Why does work feel so hard when you know you’re capable?
Why does feedback from your boss send you spiraling? Why do you overthink every interaction, struggle to set boundaries, or find yourself people-pleasing just to keep the peace? Why do you keep ending up in toxic workplaces, or stay far longer than you know you should?
And why can you be successful on paper while still feeling like you’re just trying to survive your career?
If you live with CPTSD or the effects of complex trauma, your past doesn’t stay neatly outside the office.
It can show up in how you respond to authority, conflict, criticism, uncertainty, visibility, and change.
It can influence the jobs you choose, the behavior you tolerate, the opportunities you pursue, the boundaries you set, and what you believe you’re capable of professionally.
The Resilient Career is where we talk about that.
Hosted by career coach and trauma survivor Cyndi Bennett, this podcast explores the intersection of CPTSD, complex trauma, and work...and what it takes to build a successful career when your nervous system learned survival long before you learned how to navigate the workplace.
This isn’t therapy, and it isn’t another podcast telling you to simply be more confident, think positively, or push through.
It’s a conversation about understanding the patterns beneath your professional life so you can make different choices.
You’ll learn how trauma can show up in your career, how to recognize workplace triggers and survival patterns, how to navigate difficult managers and toxic environments, how to build boundaries and advocate for yourself, and how to make career decisions from a place of greater clarity and confidence.
Because resilience isn’t about tolerating more.
It’s about understanding yourself well enough to build a career that no longer requires you to abandon yourself in order to succeed.
Your past may be part of your story.
It doesn’t have to write the rest of your career.
Topics include: CPTSD at work, complex PTSD, complex trauma, workplace trauma, toxic workplaces, trauma responses at work, workplace triggers, people-pleasing, perfectionism, hypervigilance, burnout, boundaries at work, difficult managers, career confidence, self-advocacy, trauma-informed leadership, career transitions, professional identity, Entrepreneurship as a Trauma Survivor, and career resilience.
The Resilient Career with Cyndi Bennett: CPTSD, Trauma & Resilience at Work
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A New Chapter for Our Community: The Podcast Launch and What Comes Next | Newsletter #14
Saturday, October 24, 2026 • Duration 08:26
October Community Update
Have you ever looked at your calendar and realized that several things you’ve been working toward are suddenly happening at once?
That’s how this season feels for me. There are new conversations on the horizon, a podcast I’ve been preparing to share, and an opportunity to connect with fellow trauma survivors in a space that means a great deal to me.
As I’ve been thinking about all of this, I’ve also been reconsidering how we stay connected here. I want what lands in your inbox to be useful, relevant, and worth your time. More on that in a moment.
Before We Go Any Further, Let Me Introduce Myself
If this is your first time here, welcome. And if you’ve been here for a while, I’m glad you’re back.
I’m Cyndi Bennett, a trauma-informed career coach and founder of the Resilient Career Academy™.
After spending more than 25 years navigating the corporate world, I understand how deeply our professional experiences can shape the way we see ourselves. I also understand how complex trauma can influence the choices we make, the opportunities we pursue, and the expectations we place on ourselves.
Let’s Connect: What’s Coming Up
Navigating work and life with complex trauma can feel isolating.
Connecting with people who understand can remind us that we don’t have to figure everything out on our own.
That sense of community matters to me, and I want to keep creating opportunities for us to learn from and support one another.
Here are a few ways we can connect in the weeks ahead:
Sunday: A Live Conversation With Patrick LaRose
I’m so excited to be going live with Patrick LaRose, host of The Second Shift, to talk about how trauma triggers show up at work and how they can shape the trajectory of our careers.
Patrick and I share a deep appreciation for nurses and others in the medical community. If you’re a nurse, first responder, or healthcare professional, I hope you’ll join us for a conversation about the ways trauma can affect our working lives.
Join us live in the Substack app on Sunday, October 25, at 1 p.m. CDT / 2 p.m. EDT. We look forward to seeing you there!
Tuesday, October 27: The Resilient Career with Cyndi Bennett | CPTSD, Trauma, & Resilience at Work Podcast Launches
Why does work feel so hard when you know you’re capable?
If you’ve ever spiraled after feedback from your boss, overthought an interaction, or struggled to set a boundary, you know that complex trauma doesn’t stay neatly outside the office.
That’s what we’ll explore on The Resilient Career with Cyndi Bennett | CPTSD, Trauma, & Resilience at Work, podcast launching Tuesday, October 27.
As a career coach and trauma survivor, I’ll bring both my professional experience and my lived understanding to conversations about workplace triggers, difficult managers, people-pleasing, boundaries, and career confidence.
My hope is that these conversations help you understand the patterns beneath your professional life so you can make choices that support both your career and your well-being.
Your past may be part of your story. It doesn’t have to write the rest of your career.
Speaking at the Healing Together Conference 2027
I’m also preparing to speak at the Healing Together Conference 2027, a gathering for people living with dissociative identity disorder (DID) and those who support them.
This opportunity is personal for me. I live with a DID diagnosis, and I’m grateful for the chance to bring together my lived experience and my work as a trauma-informed career coach.
One question at the heart of my work is: What might become possible when we stop assuming the ways we struggle mean we are incapable, and start understanding what our systems need to succeed?
My presentation is Building a Career That Fits the Whole System: A Practical Guide for Plural People and Those Who Support Them.
I‘ll have a table there to promote The Resilient Career Academy, so please consider this a personal invitation to visit me in person. I would treasure an opportunity to connect.
The conference takes place February 26–28, 2027, at the DoubleTree by Hilton Orlando at SeaWorld in Orlando, Florida, with virtual attendance available.
Recently, we’ve been exploring the many ways complex trauma can shape our working lives, from workplace triggers and professional identity to what we want from our careers beyond simply getting through the day.
We’ve also looked at how these patterns can show up in caring professions, including nursing.
I’m planning upcoming webinars for the Resilient Career Academy, and I’d love your help deciding what to offer first. My goal is to focus on what you’re navigating right now and give you practical strategies to take your next step. Here is a list of topics I am considering:
* When Work Triggers You: Recognize the Pattern and Find Your Next Step
* Boundaries at Work When Saying No Feels Unsafe
* Beyond Survival: Figuring Out What You Want From Your Career
* When Your Business Triggers You: Recognize the Pattern and Find Your Next Step
These are potential topics, with dates and details still to come. Paid subscribers can attend these webinars at no additional cost. Free subscribers are welcome to register for a fee.
Cast your vote below to help shape what we explore next. There’s no deadline to share your preference. Your vote will help shape upcoming webinars, whenever you find this issue.
Not seeing what you need here? Message me and let me know what you’re navigating or what you’d like us to explore. I’d love to hear from you.
One Question for You: What Would Make These Emails Most Valuable?
As the podcast launches and this community grows, I’ve been thinking about the role of this newsletter.
I’ve considered moving to a monthly roundup, so you have one place to catch up on recent content and see what’s coming next. But I’ve also been reminded that connection isn’t just about how often an email arrives. It’s also about feeling understood, finding something that helps, and knowing you’re part of a community where you don’t have to navigate these experiences alone.
Rather than making that decision without you, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
When you open an email from me, what do you most hope to find?
Is it a personal story, a practical strategy you can try at work, a deeper exploration of CPTSD and careers, a podcast recommendation, or news about opportunities to connect?
And how often would hearing from me feel genuinely useful?
You can simply reply to this email. I read your responses, and they’ll help me decide how to make our time together here more meaningful.
Thank you for being here and for helping shape this community. Whether you join a conversation, share what’s on your mind, or quietly read along, I’m glad you’re part of it.
Take good care of yourself. I look forward to hearing from you.
Warmly,Cyndi
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How Trauma Shows Up at Work When You’re a Nurse
Thursday, October 22, 2026 • Duration 12:48
Have you ever sat in your car after a grueling twelve-hour shift as an emergency room nurse and just couldn’t move?
The fatigue hits hard once you leave those doors and finally sit down without someone needing you.
The day was chaotic. Perhaps it was a full moon.
Critical patients were everywhere. You barely had a chance to go to the bathroom. Lunch was a quick pass through the break room to inhale the food you brought.
And a young child, the same age as your son, did not survive a car accident. You kept working afterward, carrying that heaviness through the rest of your shift.
Now you’re looking at your phone. There’s a reminder for the in-service training you signed up to attend but never reached.
You missed it again.
You had wanted to be there. It was an opportunity to learn, build your skills, and take another step toward the career you wanted.
But sitting in your car, you feel relieved that you don’t have to take on one more thing.
Then comes the question:
How are you supposed to grow in your nursing career when getting through a shift takes everything you have?
When Getting Through the Shift Takes Everything
You signed up for that training because you wanted to be there. Maybe it would help you earn a certification, prepare for another role, or explore a specialty that interests you.
Now you have missed it again.
Other people manage to do this. Why can’t I?
You think about the colleague who stayed late for a class last week. You tell yourself you should have planned better, pushed through, found a way.
During the shift, pushing through was what you did.
When someone needed help, you stepped in, even though you were already behind. When you needed help yourself, you hesitated.
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Introduction to CPTSD in the Workplace
Tuesday, October 20, 2026 • Duration 19:42
Imagine spending years building something you’re proud of. You’ve invested your time, developed your skills, earned the trust of others, and created a career that means something to you.
Then, seemingly without warning, things that once felt manageable become overwhelming.
A meeting you would have walked into confidently now fills you with dread. A conversation with your manager leaves you questioning your abilities. You sit down to complete work you’ve done hundreds of times before, but your mind won’t cooperate.
You know how to do your job. You’ve proven that over and over again.
So why does it suddenly feel so difficult?
For those of us living with Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD), the answer may have less to do with our professional capabilities and more to do with what is happening in our nervous systems.
And sometimes, we don’t recognize that connection until our careers begin to feel like they’re slipping through our fingers.
When Work Stopped Feeling Like My Safe Place
I’m Cyndi Bennett, a trauma-informed career coach and Founder of the Resilient Career Academy.
For most of my career, work was where I felt the most competent and confident. I knew what I was doing. I loved the work. I had built a successful career in a large financial corporation, and my professional identity was an important part of how I understood myself.
Then, in 2019, everything changed.
I began experiencing an overwhelming flood of previously inaccessible memories of childhood trauma. Although I knew I had experienced abuse, I hadn’t understood the extent of what I was carrying or how profoundly it could affect my everyday life.
I knew very little about trauma or what was happening in my nervous system.
Suddenly, the skills I had relied on throughout my career didn’t seem to be working anymore.
I struggled to concentrate. I experienced emotional flashbacks and dissociation. Situations I had previously navigated with confidence began triggering intense fear and insecurity.
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Returning to Work After a Sabbatical: What Five Weeks Away Helped Me See | Newsletter #13
Saturday, October 17, 2026 • Duration 04:05
Have you ever stood over an open suitcase, trying to decide what absolutely needs to go because you are not paying for another piece of luggage?
You run through the trip in your head.
What’s the weather supposed to be? Will you need a jacket? How much walking will you be doing? Can one pair of shoes work for everything?
You’ve figured out what you need for the daytime outings. But what about the evenings?
What are you going to do when you get back to the hotel room at night?
Well, there’s that article you could work on. A few emails you could catch up on. Maybe you could make some progress on that project once you’re settled in for the evening.
And just like that, your computer starts looking like an essential item.
That’s where I found myself before the first trip of my five-week sabbatical.
But this time, with more fear and trepidation than leaving a laptop behind probably warrants, I decided it was staying home.
I wanted to be present with my husband, even if part of my brain was convinced I would spend the rest of my sabbatical catching up.
And as we traveled, something unexpected happened. Without work filling every available space, there was room to think about the future of my coaching business. What could it look like? What possibilities had I been too busy to consider?
Making Room for What Could Be
Maybe you recognize that busyness, too. Between getting through the workday, taking care of the people who depend on you, and keeping up with everything else, when is there room to think about what you want next?
You can spend so much time managing the life you have that you rarely get to consider what you’d like your future to look like.
You may know exactly what needs your attention today. But if someone asked what you want your work to make possible over the next few years, would you know where to begin?
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Who Am I When My Career Is No Longer My Identity? | Newsletter #12
Saturday, October 10, 2026 • Duration 14:53
“I wish I would’ve started earlier.”
That is the thought that ran through my head before my husband and I reluctantly met with our Financial Advisor to see if we were prepared for retirement.
He was turning 65 this year, and things, like Medicare, had to be done by a certain time.
We put this meeting off for years because we were afraid we would be told we couldn’t retire until we were 80.
The regret of not starting my 401K until a few years into my career was palpable, because at the time, there was more month than money.
I could feel us holding our breath as she did the math.
Our hearts were pounding.
And I’m sure we were sweating.
The exhale was in stereo when we heard her say, “You are not as bad as you think.” Whew!!!
Sometimes the future we've imagined is more frightening than the possibilities actually available to us.
My husband is fortunate that he is six years older than me, and that I will be working until Jesus comes.
But even with the reassurance that our financial situation wasn’t as dire as we’d imagined, I realized there was another part of retirement we hadn’t really prepared for.
What would the next season of our lives actually look like?
We’d spent so much time worrying about whether we could afford to retire that we hadn’t given nearly as much attention to what we wanted retirement to mean for us.
That sense of regret is something that I often hear from trauma survivors who have found my work in the twilight of their careers.
“I wish I had come across your teaching twenty years ago.”
My first thought always is: “Yeah, me too.”
As someone who spent 25 years learning how to navigate the corporate world as a trauma survivor, that sense of regret and longing for what could have been are not lost on me.
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Who Am I at Work When I’m Not Trying to Prove Myself?
Thursday, October 8, 2026 • Duration 25:14
Do you remember learning how to ride a bike?
Maybe you started with training wheels.
And with those training wheels on, you could ride. You weren’t thinking about balance or wondering whether you could stay upright. You climbed onto the seat, put your feet on the pedals, and took off.
Maybe you rode up and down the sidewalk or raced the other kids in the neighborhood. You learned to steer around cracks in the pavement and how hard you had to push the pedals to climb a hill. You might have even gotten pretty fast.
You knew how to ride your bike.
Until someone decided it was time to take off the training wheels.
Suddenly, the bike you had been riding confidently felt like an entirely different machine.
There was nothing on either side to catch you if you leaned too far. The bike wobbled underneath you, and something you had felt perfectly capable of doing five minutes earlier suddenly didn’t feel so certain.
Could I really do this without the training wheels? What if I fell? What if I couldn’t do it?
Maybe you weren’t convinced. So someone offered to hold onto the back of the seat.
They would give you a little push to get you started, then run alongside you while you pedaled. And once you had a little momentum, something wonderful happened. You could balance! You could steer, pedal, and keep the bike upright without the training wheels.
As long as you were moving, you were fine.
The hard part was getting started.
When the bike was standing still, with one foot on the ground and the other on the pedal, it was a different story. You had to push off, get your feet onto the pedals, and build enough momentum to balance before the bike tipped over.
That was the scary part.
So you asked for another push.
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Trauma-Informed Career Development: What Kind of Work Would Jazz You? | Newsletter #11
Saturday, October 3, 2026 • Duration 17:57
When was the last time you thought about what kind of work jazzes you?
Not what you’re qualified to do.
Not what someone would hire you to do.
Not what you’ve already spent 10, 15, or 20 years doing.
I’m talking about the kind of work that makes something in you come alive.
The problem you can’t resist trying to solve. The conversation you could have for hours. The thing someone asks for your help with and, instead of feeling drained afterward, you find yourself thinking about three more things you could have told them.
That kind of jazzed.
Somewhere along the way, many of us learned to think about our careers from the opposite direction.
* What can I do?
* What am I qualified for?
* What’s available?
* What will pay enough?
* What feels safe?
Those are important questions. We have bills to pay and responsibilities to consider. There are practical realities involved in almost every career decision we make.
But what if those aren’t the only questions we get to ask?
Before We Go Any Further, Let Me Introduce Myself
I’m Cyndi Bennett, a trauma-informed career coach and the founder of the Resilient Career Academy™.
I spent more than two decades building my own corporate career before I began to understand how much our lived experiences can shape the way we navigate work.
Today, I help trauma survivors explore what can become possible in their careers when we begin recognizing the patterns that may have been limiting our choices and start building careers around more than survival.
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Why Does My Boss Trigger Me? CPTSD, Authority, and the Workplace
Thursday, October 1, 2026 • Duration 35:02
Have you ever had a reaction to your boss that felt much bigger than what was actually happening in the moment?
I have. I had been with the company for almost 22 years when a manager told me she wanted me to start accounting for my time.
By that point in my career, I was a tenured senior leader. I knew how to manage my workload. I knew how to get my work done. No one needed me to account for how I spent every hour of my day before.
But my response to her request wasn’t simply, I disagree with this management approach.
It felt much bigger than that.
I felt insulted. Controlled. Diminished. It felt like I had suddenly gone from being a capable professional who had spent more than two decades building a career to being a child who couldn’t be trusted to manage herself.
And that intensity was information.
Because my manager wasn’t the first authority figure I’d encountered in my life.
Long before I had bosses, managers, performance reviews, deadlines, or corporate hierarchies, I learned what it meant to live with adults who held power over me. My nervous system learned to pay attention to control, criticism, expectations, unpredictability, and the possibility of getting something wrong.
So when I encountered some of those same dynamics at work, my nervous system didn’t necessarily experience them as isolated workplace interactions.
Sometimes, it recognized something familiar.
And I don’t think I’m alone in that.
For those of us with histories of complex trauma or CPTSD, our relationships with authority at work can carry more weight than anyone around us realizes.
A manager’s tone, a request for a meeting, unexpected feedback, being questioned about a decision, or even a message that says “Can we talk?” can activate a response that seems much bigger than the situation in front of us.
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CPTSD at Work: When Being Capable Becomes Part of Your Armor | Newsletter #10
Saturday, September 26, 2026 • Duration 15:38
Do You Remember Darth Vader?
From the moment Darth Vader appears in Star Wars, there is no question that he is someone to be reckoned with.
He doesn’t have to announce his power. You can feel it.
The black helmet. The cape. The mechanical breathing that lets you know he’s coming before he even enters the room.
He is intimidating. Commanding. Driven. Powerful.
He walks into a room and people respond.
He doesn’t appear uncertain. He doesn’t appear overwhelmed. He certainly doesn’t look like someone who needs help.
He is strong in the dark side of the Force, capable of taking control of a situation without ever raising his voice, and seemingly unfazed by whatever stands in his way.
For most of the original Star Wars trilogy, that’s the Darth Vader we know.
Powerful.
In control.
A force to be reckoned with.
And then, near the end of Return of the Jedi, something happens that changes the way we see him.
Luke removes his father’s mask.
For the first time, all of that armor is stripped away.
And the man underneath looks nothing like the figure we’ve been watching.
He is pale. Scarred. Frail.
He is dying.
Suddenly, there is this enormous contrast between the person everyone else could see and the person who had been underneath the armor all along.
The armor hadn’t just protected him.
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Workplace Triggers: Why Do I Get Triggered So Easily at Work?
Wednesday, September 23, 2026 • Duration 25:13
Sometimes the hardest part of the workday isn’t the work.
It’s the deadline that suddenly gets moved up.
The meeting where you’re expected to present without much notice.
The manager who checks on your progress for the third time today.
The project that changes direction after you’ve already spent hours getting it right.
The performance review sitting on your calendar next week.
The disagreement with a coworker you can’t stop thinking about.
The vague announcement about “organizational changes” that leaves you wondering whether your job is safe.
Any one of these could be a normal part of working. They can also be incredibly activating.
And when we’re triggered by them, we may tell ourselves that we should be able to handle it. It’s just a deadline. It’s just feedback. It’s just a meeting. Everyone else deals with this.
But knowing intellectually that something is part of work doesn’t necessarily change what happens inside us when we experience it.
That’s what I want to talk about: why certain workplace situations can trigger such strong responses, what those responses might be telling us, and what becomes possible when we begin to recognize our own patterns.
If we haven’t met, I’m Cyndi Bennett. I’m a trauma-informed career coach, founder of the Resilient Career Academy™, and a trauma survivor myself.
I spent more than 25 years working inside corporate America, and much of the work I do now focuses on something I wish more of us talked about: the ways our past experiences can follow us into the workplace and quietly shape how we respond to pressure, feedback, uncertainty, conflict, authority, and the everyday demands of our jobs.
That’s why I think workplace triggers are worth talking about. Not because we need to eliminate every uncomfortable reaction we have at work, but because understanding what activates us can give us more awareness and more choice about what happens next.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit
Everyone’s busy. I should be able to handle this.
You noticed the change in your supervisor’s tone and wondered whether you had done something wrong. You checked your patient notes again. You wanted to be certain there was nothing anyone could question.
After the child died, someone asked if you were okay.
“I’m fine.”
There were patients waiting. And you weren’t sure what would happen if you let yourself stop.
Perhaps some of this feels familiar beyond nursing: watching other people closely, trying to anticipate what they need, feeling uneasy about disappointing them. Being useful may have become a way to feel secure long before it became part of your job.
Now those habits can be difficult to separate from being a good nurse.
You may volunteer for another shift while postponing the course that matters to you. You may want a transfer but worry that your manager will think you cannot cope. You may hear about an opening and immediately think of every qualification you lack.
* I need more experience first.
* They probably have someone better in mind.
* I can’t leave the team when we’re already short.
Meanwhile, your own plans keep moving further down the list.
The staffing shortages, missed breaks, and distressing events are real demands. When your response is to ask even more of yourself, it becomes harder to see what support is missing or what choices might be available.
Career development begins to involve questions you may not have expected:
What happens to my goals when I keep putting everyone else’s needs ahead of them? And what would help me give those goals some room?
Before We Go Further, Let Me Introduce Myself
I’m Cyndi Bennett, a trauma-informed career coach and Founder of the Resilient Career Academy.
I help professionals who have experienced complex trauma and CPTSD understand how their experiences may be shaping their working lives and career decisions.
For nurses, that can mean recognizing the pressure to keep pushing through, making room for their own professional goals, and exploring career options that fit their strengths, needs, and aspirations.
Today, we’re exploring how childhood caretaking patterns can become part of your work identity, how the armor that helps you get through a shift can make your needs difficult to acknowledge, and what it might mean to include yourself in the care you give.
When Caring for Others Became a Way to Be Safe
Perhaps you were taking care of people long before you became a nurse.
As a child, you may have learned to notice what someone needed before they asked. You watched expressions, listened for changes in tone, and tried to keep people comfortable. Being helpful might have brought approval, reduced conflict, or made the day feel more predictable.
Your own needs could wait. Sometimes, expressing them made things harder.
Over time, caring for others became something you did almost automatically. You simply knew how to be the responsible one, the helpful one, the person who could manage.
Then you entered a profession where caring for others is central to the work.
Your compassion, knowledge, and clinical skills matter. Alongside them, there may be an old expectation that you must keep giving, whatever it costs you.
They need me. I can wait.
You postpone the bathroom break. You offer to help before checking whether you have anything left to give. You feel uncomfortable resting while someone else is struggling.
Sometimes there genuinely is no coverage or opportunity to step away. At other times, help may be available, yet accepting it still feels uncomfortable. Both deserve attention.
If being needed once helped you feel safe, someone else’s unmet need may feel like something you must personally resolve.
That can make it difficult to recognize where your responsibility ends, especially in a workplace where there is always more to do.
When Being Capable Becomes Your Armor
At work, you may be the nurse people turn to when things get difficult.
You stay composed. You keep moving. You know how to put your feelings aside until later.
Perhaps you have been doing that for years.
The armor can be hard to recognize because it looks like competence. People see someone dependable. They may not see the effort involved, or how difficult it feels to say, “I need help.”
You might hear yourself agreeing to another request before you have considered whether you can manage it.
If I say no, will they think I don’t care?
You might want to tell your manager that you are struggling, then decide against it.
What if they stop trusting me?
Being the person who handles things may have become so closely tied to your identity that having limits feels unsettling.
If I’m not the person who always steps in, who am I?
That question can follow you into professional growth. Learning something new involves asking questions, needing guidance, and allowing others to see what you do not yet know. Pursuing an opportunity may mean disappointing someone who wants you to stay exactly where you are.
When being capable and available has helped you feel secure, those steps can carry more emotional weight than anyone else realizes.
What You Carry Beyond the Shift
You get home, but your thoughts are still at the hospital.
You remember the child’s face. You think about your own son. Someone asks about your day, and you pause before answering.
“Busy.”
You may worry about upsetting the people you love, or simply feel too tired to find the words.
Later, you open the information about that training. You read the same paragraph twice.
I’ll look at it on my day off.
But your day off already has a job: helping you recover enough to return.
Repeated exposure to other people’s traumatic experiences can contribute to secondary traumatic stress. Recognizing that exposure is part of supporting professionals whose work brings them into contact with others’ trauma. National Child Traumatic Stress Network
Alongside your own history, there may now be experiences from work that need attention too. Some may touch something familiar. Others may be painful because of what you witnessed that day.
Yet the habit of putting others first can continue at home.
My family needs me. They’ve had a long day too.
You may care for everyone around you while struggling to find somewhere you can speak honestly about what you are carrying.
Having that space could matter to your professional future as much as finding another training opportunity. It may help you understand what is exhausting you, what still matters to you, and what support you would like to explore.
Making Room for Yourself in Your Career
Recognizing these patterns can bring mixed feelings.
You may value your generosity and dependability. You may also begin to notice how often your own development waits until everyone else has what they need.
There is no requirement to change everything at once.
If it feels helpful, you might notice one moment when you automatically put yourself last. Perhaps you dismiss a course you want to attend, agree to extra work, or decide against asking a question.
What went through your mind just before that decision?
Was there a practical barrier? Concern about how someone would respond? A familiar feeling that wanting something for yourself was asking too much?
Your answer may offer a place to begin.
The workplace matters here too. Staffing shortages, distressing events, compliance demands, and fear of being blamed or sued are pressures that deserve to be taken seriously. Understanding your own patterns does not make you responsible for resolving those conditions.
It can, however, help you notice when you are carrying an additional expectation: that you must meet everyone’s needs without having any of your own.
Your interests, learning, and hopes for the future belong in the conversation.
If your needs had a place alongside everyone else’s, what might you want to explore in your nursing career?
As you sit with that question, you may begin to notice how these patterns have shaped earlier career decisions too: an opportunity you passed over, support you hesitated to ask for, or a goal that kept coming last.
If you’d like to explore those connections further, you’re welcome to read more at Resilient Career Academy, where I write about how trauma patterns can influence the direction of your career and what it can mean to make room for your own needs and aspirations.
Let’s Continue the Conversation
This Sunday, I’ll be joining Patrick LaRose, host of The Second Shift podcast, for a live conversation about how trauma patterns can influence how you show up in the work environment.
We’ll bring our perspectives to a conversation that makes room for the person behind the professional role.
If these experiences feel familiar, or you’re curious about the patterns you notice in yourself at work, you’re welcome to join us. You can listen without needing to share your story.
I went from being someone who could manage enormous responsibilities to struggling with tasks that had once been routine.
And I was terrified.
Not only because of what I was experiencing internally, but because I was afraid of losing the career I had worked so hard to build.
I couldn’t understand how I could still possess the same knowledge, skills, and experience yet feel so incapable of using them.
What I didn’t know then was that my professional capabilities hadn’t disappeared. My ability to access them was being affected by a nervous system overwhelmed by trauma.
That distinction would eventually change the way I understood my career, my healing, and the support I needed.
What We’re Exploring Together
In this article, I want to introduce the connection between CPTSD and our experiences at work, including why workplace situations can activate trauma responses, how those responses may affect our performance and relationships, and why understanding what is happening can help us begin developing more choices.
I also want to share what my own experiences taught me about the importance of support and why trauma-informed career development became such an important part of my work.
If you’re beginning to recognize these patterns in your own career, I invite you to subscribe for free toResilient Career Academy. We explore how CPTSD can affect our professional lives and the practical skills that can help us navigate work with greater awareness, confidence, and choice.
How CPTSD Can Show Up at Work
One of the things I’ve learned is that CPTSD doesn’t stay neatly contained outside our professional lives.
We bring our nervous systems to work with us.
And our nervous systems bring everything they’ve learned about relationships, authority, expectations, conflict, safety, and belonging.
For someone who experienced childhood trauma, certain workplace situations may activate responses that developed much earlier in life.
A manager’s disappointed expression might trigger an intense fear of having done something wrong. Constructive feedback might feel like rejection. A disagreement with a coworker might activate an urge to withdraw, defend ourselves, or do whatever is necessary to restore the relationship.
Even positive opportunities, such as promotions, leadership responsibilities, or increased visibility, can sometimes activate fear.
These responses aren’t necessarily conscious decisions.
Our nervous systems may recognize similarities between a present situation and an earlier experience of danger, even when the circumstances are very different.
When that happens, we may find ourselves responding automatically rather than choosing how we want to respond.
At work, that can look like:
* Overworking or perfectionism: Feeling compelled to prove our value or prevent criticism by doing more than is expected.
* People-pleasing: Agreeing to responsibilities we don’t have the capacity for because saying no feels threatening.
* Avoidance or shutdown: Struggling to initiate tasks, respond to messages, or participate in conversations when we’re overwhelmed.
* Hypervigilance: Constantly monitoring our environment, our manager’s mood, or other people’s reactions for signs that something might be wrong.
* Difficulty receiving feedback: Experiencing correction as a threat to our competence, belonging, or security.
* Challenges with concentration and memory: Finding it difficult to think clearly or access information when our nervous systems are highly activated.
Not everyone with CPTSD experiences these patterns, and these behaviors can have other explanations. But when trauma is part of our history, understanding that connection may give us a different place to begin.
Instead of asking, “What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I handle this?”
We can begin asking, “What’s happening in my nervous system, and what might I need to navigate this situation differently?”
That shift matters.
Because when we understand what’s happening beneath our responses, we have more information about what to do next.
The Conversation That Changed Something for Me
When I was struggling most intensely, I began withdrawing from the people around me, including the team I was leading.
I had spent years learning how to protect myself by keeping people at a distance. I often describe that protection as titanium armor.
The armor had served a purpose. It helped me maintain control and keep difficult experiences from reaching parts of me that felt vulnerable.
But it also made receiving support incredibly difficult.
Eventually, I realized I needed to talk with my manager.
I remember walking into her office feeling physically sick with fear. I told her about what I was experiencing, how much I was struggling, and how concerned I was about my ability to continue performing my responsibilities.
I even told her I would understand if she needed to find someone else to do the work.
Her response surprised me.
She told me she had hired the right person for the job. She still believed I was capable and qualified.
And then she asked a question I’ll never forget.
“How can I help?”
Those four words meant more to me than I can adequately explain.
At a time when I was questioning everything about myself, someone I respected still saw my capabilities.
She didn’t need me to prove that I deserved support.
She simply wanted to understand what would help.
That conversation didn’t resolve everything I was experiencing. I still needed therapy, time, and opportunities to develop new skills.
But it helped me begin to understand that receiving support didn’t have to mean surrendering my professional identity.
I could be struggling and still be capable.
I could need help and still have value.
And perhaps most importantly, I didn’t have to navigate every difficult moment alone.
I also recognize that not everyone has a manager who can respond this way. Disclosing a trauma history at work is a personal decision, and there may be very real reasons to protect that information.
We can advocate for what we need without necessarily sharing the details of why we need it.
Why Support Matters Beyond the Therapy Room
As my healing continued, I learned something else.
Having a trauma therapist was incredibly important, but I was still navigating situations at work that activated my nervous system between appointments.
I needed to understand what to do when I was triggered during a meeting, overwhelmed by a conversation, or struggling to concentrate while responsibilities continued piling up.
For a time, my manager provided an important source of support.
When she left the company, I experienced just how much I had come to rely on that relationship.
Her departure activated deep attachment wounds, and I withdrew again. My dissociation became severe, and it took the intervention of a trusted friend and coworker to help me recognize how much support I needed.
I returned to therapy and eventually sought additional support from a trauma recovery coach.
But that experience left me thinking about a much larger question.
What happens to trauma survivors who are trying to maintain their careers while learning how to manage trauma responses, especially when they don’t have access to supportive managers, coaches, or other resources?
What do we do when a trigger happens at 10:30 on a Tuesday morning, and we still have meetings to attend, decisions to make, and work to complete?
That question became central to my work.
Therapy and other healing supports can help us understand and process our experiences. But we may also need practical skills and appropriate support for navigating the professional situations we encounter every day.
We may need to learn how to recognize when we’re becoming activated, identify what is happening in the present, regulate our responses, communicate our needs, establish boundaries, and make career decisions without automatically responding from fear.
And we may need opportunities to practice those skills in manageable ways.
Learning to Recognize the Difference Between Then and Now
One of the most meaningful changes in my own journey has been learning to distinguish between what my nervous system learned in the past and what is happening in my present circumstances.
When we experienced trauma during childhood, we may have had very limited choices.
We couldn’t necessarily leave, challenge authority, establish boundaries, or seek help safely.
Our nervous systems adapted to those circumstances.
Those adaptations may have helped us survive.
But years later, we may find ourselves responding to workplace situations as though we still have the same limited choices.
A manager’s request can feel like a command we cannot question. A disagreement can feel like a threat to a relationship. A mistake can feel as though it puts our entire career at risk.
Sometimes our current environments really are unsafe, and our concerns deserve to be taken seriously.
Other times, our nervous systems may be responding to something familiar from the past, even when more options are available to us now.
Learning to recognize the difference creates an opportunity to ask new questions.
* What is happening right now?
* What does my nervous system seem to be responding to?
* What choices do I have in this situation?
* What would help me feel safe enough to consider one of those choices?
We don’t have to force ourselves into situations that feel overwhelming to make progress.
Sometimes the next step is simply recognizing a pattern. Sometimes it’s practicing a small boundary, asking for clarification, or giving ourselves time to regulate before responding.
The goal isn’t to never get triggered.
The goal is to create more choice in what happens next.
What Trauma-Informed Career Development Can Look Like
Traditional career advice often focuses on the actions we need to take to succeed.
* Speak up in meetings.
* Advocate for yourself.
* Build relationships.
* Ask for feedback.
* Pursue advancement.
* Set boundaries.
Those can be valuable strategies.
But what happens when our nervous systems interpret those same actions as threatening?
Knowing what we’re supposed to do doesn’t necessarily mean we can comfortably or consistently do it.
That’s where trauma-informed career development offers a different approach.
Instead of focusing only on the professional behavior we want to change, we also explore what may be happening beneath that behavior.
We develop awareness of our patterns, consider how our earlier experiences may influence our responses, and build skills that support us in navigating present-day situations.
That might mean learning how to recognize activation before a difficult conversation, developing ways to recover after receiving feedback, practicing boundaries in lower-stakes situations, or exploring why a desired career opportunity feels frightening.
It’s not about lowering our professional aspirations.
It’s about developing the capacity and support to pursue them in ways that account for our needs.
Where We Go From Here
When I first began writing about CPTSD in the workplace, I wanted to help other trauma survivors feel less isolated.
I wanted to talk about the experiences that weren’t being addressed in traditional career development conversations.
I still want that.
But my understanding of what we need has evolved.
I don’t want us to focus exclusively on how to survive another workday.
I want us to explore what becomes possible when we understand our patterns, learn to work with our nervous systems, develop greater trust in ourselves, and begin making career decisions with more intention.
Through Resilient Career Academy, we’ll explore workplace triggers and emotional regulation, relationships and boundaries, professional identity, career confidence, leadership, advancement, and the many ways trauma can influence our working lives.
We’ll also explore what it means to build a career that supports our well-being rather than continually requiring us to sacrifice it.
Some of that work begins with recognizing what we’re experiencing.
Some of it involves learning new skills.
And some of it requires examining the environments we’re working in and deciding whether they can support the lives and careers we want to build.
There isn’t one path that works for everyone.
But there are possibilities worth exploring.
A Place to Begin
If you’ve recognized yourself in parts of this article, you don’t have to figure everything out today.
You might begin by paying attention to one situation at work that consistently brings up a strong emotional or physical response.
What happened? What did you notice in your body? What did you feel compelled to do?
You don’t need to judge the response or immediately change it.
It’s designed to help you begin identifying workplace triggers, noticing patterns, and considering the support and coping strategies that may help you navigate difficult moments.
I spent many years believing that my ability to perform at work was evidence of my competence and value. When trauma began affecting that performance, I struggled to separate what I was experiencing from who I believed myself to be.
Today, I understand that distinction differently.
Our trauma responses can affect how we experience work, but they do not define the full extent of our professional capabilities or what may become possible for us.
And we deserve opportunities to discover what those possibilities might be.
The article offers a place to begin noticing what you want more room for. Paid members can go further with a worked example and The Beyond-Survival Career Reflection Guide, a companion worksheet for exploring possibilities and choosing one manageable next step.
Help Choose the Podcast Art
With all the traveling during my sabbatical, there was less time to work on The Resilient Career than I’d imagined. Since returning home, I’ve been working hard to get everything in place for the new podcast.
The Resilient Career launches October 27! You’ll be able to watch on YouTube, listen here on Substack, or tune in wherever you get your podcasts.
Before launch day, there’s one decision you can help with: the podcast art! Take a look at the two options below and cast your vote.
Option 1: Green shirt, purple background
Option 2: Blue shirt, navy background
Thanks for helping bring this podcast to life. Your vote gives me a little more direction as launch day gets closer!
And beyond the artwork, what would you like us to talk about on The Resilient Career? What questions about work or your career have been on your mind?
Reply to this email or leave a comment. Your questions can help shape future episodes.
I feel it in the depths of my being, and if I’m not careful, these thoughts and feelings can lead me to a very dark place.
But alas, we cannot change the past. Oh, how I wish we could sometimes.
And while there’s room to grieve the opportunities we missed or the things we wish we’d understood sooner, I wonder how often that regret keeps us looking backward when there are still meaningful decisions waiting for us in the present.
Whether we’re preparing for retirement, considering a career transition, or simply beginning to question what we want for the next chapter of our lives, there’s another question worth exploring.
Who are we becoming when the careers we’ve spent decades building are no longer at the center of our lives?
Before We Go Any Further, Let Me Introduce Myself
If this is your first time here, welcome. And if you’ve been here for a while, I’m glad you’re back.
I’m Cyndi Bennett, a trauma-informed career coach and founder of the Resilient Career Academy™.
After spending more than 25 years navigating the corporate world, I understand how deeply our professional experiences can shape the way we see ourselves. I also understand how complex trauma can influence the choices we make, the opportunities we pursue, and the expectations we place on ourselves.
Today, we’re going to explore something traditional career development often overlooks: what happens to our sense of identity when we begin transitioning away from careers we’ve spent decades building.
We’ll talk about the emotional side of that transition, the desire to leave a meaningful legacy, and how we can begin preparing for a next chapter that reflects who we are becoming.
When Our Careers Become Part of Who We Are
Think about how often we introduce ourselves by telling people what we do for a living.
“I’m a project manager.”
“I’m a teacher.”
“I’m an executive.”
“I’m a nurse.”
For many of us, our professional roles become much more than descriptions of how we earn a living. They’re connected to our daily routines, our relationships, our accomplishments, and the ways we contribute to the world around us.
Over time, our careers can become woven into how we understand ourselves.
We may be the person others depend on to solve difficult problems. The one who knows how everything works. The person who can step into a complicated situation and figure out what needs to happen next.
There’s often a sense of pride that comes with developing that kind of expertise.
And after 25 or 30 years, we’ve invested an enormous amount of time, energy, and effort into becoming the professionals we are today.
But what happens when we begin imagining a future where those roles are no longer part of our everyday lives?
What happens when we’re no longer the person everyone calls when something goes wrong?
Or when the title we’ve worked so hard to earn no longer appears beside our name?
For some of us, those changes may feel exciting. For others, they may bring uncertainty, sadness, or a sense of loss.
And sometimes, we experience all of those feelings at once.
When Professional Identity and Personal Worth Become Entangled
This conversation can become even more complicated for those of us who’ve experienced complex trauma.
When we’ve spent years trying to prove our competence, earn approval, or establish a sense of security, our professional accomplishments can become deeply connected to how we measure our worth.
Maybe we’ve learned to feel valuable when we’re needed.
Maybe being the dependable one gives us a sense of belonging.
Or perhaps our professional achievements have become evidence we use to challenge an internal belief that we’re somehow not enough.
I recognize how powerful that can be.
And I also wonder what happens when the career we’ve relied on to provide that evidence begins to change.
If we’re no longer achieving, producing, solving problems, or meeting other people’s expectations in the same ways, where do we look for that sense of value?
That’s a question worth exploring before we reach the point of transition.
Because the skills, talents, and qualities that made us valuable contributors throughout our careers don’t disappear when we leave a particular position.
But we may need time to discover how we want to express those parts of ourselves differently.
Preparing for More Than a Financial Transition
When my husband and I met with our financial advisor, we were focused on whether we had enough money to retire.
And that was an important conversation.
But financial readiness is only one part of preparing for a major career transition.
We may also need to consider what our days will look like, where we’ll find connection and community, what will give us a sense of purpose, and how we’ll navigate the changes in our professional identity.
For someone who’s spent decades working within a structured environment, the idea of having fewer external expectations can be both appealing and unsettling.
We may discover that we’ve become so accustomed to organizing our lives around our careers that we haven’t spent much time imagining what we want outside of them.
And if we’re beginning to recognize how trauma responses have influenced our professional lives, there may be additional questions to explore.
What parts of our professional identity reflect who we genuinely are?
What parts developed because we were trying to feel safe, accepted, or capable?
And which parts do we want to carry into the next chapter?
These aren’t questions we have to answer overnight.
But they’re worth considering while we still have opportunities to make intentional choices about what comes next.
What Will Your Next Chapter Look Like?
After spending decades building a career, transitioning into something different can bring up questions we haven’t had much reason to consider before.
Who am I beyond my professional role? What do I want to do with the knowledge and experience I’ve accumulated? What would a meaningful next chapter look like for me?
These are questions we can explore together through individual career coaching.
Whether you’re considering retirement, a career change, consulting, entrepreneurship, or a different way to contribute, we can work together to explore your professional identity, identify what matters most to you, and develop a transition plan that reflects your goals, values, and circumstances.
You don’t have to have all the answers before we begin.
The Legacy We Want to Leave Behind
As we approach the later chapters of our careers, many of us begin asking different questions about success.
Earlier in our professional lives, we may have been focused on establishing ourselves, earning enough to support our families, advancing into new positions, or demonstrating what we were capable of accomplishing.
But as we begin thinking about what comes next, our attention may shift.
We may start wondering what difference we’ve made.
What knowledge or experience do we want to pass along?
What do we hope people will remember about the way we worked, led, supported others, or contributed?
And is there something we’ve always wanted to do that we haven’t yet given ourselves permission to explore?
Legacy can take many forms.
For some, it may mean mentoring younger professionals or sharing decades of industry knowledge.
For others, it might involve consulting, teaching, volunteering, advocating for changes in their profession, or building a business around something they care deeply about.
And for some, leaving a meaningful legacy may have less to do with professional accomplishments and more to do with the relationships they’ve nurtured and the lives they’ve touched along the way.
There’s no single definition of what a meaningful legacy should look like.
We deserve the opportunity to define it for ourselves.
We Still Have Something to Offer
In my last newsletter, What Kind of Work Would Jazz You?, we explored the idea that each of us brings a unique combination of gifts, talents, interests, skills, and lived experiences into the world.
That conversation becomes especially meaningful when we’re approaching a major career transition.
Because after 25 or 30 years in the workforce, we’ve accumulated an enormous amount of experience.
We’ve learned things that can’t always be taught in a classroom. We’ve developed judgment through practice. We’ve discovered what we’re good at, what interests us, and perhaps what we’d rather never do again.
And some of us may be discovering gifts and interests that haven’t had much opportunity to develop while we’ve been focused on our professional responsibilities.
What if the next chapter gives us an opportunity to use those gifts differently?
Maybe we’re ready to share what we’ve learned.
Maybe there’s a cause we’d like to support.
Maybe we’d like to pursue work that feels more aligned with our values.
Or maybe we want to create space for parts of ourselves that have received less attention throughout our careers.
We don’t have to keep doing what we’ve always done simply because we’ve become good at it.
And we don’t have to prove our value through another accomplishment to justify wanting something different.
We get to explore what a meaningful next chapter might look like for us.
The Next Chapter Is Still Ours to Write
When I think about the people who tell me they wish they’d discovered my work twenty years ago, I understand the longing behind those words.
I have my own list of things I wish I’d known sooner.
And while I can’t change the decisions I made with the information I had at the time, I can continue learning about myself and making choices about what I want my future to look like.
That’s true for many of us.
We may be approaching the end of a particular career, but that doesn’t mean we’re approaching the end of our opportunities to grow, contribute, connect, or find fulfillment.
Our professional identities may change.
Our priorities may evolve.
And our definitions of success may look different from the ones we carried earlier in our careers.
Perhaps that’s something worth welcoming with curiosity.
Because the career we’ve spent decades building is part of our story.
It doesn’t have to be the final chapter.
I’d Love to Hear From You
As you think about the next chapter of your life, I’d love to hear how you’re approaching professional identity and legacy.
When you imagine stepping away from the career you’ve built, what part of your professional identity do you most want to carry forward?
Maybe it’s a skill you’ve developed, a way you’ve helped others, a contribution you’re proud of, or something you’ve only recently begun to recognize about yourself.
I invite you to share your thoughts in the comments. There’s a great deal we can learn from one another about navigating these transitions and imagining what might still be possible.
And every time, once you were moving, you could ride. You were doing the pedaling, the steering, and the balancing.
But you still believed you needed someone holding the back of the seat to get you going.
Until one day, the person helping you did something you weren’t expecting.
They gave you that familiar push, but instead of running alongside you, they let go.
You kept pedaling, gripping the handlebars and concentrating on staying upright. You were so focused on riding that you didn’t notice anything had changed.
Until you realized you couldn’t hear their footsteps anymore.
You looked back.
They were standing halfway down the sidewalk, watching you.
They hadn’t been holding on for a while.
You’d been riding the bike by yourself.
And that’s the part of this story that has me thinking about our careers.
Because I wonder how many of us have spent years learning, growing, developing skills, and accomplishing things we once weren’t sure we could do, yet still approach every new challenge as though we’re that child gripping the handlebars, terrified that we’re going to fall.
What if we’ve already demonstrated that we’re capable?
What if the person we’re still trying to convince is ourselves?
Before We Go Further, Let Me Introduce Myself
I’m Cyndi Bennett, a trauma-informed career coach and Founder of the Resilient Career Academy. I help survivors of complex trauma and CPTSD recognize the patterns that may be holding them back, rediscover the strengths and capabilities they bring to the workplace, and build careers based on their own vision of success rather than the limitations trauma taught them to believe in.
I’m also someone who spent a lot of my career trying to prove what I could do.
For a long time, I didn’t necessarily see that as a problem. Being determined to demonstrate my capability helped me develop skills, solve problems, navigate difficult situations, and build a career I’m proud of.
But as I began to understand how my own experiences with complex trauma had shaped the way I saw myself, I started questioning something I hadn’t really considered before.
Who was I trying so hard to convince?
And perhaps more importantly, why did I still need convincing after everything I’d already accomplished?
That’s what I invite you to explore with me today. How can beliefs we developed about ourselves long before entering the workforce influence our professional identity? Why might accomplishments fail to change those beliefs? And what might become possible if we could begin seeing ourselves through the evidence of who we’ve become rather than the beliefs we learned about ourselves long ago?
Want More Trauma-Informed Career Support?
If you’re navigating the ways complex trauma or CPTSD can affect your career, I invite you to subscribe to my Substack for free. You’ll get access to trauma-informed career development articles and resources designed to help you recognize patterns that may be holding you back, discover strengths you may not recognize in yourself, and explore new possibilities for building a career you’re proud of.
When We’re Trying to Prove Something to Ourselves
There’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting to demonstrate what we’re capable of.
When we’re learning something new, we don’t always know whether we can do it. We develop confidence through experience, practice, and discovering what happens when we try.
But for some of us who experienced complex trauma, the uncertainty can run deeper than whether we have the skills to accomplish a particular task.
We may have grown up with experiences that taught us to question our abilities, our judgment, our value, or whether we were good enough. Perhaps our accomplishments were overlooked, our mistakes were magnified, or the expectations placed on us seemed impossible to satisfy.
Those experiences can shape beliefs about ourselves that follow us into adulthood.
I’m not smart enough.
I’m not capable enough.
I’m not good enough.
And sometimes, without realizing it, we begin building careers around trying to overcome those beliefs.
We work hard. We figure things out. We take on challenges that stretch us beyond what we thought we could do. We earn credentials, develop expertise, receive recognition, and accomplish things that once seemed impossible.
Each accomplishment offers another piece of evidence that we are capable.
But something unexpected can happen.
We accumulate the evidence without changing what we believe about ourselves.
And so we keep trying.
When Accomplishment Doesn’t Change What We Believe
Have you ever accomplished something you weren’t sure you could do, only to find that the feeling of accomplishment didn’t last very long?
Maybe you earned the promotion you’d been working toward for years. You were excited, relieved, and proud of yourself. But before long, the questions started creeping back in.
What if I can’t handle this new role? What if they realize I’m not as capable as they think I am?
Or perhaps you completed a difficult project, received recognition for your work, and immediately started thinking about everything you could have done better.
Instead of allowing the accomplishment to become evidence of your capability, you found reasons to discount it.
* That wasn’t really that difficult.
* Anyone could have done that.
* I just got lucky.
* But can I do it again?
And before long, you’re looking for the next opportunity to prove yourself.
This is one of the more exhausting ways complex trauma can influence our careers.
We may be trying to use professional accomplishments to change beliefs about ourselves that were formed long before we ever entered the workplace.
The accomplishments are real. The skills we’ve developed are real. The career we’ve built is real.
But the beliefs we’re trying to overcome may not respond to evidence the way we expect them to.
We can spend years becoming more capable without ever feeling more capable.
And when that happens, the next accomplishment can start to feel like the one that will finally settle the question.
Maybe this time I’ll believe it.
When Proving Becomes Part of Our Professional Identity
Over time, that need to prove ourselves can become more than something we do. It can become part of who we believe we have to be.
We become the capable one. The dependable one. The one who figures things out. The person everyone turns to when there’s a problem because they know we’ll find a way to solve it.
And those qualities may be completely real.
We may be extraordinarily resourceful. We may learn quickly, notice things other people miss, solve complicated problems, or persist through situations that would have caused other people to give up.
Those are strengths we’ve developed, and they’re worth recognizing.
But there’s a difference between knowing we’re capable and needing to continually demonstrate our capability in order to believe it.
When our professional identity becomes intertwined with proving ourselves, ordinary workplace situations can begin carrying an additional emotional burden.
We’re not simply completing the project. We’re trying to convince ourselves that we’re capable of doing the work.
We’re not simply learning something new. We’re trying to overcome the fear that we aren’t smart enough to figure it out.
We’re not simply accepting an opportunity. We’re hoping it will finally make us feel like we deserve to be where we are.
And when we make a mistake, we may experience it as something much bigger than a mistake.
It can feel like evidence that the belief we’ve been trying so hard to overcome was right all along.
That’s an enormous amount of pressure to place on ourselves.
Let’s Recognize What Proving Has Given Us
I don’t think we need to turn our drive to prove ourselves into another behavior we’re supposed to feel bad about.
For many of us, that drive has taken us places.
Maybe someone underestimated us, and we figured out how to do something they didn’t believe we could do. Maybe we weren’t given the same opportunities as others, so we created our own. Maybe we entered a room without the experience everyone else seemed to have and taught ourselves what we needed to know.
Maybe the determination to prove that we could do something helped us develop expertise, resilience, resourcefulness, independence, persistence, or courage.
Some of us have careers we’re incredibly proud of because somewhere along the way, a little voice inside us said:
Watch me.
And we did.
We learned. We grew. We accomplished things. We developed strengths that became valuable parts of who we are professionally.
It’s important that we recognize those strengths rather than dismissing them simply because some of the motivation behind them may have come from painful experiences.
The strengths are still ours, regardless of what motivated us to develop them.
But we can also become curious about whether proving ourselves still needs to be the fuel that drives our careers.
Because the same determination that helped us build something meaningful can become exhausting when we believe we must keep accomplishing more just to feel that we’re enough.
What Happens When There’s Always Something Left to Prove?
When proving ourselves becomes automatic, we may stop noticing how often it influences our career decisions.
We might accept an impossible assignment because declining it feels like admitting we’re not capable. We might overprepare because walking into a meeting without every possible answer feels too risky. We might struggle to say, “I don’t know,” because somewhere inside us, not knowing feels like evidence that we’re inadequate.
We may have difficulty asking for help, even when help is readily available. We may interpret feedback as confirmation of our deepest doubts rather than information we can use to grow. We may continue carrying responsibilities long after we’ve established that we’re capable of carrying them.
And sometimes, we may pursue the next achievement without ever stopping to ask whether we actually want it.
That’s where this pattern can begin shaping the direction of our careers.
The question becomes less about what we want to accomplish and more about what we need to accomplish to finally feel capable.
We might pursue the promotion because it seems like proof that we’re good enough. We might accept the leadership role because turning it down feels like admitting we can’t do it. We might continue climbing a career ladder without ever considering whether the destination is somewhere we want to go.
And even when we reach the next milestone, the internal question may remain unresolved.
Am I enough yet?
If we’re constantly looking to the next accomplishment for an answer, we may spend years building careers that demonstrate our capability without giving ourselves permission to believe in it.
Being Capable Doesn’t Mean We Have to Pick It Up
One of the things I’ve been learning is that capability doesn’t automatically create obligation.
We can be capable of taking on another project and still decline it. We can know how to fix the problem and allow someone else to figure it out. We can have the answer and decide we don’t need to be the first person to provide it.
We can be qualified for an opportunity and decide it isn’t an opportunity we want.
And we can make a mistake without allowing that mistake to redefine everything we believe about ourselves.
For someone whose professional identity has been shaped by proving their capability, these choices may feel uncomfortable at first.
Because if we’ve been using accomplishment to reassure ourselves that we’re capable, choosing not to demonstrate our capability can leave us face-to-face with the very uncertainty we’ve been trying to overcome.
But what if we could begin approaching those moments with curiosity?
Instead of automatically accepting another responsibility, we might ask ourselves whether it’s something we genuinely want to take on.
Instead of treating a mistake as evidence of inadequacy, we might consider what we can learn from it.
Instead of assuming that asking for help means we aren’t capable, we might recognize that collaboration is also a professional skill.
And instead of pursuing the next accomplishment to prove something about ourselves, we might begin choosing opportunities because they’re meaningful to us.
Being capable of carrying something doesn’t mean we have to pick it up.
And perhaps we can begin trusting our capability without requiring ourselves to demonstrate it at every opportunity.
So Who Am I If I’m Not Proving Myself?
This may be the harder question.
