At Work, the Past May Be Very Much Present

In our last post in this series about not recreating your personal trauma history at work, we explored the idea of our work life as the ultimate mirror for our unresolved personal trauma impacts. Today we take a closer look at what trauma impacts look like.

When we experience an event, series of events, or prolonged circumstances that overwhelm our ability to cope effectively, our body and brain change temporarily and sometimes long-term.

How do our brain and body change?

When an event that feels life-threatening or deeply physically or emotionally unsafe occurs, our brain’s “reptilian” part — the limbic system, responsible for survival instincts and automatic bodily functions — takes over. The parts of our brain responsible for emotional processing, cognitive processing, and decision making go “offline” as we switch to survival mode, and we stay in this mode until the event or circumstance passes, which can help us survive it.

In some cases, after we move through scary situations, even if our body and brain have responsed this way, we’re able to properly “metabolize” and “digest” the experiences we went through cognitively, emotionally, and physically, leaving us with no maladaptive trauma symptoms. But at other times, when we aren’t adequately supported (either internally or externally) to make sense of and process the hardship we went through, our brains and the cells of our bodies are left with an imprint and impact of the experiences we endured. We may be left with many biopsychosocial consequences that impede our ability to move effectively through our lives post-trauma.

A partial list of trauma impacts might include:

• Depression and/or anxiety (including generalized anxiety).
• Irritability and being short-tempered; having a short fuse.
• Loss of interest in things that used to bring you pleasure or in life itself.
• Numbing through substances and behaviors, repeatedly and compulsively.
• Trouble concentrating, focusing, and self-organizing.
• Insomnia and challenges sleeping (including nightmares).
• Feeling emotionally flooded and easily overwhelmed.
• An inability to visualize a future (let alone a positive future).
• Hopelessness and a sense of despair.
• Shame, or a sense that you’re worthless.
• Few or no memories, or feeling like your childhood is a fog or a blank.
• Hypervigilance, an exaggerated startle response, and general mistrust.
• Bodily symptoms such as aches, pains, headaches, GI issues, or muscle rigidity.
• Substance abuse and eating disorders.
• Self-harming or destructive behaviors such as cutting or burning.
• Feeling like you have no true self, like you don’t know who you really are.

Why talk about trauma in our work lives?

What’s so important about this? When we see a thing more clearly – in this case, a wider, subjective lens of trauma and examples of unresolved trauma impacts – we can perhaps see ourselves and our stories and how this is still playing out in our work lives more clearly. In doing so, we can seek the appropriate help to resolve it and advance even further in our work lives.

Over the years, I’ve worked with many extraordinary clients who have achieved high academic, professional, and financial success but still have unresolved trauma symptoms. It is possible to be both high-achieving and live with unresolved trauma symptoms, but often, at a certain point, this can feel like trying to drive a high-performance race car down the highway with no gas in the tank. But when we become aware of unresolved trauma symptoms and attend to them with proper attention and support, we give ourselves a chance to feel more at ease and more integrated, and to feel a greater sense of empowerment and agency — putting gas in the car's tank, so to speak.

Let’s illustrate how unresolved trauma impacts might actually, practically show up for someone in her work life.

Imagine, if you will, a little girl raised by personality- and mood-disordered parents. In such an environment, devoid of consistent relational safety and adequate emotional nurturance, she may grow up to hold beliefs like:

• “I can’t trust anyone.”
• “People will always take advantage of me.”
• “It’s safer to keep people at a distance.”
• “Everything will fall apart at any minute.”

In school and her early career, she may develop behaviors like:

• Overworking to the point of sacrificing her relationships and health because she thinks everything will fall apart or fail if she stops working.
• Binge eating and purging at night to cope with the increasing stress, anxiety, and vulnerability she has advancing in her academics and career.
• Developing a growing sense of anger and resentment toward others who don’t work as hard as she does, and wondering why everyone around her seems to be having fun and enjoying life when it feels so hard for her.

As she arrives in a leadership role at mid-career, this plays out in myriad ways:

• She doesn’t hire until she’s beyond burnout, fearing handing over any part of her business to anyone else.
• She doesn’t let her COO and right hand see the numbers, fearing she’ll be taken advantage of if she does and robs herself of support.
• She keeps herself out of community with other entrepreneurs and business mentors, falsely believing there is no nurturance or support there.

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She feels increasingly overwhelmed, dealing with depression, numbness, and dullness from working constantly and turning to substances for relief, recreating old patterning of attaching to food and drink versus safe, trusted others. Her childhood patterns will extend into her business, and commensurately, her work life will reflect back to her what her unattended issues are — if she pays attention or if her work life forces her attention to them.

Unresolved trauma impacts may also show up in more subtle ways:

• Challenges saying no or disappointing others to the point of sacrificing career advancement opportunities that require more people management.
• Staying in work environments replete with unsupportive (if not downright damaging) microaggressions because, while it’s not supportive, it’s familiar.
• An inability to stand up to a hostile co-founder because of fear of retaliation.
• Holding back from going after venture funding because of a lack of esteem.

Whether the way your unresolved trauma patterns show up is obvious or more subtle, paying attention to your patterning is an important opportunity to advance your own personal growth work on your relational trauma recovery journey.

To find a therapist, visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory.