TL;DR –Your work life serves as the ultimate mirror for unresolved trauma patterns because of the disproportionate time invested (250+ work days versus 20 vacation days), the inherent discomfort of professional growth, and the high stakes tied to income, identity, and security. How you approach deadlines, manage teams, handle conflict, or respond to success often reflects the same patterns playing out everywhere else—the "never enough" mindset, the inability to trust colleagues, the compulsive overwork to avoid feelings, or the boundary struggles that echo childhood dynamics. While trauma encompasses far more than single incidents (including chronic workplace stress, complex developmental trauma, and historical/racial oppression), its unresolved impacts show up vividly in professional settings: the surgeon who can't delegate, the entrepreneur who won't share financials with her COO, the manager who sacrifices advancement to avoid disappointing anyone.
Rather than viewing these patterns as career limitations, approaching work consciously transforms it into "grist for the personal growth mill"—an opportunity to identify and heal maladaptive beliefs formed in childhood. When you recognize that your inability to trust team members mirrors early betrayals, or that working to exhaustion recreates familiar chaos, you gain the awareness needed for change. The woman who grew up with mood-disordered parents doesn't just struggle with trust; she builds a successful business while burning out, unable to accept the support that could sustain her growth—until she sees the pattern and chooses differently.
As a trauma clinician and entrepreneur who has built a 22-employee multi-state, professional therapy corporation in the last few years, talking about trauma and work are two of my favorite subjects (other favorite topics, in case you’re curious, include my daughter, international travel, and Peloton).
Summary
For driven, ambitious women with relational trauma histories, the workplace is rarely just about work. It becomes the arena where old dynamics replay with new characters — the critical parent becomes the impossible-to-please boss, the sibling rivalry becomes competitive colleagues. Recognizing these patterns is the first step to breaking them.
Lately, I’ve been talking more openly with other female entrepreneurs I know as well as other professionals at the top of their field (doctors, surgeons, lawyers, co-founders, etc) about both of these subjects deeply.
In these conversations (not to mention through my own personal experience), I’ve come to realize how vividly our unresolved trauma patterns can be mirrored in our work life. And, if we approach it consciously, provide one of the strongest vehicles for resolving these maladaptive patterns.
If you’re curious to know more about whether or not you’re recreating your own personal trauma history in your work life – no matter what your profession is – and, more importantly, if you’re interested in knowing how to not recreate your own personal trauma history at work, I hope you’ll find value from this month’s two-part essay series.
In this first essay, we’ll explore more about how and why our work life can serve as the ultimate mirror for our “stuff,” why our work life is excellent “grist for the personal growth mill” (so to speak), what exactly trauma is and trauma impacts you may recognize in yourself (at work or otherwise) if it hasn’t been processed, and then I’ll provide a concrete example of how this might look when someone plays this out in her business.
In the second of this two-part essay series, I’ll explore the steps to not recreate trauma in our work lives. I will provide you with a list of tools and prompts to deepen your understanding and inquiry about this.
Table of Contents
- Our work life as the ultimate trauma mirror.
- Signs You May Be Carrying Relational Trauma
- Let’s break this down further.
- Perhaps, of course, this increased growth normalizes over time.
- Your work-life is excellent “grist for the personal growth mill.”
- What exactly IS trauma?
- And what happens when something overwhelms our ability to cope?
- So why talk about trauma? Why talk about trauma in our work lives in particular?
- An example of someone who might recreate their own personal trauma history at work.
- This is, of course, one example that’s a bit more extreme.
- How Therapy Helps Transform Work From Trauma Trigger to Healing Laboratory
- Wrapping up.
Our work life as the ultimate trauma mirror.
Definition
Trauma Repetition Compulsion: Trauma repetition compulsion is the unconscious tendency to recreate familiar relational dynamics — even painful or dysfunctional ones — in adult life. This pattern, first described by Freud and refined in modern trauma research, often plays out in workplaces, friendships, and romantic relationships.
All content areas are portals into our psychological patterns.
What do I mean by this?
Effectively, how we do one thing is generally how we do everything when it comes to our primary psychological patterning.
For instance, how you eat, how you vacation, how you approach money, can be a window into your primary patterning. (Examples: a “never enough” pattern, a “I can’t trust anyone” pattern, a “catastrophic thinking, and relentless activity to avoid feeling your painful feelings” pattern, a “I trust the world and others” pattern, a “struggle to say no because of fear of rejection” pattern, among countless other patterns).
In most cases, how you do one thing is generally how you do most things.
In therapy, we could look at any content area to gain greater insight into our dominant psychological patterns. But certainly, our work life will often be more stark and vivid a mirror for us to do some self-inquiry.
Why is this?
Because of the disproportionate amount of time spent on it. The growth inherent to most work life situations. And the higher stakes generally associated with it.
