7 Signs Your Job Is Retriggering Your Childhood Trauma

Añadido: 2026-05-06

[00:00:00]Your workplace is not supposed to feel like your childhood home. But for a lot of people who grew up with abuse or neglect, that's exactly what's happening. And they don't even realize it. You drag yourself home from work and you can't even talk. You're not just tired, you're just like emptied out. You pour cereal for dinner. You stare at the wall. And somewhere in the back of your mind, you're thinking, "What is wrong with me? Other people handle their jobs.

[00:00:28]Why does this destroy me? Well, here's what might be going on. Your job, the actual day-to-day experience of it may be re-triggering wounds from your childhood. Why? Because certain dynamics at work are structurally identical to what happened to you as a kid. The powerlessness, the unpredictability, the feeling that you have to read somebody's mood just to stay safe. And when that's happening, it doesn't just make work hard. It makes everything hard. Your health, your relationships, your ability to think clearly about your own future. Does this mean you have to leave your job? Not necessarily. I want to walk you through some real signs that this is happening to you and then what you can actually do about it because you can change this. You don't have to white knuckle your way through a career that's slowly taking you apart. All right. So, here are the signs. The first sign is that you have a disproportionate fear of authority figures at work. Your boss says, "Can I talk to you for a minute?"

[00:01:35]And your stomach drops to the floor and your heart's pounding and your palms are sweating and you've already mentally written your resignation letter before you even sit down. And then it turns out that they just wanted to ask you, you know, could you cover a shift next week?

[00:01:49]So, if you react to every interaction with a boss or supervisor, like a survival situation, that's probably not exactly about the job. That's old fear.

[00:01:58]That's the part of you that learned as a kid that the person in charge is dangerous or they're about to abandon you or they disapprove of you and you have to do everything in your power to get their approval. Do you get that going on inside? That's what I call parentifying the boss. And we do this to co-workers, too. And when things feel good and we feel included, we call them our family, right? I call this familyifying your co-workers. This is totally common in organizations where you know even the HR department says we're a family and they tell you in your interview and in the beginning days they they say that a lot but just like in your childhood that doesn't mean everything is stable or permanent, [laughter] right? And if the job doesn't work out, it can hit you harder than just losing a job. It's like you've been cast out of your family, which may have already happened to you in your actual family. The second sign is perfectionism that borders on paralysis. You rewrite the email 11 times. You triple check, you know, the the work that doesn't need triple-checking. You stay late not because you love the work, but because you're terrified of making a mistake.

[00:03:15]And here's the thing, the fear isn't really about the mistake. The fear is about what happens after the mistake.

[00:03:21]Because when you were a kid, mistakes weren't just corrected. They got you abandoned or punished or, you know, kicked out. Your brain equates this feeling with certainty that you're going to be fired. And some jobs actually require that level of accuracy. It's true. If you're a brain surgeon, you're just going to have to buck up and do it right.

[00:03:45]But your trauma can lead you to way overdo it where you think error equals catastrophe. And that keeps you exhausted and slow and actually making more mistakes and unable to take the kind of risks that lead to career growth. That takes some risk. So if you're terrified of mistakes, you can't do that. All right. Third, you absorb other people's emotions at work like a sponge. Like a co-orker is in a bad mood and suddenly you feel really anxious.

[00:04:15]Your manager seems stressed and you immediately start trying to fix it, volunteering for things, overfunctioning, reading the room like your survival depends on it because at one point it did. You learned as a child to be a little emotional weather station kind of like how is it out there? and you're constantly scanning for storms and strong winds and that skill kept you alive. Then at work now it just drains you dry. It makes you maybe a little odd. You come home with nothing left because you spend the whole day managing everyone else's emotional state and it probably isn't working by the way. The fourth sign is you can't handle criticism even when it's constructive.

[00:04:58]So, someone gives you feedback, normal, reasonable work-related feedback, and inside it feels like they just said you're worthless. You might shut down.

[00:05:08]You might cry in the bathroom. I've done that a lot of times. You might spend the next 3 days replaying it in your mind or take time off with sick days because you're so disregulated, you can't really move.

[00:05:20]You end up building a case for why you should quit. And this is what happens when criticism was never safe growing up. When you know already you had so much self-criticism that people saying one thing really could have given you a breakdown. When feedback could actually be cruelty disguised as correction. So your traumatized self is still attached to the idea that if you're a good girl, if you're just good enough, you will be appreciated and wanted and everything will be okay. But you notice that feeling of safety never comes. Fifth, you people please compulsively at work.

[00:05:58]You say yes to everything. You take on other people's tasks. You laugh at jokes that are not funny. You never ever express a preference or a boundary because the thought of someone being annoyed with you feels genuinely threatening. And slowly over months and years, you disappear into a role that has nothing to do with you or who you are or your work. You become the easy one, the reliable one, the one who never causes problems. And inside you're screaming. And by the way, this trait can be very easy for people to get groomed, for people to test them by crossing boundaries just to see how they react. And if they don't react, if they go, "No, that's okay. I'm a good sport.

[00:06:42]They'll do it again. Something to keep in mind. Okay. Sixth, you dissociate or zone out during the workday. You're in a meeting and suddenly you realize you haven't heard a word anyone said for the last 10 minutes.

[00:06:55]You're at your desk, right? And and time just vanishes. And this isn't laziness.

