if you were hurt by trauma when you were a kid you're already painfully aware of how the old
hurts and fears and triggers come back to haunt you right when you're trying to take a big step
up in your career and it's not that you're not smart enough or capable enough it's the trauma
injury inside it can rise up sometimes and make you say the wrong thing or lose your focus or get
overwhelmed and take yourself out of the running for an opportunity that you really wanted has this
ever happened to you it's a terrible waste of your talent and i want to show you some strategies so
that even though you have ptsd from childhood you can show up and be strong and do great things in
your work life i'm anna runkle also known as the crappy childhood fairy and i teach people
how to heal the symptoms of complex trauma from childhood so that you can free yourself
from destructive patterns that maybe in the past have sabotaged your work life and held back your
ability to rise up the ladder of career growth and income i don't talk about money enough on
this channel i think but as a person who grew up poor i can tell you that a lack of money and fear
around money can make you really vulnerable to more trauma in your life because it can pressure
you to take jobs that are miserable for you and to cling to bad relationships only because you can't
afford to leave now our careers bring security and choices into our lives both very important
when you're setting your life up for healing from the past your career is also one of the
ways that you express yourself what you are who you are what you bring to this world and to the
people around you and when this goes well it is in itself healing for the wounds of your past trauma
i believe we need to develop and express these gifts and when that's blocked and that's exactly
what ptsd can do it's miserable it's it's not just that you have all these symptoms it's that
you can't do what you're meant to do and that is miserable that's where you get the feeling that
life is passing you by have you ever had that when time is passing but you're stuck outside
of your life it feels like and the happiness you know you're capable of is like somewhere outside
where you can't get to it so that's a big part of healing from past trauma getting your life back
becoming who you're meant to be and doing work that serves the world and that's fulfilling to you
doesn't that sound good healing trauma isn't just about trying to be someone
else it's about becoming more more of yourself and yes you are someone who was traumatized and
you have great things to bring to this world anyway this is your chance to
not let the past limit everything about your future what happened in the past it's real but
what you do with your life today is even more real so in this video i'm going to show you how to spot
where your ptsd is getting you stuck and teach you some strategies to free yourself and go further in
your career than you thought was possible because the world needs you right that's why we need you
so let's talk for a moment about the ways old trauma shows up in your work life now in my
experience there are four main trouble spots one is your ability to work with other people
has some gaps in it some spots where you get triggered especially around teams and your sense
of belonging in them and around bosses and either their authority over you or trying to get their
approval of you am i right have you had this if you grew up with abuse or neglect these ordinary
aspects of working with other people they can be just so fraught and confusing and that can lead
to you wanting to avoid people and challenges that are important to getting where you're trying to go
or it can lead you to walk in like a deer in the headlights into work situations that repeat the
abuse and neglect that hurt you in the first place bosses and co-workers who are bullies
manipulators excluders you know the mean girls in high school and if you grew up with this
kind of thing you might know that you need to get out of there but it can make you paralyzed
you start to doubt yourself and it's not rational but that's what trauma can do okay so that's the
people you work with the second way trauma can show up in your work life is in your tendency
to get dysregulated around unpleasant people or just around any kind of stress or deadline
pressure or self-doubt which everybody has at work sometimes now you've probably heard me talk about
dysregulation it's a brain state that's common for people with childhood ptsd any kind of stress
can make you feel spaced out discombobulated overwhelmed or it can make you feel over emotional
with feelings like panic or rage or just getting upset until you cry which is never fun at work i
happen to know but it's especially painful when you're freaking out and you're confused about
whether the thing that's upsetting you is even real right or you know it's not reasonable to be
freaking out but you can't stop and if this has happened to you you know there's a lot of shame
wrapped up in it and that shame all by itself can stop you from being who you are
and it can stop you from going for the work that you really love so it's devastating the third way
that trauma can show up in your work life is when it crushes your brilliance that chronic ongoing
stress and intensity of having cptsd in your brain when you don't have a way to calm it down
it just starts like robbing you of your ability to focus and it's draining you of your productivity
your enthusiasm and it makes you feel like a dumbed-down version of yourself
have you experienced that and of course cptsd symptoms create a negative cycle around money
i grew up poor for example my mother had grown up middle class and had a great education but
the chaos in our family around her addiction and drinking if you have that in your family you know
how it gets wrapped up in everything and sucks the life out of it so we were on and off welfare for
several years and when i was very little we were hungry sometimes and she'd go out for a while for