Signs You May Be Carrying Relational Trauma
Take this 5-minute, 25-question quiz to find out — and learn what to do next if you do.
Let’s break this down further.
When it comes to time, in general, for most of us, our work-life demands lots of attention and time in a way that few other things do.
Yes, the way I vacation is a portal into my patterns but I do that 20 days a year (maybe).
Personally, I do my business and work nearly 250 days a year (if you don’t include weekends and yet there are plenty of weekends where I work, too).
Clearly, at least for me, there is a disproportionate amount of time spent on work which means there is a commensurate and disproportionate opportunity to be made aware of my issues, growth edges, and patterns as my work life mirrors them back to me in a way that other content areas (vacationing, for example) don’t allow as much.
Related reading: What does it mean to be an ambitious, upwardly mobile woman from a relational trauma background?
The other reason our work lives can serve as stark mirrors and powerful portals is that most of our work lives, particularly if you’re a professional and/or business owner, inherently involves some level of growth and advancement over the years – obtaining that advanced degree or professional license, going after the promotion, taking on managerial responsibilities, etc.
And this – growth and advancement – inherent to our work life – usually invites a certain degree of discomfort for most of us.
For example, taking on increasing responsibilities or being tasked with greater levels of risk and reward in your work life can often feel uncomfortable as you assume these new weighty tasks and realities.
Perhaps, of course, this increased growth normalizes over time.
But when it’s new and when we’re often putting ourselves in a position of attempting to grow and advance in our careers, there will likely be a certain amount of discomfort.
And in this discomfort, we usually get to see what our own adaptive or maladaptive beliefs and behaviors are when we cope with this discomfort.
And finally, another reason our work lives can provide a stark mirror into our primary psychological patterning in a way that few other things will is because, for most of us, our work life often feels high stakes.
For most of us, our work lives are how we earn money in the world, how we feed our families, pay the mortgage, and attempt to feel a certain amount of logistical security in the world.
Our work lives are also, for many of us, interwoven to some extent with our sense of identity, our personal reputation, our meaning and purpose.
All of which can make work feel higher stakes than, let’s say, a vacation or our relationship with hobbies, etc.
I outline the reasons that our work lives can provide a stark mirror into your psychological patterning not to overwhelm you but because I want to reframe that instead of this acuity feeling and being “bad,” it’s actually truly excellent “grist for the personal growth mill” so to speak.
Your work-life is excellent “grist for the personal growth mill.”
Your work-life is excellent “grist for the personal growth mill” – what do I mean by this?
Essentially, it can provide excellent material, insight, and knowledge for your personal growth and development if you approach it consciously.
For example, whatever your personal issues are, whatever the unresolved impacts of your relational trauma history are – the beliefs you have about money, yourself, your self-worth, your ability to set boundaries, your ability to have healthy assertive conversations and tolerate conflict and being disliked, etc. – all of it is going to show up (particularly as you advance in your career) providing you with an opportunity to be curious and conscious about whether or not those beliefs, behaviors, and patterns are working quite so well for you.
But in order to use our work life as “grist for the personal growth mill” and an opportunity to heal our unresolved trauma impacts, we first need to understand what exactly trauma is, what trauma impacts can look like, and how this might show up in our work life (practically speaking).
What exactly IS trauma?
Contrary to popular belief, trauma isn’t relegated to just a discrete set of experiences or incidents (like a car crash or wartime conflict).
Instead, trauma has a much more expansive definition.
Trauma can be an event, series of events, or prolonged circumstances that are subjectively experienced by the individual who goes through it as physically, mentally, and emotionally harmful and/or life-threatening and that overwhelms this individual’s ability to effectively cope with what they went through.
What kind of events and circumstances might lead to trauma?
Related reading: Attachment Trauma: How Early Relationships Shape Your Adult Connections
There are an endless number of events and circumstances that might lead to trauma but it might be helpful to think about them in four discrete categories with some attendant examples to help think through how this has, perhaps, shown up in your own life.
Acute Trauma:
Acute trauma refers to a single-incident, one-time event. Such as experiencing a wildfire, car crash, school shooting, terrorist event, or house fire.
Chronic Trauma:
Chronic trauma is a set of experiences that are repeated and take place over time. Such as enduring vicarious trauma on the job, middle school bullying, poverty, exposure to violence in the community, or long-term medical challenges.
Complex Trauma:
Complex trauma is also often called developmental or relational trauma. It is the kind of trauma that takes place over time in the context of a caretaking relationship. (Usually between a parent and child.) That relationship fails to adequately support the child’s biopsychosocial development. Such as when ongoing neglect, sexual abuse, physical punishment, witnessing domestic violence, or being raised by a personality- or mood-disordered parent takes place.