Because if we’ve spent years building our professional identity around overcoming the belief that we’re not enough, changing that pattern isn’t simply about working less or setting better boundaries.
It can challenge the way we’ve learned to understand ourselves.
If I’m not the one who always figures it out, who am I?
If I’m not constantly accomplishing something, how do I know I’m making progress?
If I stop pushing myself to do more, will I still believe I’m capable?
And if my accomplishments have been one of the primary ways I’ve tried to convince myself that I’m enough, what happens when I stop asking them to do that job?
There’s an opportunity here to explore a different relationship with our professional identity.
* What if we could recognize our resourcefulness without needing another crisis to demonstrate it?
* What if we could appreciate our expertise while accepting that there will always be things we don’t know?
* What if we could acknowledge how far we’ve come without immediately turning our attention to how much farther we still need to go?
We might discover that we’re still capable, ambitious, resourceful, determined, and curious.
But those qualities can become strengths we recognize in ourselves rather than roles we feel obligated to perform.
And perhaps we can begin separating two ideas that have become intertwined.
Our competence is something we can develop, strengthen, and expand throughout our careers. There will always be things we know how to do and things we haven’t learned yet.
Our worth, however, isn’t determined by how competent we are.
We don’t become more worthy when we accomplish something, and we don’t become less worthy when we struggle.
That’s an important distinction when we’ve spent years trying to use accomplishment to answer questions about our value.
What Might Become Possible If We Believed the Evidence?
I invite you to consider something.
What if you could look at your career and recognize what you’ve already demonstrated about yourself?
Not as a way to convince yourself that you’ll never struggle again, make another mistake, or encounter something you don’t know how to do.
But as an opportunity to recognize that you’ve learned, adapted, grown, and developed capabilities you may not be giving yourself credit for.
And what if you could begin making career decisions from that understanding?
Instead of asking whether you can prove that you’re capable of taking on a new challenge, you might ask whether it’s a challenge you want.
Instead of automatically pursuing the next promotion, you might consider what success means to you at this stage of your life.
Instead of measuring your professional identity by how much you can accomplish, you might begin considering the kind of work you enjoy, the strengths you want to use, the contributions you want to make, and the life you want your career to support.
Maybe the next stage of your career isn’t about becoming more capable.
Maybe it’s about beginning to recognize the capability you’ve already developed and deciding what you want to do with it.
A Few Questions to Explore
I invite you to spend some time with these questions. There’s no right answer, and you don’t have to figure everything out today.
* What have I spent my career trying to prove to myself?
* What evidence of my capability have I accumulated that I may not be allowing myself to recognize?
* What strengths did I develop along the way that I genuinely want to keep?
* If I no longer needed my career to prove that I’m enough, what would I want my career to be about instead?
That last question may take some time to explore, especially if proving ourselves has influenced our decisions for much of our careers.
But I think it’s a question worth asking.
Because when we begin separating our worth from our accomplishments, we may discover that our careers can become something more than a place where we continually try to overcome what we believe is wrong with us.
They can become a place where we choose what we want to build.
Exploring Your Professional Identity in a Supportive Environment
If this article has you wondering how much of your professional identity has been shaped by what you’ve needed to prove to yourself, you don’t have to explore those questions alone.
In 1:1 trauma-informed career coaching, we can create a supportive environment to explore how your experiences may have influenced the way you see yourself professionally, the strengths you’ve developed, the patterns that may be affecting your career decisions, and what you want to carry forward.
We can examine the difference between the professional identity you’ve built and the one you want to build moving forward, with space for curiosity, reflection, and choice.
The goal isn’t for me to tell you who you should be or what your career should look like. It’s to support you in discovering what matters to you and identifying the possibilities you want to pursue.
Maybe We’ve Been Riding on Our Own for a While
I keep coming back to that bicycle.
The child who was so confident riding with training wheels, but suddenly wasn’t sure they could do it when the training wheels came off.
The child who could balance and steer once the bike was moving, but wasn’t yet confident enough to get started without someone giving them that first push.
And then that moment when they looked back and realized the person they thought was holding onto the seat had already let go.
They’d been balancing. They’d been steering. They’d been making all those tiny adjustments that kept the bike moving forward.
They’d been riding on their own.
But they didn’t know it yet.
And there’s another part of that experience worth remembering.
Learning that we can ride once we’re moving doesn’t automatically mean we’ve learned how to start without help.
That can take more practice, and needing that practice doesn’t erase the capability we’ve already developed.
I wonder how many of us have spent years building careers that demonstrate our capability while still seeing ourselves through the eyes of the person who wasn’t sure they could ride.
Maybe we’ve been gathering evidence for years. Maybe we’ve accomplished things we once couldn’t imagine doing, and maybe there are still some things we’re learning how to do.
We can recognize how capable we’ve become without requiring ourselves to have mastered everything.
And perhaps the next stage of our careers doesn’t require another accomplishment to prove that we’re enough.
Maybe it begins with recognizing what we’ve already demonstrated, trusting ourselves to learn what we haven’t yet mastered, and asking a different question.
Every person is uniquely equipped by the Creator with gifts and talents specific to them, and our lived experiences can deepen and enhance those abilities.
That’s what I want to explore with you today.
We’re going to look beyond job titles and résumés and begin looking for the clues that can help us identify our unique equipping: our gifts, talents, interests, lived experience, curiosity, and the things that make us come alive.
Because maybe the question isn’t simply:
What job should I do next?
Maybe there’s another question worth asking first:
What have I been uniquely equipped to contribute?
We Don’t Have to Start With a Job Title
Think about the way we typically approach career exploration.
We pull up a job board.
We search for titles similar to the one we already have.
We read the qualifications and start sorting opportunities into two categories:
* I could do that.
* I couldn’t do that.
And before long, the possibilities for our future have been narrowed by our past.
We’re looking for the next version of something we’ve already done.
But a résumé tells us where we’ve been. It doesn’t necessarily tell us everything we’re capable of becoming.
That’s why I like starting somewhere else.
I believe every person is uniquely equipped by the Creator with gifts and talents specific to them, and that our lived experiences can deepen and enhance those abilities.
Our unique equipping is bigger than a list of skills.
It’s the combination of the things that seem to have always been there and everything life has added along the way.
Our natural gifts.
Our talents.
Our interests and curiosities.
The way our minds work.
The things we’ve learned.
The experiences we’ve had.
The problems we’ve solved.
The perspectives we’ve developed.
The skills we’ve practiced until they’ve become second nature.
Put all of those things together, and the combination is uniquely ours.
So instead of beginning career exploration with:
What job should I do next?
I think there’s another question worth asking first:
What have I been uniquely equipped to contribute?
Our Lived Experience Can Change How We Use Our Gifts
I want to be careful here, especially when we’re talking about trauma.
I don’t believe we need to call what happened to us a gift.
We don’t have to be grateful for painful experiences or believe we needed them in order to become valuable.
Our gifts don’t have to come fromour trauma for our lived experiences to influence how we’ve learned to use them.
Maybe you’ve always had a gift for recognizing patterns.
Life may have sharpened your ability to notice things other people miss.
Maybe you’ve always been a communicator.
The experiences you’ve navigated may have taught you how to explain complicated things in ways people can understand.
Maybe you’ve always been deeply curious.
The problems you’ve encountered may have given that curiosity somewhere meaningful to go.
Maybe you’re naturally good at bringing order to chaos, connecting people, creating something from nothing, seeing possibilities, teaching, organizing, advocating, analyzing, building, designing, listening, leading, or solving problems.
Then life happens.
We work. We learn. We struggle. We succeed. We make mistakes. We recover. We change directions. We encounter people and situations that teach us things we never would have learned in a classroom.
Our lived experience becomes another layer of our equipping.
And that creates a career question I find much more interesting than “What am I qualified to do?”
Where could I use this unique combination of gifts, talents, abilities, interests, and lived experience in a way that jazzes me?
But What If I Don’t Think I Have Any Special Gifts?
Maybe you read all of that and thought:
That’s a nice idea, Cyndi.
I’m just not sure it applies to me.
I think we need to talk about that.
Because some of us may genuinely struggle to believe we’re uniquely equipped at all.
When someone asks what we’re good at, our mind goes blank.
We can identify talent in everyone around us, but when the attention turns toward us, suddenly we can’t think of anything.
Or the things we’re good at seem so ordinary that we don’t count them.
Anybody can do that.
That’s not really a skill.
It’s easy.
It’s not anything special.
But here’s something worth considering:
Maybe it feels easy because it’s one of your gifts.
We’re experiencing our abilities from the inside. We don’t necessarily know what it’s like for someone who doesn’t think the way we think or see what we see.
And for some trauma survivors, there may be another layer.
We may have spent years becoming experts at identifying what was wrong with us.
What needed fixing.
Where we weren’t enough.
What we needed to do better.
How we needed to change to be accepted, valued, successful, safe, or loved.
When we’ve spent that much time looking for deficiencies, being asked to look for gifts can feel almost unbelievable.
You mean there’s something already in me that’s valuable?
Sometimes the idea that we might have been uniquely equipped feels too good to be true.
So I’m not going to ask you to suddenly believe something about yourself that you don’t believe yet.
Let’s look for evidence instead.
Start Looking for the Clues
Maybe you don’t know what your gifts are yet.
That’s different from not having them.
So instead of trying to declare what your unique equipping is, I invite you to become curious about it.
Grab a notebook, open a blank document, or just sit with these questions for a while.
What seems to come naturally to me?
What do you do that feels relatively easy to you but seems harder for other people?
Maybe you organize information quickly. Maybe you make people feel comfortable. Maybe you can connect dots like nobody’s business. Maybe you can look at a complicated problem and immediately see where to start.
Don’t dismiss something because it seems too easy to count.
That might be exactly why we need to pay attention.
What do people consistently come to me for?
Think beyond your job description.
What do coworkers, friends, family members, clients, or leaders ask for your help with?
* Advice?
* Problem-solving?
* Explaining something?
* Making a decision?
* Creating a plan?
* Handling a difficult conversation?
* Seeing something they’ve missed?
Sometimes other people have been giving us clues about our gifts for years.
What has my life taught me?
Think about the knowledge and abilities you’ve developed through living.
That can include your education and professional experience, but it doesn’t stop there.
What have you had to figure out?
What have you learned through relationships, challenges, transitions, caregiving, leadership, entrepreneurship, healing, failure, starting over, or navigating systems that weren’t designed with you in mind?
What do you understand now that an earlier version of you didn’t?
What am I deeply curious about?
What subjects do you keep coming back to?
What do you read about when nobody assigns it?
What problems make you think, There has to be a better way to do this?
What could you spend hours talking about without someone having to keep the conversation going?
Curiosity can be a clue.
What jazzes me?
And now we get to my favorite question.
Think about moments when you’ve been doing something and felt more energized afterward.
What were you doing?
Who were you doing it with?
What part of the experience gave you energy?
Was it creating?
Teaching?
Solving?
Leading?
Helping?
Analyzing?
Building?
Connecting?
Advocating?
Imagining?
Don’t worry about whether you can turn the answer into a job yet.
We’re collecting clues.
Now Look for the Intersections
Once you have some answers, resist the urge to immediately search for a job title.
Look across everything you’ve written.
What keeps appearing?
Where do your gifts and talents intersect with what you’ve learned through living?
Where does your curiosity overlap with something you’re unusually good at?
Where do your experiences give you a perspective someone else might not have?
What kinds of problems allow several pieces of your unique equipping to come together at once?
And perhaps most importantly:
Where do you find yourself thinking, “I’d love to do more of that”?
That’s where I would start exploring.
Not because every interest needs to become a career.
Not because every gift has to be monetized.
And not because we’re going to ignore salary, responsibilities, geography, family needs, accessibility, benefits, or any of the other realities that influence our career choices.
We’re simply allowing ourselves to explore possibility before we eliminate it.
What If Career Exploration Started With You?
For those of us who have spent significant parts of our careers in survival mode, this can be a very different way of thinking.
We’ve gotten good at asking:
* What do they need?
* What will make me valuable?
* What am I supposed to do?
* What will keep me secure?
* What can I handle?
Those questions may have helped us build careers, support ourselves, take care of people we love, and get through seasons when stability mattered more than fulfillment.
But there may come a point when another question starts asking for our attention:
What do I want?
That question can be surprisingly difficult.
We don’t have to know the answer immediately.
We can start by noticing.
* What draws us in.
* What energizes us.
* What we’re good at.
* What we’ve learned.
* What we care about.
* What we’d like to contribute.
* What we might explore if we weren’t required to know exactly where it would lead.
Because maybe career exploration doesn’t have to begin with a job title.
Maybe it can begin with us.
What Could Your Unique Equipping Make Possible?
Becoming Limitless isn’t about pretending there are no constraints.
It isn’t about believing we can be anything we want to be if we just think positively enough.
For me, it’s about becoming curious about possibilities we may have eliminated before we ever gave ourselves permission to consider them.
Maybe you already have an idea of the kind of work that jazzes you.
Or maybe you’ve spent so much of your career doing what you’re good at, what other people needed from you, or what made practical sense that you aren’t sure anymore.
We don’t have to know the job title before we begin exploring.
We can start with the clues.
* Your gifts.
* Your talents.
* Your lived experience.
* Your curiosity.
* Your values.
* The problems you’re drawn to solving.
* The contribution you want to make.
* The things that make something inside you light up.
And then we can ask:
What kind of career could allow more of my unique equipping to come together?
If You’re Ready to Explore What’s Possible
If you’re at a point in your career where you know you want something different, but you’re having trouble seeing what that differentcould be, this is the kind of work we can do together through individual career coaching.
We can start with you, rather than a list of job titles.
Together, we can explore your gifts, talents, lived experience, interests, values, strengths, goals, and the things that jazz you. Then we can begin translating what we discover into real career possibilities and a path for exploring them.
The goal isn’t for me to tell you what you should do next.
It’s to help you see possibilities you may not have been able to see from where you’re standing.
It also doesn’t automatically mean our boss is doing something wrong.
