, it actually slightly slows down your breath. And so, when we think about so one of the new, well, I shouldn't give it away for before all the RF black out and everything, but one of the new kind of tools is like pairing playfully this stress straw with a little teeny sand timer. And we're practicing, experientially practicing a specific type of breathing that is guided using this straw as you also focus your attention on the sand. So, you're kind of timing yourself. Let me do five breaths. This is a 20-second timer. So, you know, it's a short practice, and I'll demonstrate it. You can just you just breathe in. And as you breathe out, you're really trying to allow the sand to move through. So, you're elongating that out breath with the support of an external reinforcer and also a physiological guide. And so, I it is very science-based play, but it engages people with their bodies in a different way.
Jess Vachon: 16:19
It's interesting because when you were demonstrating that, I actually took a breath and held it, but I felt better watching. So, you put these kits together. How could people get these kits? Can they get these kits from you? And I know you also are bringing them to different conferences, to different groups. How could they sponsor some of these packages, these groups that you bring them to?
Dr. Sara Rabinovitch: 16:47
They're only B2B right now because I can't really not honestly be organized enough to get my SHIT together to have another way. But we're very well equipped. We have a great production system. And so, we, yeah, you're welcome to email me or go to my website and you know, they'll I'll have these kits at I think a few companies or at each of the big conferences coming up. And I also like to, you know, give back to nonprofits and support nonprofits like LGBTQ students. And so, I'll frequently ask different companies, like, hey, will you sponsor 200 of these kits for students? They're actually they're cheap, they're like 10 bucks each or something like that. And um, and then I'll bring them and I'll give them out and for a market, you know, to marketing and branding. But it goes such a long way. And honestly, having these little notes from a company for students who are like trying to break into like the field of tech and are brilliant, like that says, like, hey, the great most recent Adam Arellano at Harness, like a little card that said, like, you know, harness believes Harness believes in you. Go get him at the career fair. And it goes such a long way. Anyway, so long story short, you can reach out to me and email me or message me on LinkedIn. And I love, I love, love, love disseminating these kids because they're so fun and helpful.
Jess Vachon: 18:01
Yeah, we'll make sure we put it in the show notes, so people know exactly where to go to get the information. Okay, cool. I want to move to an area that I'm very interested in. So, heart rate variability, and that's the physiological data that we talked about in the intro. So, I have an aura ring, I have my Apple Watch, works all the time on my HRV, wasn't quite sure what that meant. You're the expert in this. Why don't you talk to us about HRV and what this means to us and how we can use it to better our mental health?
Dr. Sara Rabinovitch: 18:32
Yeah, how cool that you're leveraging some of these biometrics too to support your well-being, because like we know that getting feedback, you know, biofeedback, is really helpful when it comes to actually changing the behaviors that we want to do to help ourselves. So, whether it's, I think there's the aura ring track, sleep, also like sleep and stress signals. So, we're kind of like pairing this awareness of what's going on in our bodies and how our bodies are functioning and how stressed they are. I'll talk about HRV in a second, in particular, how stressed they are and how different health behaviors impact those levels of stress. Heart rate variability is, I love it. I mean, I just think it's such a rich way of capturing stress. And heart rate variability, I think of it as like almost like a shorthand for the level of stress that you're experiencing. We actually want to have more variability in our heart rate than less variability. So, more variability means more flexibility. It means that our body's able to adapt to challenges more effectively. It means that we're cognitively more flexible in many ways and can and we're able to adapt and come back down to baseline. The goal of all of these stress recovery and well-being interventions really isn't to like to maintain ourselves at some crazy low level of stress. I mean, you'd need, I don't know, probably, I don't know much about marijuana, but a whole prompt of marijuana to get your body in that in that zone. So, but that's not the goal. The goal is to notice when we've kind of moved to a place of high stress and to have the internal resources to come back down to baseline. And so, this dovetails very nicely with the polyvagal theory that I mentioned as the backbone of our interventions. I did a very cool physiological study. I didn't use HRV because it was too hard to. There's some cool phone apps now that are like there's your camera is the sensor, but I wanted to be able to reach people who and not, you know, scare people and have data privacy. So basically, respiratory rate is another in breaths per minute, is actually another really strong indicator of how stressed we are. And so, I used respiratory rate because it's easier to measure with a very simple app and it doesn't collect data. And it also, what I use in these activations at conferences is just a very simple respiratory rate monitor. So, it just says the number and then it's off the screen. And because you know, data privacy is so important in cyber. And so, well, I this little pilot study that I did, it wasn't a big N, it was like 24, I think, or 23. And I had 23 people do take their respiratory rate, and you could replace this with HRV, I would love to at some point, like respiratory rate, and then engage in this two-minute humming, um, polyvagal, kind of ventral vagal humming practice. I'll take you through it. So, and it's really brief, it's just so you're breathing in naturally, and then as you breathe out, just uh doing a little hum. It can be barely audible too. It's just for you, and it is kind of creating vibrations in the larynx. So, and this is one of the common kits QR link to this practice for one of them. So, breathing in, breathing out with a little hum. And then taking your respiratory rate again and seeing the shift and then getting a little feedback. And the crazy thing was one, there was like a I think it was like 1.9 breaths per minute drop after like a one- or two-minute humming practice in participants. But the crazier part was that even people whose respiratory rate didn't go down for whatever reason, I mean, you know, that what sometimes it doesn't expressed feeling motivated to engage with some of these tools. So, 98% of people were expressed feeling motivated after doing this practice, whether or not their respiratory rate or physiological stress levels went down, they were motivated to learn more about stress recovery, which I think is so cool. It just shows that having data, especially in cybersecurity, like personal data to drive decision making, cybersecurity folks are so smart and can be super skeptical. Like they don't want to hear from someone who's like, yeah, and this will help you. And there's like they want to see it for themselves, and it's really motivating whether or not they see the change they want right away. It's really motivating and engaging to want to continue.