more than a couple days sometimes and we'd have to find something to eat and get ourselves to
school and my clothes would be dirty and i'd have no jacket that kind of thing so poverty can cause
trauma and trauma can cause poverty you can break that cycle but if you haven't done it yet
that trauma can keep getting back into your life trauma has a tendency to get more trauma sometimes
you probably have experienced that maybe your trauma symptoms cause you to lose a job or drop
out of school or you never go for anything challenging or well paid because of that
big trauma-shaped hole in your self-confidence or you're worried that being around people and
working with them is just going to be too triggering or you gravitate to cruddy jobs
just because you know you won't have to deal with people kind of helps cut short that dysregulation
but it cuts you off from learning to work with other people and deal with them which is a big
part of being successful in life as well as work and the thing is when you're broke
or struggling financially you are extra vulnerable to re-traumatizing yourself
through the choices you have to make staying in a bad relationship or a miserable job because you
can't or or you feel you can't make that leap to something better so what can you do to stop the
negative cycle and start taking positive steps to do the important and meaningful work that you know
is inside you i call this breaking the wheel okay the wheel is that hurricane of bad thoughts
and feelings and actions and outcomes that just goes round and round and it can be hard to escape
you don't even try to climb out just break it that's what i'm saying just take a big stick and
jam it in there wherever it lands do the thing about your trauma that is right in front of you
make the change that's doable for you if something's too hard not that do the thing
that's doable is it taking a class go sign up is it quitting a crap job maybe it's time is
it changing where you live so that you can pay down debts and start building up savings again
yes that's a good idea being economical feels good start where you are and change the thing
in front of you when you're healing work can be an opportunity to grow and heal and evolve
if you're engaged in healing your past trauma for this a few things are important all right
one is you need a way to discharge ptsd thinking before it spills out of your mouth and into
your work life those urgent feelings in cptsd that would make you lash out at other people
or sabotage yourself when you're upset you can always wait a day to do that assuming
you're not in physical danger that is if you need techniques to get those thoughts and feelings out
safely i've got a link in the description section that you can follow for my free course i'm always
talking about it look for the words free course down there and i'll teach you how to calm the
symptoms so that you can take smart actions from a calm and clear place the second thing
i really encourage you to give yourself for healing trauma is support now maybe this is
a therapist maybe it's a trusted friend a 12-step sponsor or a group who can be your sounding board
when you don't know if you're being abused or just running through an old emotional loop it goes both
ways right and to learn discernment it helps to have gentle feedback from somebody you trust
the third thing is practice recognizing when cptsd symptoms are happening so that you can
take measures to come back into a regulated state before you try to communicate or solve anything
and i'll put more course links in the description section if you need help with that
it also helps to be very practical about your work life what happens with complex trauma sometimes
is that unmet needs from childhood leak into everything else and we can go through our work day
hurting that we didn't get enough acknowledgement or appreciation things like that
and yeah that can be a real thing but for those of us who didn't get it as kids
the pain around it can get kind of oversized so this is something to try to stay grounded about
to keep expectations right sized now one thing i didn't learn until pretty far into my career and
it made a bigger impact than anything else i'd learned up to that point is that when you take
a job you're paid to make the organization and the other people who run it successful and i did
used to be somebody who didn't get that i was worried more about what the job was giving me
so that's important but it needed to be balanced with what i contributed and i'm telling you when
this was explained to me by a mentor not a work mentor i never had a work mentor honestly
but someone helped me see it that shifting my focus like this made my career finally take off
out of dumb down work and on to a series of new opportunities that ultimately led me right here
to be with you trying to help you be successful you can consider orienting yourself in a similar
way towards the service of other people now that's not being a servant that is bringing your gifts to
bear and i'm telling you there is nothing more satisfying and fulfilling it requires a lot of
continuous learning but you'll see how your old sense of disappointment and hurt sort of just get
swept away by a sense of self-worth and dignity when you're serving now when you're bringing the
best of yourself to work not being a doormat not being a klingon who stays in bad situations but
bringing your best self it gradually reveals even more of the goodness that's coded into you you
were meant for better things than a life that's limited by trauma you're designed to heal and
to grow and to bring good things into the world through everything you do including your work
including the way you make money now if you get triggered at work and you want to learn quick ways
to calm that down before you do anything drastic at work here's a video where i teach strategies
to do exactly that so you can go a little deeper into the topic and i will see you soon
you