It may mean there is more information our nervous system is responding to than what is happening in this particular moment.
And learning to recognize that difference can matter enormously for our careers.
Because the goal isn’t to make ourselves impossible to trigger.
The goal is to understand what’s happening well enough that an automatic response doesn’t have to be our only response.
That’s where we begin to create choice.
Before We Go Any Further, Let Me Introduce Myself
If we haven’t met yet, I’m Cyndi Bennett. I’m a trauma-informed career coach, and I help professionals understand how the after-effects of complex trauma and CPTSD can show up at work and create obstacles in our careers.
But I don’t come to this work only as a coach.
I’ve spent more than 25 years building my own career in corporate America while navigating many of these patterns myself. For years, I didn’t understand why certain workplace situations seemed to affect me so differently, or so much more intensely, than they appeared to affect the people around me.
It wasn’t until my own childhood trauma surfaced later in life that I began to recognize something I hadn’t understood before: the survival responses we learned long before we ever had a career don’t necessarily stay at home when we go to work.
They can show up in how we respond to feedback, conflict, authority, visibility, boundaries, expectations, and even success.
That’s what much of my work is about today.
I help us get curious about those patterns without judging ourselves for having them, understand what may be underneath them, and explore what becomes possible when an automatic survival response doesn’t have to be our only response.
Because I’ve experienced these patterns in my own career, too.
Including with my bosses.
Why Authority Can Feel Different When We Have a History of Complex Trauma
A boss isn’t just another person we interact with at work.
They may have influence over our workload, our performance reviews, our opportunities, our compensation, our reputation, and sometimes whether we get to keep our job.
There is a real power dynamic built into the relationship.
For those of us who experienced complex trauma in childhood, power and authority may already carry a history.
The first authority figures in our lives were the adults we depended on for safety, care, protection, and survival. When those relationships were also a source of fear, control, criticism, neglect, unpredictability, or harm, we may have learned very early that being around someone with power required us to pay attention.
* We learned to notice changes in tone.
* We learned to anticipate what someone might need before they asked.
* We learned to avoid mistakes, keep the peace, stay out of the way, become indispensable, or figure things out on our own.
Those responses may have helped us navigate the environments we grew up in.
And then we went to work.
Suddenly, we’re in another environment with hierarchies, expectations, evaluations, consequences, and people who have some degree of power over what happens to us.
Our circumstances may be completely different, but something about the dynamic can feel familiar.
A manager who closely monitors our work may activate an old response to being controlled. A boss who is difficult to read may leave us scanning for signs that something is wrong. Critical feedback may feel like more than information about our performance. An absent manager may activate the familiar belief that when we need help, we’re going to have to figure it out on our own.
And sometimes, we may find ourselves working incredibly hard to stay in an authority figure’s good graces by saying yes, overdelivering, avoiding disagreement, or trying to become the employee they could never be disappointed in.
None of this means every difficult interaction with a boss is about our past.
It means our past may be one of the things our nervous system brings with us into the interaction.
And that can help explain why two people can walk out of the exact same meeting having experienced it very differently.
One person may leave thinking, That was uncomfortable.
Another may leave with their heart racing, replaying every word, wondering what they did wrong, worrying about their job, or already figuring out what they need to do to make things okay.
The meeting may be over.
But their nervous system may still be responding to what it believes is at stake.
Your Nervous System May Hear Something Your Manager Didn’t Say
Have you ever received a message from your boss that simply said:
“Do you have a few minutes to talk?”
That’s it.
No explanation. No context. Just a request to talk.
And suddenly, your mind is off to the races.
* What did I do?
* Did I miss something?
* Are they upset with me?
* Am I in trouble?
* Am I going to lose my job?
By the time the meeting happens, we may have replayed our last several interactions, reviewed everything we’ve worked on recently, and prepared ourselves for a conversation that hasn’t even happened yet.
Then we get on the call, and our manager says, “I wanted to get your thoughts on this project.”
Nothing was wrong.
But the response we experienced before that conversation was real.
This is one of the ways our past experiences can shape what we hear in the present.
Our manager may say, “I’d like you to make a few changes to this.”
We may hear, “You didn’t do it right.”
They may say, “I noticed something I want to give you some feedback on.”
We may hear, “You messed up.”
They may disagree with an idea we proposed.
We may hear, “Your ideas aren’t valuable.”
They may make a decision we don’t understand.
We may hear, “You don’t matter here.”
The words our manager actually says and the meaning our nervous system assigns to those words aren’t always the same thing.
And that doesn’t mean we’re making it up.
Our nervous system has learned from experience. If criticism once came with humiliation, if mistakes had consequences that felt dangerous, if someone’s changing tone told us we needed to prepare for what was coming next, or if keeping an authority figure happy helped us feel safer, it makes sense that we became really good at noticing those cues.
The challenge is that the meaning we learned to assign to those cues may continue showing up long after our circumstances have changed.
That’s why I think curiosity is so important here.
Instead of immediately asking ourselves, Why am I reacting like this?, we can begin asking:
* What did my manager actually say or do?
* What meaning did I attach to it?
* What did I immediately believe was going to happen next?
* And what about this feels familiar?
Those questions aren’t about talking ourselves out of our response.
They’re about getting more information.
Because sometimes our nervous system is responding to an old alarm.
Sometimes it’s picking up on something happening in the present that deserves our attention.
And sometimes it may be a little bit of both.
The more we can understand what we’re responding to, the more choices we can begin to see about what to do next.
What Boss Triggers Can Look Like at Work
Once we start paying attention, we may notice that it isn’t simply our boss who triggers us.
It may be something specific about the way they lead, communicate, respond, or use their authority that our nervous system recognizes.
And different behaviors may activate very different responses.
Control or Micromanagement
Being closely monitored, having our decisions questioned, or feeling like we constantly have to account for what we’re doing can be especially activating if control was part of our earlier experiences.
We may find ourselves becoming angry or defensive. We may shut down. We may feel an overwhelming need to prove that we’re capable. Or we may comply while quietly feeling smaller and smaller.
That was part of what was happening for me when my manager asked me to account for my time.
It wasn’t simply the request.
It was what the request seemed to say about whether I could be trusted.
Criticism or Perfectionism
For some of us, getting something wrong wasn’t always safe.
Maybe mistakes were met with anger, humiliation, punishment, withdrawal, or expectations we could never quite meet. We may have learned that doing things perfectly was one way to reduce the possibility of what might happen next.
Then we encounter a manager who focuses heavily on mistakes, expects perfection, or continually moves the bar.
Suddenly, a correction to a presentation or a piece of feedback on a project can feel like much more than feedback.
It can feel like evidence that we’ve failed.
Yelling, Anger, or Changes in Tone
Sometimes the trigger is much easier to recognize.
A boss raises their voice. Slams a door. Sends an angry email. Becomes visibly frustrated.
But it doesn’t always have to be that obvious.
For those of us who became skilled at monitoring other people’s emotions, even a subtle change in our manager’s tone, facial expression, or communication style may be enough to put us on alert.
We may notice the shift before anyone else in the room does.
And then we may start preparing for what we believe is coming next.
Unpredictability
A manager is warm and supportive one day and critical the next.
Priorities constantly change. Expectations aren’t clear. We never quite know which version of our boss is going to show up.
For a nervous system that learned to survive by anticipating what was coming next, unpredictability can keep us scanning.
Instead of focusing only on our work, part of our attention may always be trying to answer:
Are we okay today?
Favoritism or Unequal Treatment
Watching a manager give someone else opportunities, attention, flexibility, or approval that we aren’t receiving can bring up more than frustration about workplace fairness.
It may activate an old drive to earn approval.
We may start working harder, volunteering for more, saying yes more often, or trying to figure out what we need to become in order to finally be seen as valuable.
An Absent or Unavailable Manager
Not every authority trigger comes from someone exerting too much control.
Sometimes it’s the opposite.
A manager who is rarely available, doesn’t provide direction, or isn’t there when we need support may activate something entirely different.
We may immediately default to:
I’ll figure it out myself.
That independence can look like a strength, and often it is a strength.
But sometimes underneath it is an old expectation that when we really need someone, they aren’t going to be there.
These are only a few examples.
The point isn’t to create a checklist of behaviors that should trigger us. It’s to begin noticing our own patterns.
What happens inside us when our manager questions us?
What happens when they disagree with us?
What happens when they’re disappointed?
What happens when they don’t respond?
What happens when they have something we need, such as approval, information, support, an opportunity, or a decision, and we have to wait?
Those moments can give us clues.
Because when we stop at “My boss triggers me,” the problem can feel enormous and almost impossible to change.
But when we become curious about what specifically is activating us, what response it creates, and what that response may be trying to protect us from, we have something we can begin to work with.
Is This an Old Alarm, a Present Problem, or Both?
Recognizing that our past may be influencing our response doesn’t mean we should automatically assume the problem is ours.
Sometimes our nervous system is responding to something that feels familiar from the past.
Sometimes our manager is behaving in a way that really is controlling, demeaning, unpredictable, inappropriate, or harmful.
And sometimes both things are happening at the same time.
This distinction matters.
If I become activated when my manager questions a decision I’ve made, I can get curious about why being questioned feels threatening to me. Maybe I learned that making a mistake could lead to criticism, humiliation, or consequences that felt much bigger than the mistake itself.
That’s useful information about me.
But it doesn’t tell me everything I need to know about what is happening now.
I can also look at the present situation.
How did my manager question me?
Was I being asked to explain my thinking, which may be a reasonable part of working with a manager?
Was I spoken to disrespectfully?
Is this an isolated interaction, or is there a pattern?
Are expectations clear and reasonable?
Am I being treated differently from others?
Is there something happening here that I need to address, document, set a boundary around, or get support with?
This is where getting curious can help us separate the different pieces of the experience.
We don’t have to dismiss our response as just a trigger.
And we don’t have to assume that because we feel triggered, our interpretation of what’s happening is the only possible interpretation.
We can hold space for both the past and the present.
We can ask ourselves, What does this remind me of?
And we can also ask, What is actually happening here?
Those two questions can give us very different information.
The first can help us understand the response our nervous system learned.
The second can help us evaluate the situation we’re in now.
And together, they can help us decide what we need.
Sometimes that might mean regulating ourselves and approaching the situation differently. Sometimes it might mean having a conversation, asking for clarification, setting a boundary, documenting a pattern, seeking support, or considering whether this environment continues to work for us.
The goal isn’t to convince ourselves that everything is safe.
The goal is to get enough information to make a choice based on what is happening now, rather than having the past make that choice for us.
We Can’t Always Control the Trigger. We Can Learn to Work With the Response.
One of the things I’ve had to learn in my own career is that recognizing my triggers doesn’t mean they stop happening.
I can understand exactly why something activates me and still feel my nervous system respond when it happens.
My heart may start racing. I may feel defensive. I may want to shut down, get away, explain myself, prove myself, fix the situation, or immediately do whatever I think will make everything okay again.
The trigger can happen quickly.
What I’ve learned is that I don’t have to make my next decision just as quickly.
When we’re activated, there can be an enormous sense of urgency. We may feel like we need to respond to the email right now, explain ourselves right now, confront our boss right now, fix whatever went wrong right now, or start looking for another job right now.
But urgency is something we can learn to notice, too.
When possible, we can give ourselves enough space to get grounded before deciding what to do next.
That might mean stepping away from the computer for a few minutes. Taking a few slow breaths. Going for a walk. Writing down what happened. Talking with someone we trust. Or simply reminding ourselves, I don’t have to figure this out in this exact moment.
Once there is a little more space between the trigger and our response, we can begin getting curious.
What happened?
What did my manager actually say or do?
What happened inside me?
What did I feel in my body? What thoughts showed up? What did I immediately want to do?
What meaning did I give the interaction?
Did I hear criticism as I’m not good enough? Did a question feel like I can’t be trusted? Did someone’s frustration become I’m in trouble?
What does this remind me of?
Is there something familiar about the feeling, the dynamic, or the response?
And then we can come back to the present.
What choices do I have now?
That last question matters.
Because the response that once helped us survive may still show up automatically, but automatic doesn’t have to mean inevitable.
We may not get to choose whether our nervous system reacts.
We can practice creating more choice in what happens next.
This is the beginning of what I teach through my 5 R Framework:
* Recognize the pattern,
* Root out the cause,
* Rebuild the response,
* Rehearse it live, and
* Reinforce for good.
It starts with noticing.
Not judging the response.
Not shaming ourselves for having it.
Not demanding that we stop being triggered.
Just recognizing what is happening and getting curious about why.
Because awareness alone doesn’t change a career.
But awareness can create the space where a different response becomes possible.
Start by Noticing the Pattern
If you’re beginning to recognize some of your own workplace triggers as you’re reading this, you don’t have to figure them all out at once.
Start by noticing.
What happened?
What did you feel?
What did you immediately believe the interaction meant?
What did you want to do next?
And what, if anything, felt familiar about it?
I created the Workplace Trigger Tracker Toolkit to help us slow these experiences down and begin looking for the patterns that can be difficult to see when we’re in the middle of them.
Instead of simply walking away from an interaction thinking, My boss triggered me again, the Trigger Tracker can help us get more specific about what happened, what response it activated, and what we may need in order to navigate similar situations differently in the future.
We don’t have to use what we discover to judge ourselves.
We can use it to get curious.
Because every time we recognize a pattern, we have another opportunity to understand what our nervous system has been trying to do for us and consider whether that same response is what we need now.
We May Have More Choices Than Our Nervous System Realizes
One of the hardest things about being triggered by someone in authority is that, in the moment, we may not feel like we have very many choices.
We may feel like we have to comply.
We may feel like we have to keep them happy.
We may feel like we have to defend ourselves, prove ourselves, fix the situation, or get away from it.
Sometimes leaving the job may feel like the only way to make the feeling stop.
I understand that response.
When many of these patterns were first formed, we really may not have had many choices.