Jess Vachon: 23:19
I love that. I want to go back to something you touched upon. So, we were talking about HRV, and you talked about how our goal should not be to keep it constant. If there's individuals out there who have worked in IT or information security for a long time, who have been very influenced by the culture of using substances to relax? You mentioned, I think, marijuana, but there's certainly alcohol as well.
Dr. Sara Rabinovitch: 23:47
Yeah.
Jess Vachon: 23:49
If that is keeping their HRV, or if they're using that as a tool to keep their HRV level or flat or control it, I guess my first question is does that cause long-term damage because they're losing that flexibility that you talked about? Two, you went on to talk about some practices. Should we, in information security or in IT in general, be stressing these are the tools that you can use to de-stress to get yourself to a place where you can reset and better learn to live within the body that you have rather than going out and using these substances that, while they may make you feel good temporarily, may in the long term cause damage. I'll stop there because I said a lot, but I want to hear you.
Dr. Sara Rabinovitch: 24:34
No, I think that's so that's those are such good points. And I don't quite know the how alcohol long-term effects HRV, which is really interesting. We'll look it up after this. But I think when I think about alcohol or marijuana or other substances that super highly stressed people engage in, you know what? Like it's honestly, it's like name your vice. They're all they're all one and the same, whether it's scrolling on, you know, TikTok or I don't know, engaging in video game stuff or pornography addiction is very common, whatever it is, like whatever that sort of go-to is that is helping you bring down some of the intensity of your stress experience. What that really is experiential avoidance. So, we're not actually, we think we're bringing down our stress, but we're actually not. We're actually cutting off our awareness of our stress signals. You mentioned I like the way you said like living in a body that you have. We're cutting off our awareness of our stress signals. And then the long-term ramifications of that are like we're not even aware of the signals our bodies are giving us that say, hey, slow down. You really need to sleep right now, or hey, you're having you're going to have a panic attack. Like you've got to go somewhere that feels safe and nurturing to you. And it's adaptive. That's the thing. You know, I there's a module in the in the app that's like, do you but something like, do you want to consider cutting down alcohol at professional events or something like that? I took it out because actually a few of my beta testers were like, I felt judged, but like I don't want to think about this. I was like, okay, that's fine. But the approach that I use is like a very mo, it's based in like motivational interviewing, which is actually like was a type of intervention that was developed in working with folks who are really seriously substance, substance uh abusers. Um it's very gentle. It's not to say these are all the things that are wrong with drinking to you know numb yourself out so that you can cope. It's saying, like, what do you notice? It's really Socratic. It's like, what do you what do you notice? Like, what are some of the positives of it? Like, why does it make full sense that you're smoking, you know, three blunts a day? Like, like the question isn't why are you doing it? It's like, how could you not be doing that given how stressed you are? So, it's starting with, why do you make sense? Not what's wrong with you? And in doing so and helping the person come to their own conclusions, they begin to feel safe to come back in contact with their body sensations. And it's exposure. Exposure works best with its gradient often. So, it's little amounts of exposure, awareness building. And that's what the app is all based off of. It's awareness building, it's concrete tools too, but it's questions. It's you doing your own pros and cons algorithm about like, you know, am I am I controlling or just do am I someone who prefers routine? Because a lot of cybersecurity folks get feedback, pushback from family members, like, you're so controlling. And they're like, “Well, how am I going to how am I expected to like take care of all the frigging tasks in this house without being so vigilant and then be called controlling?” It's like a double bind. You know, like how am I, why, how can I not drink when I have the weight of the world on me? You know, it's like a double bind. And so, we through these pros and cons practices of their in interactive modules, some of them, the person sing for themselves, like, you know, and being validated, like what wow does it make sense that I prefer routine? And what part of that's okay and good and adaptive? At what when at what point does that maybe lead to some consequences for me interpersonally or within myself? Um, so it's all about dialectical balance.