Historical/Racial Trauma:
Historical and racial trauma refers to the experiences of racially-driven oppression, targeting, harassment, and discrimination that groups of individuals have experienced over time and that generations after them still suffer the effects of.
All of these categories of trauma and the attendant examples in them might overwhelm someone’s subject ability to cope with what they endured.
And what happens when something overwhelms our ability to cope?
When we experience an event, series of events, or prolonged circumstances that overwhelm our ability to effectively cope, our body and brain are changed both temporarily and sometimes long-term.
How do our brain and body change?
When an event that feels life-threatening or deeply physically or emotionally unsafe occurs, our brain’s “reptilian” part (the limbic system, responsible for survival instincts and automatic bodily functions) takes over and the mammalian and neomammalian parts of our brain (responsible for emotional processing, cognitive processing, and decision making) go “offline” as we switch to pure survival mode.
We stay in this mode until the event or circumstance passes – which can certainly be helpful in surviving the moment!
Then, in some cases, after we move through scary situations, and even if our body and brain respond this way, we’re later able to properly “metabolize” and “digest” the experiences we went through cognitively, emotionally, and physically, leaving us with no maladaptive trauma symptoms.
But at other times, when we aren’t adequately supported (either internally or externally) to make sense of and process the hardship we went through, our brains and the cells of our bodies are left with an imprint and impact of the experiences we endured and we may be left with a host of biopsychosocial consequences that impede our ability to move effectively through our lives, post-trauma.
A partial list of trauma impacts might include:
- Depression and/or anxiety (including generalized anxiety);
- Irritability and being very short-tempered, having a short fuse;
- Loss of interest in things that used to bring you pleasure, or in life itself;
- Numbing through substances and behaviors, repeatedly and compulsively;
- Trouble concentrating, focusing, and self-organizing;
- Insomnia and challenges sleeping (including nightmares);
- Feeling emotionally flooded and overwhelmed very easily;
- An inability to visualize a future (let alone a positive future);
- Hopelessness and a sense of despair;
- Shame, a sense that you’re worthless;
- Few or no memories, feeling like your childhood is a fog or a big blank;
- Hypervigilance, exaggerated startle response, and general mistrust;
- Body symptoms such as aches, pains, headaches, GI issues, muscle rigidity;
- Substance abuse and eating disorders;
- Self-harming or destructive behaviors such as cutting or burning;
- Feeling like you have no true self, like you don’t know who you really are.
- And more.
So why talk about trauma? Why talk about trauma in our work lives in particular?
What’s so important about this?
Because when we see a thing more clearly – in this case, a wider, subjective lens of trauma and examples of unresolved trauma impacts – we can perhaps see ourselves and our stories and how this is still playing out in our work lives more clearly.
And in doing so, we can seek out the appropriate kind of help to resolve it. And advance even further in our work lives.
Related reading: Trauma and Relationships: When Your Professional Strengths Become Your Relationship Blindspots
Over the years, I’ve worked with so many extraordinary clients who have achieved high levels of academic, professional, and financial success. But who still have unresolved trauma symptoms at play.
It is possible to be both things: high achieving and have unresolved trauma symptoms.
But often, at a certain point, this can feel a little like trying to race a fancy, high-performing race car down the highway with no gas in the tank.
But, when we become aware of any unresolved trauma symptoms and attend to them with proper attention and support, we give ourselves a chance to feel more ease, more integration, a greater sense of empowerment and agency (racing that car with more gas in the tank, so to speak).
So let’s break this down and take a look at an example of how this – unresolved trauma impacts – might actually, practically show up for someone in her work life.
An example of someone who might recreate their own personal trauma history at work.
Imagine, if you will, a little girl robbed of her childhood and raised by personality- and mood- disordered parents.
In such an environment, devoid of consistent relational safety and adequate emotional nurturance, she may grow up to hold beliefs like:
- “I can’t trust anyone.”
- “People will always take advantage of me.”
- “It’s safer to keep people at a distance.”
- “Everything will fall apart at any minute.”
Along the way in school and her early career she may develop behaviors like:
- Overworking to the point of sacrificing her relationships and health. Because she thinks everything will fall apart or fail if she stops working.
- Binge eating and purging at night. To cope with the increasing stress, anxiety, and vulnerability she has advancing in her academics and career.
- Developing a growing sense of anger and resentment towards others who don’t work as hard as she does. Wondering why everyone around her seems to be having fun and enjoying life when it feels so hard for her.
As she arrives solidly into her mid-career life this unresolved plays out in her own business in myriad ways:
- She doesn’t hire until she’s beyond burnout, fearing handing over any part of her business to anyone else.
- She doesn’t let her COO and right hand see the numbers. She fears she’ll be taken advantage of if she does and robs herself of support.
- She keeps herself out of community with other entrepreneurs and business mentors. She falsely believes there is no nurturance or support there.