[00:07:00]This is your nervous system checking out because something in the environment, the tone of someone's voice, the fluorescent lights, I have that. the feeling of being watched or evaluated, it just trips a wire and your your nervous system or really your spirit decides it's safer to just like get out of there for a minute or two or 10.

[00:07:22]Seventh, you keep ending up in jobs or work dynamics that mirror your family.

[00:07:28]The chaotic workplace with no clear rules or the narcissistic boss who lovebombs you and then tears you down.

[00:07:36]or the role where you're the caretaker, the fixer, the one holding everything together while you never get credit or proper pay for what you do. And if this keeps happening, it's not bad luck.

[00:07:48]There's something familiar about these environments that blinds you to the red flags from the beginning. So, this is actually coming from your choice to be there because you didn't know any better. And that's one of the crulest tricks of childhood trauma. It can make the thing that's hurting you feel like the thing you're supposed to tolerate.

[00:08:08]Now, here's what all of this does to you when it goes unchecked. It's not just that work feels bad. It's that chronic re-triggering keeps your stress hormones elevated day after day, week after week.

[00:08:19]And research shows that prolonged activation of your stress response, what some people call being stuck in fight or flight. It damages your immune system, your cardiovascular health, your digestion, your sleep. It impairs your prefrontal cortex, which is the part of your brain responsible for planning, decision-making, and impulse control.

[00:08:42]Familiar? So, the re-triggering doesn't just make you miserable at work. It makes you worse at work. It makes you worse at everything. At parenting, at friendships, at taking care of yourself, and at envisioning a path of growth in your career. You can't see it anymore.

[00:09:00]So, you get stuck. It's this vicious cycle where the dysregulation causes problems. The problems cause more dysregulation. The dysregulation in turn causes more problems. And I want to be honest, sometimes it's not just the trauma response. Sometimes you're also doing things that make it worse. Not setting boundaries, not speaking up when something is wrong. Staying in a job you've known for years is toxic for you because leaving feels scarier than staying. or venting to co-workers instead of actually making a change.

[00:09:34]Now, I say this with total compassion, but also with total honesty. Trauma explains the pattern. It doesn't mean you're off the hook for changing it. So, what do you actually do? First, get your nervous system regulated and your mind clear so that you can think straight.

[00:09:54]You can't make good career decisions or any decisions when you're in a trauma state. And this is where I always come back to the daily practice I teach. It includes a specific writing technique where you get your fears and resentments out on paper. It's not journaling. It's not free writing. It's a very specific format. And then you follow that with meditation. And what it does is clear the mental clutter, all that rumination and emotional overwhelm so that you can actually access your own inner voice, your wisdom, your clarity about what step to take today, not someday, today.

[00:10:32]And I have a free course on this.

[00:10:33]There's a link in the top line of the description section below. It's called the daily practice. And it walks you through exactly how to do it. All right.

[00:10:42]Second, start identifying which parts of your work stress are actually trauma responses and which parts are legitimate problems with your job because sometimes it's both. Sometimes you are being re-triggered and your boss is genuinely terrible. You need to be able to sort that out because the action you take is different in each case. If it's a trauma response, you work on regulation and healing. If it's a genuinely bad situation, you make a plan to change it.

[00:11:13]If you're not sure, go back to plan A and work on getting regulated. It's always a good place to start. Third, challenge the belief that you just have to endure. This is a big one. So many people with childhood trauma have this deep bone level belief that suffering is just what life is. It's a trauma-driven belief, you know, that you don't get to have work that feels good, that wanting something better is selfish or unrealistic. And I'm telling you that is a lie your childhood taught you. Work can be stabilizing. It can connect you to the world. It can be a place where you come into your own and blossom. It can be where you bring your real gifts, not your adaptive, peopleleasing, shape-shifting, survival gifts, but your actual gifts to bear. And there is nothing more satisfying than that. If you keep finding yourself in jobs that demean and depress you, that don't pay adequate or fair wages, it's time for you to change that the choice that you keep making, which is in effect a self-defeating behavior. And if you want to see my full list of common self-defeating behaviors that are common for people who were traumatized as kids, I can give you a free copy. I'll put it in the second line of the description section below the video. All right.

[00:12:35]Fourth, take one concrete step, not a hundred steps, just one. Update your resume. Research a company you know that you'd like to work for. Practice saying no to one extra task this week. Let yourself experience um action even if it starts small. Usually you have to start small because there's some kind of inertia and fear there. But you take one action and ah there's a opening right there. A door has opened in the wall that's blocking you and you walk through and you take a second action. Healing doesn't always happen in some dramatic breakthrough. It happens in the small boring Tuesday afternoon decisions to do one thing differently and not the other.

[00:13:17]Your job does not have to mimic your childhood. And if it does, that's information. It's a signal that old wounds are still driving you and giving you the same hard experience over and over. And the repetition comes from an unconscious place, but you can surface it and face whatever is driving you.

[00:13:38]When you make a decision to face your fears and resentments honestly with good tools and friendly support, you don't have to keep playing small in your life, caged in by the belief that other people get to decide your worth, where you believe you can't make waves or that you should be grateful for whatever scraps you get. You can do so much better. And the beautiful thing is you're the one who gets to give that to yourself. Not your boss, not your company, not some future rescuer. You right now, starting today.

[00:14:11]When another woman aims this kind of hostility at you, you feel it in [music] your nervous system. You start questioning yourself and you start wondering if you did something wrong.

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