Jess Vachon: 28:09
I love it. I just know that people out there listening are saying, Oh, it's me. Oh, I see that I'm what she's talking about. There's so much that good that's coming out of this conversation for our field. And I really wanted to have you on because I want people to start thinking about it. And we've focused now on us, the individual, and how we're feeling and how we can have tools that can help us. But we work for companies. So, my question is in cybersecurity where endurance is often celebrated, we're working long hours, we're constantly vigilant, we have a little rest. What would it take for leaders in the field to start seeing recovery as part of readiness and not a sign of weakness? Because I think some of us that masking, that coping that we do is because we don't want to be seen as weak, because we think then the business might lose trust in us and or replace us because they want someone who's very stern and in control of everything.
Dr. Sara Rabinovitch: 29:05
Yeah. Yeah, that's a really good question. And honestly, that's why I really lean on physiological data, because a lot of the kind of newer research that I'm doing is on the actual cognitive performance deficits that come out of burnout. Um that to really demonstrate on a on a cognitive performance-based level that when employees are burnt out, when they are highly stressed, they make more errors, and they are slower to respond and there's more false alarms. And it's really like indisputable. And so, and I know there's like a lot of research out there, like you know, and like Forbes did a really cool article, but I think like actually showing the data in a way like on this task, when this person was more cognitively taxed, not a work, not a cyberscope, but like a random task that measures cognitive performance, they do worse when they're under stress like this. And Here's the data to suggest it. So, these are low-lift ways that you can help your employees reduce and recover from stress that actually tie and bolster business outcomes.
Jess Vachon: 30:11
Okay. And speaking of business outcomes, that's perfect for my next question. So, you're bridging psychology, physiology, and business strategy in your work. When you talk to executives about investing in this well-being, what kind of impact or return resonates most with them? Because we can talk about what needs to be done, but if an organization is going to sponsor these programs, how do you translate what you're doing for work as ROI for the company?
Dr. Sara Rabinovitch: 30:40
That's a great point. And to be honest, I'm not a, I don't consider myself to be an extremely effective like businessperson. I'm a horrible salesperson. So, I don't know. But like what I will say is that many companies have been open to, and senior executives have been open to bringing some of these programs into their companies, like many have. And I think it boils down to retention and also performance. And so having those metrics laid out is so important. But I also think that a lot of executives are really like lonely. That I actually think when I meet with them, there's a it has to be kind of a personal buy-in too. That we think about executives being this kind of like iron arm from the top, and in some ways that's true. And like, but like CSOs are so lonely. It's a crisis in a lot of ways. And, you know, and so like I think speak like being speaking in a way that's really personal and isn't fluffy and isn't sales salesy. It's just real talk. And it really goes a long way, you know. I think when there's personal buy-in and investment in it, it's actually pretty easy to encourage uptake.
Jess Vachon: 31:52
Okay. I want to ask you about artificial intelligence because I've been asking everyone about it, and it seems to be the topic of the year for 2025, and I'm sure going forward into 2026. In your work, we're talking about stress, we're talking about psychological and physiological safety. How are you seeing AI affecting mental health with the people that you're talking to and working with?
Dr. Sara Rabinovitch: 32:19
Hmm. You know, to be honest, I'm a pretty big proponent of AI. Like I think that, especially for neurodivergent folks that I work with in cyber and tech, I actually think like some of the AI tools that are coming out are so helpful for someone who's struggling with neurodivergence, whether that's autism spectrum, whether that's ADHD, that I think from my end, I see a lot of benefit for my cyber folks when it comes to AI. And I also know there are many perils and in mental health in particular. I know there's been a lot of um recent news stories out there about like Chat GPT encouraging the teenagers to kill themselves and things like that. And so, like, I am very much aware of the perils of it. And like I try to leverage the benefits of it when possible. I mean, the app that I created comes from 352 qualitative interviews with cybersecurity professionals over like seven years. And then it I created different like avatars using AI tools based on like different, like so, like one avatar was like a you know, neurodivergent, younger, single, white, and like you know, unmarried person living in the Bay Area, isolated, you know, another avatar. So and a seize out avatar that was a very different and you using those tools to really inform different iterations to make sure that the tools matched the lived experiences, and then doing it in a participatory, co-creating way of like, and there's been, I mean, this app's been like a six-year thing, like different iterations that really map onto like from a bottom-up place, the experiences of diverse cybersecurity professionals.
Jess Vachon: 34:05
Do you see any point in the future where you might use your tools and techniques and artificial intelligence to help people learn the practices that you shared with us earlier in the show?
