Adulting with trauma: Career edition
When life suddenly goes off the rails, so can your job and work identity.
Trigger warnings: Numerous.
A few weeks after my mother's first suicide attempt in 2009, I found myself in a Houston hotel room with a laptop, writing copy for WordPress.com as a newly hired editorial consultant. My mother was about to have surgery at a nearby hospital. Her mysterious pelvic condition had plunged her into a hopeless state, and the surgeon seemed confident he could fix her severe pain by releasing trapped nerves.
I didn't want to be doing this—working in a hotel room at the same moment she got prepped for experimental surgery—but I was in a bind. Months earlier, I had pitched an idea for a new job to WordPress, oblivious to a future existence in which my mother became suicidal and would never really get better. They liked my pitch, I signed the paperwork to become a contractor, and then my mother overdosed, on Valentine's Day, no less.
With one phone call and a frantic flight home, my life changed. Over the coming decades, my mother’s crisis would dissipate and then erupt in wildly unpredictable ways (cough syrup addiction, anyone?). From the moment it started, I was overwhelmed, unable to understand how to navigate the crisis in all realms of my life, but especially at work.
As I’d discover, most workplaces aren’t prepared when an employee suddenly goes through trauma. This means the employee often must figure it out for themselves, all while handling a traumatic event and its aftermath (or continuation). The stress of juggling both has a lasting impact. In my case, all this bootstrapping meant accepting that some work dreams just weren’t meant to be.
“It can be difficult for a person suffering from the symptoms of trauma to speak about their issues, especially in the workplace where we often must separate our work from our personal lives. We are often called upon to leave our baggage at the door, but this can be difficult when our baggage is heavy and seems impossible to put down.
What can appear to be laziness, low motivation, or slacking can actually be the result of a reduced ability to focus and debilitation due to feelings of depression or an inability to effectively handle stress. For some trauma survivors, even getting out of bed in the morning can be a herculean task. In the workplace, where we are often required to be focused, punctual, and motivated, trauma survivors may struggle to keep up.” — Khiron Clinic, a UK trauma center
Speaking the unspeakable to…HR?
The stressors change as a crisis unfolds. In the immediate aftermath, there’s deciding what to say, how to say it, and when to say it. It’s exhausting. Depending on the nature of the trauma, you may even simply disappear without any notice at all.
When you do come up for air and realize you better inform your boss/HR, you wrestle with an all-new and jarring vocabulary for why you’ve disappeared from work, hoping you’ve divulged enough to be taken seriously without sounding so wounded you may get replaced (there’s always the dreaded standby excuse of a “family emergency”).
Meanwhile, there’s also grappling with how everyone else at work will find out. Will your boss be tactful in how they relay your unexpected absence? Or will it be bungled so badly you experience additional trauma?
“A recent survey of 2,814 global business leaders showed that only 35% of businesses had a crisis response plan ... Meanwhile, 95% of business leaders acknowledged that their crisis management capabilities need to improve (PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2021).”
To make matters worse, you often must go back to work before you’re ready, while you’re still vulnerable and raw (something women who experience a miscarriage know all too well). At my current job, for example, I get 20 days off a year total, with no separate paid “sick time.” Last year, when my sibling almost died in a highly traumatic way and he needed my help, I opted to take unpaid leave, as I lacked sufficient paid leave. This was also risky: I wasn’t protected by FMLA because adult siblings aren’t considered “family” under that law.
Yes, there is the option to file for short-term or long-term disability due to PTSD, but this is not even a guarantee, and requires lots of medical red tape at a time when a person is easily overwhelmed, forgetful, maybe even prone to disassociation. There’s also the stigma: How many people are really going to come forward and disclose their deepest pain to some rando in HR?
Your brain has been rewired for danger
Meanwhile, your brain is not the same. It’s far more sensitive and attuned to danger than ever before, even if you were never in direct harm from the trauma. I distinctly remember how one boss made a joke about wanting to shoot herself. Admittedly, she didn’t know my mom was actively suicidal and that my grandfather died by a self-inflicted gunshot. Suddenly, in the middle of our phone meeting, I pictured the whole thing in very graphic detail, unable to follow anything else my boss said.
And then there is the exhaustion from having to compartmentalize and create a work persona seemingly unaffected by real life. At WordPress, I had to create a version of myself that wasn't prone to sudden bursts of tears, one who seemed cheery and agreeable and not prickly and sullen. One who wasn't having nightmares of her mother in a nightgown blankly staring at a wall. One who wasn't staying up all night listening for any signs of her mother opening a bottle of Ambien in the bedroom next door, which I know now was hypervigilance.
“For those who have experienced trauma, some of their mental capacity is already spoken for trying to regulate their emotions and create an environment around them that feels safe. There’s less capacity available to deal with the day-to-day ups and downs. Think of it like starting your day with your phone and computer batteries half-charged. It’s easy for this to lead to quicker and more intense feelings of overwhelm at work.” — Rebecca Zucker, writing for Forbes.
This compartmentalization worked for a while (along with telling myself work was a “welcome distraction”) but I was increasingly sad and angry. People who weren’t in my inner circle didn’t know why. I just seemed like a Debbie Downer.
I also had a raging case of imposter syndrome, unable to see I was actually doing a pretty good job. This was not helped by my overactive nervous system, which made me constantly on guard for any sign my boss was displeased. As a result, even after I got promoted, I still felt like a loser.
No shocker that I quit the job the following year. Awesome job: Poof.
Acceptance and resilience whether you like it or not
Of course quitting didn't solve the problem at my hand: My mother had a chronic mental illness in a broken healthcare system. And I was starting to struggle, too. This meant incredibly bad shit could happen at any time. And it did: I started a new job and my mother attempted suicide a second time, two years later, also on Valentine's Day. (Yup, that day of love is forever ruined for me.)
Meanwhile, over the coming years, other fresh traumas popped up, making it hard for me to ever catch a breath at work. I’d quit a job, but the trauma would follow me, so to speak. Having a lot of trauma and two close family members with severe mental illness means I have passed up jobs and promotions because I knew I couldn’t handle the stress. Right now I manage stress by working part-time, which I am lucky to be able to afford.
Working less while carrying a heavy emotional burden (with recent trauma) also means I’m generally more detached from my coworkers, not cluing them in to my life behind the scenes. I don’t want to “trauma dump” on them, nor provoke compassion fatigue. I try to save it all for my therapist, my spouse, and the internet (You’re welcome?).
Until we make workplaces—and everyone—more trauma-informed, it’s just safer that way.
Ooof
This was a heavy post. If you made it this far, you deserve a palate cleanser:
Thank you for reading, and if you’ve struggled with similar work/career/trauma issues, I’d love to hear from you! I hope to make “Adulting with Trauma” an ongoing series.
This newsletter is my labor of love for prickly people. If you enjoy my writing, please support my work and buy me a coffee. ☕️🤎
You spoke for a lot of people here. The hypervigilance alone is exhausting, and then there’s everything else. I’m so sorry.
I always appreciate your honesty, Joy. It probably doesn't help, but many, many people are carrying around traumas they're afraid to voice because they fear that once it's out in the open, there's no putting it back in the box. Thanks for sharing.