As children, we couldn’t simply decide that an authority figure’s behavior wasn’t working for us and find another family. We couldn’t schedule a meeting to clarify expectations, talk to Human Resources, set a workplace boundary, ask for a different assignment, look for another job, or decide how much access someone would have to us.
Our options were limited, so we learned ways to adapt.
We kept the peace.
We became easy to manage.
We stayed quiet.
We anticipated what other people needed.
We became exceptionally capable.
We handled things ourselves.
We learned how to survive within circumstances we couldn’t necessarily change.
Those responses may still show up when we’re sitting across from a boss today.
But our circumstances are different now.
That doesn’t mean every option available to us is easy, safe, or without consequences. Workplace power dynamics are real. Financial realities are real. There may be very good reasons why we aren’t ready or able to confront a manager, leave a position, or make a significant change.
Choice doesn’t mean pretending those realities don’t exist.
It means recognizing that there may be more than one possible response available to us.
Maybe we ask our manager what they meant instead of trying to interpret it ourselves.
Maybe we give ourselves time before responding to an email.
Maybe we ask for clearer expectations.
Maybe we disagree respectfully.
Maybe we stop automatically saying yes.
Maybe we document behavior that concerns us.
Maybe we seek guidance or support.
Maybe we set a boundary.
Maybe we decide that something isn’t ours to fix.
And sometimes, after looking carefully at what is happening, we may decide that leaving really is the choice we want to make.
The difference is that leaving doesn’t have to be an automatic escape from the feeling of being triggered. It can be an intentional decision based on what we know about ourselves, what we’re experiencing, what we need, and what we want for our careers.
That’s the possibility I keep coming back to in this work.
We aren’t trying to become people who never have a trauma response again.
We’re creating more space between what happens to us and what we do next.
And sometimes, in that space, we discover choices we couldn’t see before.
From Automatic Response to Intentional Choice
When I think back to that manager who asked me to account for my time, I can understand my response differently now.
I can see why it felt so much bigger than a request about how I spent my workday.
It touched something familiar.
It activated feelings around control, trust, authority, and whether someone else believed I was capable of managing myself.
Knowing that doesn’t mean I have to convince myself that I was wrong to be upset. It doesn’t mean I have to decide that my manager’s approach was reasonable. And it doesn’t erase the very real frustration I experienced in that situation.
It gives me more information about me.
And with more information comes more choice.
That’s what I wish I had understood much earlier in my career.
For a long time, I thought my options were determined by what happened around me. If someone triggered me, I responded. If an authority figure made me feel threatened, I protected myself in whatever way had worked before.
Sometimes that meant overworking.
Sometimes it meant proving myself.
Sometimes it meant staying quiet.
Sometimes it meant handling everything myself.
And sometimes it meant wanting to get as far away from the situation as possible.
Those responses weren’t random. They had a history.
But they don’t have to determine the future of my career.
And neither do yours.
Imagine being able to walk out of a difficult meeting and, instead of immediately assuming you’re in trouble, recognize: Something about that interaction activated me. Let me figure out what happened.
Imagine receiving feedback and being able to notice the part of you that wants to defend, explain, shut down, or prove yourself without automatically having to follow that response.
Imagine recognizing that your boss is disappointed with something you did and knowing that their disappointment doesn’t have to determine what you believe about yourself.
Or realizing that your manager really is behaving in a way that isn’t acceptable to you and being able to consider your options from a grounded place.
That doesn’t mean the trigger disappears.
It means the trigger doesn’t automatically get to decide what happens next.
This is what I mean when I talk about moving from automatic response to intentional choice.
We recognize what’s happening.
We get curious about where the response may be coming from.
We look at what is actually happening in the present.
And then we ask:
Given what I know now, how do I want to respond?
There may not always be a perfect answer.
But there may be more possibilities than we could see when our nervous system was focused on protecting us.
And every time we create a little more space to see those possibilities, we get to participate more intentionally in what happens next in our careers.
What Might Become Possible With More Choice?
Being triggered by our boss can affect much more than one uncomfortable interaction.
It can shape how visible we’re willing to be, whether we speak up, how we respond to feedback, the boundaries we’re willing to set, the opportunities we pursue, and even whether we stay in a job or leave it.
That’s why learning to understand these responses matters.
The goal isn’t to become unaffected by everything that happens at work. We’re human. We’re going to have reactions. And for those of us whose nervous systems learned to protect us through difficult experiences, some workplace situations may continue to activate those protective responses.
What can change is what becomes possible after we’re activated.
We can learn to recognize what is happening.
We can get curious instead of immediately judging ourselves.
We can create space to distinguish what belongs to the past from what is happening in the present.
And we can practice choosing a response that reflects what we need and what we want now.
That practice can change more than how we interact with a difficult boss.
It can change how we experience our careers.
If You’d Like to Go Deeper
If you’ve been reading this and thinking, I can recognize my triggers, but I don’t always know what to do once I’m activated,that’s exactly the gap I created Emotional Regulation in the Workplace to help us work with.
This six-week, self-paced course explores how dysregulation can show up at work and gives us practical tools for building self-awareness, coping with activation, communicating and setting boundaries, strengthening resilience, and navigating our careers with more intention.
Because recognizing the pattern is important.
Learning what to do when the pattern shows up is where we begin to practice something different.
And if you’re not ready for the course, that’s okay.
It had hidden how vulnerable the person underneath it really was.
We may not walk into work wearing a black helmet and cape, but many of us have learned to wear armor of our own. Armor that helps us look strong, confident, and in control, even when something very different may be happening underneath.
And for some of us, part of that armor is being the capable one.
* The person who can handle it.
* The person who figures it out.
* The person everyone can count on.
* The person who never seems to need much from anyone else.
And sometimes our armor can be so convincing that no one thinks to ask what it takes to keep wearing it.
If We Haven’t Met Yet
If we haven’t met yet, I’m Cyndi Bennett, a trauma-informed career coach and founder of the Resilient Career Academy. You’re listening to or reading Issue #10 of The Resilient Career Academy Newsletter, where we explore how the after-effects of complex trauma can show up in our careers and what becomes possible when we begin recognizing the patterns they can create.
Today, I want to talk about one piece of armor I know well: being the capable one.
Because being capable can be a tremendous strength. It can help us build successful careers, earn the trust of the people around us, and open doors to opportunities we worked incredibly hard for.
But what happens when being capable becomes more than something we know we are?
What happens when it becomes someone we believe we have to be?
“I Can Handle It.”
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said some version of those words throughout my career.
And most of the time, they were true.
I could handle it. I could figure things out. I could walk into complicated situations, make sense of what was happening, and find a way forward. Give me something I’d never done before, and I’d learn. Give me a problem no one knew how to solve, and I’d start looking for answers.
That capability has served me incredibly well throughout my career.
It helped me become someone people trusted. I was given more responsibility because people knew I would follow through. I was invited into bigger conversations and given increasingly complicated problems to solve.
And every time I handled the next thing, I reinforced something for the people around me and for myself:
Cyndi can handle it.
That’s where this gets complicated.
Because there is a difference between knowing we’re capable of handling difficult things and believing we have to handle everything ourselves.
For a long time, I’m not sure I recognized the difference.
Being capable wasn’t the problem. My capability was real, and I’m proud of what it helped me accomplish.
But somewhere along the way, “I can handle it” became part of the armor.
It meant I could keep functioning without anyone knowing how much effort it was taking. I could solve the problem instead of admitting I didn’t know what to do. I could take on one more thing rather than acknowledge that I was already carrying too much.
And because I kept handling it, the people around me had very little reason to believe I couldn’t.
They could only respond to the version of me I was allowing them to see.
When Being Capable Feels Safer
For some of us, being capable became valuable long before we ever entered the workplace.
Maybe we learned that the safest person to depend on was ourselves. Maybe asking for help didn’t always result in help. Maybe we learned to anticipate what needed to happen before anyone had to ask, or discovered that being responsible, independent, and easy to take care of earned us approval.
We may not have consciously decided, I’m going to become the person who never needs anything from anyone.
We adapted.
We figured things out. We learned how to solve our own problems. We became resourceful. We learned how to keep functioning when things around us weren’t functioning particularly well.
And then we entered the workplace, where many of those adaptations were rewarded.
The employee who doesn’t need much direction can be seen as a self-starter. The person who always finds a solution becomes the problem-solver. The one who takes responsibility when something goes wrong becomes dependable. The person who can carry an enormous workload becomes the person everyone turns to when there is more work to be done.
The workplace may have had no idea what it took for us to become that person.
It just knew that we delivered.
And every promotion, compliment, difficult assignment, and “Give it to Cyndi, she’ll figure it out” could reinforce something we’d already learned:
Being capable works.
It helps us feel in control. It reduces the need to depend on other people. It can protect us from the vulnerability of admitting we don’t know, can’t do something, or need support.
And it may help us build a pretty successful career.
That’s why I don’t think the answer is to stop being capable.
The question is whether we still have a choice about when we put the armor on.
Because there’s a significant difference between:
I can figure this out myself.
and
I can’t let anyone see that I need help figuring this out.
Between:
I can carry this.
and
I can’t let anyone know this is too heavy.
Between:
I’m capable.
and
I have to be the capable one.
And when that last one starts driving us, the armor that helped us succeed can also make it incredibly difficult for anyone to see when we’re struggling underneath it.
What Happens When Everyone Believes the Armor?
There is an interesting consequence to becoming the person who can always handle it.
People start believing us.
If we consistently show the people around us that we can figure things out, carry the extra load, solve the problem, and keep going no matter what is happening, eventually they stop wondering whether we need help.
Why wouldn’t they?
We’ve given them every reason to believe we’re fine.
They may not see how much energy it takes to keep everything moving. They don’t know how long we stared at the computer trying to make our brain cooperate. They don’t see the anxiety before the meeting, the tears after we log off, or how little of ourselves may be left by the time we get home.
They see the work getting done.
They see capable.
And this is where the armor can become incredibly isolating.
We may desperately want someone to notice that we’re struggling while simultaneously doing everything we can to make sure they don’t.
We may wish someone would offer to take something off our plate while continuing to reassure everyone that we’ve got it.
We may feel hurt that nobody checks on us while presenting ourselves as the person nobody ever needs to check on.
That’s a painful contradiction.
And I don’t think it means the people around us are necessarily uncaring. They may simply be responding to what we’ve shown them.
Our armor is doing exactly what we designed it to do.
It’s protecting the parts of us we don’t feel safe enough to show.
But protection can come with a cost.
If no one can see that we’re struggling, they can’t respond to the struggle they can’t see. If no one knows we need support, they don’t have the opportunity to offer it. And if we’ve built our professional identity around being the person who can handle anything, taking off even one piece of that armor can feel incredibly vulnerable.
Because then we’re faced with a different question:
What happens if they see that I can’t handle everything?
And maybe an even harder one:
Will they still see me as capable when they see that I’m human?
What If Both Can Be True?
Somewhere along the way, many of us may have created a choice that was never really ours to make.
* Either I’m capable, or I need help.
* Either I’m strong, or I’m struggling.
* Either I know what I’m doing, or I’m in over my head.
* Either I can handle it, or I can’t.
But what if those things were never opposites?
We can be incredibly capable and still reach the edge of our capacity. We can be resourceful and still benefit from someone else’s expertise. We can know what we’re doing and still have moments when we don’t know what to do next. We can be strong and still need someone to stand beside us while we navigate something hard.
Needing support doesn’t erase our capability.
That has been an important shift for me.
Taking off the armor doesn’t require me to hand over everything I’ve learned to do for myself. It doesn’t mean I suddenly become dependent on everyone around me or stop trusting my own ability to figure things out.
Maybe it means I no longer have to prove my capability by how little I need from anyone else.
I can ask the question instead of spending three hours finding the answer myself. I can tell someone I’m at capacity before I reach my breaking point. I can let a trusted colleague know that something affected me. I can accept an offer of help without immediately trying to convince them, and myself, that I’ve got it.
And perhaps most importantly, I can allow someone to see that I’m struggling without deciding that what they’re seeing is weakness.
Because the goal isn’t to stop being the capable one.
It’s to know that we don’t have to wear capability as armor in order for it to be true.
Maybe We Don’t Have to Wear the Armor All the Time
When Luke removed Darth Vader’s mask, the person underneath hadn’t suddenly become weak.
He had been underneath the armor the entire time.
And maybe that’s worth remembering when we think about our own armor at work.
Letting someone see that we’re struggling doesn’t erase decades of competence. Asking for help doesn’t undo everything we’ve accomplished. Saying “I don’t know” doesn’t take away what we do know. Reaching the edge of our capacity doesn’t mean we were never capable in the first place.
The capability is still there, even when the armor isn’t.
And maybe healing isn’t about ripping off the armor and deciding we’re never going to wear it again.
That armor may have protected us for very good reasons. There may still be people, situations, and workplaces where we decide that keeping parts of ourselves protected is exactly what we need to do.
But perhaps we can begin noticing when we’re wearing it automatically.
We can ask ourselves whether we actually need it right now.
Whether the person standing in front of us has earned enough trust to see a little more of what’s underneath.
Whether “I can handle it” is something we’re choosing because we genuinely want to handle it, or something we feel compelled to say because we don’t know who we’d be if we couldn’t.
We don’t have to stop being strong.
We don’t have to stop being resourceful.
And we certainly don’t have to stop being capable.
Maybe we can simply begin giving ourselves permission to be capable without having to look invulnerable.
What Might Change If You Didn’t Have to Carry It All Alone?
Recognizing our armor is one thing. Figuring out when we still need it, what might feel safe enough to do differently, and how those patterns are shaping our careers can be much harder to navigate on our own.
That’s the kind of work I do through trauma-informed career coaching.
We can look at the patterns showing up in your career, understand what they may be protecting, and explore what could become possible if you had more choice in how you respond, without asking you to give up the strengths that helped you get this far.
What Do We Mean When We Say We're “Triggered” at Work?
