Episodes

  • Who Am I When My Career Is No Longer My Identity? | Newsletter #12

    Who Am I When My Career Is No Longer My Identity? | Newsletter #12
    Oct 10 2026
    “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.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 MyselfIf 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 AreThink 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 EntangledThis conversation can become even more complicated for those of us who’ve ...
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    15 mins
  • Who Am I at Work When I’m Not Trying to Prove Myself?

    Who Am I at Work When I’m Not Trying to Prove Myself?
    Oct 8 2026
    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.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 MyselfI’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 OurselvesThere’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting to demonstrate what we’re capable of.When we’re learning something new, ...
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    25 mins
  • Trauma-Informed Career Development: What Kind of Work Would Jazz You? | Newsletter #11

    Trauma-Informed Career Development: What Kind of Work Would Jazz You? | Newsletter #11
    Oct 3 2026
    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 MyselfI’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.And one of the things I believe deeply is this: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 TitleThink 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 GiftsI 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 from our 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 ...
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    18 mins
  • Why Does My Boss Trigger Me? CPTSD, Authority, and the Workplace

    Why Does My Boss Trigger Me? CPTSD, Authority, and the Workplace
    Oct 1 2026
    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.That doesn’t mean we’re overreacting.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 MyselfIf 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 TraumaA 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...
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    35 mins
  • CPTSD at Work: When Being Capable Becomes Part of Your Armor | Newsletter #10

    CPTSD at Work: When Being Capable Becomes Part of Your Armor | Newsletter #10
    Sep 26 2026
    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.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 YetIf 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 SaferFor 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 ...
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    16 mins
  • Workplace Triggers: Why Do I Get Triggered So Easily at Work?

    Workplace Triggers: Why Do I Get Triggered So Easily at Work?
    Sep 23 2026
    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.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 RealizeWhen 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 ...
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    25 mins
  • CPTSD and Entrepreneurship: How Complex Trauma Can Show Up in the Businesses We Build| Newsletter #9

    CPTSD and Entrepreneurship: How Complex Trauma Can Show Up in the Businesses We Build| Newsletter #9
    Sep 19 2026
    Have you ever thought, “Maybe I should just work for myself”?Maybe it came after another difficult interaction with your boss.Or after leaving a workplace that had become unbearable.Maybe you were exhausted from constantly managing triggers, personalities, expectations, office politics, and trying to hold yourself together while still doing your job.Maybe you lost a job and couldn’t imagine putting yourself through another workplace like the one you’d just left.And somewhere in all of that, entrepreneurship started to look like an answer.If I work for myself, I can control my environment.I can choose who I work with.I can set my own schedule.I won’t have a boss triggering me.I can finally do things my way.That possibility can hold a tremendous amount of hope.And maybe some relief, too.But there’s something I don’t think we talk about nearly enough:We may leave the workplace. But we don’t leave our nervous system, our history, or the survival strategies we developed there behind.A quick introduction, if we haven’t metIf we haven’t met yet, I’m Cyndi Bennett, a trauma-informed career coach and founder of the Resilient Career Academy. You’re reading or listening to The Resilient Career Academy Newsletter #9, where we explore how the after-effects of complex trauma can show up in our careers and what becomes possible when we begin recognizing and removing the obstacles they can create.Today, I’m starting a new conversation about something we haven’t talked about nearly enough: what happens when trauma survivors become entrepreneurs.Leaving a difficult workplace and building something of our own can change a lot about our working environment. We may have more control over our time, the people we work with, the work we choose to do, and even the conditions under which we do it.But becoming an entrepreneur doesn’t give us a clean slate.We bring ourselves with us.Our experience. Our strengths. Our resourcefulness. Our hopes for what this business might make possible.And we may also bring some of the adaptations we developed long before we ever thought about starting a business.Over the next several months, I want to explore what that can look like, not because there is one universal experience of entrepreneurship as a trauma survivor, but because I think there are conversations we need to start having.And today, I want to start with a simple question:What happens when the survival strategies that helped us get this far become part of how we build a business?We Don't Start Our Businesses From a Blank SlateWhen we start a business, we bring decades of experience with us.We bring the skills we’ve developed throughout our careers, the things we’ve learned about people, the problems we know how to solve, and the experiences that have shaped what matters to us. For trauma survivors, some of those experiences may have helped us develop strengths that serve us incredibly well as entrepreneurs.We may be resourceful because we’ve spent much of our lives figuring things out. We may notice things other people miss because we’ve learned to pay close attention to what’s happening around us. We may understand people deeply, anticipate needs, adapt quickly when circumstances change, and keep going when things don’t go according to plan.Those things come with us.But so do the strategies we developed to protect ourselves.And here’s where entrepreneurship gets interesting.Some of the very same adaptations that helped us navigate difficult circumstances can look remarkably useful when we’re building a business. * Self-reliance can look like independence. * Hypervigilance can look like being exceptionally prepared. * People-pleasing can look like outstanding customer service. * Perfectionism can look like having incredibly high standards. * Over-functioning can look like the work ethic entrepreneurship supposedly requires.Sometimes the things that helped us survive can also help us succeed.Until they don’t.That’s what makes these patterns so difficult to recognize. They don’t necessarily show up in our businesses looking like trauma responses. They may look like the qualities of a really committed entrepreneur.And that’s what I want us to start becoming curious about.I Thought the Triggers Would Go AwayOne of the things I didn’t expect when I started my own business was that the things that triggered me would change.In my corporate career, I had become pretty familiar with the situations that could knock me off-center. I understood what it felt like to navigate difficult workplace relationships, authority dynamics, conflict, feedback, and the unpredictability of working inside a large organization.Entrepreneurship gave me more control over many of those things. I could decide what kind of work I wanted to do, who I wanted to work with, how I spent my time, and what I wanted to create.And yet, I discovered that having more control over my working environment didn’t mean I ...
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    15 mins
  • When CPTSD Makes You Question Everything, Including Your Career| Newsletter #4

