A recap on what can make our work life traumatic.

As I mentioned several weeks ago, the definition of what makes something traumatic – whether at work or in any other sphere of our life – is highly subjective.

As a trauma therapist, the way I define trauma is this: 

“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.” 

For me, the emphasis is on that specific part: “that overwhelms this individual’s ability to effectively cope with what they went through.”

Therefore, when we have adequate internal and external support, we don’t overwhelm ourselves, and/or we reduce the opportunity for potentially traumatic overwhelm.

Moreover, we increase the odds that we can properly metabolize and digest the overwhelming experiences so they don’t lodge in our nervous systems and neural pathways as traumatic responses, allowing us to respond more functionally and adaptively to the situation(s).

So, in essence, one of the primary ways we can avoid recreating our trauma history (or traumatizing ourselves, period) in our work lives involves increasing our support.

But how can we increase our support?

Increasing your support is critical to avoiding trauma in your work life.

When it comes to increasing the support in our lives to avoid recreating (or creating for the first time) trauma, we can imagine the following will be helpful:

1) First, develop great internal support.

What does this mean?

I always think of it this way – “don’t kill the goose that lays the golden egg” (aka short-sighted destruction of the most valuable resource). 

YOU are the most important asset in your work life.

So take care of yourself.

Sleep, nutrition, exercise, regular medical appointments, whatever it means and looks like for you to take great care of your basic biological needs to show up consistently and be well-resourced for your work life. 

And taking care of yourself and cultivating great internal support can and should also mean doing your own personal psychological work.

Develop better emotional regulation skills. 

Learn to feel your feelings and use them for their signal value.  

Explore your maladaptive beliefs and behaviors. 

Cultivate better adaptive beliefs and behaviors. 

Develop great internal support by tending to your physiology and psychology to show up well-resourced for your work life.

And often, in pursuit of cultivating these internal supports, you may need and want to develop great external supports to help you do so.

2) Develop great external supports.

Again, part of what can lead to childhood trauma (or adult trauma) is not only the absence of internal support to cope with what happened but also the absence of external support to help us cope with what happened/is happening.