Dr. Sara Rabinovitch: 34:19
I'm open to it for sure. I'm open to wherever this universe is going to take us and you know and take the good with the bad and capitalize on it if possible. And I would love, I would love to, and we're actually moving in that direction too.
Jess Vachon: 34:34
Great. Okay. And finally, our signature question for you here at Voices of the Vigilant. We explore what it means to stay both aware and human in demanding work. What does vigilance mean to you personally?
Dr. Sara Rabinovitch: 34:49
Such a good question. I've never thought of it before. Thanks. I work hard on this question. Yeah, I'm trying to think. What does vigilance mean to me? Vigilance means at its core, vigilance is deep, compassionate, interested, sustained attention, I think. And we can direct that in many different areas. We can direct it in detecting threats. We can also like really conceptualize it interpersonally, like to visit with someone, to really sit with someone and be vigilant to what's coming up for them, to be fully present. There's a beautiful layer of presence that comes with it. And there's a power in it too, a quiet power to vigilance. And I think a lot of cybersecurity folks are so vigilant in so many areas of life, and that there's a lot of beauty that comes out of that.
Jess Vachon: 35:55
That is that's one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard. And I hope everyone, I hope when they're listening to the podcast that they rewind, and they just listen to that last sentence a couple of times.
Dr. Sara Rabinovitch: 36:08
It's true though.
Jess Vachon: 36:10
Yeah, it is. For those that are watching live, we've got a banner up on the bottom learn.pacificmndfl.com. I want to give you a minute just to talk a little bit about what people will find if they go there.
Dr. Sara Rabinovitch: 36:23
Yeah, you'll go. So, it's a little login. I don't use your information for you have to do your, but you can do a fake name and a fake email. I don't know, whatever, but like whatever's going to give you a login. And then you I'll kind of route you into the CyberPro pilot study. It's all free. And you'll there's like 18 or 17 mini modules that I just kind of like gently introduce them. The two-minute mini modules, they include like audios and videos, and they're all subjects that are super pertinent to stress and burnout in cybersecurity, like how to reduce vigilance when you go home, when you leave work, how to tackle imposter syndrome, when you're between jobs, how to use a self-compassion practice to manage stress surges. So, I think you'll find them to be how to reach how to train the brain to be more kind of attuned or sensitive to rewards, to pleasure, to joy, when like, you know, this work is very dampening of those neural networks in a lot of ways. So that's very how-to. And I think you'll enjoy it and you're welcome to share the resource. And if you go to pacificmindful.com too, you'll see all sorts of other, you know, like just cool stuff like workshops and activations and info on the common kits, I think is on there. And but please enjoy it. And your feed, you know, your feedback is so welcome and so wanted, and you know, it's created with you and for you and iterated with tons of feedback from you. So, you know, what do I know? I'm just some non-cyber lesbian of three living in Southern California. But really, though, I mean, we think about like our own lived experience. Like what, like we can't, we I can't create any, I couldn't have created any of these tools without like the closest collaboration with like hundreds and thousands of cybersecurity professionals. So, I don't know, it's for you and created with you. And so, I hope it's helpful.
Jess Vachon: 38:20
Well, take the credit. I know we talked about this offline, but the work that you do is so important for everyone. You know, in our society, mental health care, mental health, mental well-being is not given enough of a priority, and we need more people like yourself out there giving us the tools, promoting it, having us talk about it. I've gone out to this link that we talked about. I've tried some of the tools, they're amazing. They take thank you. Yeah, I want to say like less than a minute.
Dr. Sara Rabinovitch: 38:46
Oh, yeah, they're so short.
Jess Vachon: 38:48
And I think my feedback immediately to you, I did two of the modules was “oh my god, I feel so much better.” I've added these to my toolkit and I'm going to use them throughout the day. So, you know, if you're in cybersecurity, if you're in IT, if you're in any occupation that's stressful, go out and try these out. You're going to feel so much better. It's great to have them in your toolkit, and you'll be amazed at what is around you or within you that allows you to take a breath, to be present as you spoke about. I just want to highlight again your work at Pacific Mindful Wellbeing at work. People Google it, go out to the websites, great fun with Dr. Sara.
Dr. Sara Rabinovitch: 39:29
Um let's have fun. Let's create things and see how I can support. I'm always down to you know, jump in and collaborate.
Jess Vachon: 39:39
And you can connect with Dr. Sara on LinkedIn as well if you want to quickly chat and get more information. As always, folks, thank you for spending your time with us here on Voices of the Vigilant, where we celebrate the people and practices, like Dr. Sara, that keep our communities strong, aware, and resilient. Until next time, stay curious, stay kind, and stay vigilant. Thank you. Bye.