    When CPTSD Makes You Question Everything, Including Your Career| Newsletter #4
    Aug 13 2026
    Last week I had a discovery call with a man who has spent almost three decades in the financial sector. He's the kind of person people trust in a room. Steady. Reliable. The one everyone assumes has it together.He was diagnosed with CPTSD last year.He told me that in the months since, nothing has felt safe. Not the people he works with, not the meetings he used to walk into without a second thought, not even his own reactions. He’s found himself questioning everything he thought he knew about himself. The way he reacts to feedback. The way he reads people. The way he’s built his entire career on staying in control. All of it suddenly looked different to him, like he was seeing his own life from outside of it for the first time.Here’s what he described, and what I hear so often from people in the early days of a CPTSD diagnosis.Suddenly, everyone feels like a threat. Not because anything around him actually changed, but because his nervous system is finally being honest about how much it’s been protecting him, for how long, from how far back. A coworker’s tone in a meeting. A boss’s silence after he speaks. Things that used to roll off him now land like something is wrong, something is dangerous, even when he knows, logically, that it isn’t.That’s a dysregulated nervous system at work, and it’s showing up for him in ways I recognize from so many conversations like this one.Common Workplace Struggles for Trauma Survivors:* A hyperactive threat-detection system that reads colleagues and leaders as adversaries, even when no real threat is present* A running fear about job security, about losing the income and stability built over years of hard work* The daily exhaustion of managing an internal alarm just to keep functioning* Defensiveness that others perceive as overreacting, while it feels like a necessary safety response from the inside* Performing well on the outside while feeling like everything is falling apart on the inside* A pull between ambition and the need to heal, unsure how to hold both at once* Not feeling safe naming any of this at work, even in cultures that claim to value mental health* A workplace moment reopening something much older, making ordinary stress feel exponentially heavier* Hypervigilance that makes even routine, safe situations feel like something is about to go wrongDo any of these sound familiar to you? They do to me, because I experienced the same things.He has done what many of us do when we get this diagnosis…we research the heck out of it. We do a deep dive on Google, YouTube, Discussion Forums, Podcasts, and so, so many books.I did the same thing, because I felt compelled to figure out “what was wrong with me and how to fix it.” Can anyone relate to that? Of course, you can.The first couple of years on the CPTSD healing journey are the hardest and most vulnerable, because you have all the emotions and very inadequate coping strategies.If you find yourself on this healing journey, I want you to know that you are not alone. You are really in good company, with over 80% of the workforce experiencing trauma at one point in their life.Regulation is the FoundationAs someone who has walked this journey myself, and walked alongside countless other survivors, the first order of business is to get your nervous system regulated, because the rest of your healing journey is based on this foundation.To help with this, I created a FREE tool called “The Workplace Trigger Tracker Toolkit”. It is a template you can use to create awareness of the workplace situations and scenarios where you are triggered, what set it off, and the intensity. Additionally, there is a picklist of coping strategies you can choose from to address the triggers. Almost 2K subscribers have requested this tool to help them in the workplace.You can get yours for FREE here:🌱 Become GroundedPattern PivotsIs this fire, or is this toast?Years ago, I set off my own smoke alarm making toast.Not burnt toast. Slightly golden, barely-there toast.The alarm didn’t know the difference. It just knew smoke, and smoke means danger, so it screamed the same way it would if the whole kitchen were on fire.That’s what a dysregulated nervous system does at work.You think the alarm is telling you:* “That email was hostile.”* “She’s building a case against you.”* “This meeting is a threat.”* “You need to defend yourself right now.”Oftentimes, the alarm isn’t reading the room. It’s reading old smoke from a fire that happened somewhere else, a long time ago.Let’s imagine you get a slightly terse Slack message and your whole body goes on alert before your eyes even finish reading it. How much of that reaction actually belongs to the message?Listen, you don’t need to silence the alarm. Silencing it isn’t the goal.The win is when you can hear it going off and ask, “Is there fire, or is there toast?”The win is catching the half-second between the alarm and the reaction.The win...
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    13 mins