- She feels more and more overwhelmed every day, dealing with depression, numbness, and dullness in her waking hours from working constantly and turning to substances for relief, recreating old patterning of attaching to food and drink versus safe, trusted others.
Her childhood patterns will extend into her business. And commensurately, her work life will reflect back to her what her unattended issues are. (If she pays attention or if her work life forces her attention to them.)
This is, of course, one example that’s a bit more extreme.
Unresolved trauma impacts may show up for some in more subtle ways:
- Challenges saying no or disappointing others to the point of sacrificing career advancement opportunities that require more people management;
- Staying in work environments replete with unsupportive (if not downright damaging) microaggressions because, while it’s not supportive, it’s familiar;
- An inability to stand up to a hostile co-founder because of fear of retaliation;
- Holding back from going after venture funding because of a lack of esteem;
- And so much more.
How Therapy Helps Transform Work From Trauma Trigger to Healing Laboratory
When workplace trauma patterns become conscious through therapy, your work environment transforms from a place where you unconsciously replay old wounds into a laboratory for practicing new responses. Research shows that mental health support specifically targeting the intersection of professional life and childhood trauma helps break cycles that employee assistance programs alone can’t address.
A trauma-informed therapist recognizes that your physical symptoms before presentations, your inability to delegate, or your compulsive overworking aren’t just stress—they’re manifestations of post-traumatic stress disorder playing out in professional settings. Through therapy, you explore how traumatic events from childhood created the blueprint you’re still following: if love was conditional on performance, of course you can’t stop working; if trust meant betrayal, of course you can’t share responsibilities with your team.
The therapeutic process involves identifying which form of workplace stress represents normal challenges versus trauma recreation, understanding how the curse of competency and being so high-functioning masks deeper wounds. Your therapist helps you recognize when you experience workplace situations through your trauma lens—seeing a deadline as life-threatening because deadlines once were, interpreting feedback as rejection because criticism once meant abandonment.
Long-term healing happens as you practice responding from your resourced adult self rather than the terrified child who learned that hypervigilance meant survival. With consistent support, even triggering workplace dynamics become opportunities to update old neural pathways, proving to your nervous system that it’s safe to trust, delegate, rest, and succeed without sacrificing yourself.
Wrapping up.
Whether the way your unresolved trauma patterns show up is obvious or more subtle, paying attention to your patterning is an enormous opportunity to advance your own personal growth work.
In the next essay of this two-part series (which will be published in two weeks) we’ll explore the steps we may need to take in order to not recreate trauma in our work lives and provide you with a list of tools and prompts to deepen your understanding and inquiry about this.
Here’s to healing relational trauma and creating thriving lives on solid foundations.
Warmly,
Annie
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I know if I’m recreating trauma in my work life?
Common signs include: having the same conflict across different workplaces, feeling an intensity of emotional response at work that seems disproportionate to the situation, repeatedly finding yourself in the same role (the overachiever who never gets recognized, the one who ends up doing everyone else’s work, the one who always gets left out), or finding that certain authority figures provoke the same feelings as your parents or early caregivers.
Why do driven, ambitious women often recreate trauma at work?
Work is a particularly powerful trauma arena for high-achieving women because it involves the core dynamics of relational trauma: performance evaluation, approval from authority figures, competition for limited resources, and power differentials. For women whose early worth was contingent on performance, the professional environment can be almost tailor-made to activate those old nervous system responses.
Can changing jobs stop the pattern?
Changing jobs can provide temporary relief, but if the underlying patterns aren’t addressed, they tend to reassert themselves in the new environment. Many people notice that different jobs seem to have the same kinds of difficult people in them. The common denominator is worth examining.
What role does the inner critic play in work trauma reenactment?
The inner critic — often an internalized version of a critical or dismissive caregiver — is a central player in work trauma reenactment. It drives perfectionism, imposter syndrome, the inability to accept recognition, and the constant sense that you’re about to be found out. Addressing the inner critic therapeutically is often central to shifting work-life patterns.
What’s the difference between a genuinely toxic workplace and my trauma being triggered?
Both can be true simultaneously — and often are. A genuinely toxic environment can also be one your trauma history made you more likely to enter, stay in, or struggle to navigate. The key questions are: Would most people find this environment objectively problematic? And am I also responding with a level of activation that reflects older material? Working through both layers is usually necessary.
This is part of our comprehensive guide on this topic. For the full picture, read: Self-Sabotage: A Therapist’s Guide.
DISCLAIMER: The content of this post is for psychoeducational and informational purposes only and does not constitute therapy, clinical advice, or a therapist-client relationship. For full details, please read our Medical Disclaimer. If you are in crisis, please call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline) or text HOME to 741741 (Crisis Text Line).
You deserve a life that feels as good as it looks. Let’s work on that together.
