Is your Trauma Masquerading as Work Stress?

Have you ever cried at work or were close to it? Perhaps it wasn’t actually about your work stress, but more so the underlying thing it represented. This is a story about the time I came head-on with my abandonment issues.

For the most part, my 20s were manicured to avoid discomfort. I avoided certain situations that would trigger any childhood traumas I wasn’t ready (or perhaps conscious of) to resolve. I gravitated toward certain people and places that reinforced the stories I told myself. Like, if I ask questions, I show weakness, that I should know everything. I felt ‘free’, running towards new experiences and away from old ones. 

Work, on the other hand, was a different story. Not something I could manicure so easily.

Work Stress

The Incident

My team had slowly dissipated over the last year. It was only my manager and I left until I got the call from the Senior Director. 

“Lidia has just handed in her resignation, you are now left to take on her clients”. 

It felt like a ton of bricks had dropped on me. Hiding in the meeting room of my client’s offices, with a shaky but confident voice, I said: 

“That’s alright. How can we divvy up her clients?” I knew the answer to that question, but I couldn’t bear the silence. 

There was nobody left to divvy it up. At this stage, it was only the Senior Director and myself left on the team. It was all going to fall on me. 

As I hung up the phone still shook, feeling completely stressed, thoughts racing through my head, tears rolling down my eyes. All I could think was, why didn’t she tell me? I thought we were close. Something in me that I had suppressed for so long came bubbling up. At the time, too overwhelmed with the feeling, I couldn’t see what was happening. I felt abandoned.

I had spent so much of my life carefully balancing on this delicate tightrope, avoiding any landmines in my inner world. Steady like a surgeon’s hand to not cut open any untreated wounds. And with one fell swoop, it all came toppling down. 

I was confronted with the reality that no matter how hard you try to avoid discomfort or delay dealing with the inner layers of your vulnerabilities –  you can’t outrun them. Whether it’s you who steps on a landmine or something external that triggers it, eventually landmines will do what landmines do. Explode. 

The Collective Experience 

The more I reflected on this pivotal moment in my life, I began to see all the things I had forfeited in the guise of achieving this elusive trophy that was my career. I had lost countless amounts of sleep, hair, weight, time worrying about work, and even friends. 

I know this sentiment is felt by more than just me. In a Deloitte study of 1,000 full-time professionals, 77% of people experience burnout in their jobs, with more than half of that 77% experiencing multiple burnouts. Work stress is legit.

Even those who love their job can easily fall into the trap of abandoning themselves for work. Spending countless hours working, bailing on friends, family, and significant others,  leaving their house a mess, fridges rotting away because they’re too busy to cook, constantly on hyper-drive trying to prove their self-worth through work. 

The Examples 

Ever feel like it’s hard to set your boundaries at work, whether it’s taking on too much at work, or letting that one colleague get away with that passive-aggressive micro-aggression? 

Overtly trying to be a perfectionist because you fear being yelled at? Yet riddled with self-doubt, too afraid to ask for help in case you’d be “found out”? 

That there is no structure, too much pressure, too much responsibility in a high-stress environment, being bullied at work or fear of losing your job? 

Or maybe, you’ve been fired from an old job and carry a sense of low self-worth into the next one? 

How about issues with authority that bubble up when you butt heads with that authoritative manager. 

Even the good ol’ imposter syndrome stems from deep-seated wounds that when left untreated, can take you on a downward trajectory. 

As I say all this, it’s easy to jump to believing it’s all your job’s fault that you have all this work stress. Sometimes it is, but most times, it’s ours. The ones who bring their childhood traumas to work, the ones who unconsciously reenact these traumas in their daily interactions.

The Solution

The solution is not to quit your job and buy land in the mountains to be a hermit. Why do I know this? Because I’ve done it. The extreme end of the opposite thing you’re running away from while appealing, isn’t the answer. Maybe you just need to find a new career path, one that is more aligned with the type of future you see for yourself. Or maybe, you use the challenges you face at work as your blank canvas to paint a new story of how you want to show up in the world. 

The only way out…is through. 

Trauma comes in all different shapes and forms. There isn’t one solution to this. No one formula that can be applied. What you can do though, is to practice bravery in facing one’s challenges. You don’t need to step on a landmine to face your inner insecurities. You can carefully defuse those landmines by first understanding where they are. 

If you’re unsure of what these landmines are in your life, take a look at your work life and see what is your biggest point of contention. If you don’t have any (lucky you!) then take a look at your personal life. Take a look at any invisible limitations you’ve put on yourself, even the ones you think are set in stone. Especially the ones you think are set in stone. 

The Questions

Ask yourself these questions, and write down your answers. This is a moment to practice radical ownership and honest self-assessment. 

“What bothers me most at work?”

“What am I most afraid of (at work and in general)?” 

“How did I respond the last time I was triggered from work stress?”

From the answers above, expand on it and ask yourself the next set of questions: 

“How does this show up in my life?” 

“Is this story I’m telling myself absolutely true?” 

“Can this story be changed?” 

“What would my life look like if I were to drop this story and adopt a new one?” 

What’s stopping me? 

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