The word triggered gets used pretty casually. We might say a frustrating email triggered us, a coworker got on our nerves, or a difficult meeting ruined our day. But when I talk about workplace triggers, I mean something more specific.
A workplace trigger is a situation, interaction, or experience that sets off a strong internal response. Something happens in the present, but our reaction may be influenced by what that experience represents to us, what it reminds us of, or what we have learned could happen next.
And that distinction matters.
A tight deadline can simply be stressful. But for someone whose sense of safety has become connected to getting everything right, that deadline might activate an intense fear of making a mistake.
Micromanagement can be irritating. It can also leave someone feeling watched, controlled, or unable to trust their own judgment.
A change in priorities can be inconvenient. For someone who has learned to rely heavily on predictability, that unexpected change may create a much stronger sense of uncertainty or loss of control.
And criticism can be difficult for almost anyone to hear. But if criticism has historically been accompanied by humiliation, rejection, punishment, or shame, even constructive feedback in the workplace can sometimes activate a response that feels much bigger than the conversation happening in front of us.
That doesn’t mean every strong reaction we have at work is rooted in trauma.
* Sometimes we’re stressed.
* Sometimes we’re exhausted.
* Sometimes we’re dealing with unreasonable expectations, poor leadership, unfair treatment, or a genuinely unhealthy workplace.
Our reactions can also give us important information about what is happening around us.
That’s why I don’t think the most useful question is immediately, “Is this a trauma response?”
I think we can start somewhere simpler:
Something happened. I had a reaction. What can I learn by getting curious about both?
We don’t have to judge the reaction, explain it away, or decide immediately whether it belongs to the past or the present.
We can begin by noticing it.
And when we start paying attention over time, we may begin to see that certain situations, people, dynamics, or experiences at work consistently create a stronger response for us.
Those patterns are where workplace trigger awareness begins.
Workplace Triggers Can Come From More Places Than We Realize
When we think about being triggered at work, we may immediately think about the obvious moments: a difficult conversation with a manager, conflict with a coworker, harsh criticism, or someone treating us poorly.
But workplace triggers can be much less obvious.
A deadline can be a trigger. So can an unexpected change in plans, unclear instructions, being interrupted repeatedly, having too much work and not enough time, being asked to speak in front of a group, or waiting for the results of a performance review.
Even things that might look positive from the outside can be activating. Being recognized for our work can increase our visibility. Being offered a new opportunity can create uncertainty. Getting promoted can change our relationships with coworkers and put us in a position where more people are watching, evaluating, or depending on us.
What makes this complicated is that the same workplace experience won’t necessarily trigger everyone in the same way, or for the same reason.
* A manager who frequently checks on our progress might activate feelings of being watched or controlled.
* A vague assignment might leave someone else feeling anxious because they don’t know exactly what is expected of them.
* A disagreement with a coworker might create an intense urge to restore the relationship as quickly as possible.
* A heavy workload might activate the belief that we have to prove we can handle everything without asking for help.
Sometimes the trigger isn’t even the event itself. It is what the event seems to threaten.
Pressure and performance can bring up fears of making a mistake, failing, disappointing someone, or not being good enough.
Power and control can show up through micromanagement, rigid policies, authority figures, or situations where we have little say in what happens next.
Relationships and belonging can be affected by conflict, criticism, office politics, exclusion, lack of recognition, or changes in how someone interacts with us.
Uncertainty and unpredictability can come from unclear expectations, changing priorities, organizational changes, poor communication, or concerns about job security.
And capacity can matter too. Excessive workloads, constant interruptions, technology problems, competing priorities, and too little time to recover can leave us with far less capacity to navigate something that might feel manageable on another day.
This is one reason simply asking “What triggers me?” may not go far enough.
We can also become curious about:
What is it about this situation that feels difficult for me?
Is it the possibility of failure? The loss of control? Being evaluated? Disappointing someone? Not knowing what is going to happen? Feeling excluded? Being visible? Having to depend on someone else?
We don’t have to know the answer immediately. In fact, we may discover that two situations that look completely different on the surface activate something very similar underneath.
And that’s where tracking our triggers can become useful. Instead of looking at each difficult workday as an isolated experience, we can begin noticing what repeats.
That pattern may tell us much more than any single trigger ever could.
What triggers you at work?
Sometimes we know we’ve had a strong reaction without recognizing exactly what set it in motion. And because our workplace triggers are personal, what activates one person may barely register for someone else.
I created the free Workplace Trigger Tracker Toolkit to help you identify the situations that may be triggering you at work, track what happens when you’re activated, and begin noticing the patterns that repeat.
Why Can an Ordinary Workplace Situation Feel So Intense?
One of the most confusing things about workplace triggers can be the difference between what is happening around us and what is happening inside us.
We may know that the deadline is manageable. We may understand that our manager is allowed to ask questions about our work. We may even recognize that the feedback we’re receiving is reasonable.
And still, something inside us responds as though much more is at stake.
For those of us with a history of complex trauma, that response may make more sense when we consider what our nervous system has learned from previous experiences.
Our brains and bodies are constantly taking in information and trying to determine what deserves our attention. Past experiences can influence that process. If certain situations once came with consequences, we may become especially sensitive to cues that suggest something similar could be happening again.
That doesn’t require the present situation to look exactly like something from our past.
The connection might be how the experience feels.
* Being micromanaged may bring up a familiar sense of having no control.
* Being criticized may activate an old expectation that making a mistake will have consequences far beyond the mistake itself.
* Unclear expectations may create the feeling that we’re responsible for getting something right without being given enough information to know what “right” is.
* Conflict may feel less like two professionals disagreeing and more like a relationship is suddenly at risk.
In those moments, our response isn’t necessarily waiting for us to consciously evaluate all the evidence.
We may feel the tension in our body before we have words for what is happening. We may want to explain, fix, withdraw, defend ourselves, work harder, make someone happy, or regain control before we’ve consciously decided to do any of those things.
That’s part of what can make a trigger feel so immediate.
But there’s another piece I think is important.
The intensity of our response doesn’t automatically tell us whether the situation is safe or unsafe.
Sometimes our past is influencing how we’re experiencing the present. Sometimes something genuinely concerning is happening at work. And sometimes both things are true at the same time.
Our goal isn’t to talk ourselves out of our reactions or assume, This is just my trauma.
It’s to create enough space to become curious about what we’re experiencing and what is actually happening around us.
We can begin asking:
* What am I feeling right now?
* What does this situation seem to mean to me?
* What do I actually know about what is happening?
* Is there something here that needs my attention, or is my system anticipating something that hasn’t happened?
We may not know the answers immediately. That’s okay.
Because emotional regulation isn’t about becoming unaffected by difficult things at work. It’s about developing more capacity to stay with ourselves long enough to understand what is happening before an automatic response decides what we do next.
And sometimes, the first sign that an automatic response has taken over isn’t how we feel.
It’s what we find ourselves doing next.
What Being Triggered at Work Can Look Like
When we hear the word triggered, we might picture an obvious emotional reaction. Maybe someone becomes visibly upset, panics, gets angry, or needs to leave the situation.
Sometimes it does look like that.
But being triggered at work can be much harder to recognize, especially when we’ve become very good at continuing to function while we’re activated.
We might leave a difficult meeting and immediately start working harder. We double-check everything we’ve done, stay later than we planned, or decide that the next deliverable has to be flawless.
We might start explaining. A simple question about our work turns into a five-minute answer because we want to make sure the other person understands why we made the decision we did. Or we send the follow-up email with three more paragraphs of context, just in case.
We might become agreeable. We say yes to the additional assignment even though we’re already overwhelmed. We change our opinion when someone pushes back. We apologize even when we’re not sure we’ve done anything wrong.
Or we might go in the opposite direction.
We get quiet. Stop contributing in meetings. Put off responding to an email. Avoid the coworker we had a disagreement with. Decide not to volunteer for the opportunity we were excited about yesterday.
Sometimes we become defensive or irritable. Sometimes we can’t concentrate. Sometimes we spend hours thinking about what happened, rehearsing what we should have said or trying to predict what might happen next.
And sometimes we simply keep working.
That’s one of the reasons these patterns can be difficult to recognize.
We can look completely functional on the outside while expending an enormous amount of energy managing what is happening on the inside.
For high-performing professionals, some of these responses may even be rewarded.
Working harder can look like dedication. Perfectionism can look like having high standards. Taking on more can look like being a team player. Staying quiet can look like being easy to work with. Constantly anticipating problems can look like exceptional preparation.
Those behaviors may have helped us succeed. They may also be skills we’ve genuinely developed and value.
The question isn’t whether every instance of working hard, preparing carefully, helping someone, or choosing not to engage in conflict is a trauma response.
The question is whether we still have choice.
* Am I staying late because I’ve decided this work needs additional attention, or because making a mistake suddenly feels intolerable?
* Am I saying yes because I genuinely want to help, or because saying no feels unsafe?
* Am I preparing thoroughly because it serves me, or because I don’t believe I’m allowed to walk into the room unless I’ve anticipated every possible question?
* Am I choosing not to respond right now because that’s the best decision, or because I feel unable to respond?
The behavior can look exactly the same from the outside.
What is happening inside us can be very different.
That’s why noticing what we do after we’re triggered can give us valuable information. We aren’t looking for another list of behaviors to judge or eliminate. We’re beginning to recognize when a response feels automatic and when we have enough space to choose it.
Because once we can see what happens after the trigger, we can begin working with what happens next.
Start With Recognition, Not Judgment
Once we begin recognizing these patterns, it can be tempting to turn that awareness into another reason to criticize ourselves.
* Why do I always do this?
* I should be able to handle feedback by now.
* I need to stop overthinking everything.
* Why can’t I just say no?
* I know better than this.
But noticing a pattern and judging ourselves for having it are two very different things.
Many of the responses we’ve been talking about developed for a reason. Working harder, anticipating what could go wrong, keeping the peace, staying quiet, getting everything exactly right, or trying to remain in control may have helped us navigate situations where those responses made sense.
We don’t have to shame ourselves for learning them.
And we don’t have to immediately get rid of them either.
We can start by becoming curious.
The next time you notice yourself having a strong reaction at work, see if you can slow the experience down enough to ask:
* What happened?
* What did I notice happening inside me?
* What did I think this situation meant?
* What did I immediately want to do?
* What did I actually do?
The goal isn’t to come up with the “right” answer. It’s to begin collecting information.
Maybe you notice that unclear expectations consistently make you want to work harder and prepare for every possible outcome. Maybe conflict creates an immediate urge to apologize or make things okay. Maybe being questioned makes you start explaining yourself. Maybe unexpected change makes you feel as though you need to regain control as quickly as possible.
One moment may not tell us very much.
But when we begin noticing these experiences over time, patterns can emerge.
And patterns give us something an isolated reaction often doesn’t: context.
We can begin to see not only what triggers us, but what tends to happen next. We may even start recognizing the moment when a familiar response begins taking over.
That awareness matters because we can’t make an intentional choice about something we haven’t learned to recognize yet.
So if you notice one of these patterns in yourself, we don’t need to begin with:
How do I stop doing this?
We can begin with:
That’s interesting. What is happening here?
Sometimes curiosity creates just enough space for another possibility to become visible.
We Can't Always Control the Trigger. We Can Learn to Work With the Response
We can’t control everything that happens during a workday.
Deadlines will change. Managers will give us feedback. Coworkers will disagree with us. Priorities will shift. We may be asked to do things before we feel completely ready. There will be uncertainty, pressure, difficult personalities, mistakes, misunderstandings, and circumstances we didn’t choose.
And sometimes, those experiences are going to trigger us.
The goal isn’t to become so emotionally regulated that nothing at work ever affects us. I don’t think that’s realistic, and I’m not sure it would even be desirable. Our reactions can give us important information about what we need, what matters to us, what feels uncomfortable, and what may require our attention.
What can change is what happens after we’re activated.
* There can be a difference between feeling the urge to immediately defend ourselves and deciding whether a response is actually necessary.
* Between noticing the impulse to say yes and giving ourselves time to consider whether we want to.
* Between feeling afraid that we’ve made a mistake and automatically working until midnight to prove that we’re competent.
That space may be very small at first.
Sometimes the win is simply noticing, I’m triggered right now.
We may still overexplain. We may still say yes. We may still spend the afternoon replaying the meeting. But now we’ve recognized something we might not have recognized before.
The next time, perhaps we notice the response a little earlier.
Over time, we can learn ways to help ourselves regulate when we’re activated. We can become more familiar with the thoughts, sensations, and behaviors that tend to signal that something has been triggered. We can learn to slow down before responding when the situation allows it. And we can get better at looking at both what we’re experiencing internally and what is actually happening around us.
None of that requires us to ignore our instincts or convince ourselves that everything is fine.
Sometimes the conclusion we reach after we’ve had time to regulate will be, Yes, something about this situation really isn’t okay.
The difference is that we’re giving ourselves a better opportunity to decide what we want to do with that information.
That’s where I think emotional regulation can become especially powerful in our careers.
It isn’t about controlling every feeling or eliminating every trigger. It’s about building more capacity to choose our response instead of automatically repeating the one we’ve learned to rely on.
And that process starts much earlier than changing the response.
It starts with recognizing the trigger.
You Don’t Have to Figure Out Every Trigger Today
Understanding our workplace triggers doesn’t happen all at once. And the goal isn’t to create a list of everything we need to avoid at work.
The first step is simply to notice.
The next time something at work creates a stronger reaction than you expected, get curious.
* What happened?
* What were you feeling?
* What thoughts showed up?
* What did you feel compelled to do next?
Over time, those individual moments can begin to reveal patterns. And once we can see a pattern, we have more information to work with and more opportunity to choose how we want to respond.
That’s why I created the Workplace Trigger Tracker Toolkit. It’s a free resource designed to help you identify potential workplace triggers, capture what happens when you’re activated, and begin recognizing the patterns that may be affecting how you experience work.
You don’t need to change anything yet.
For now, let’s just get curious about what’s happening.
