Your Trauma-Wise Career Guide

Cyndi Bennett | Career Coaching for Trauma Survivors
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Traditional career development wasn't built for trauma survivors — and it shows. Your Trauma-Wise Career Guide, hosted by trauma survivor and career coach Cyndi Bennett, MBA, M.Ed., offers trauma-informed strategies for building a sustainable professional life alongside your healing. resilientcareers.substack.com

  1. 11h ago

    How Trauma Shows Up at Work When You’re a Nurse

    Have you ever sat in your car after a grueling twelve-hour shift as an emergency room nurse and just couldn’t move? The fatigue hits hard once you leave those doors and finally sit down without someone needing you. The day was chaotic. Perhaps it was a full moon. Critical patients were everywhere. You barely had a chance to go to the bathroom. Lunch was a quick pass through the break room to inhale the food you brought. And a young child, the same age as your son, did not survive a car accident. You kept working afterward, carrying that heaviness through the rest of your shift. Now you’re looking at your phone. There’s a reminder for the in-service training you signed up to attend but never reached. You missed it again. You had wanted to be there. It was an opportunity to learn, build your skills, and take another step toward the career you wanted. But sitting in your car, you feel relieved that you don’t have to take on one more thing. Then comes the question: How are you supposed to grow in your nursing career when getting through a shift takes everything you have? When Getting Through the Shift Takes Everything You signed up for that training because you wanted to be there. Maybe it would help you earn a certification, prepare for another role, or explore a specialty that interests you. Now you have missed it again. Other people manage to do this. Why can’t I? You think about the colleague who stayed late for a class last week. You tell yourself you should have planned better, pushed through, found a way. During the shift, pushing through was what you did. When someone needed help, you stepped in, even though you were already behind. When you needed help yourself, you hesitated. Everyone’s busy. I should be able to handle this. You noticed the change in your supervisor’s tone and wondered whether you had done something wrong. You checked your patient notes again. You wanted to be certain there was nothing anyone could question. After the child died, someone asked if you were okay. “I’m fine.” There were patients waiting. And you weren’t sure what would happen if you let yourself stop. Perhaps some of this feels familiar beyond nursing: watching other people closely, trying to anticipate what they need, feeling uneasy about disappointing them. Being useful may have become a way to feel secure long before it became part of your job. Now those habits can be difficult to separate from being a good nurse. You may volunteer for another shift while postponing the course that matters to you. You may want a transfer but worry that your manager will think you cannot cope. You may hear about an opening and immediately think of every qualification you lack. * I need more experience first. * They probably have someone better in mind. * I can’t leave the team when we’re already short. Meanwhile, your own plans keep moving further down the list. The staffing shortages, missed breaks, and distressing events are real demands. When your response is to ask even more of yourself, it becomes harder to see what support is missing or what choices might be available. Career development begins to involve questions you may not have expected: What happens to my goals when I keep putting everyone else’s needs ahead of them? And what would help me give those goals some room? Before We Go Further, Let Me Introduce Myself I’m Cyndi Bennett, a trauma-informed career coach and Founder of the Resilient Career Academy. I help professionals who have experienced complex trauma and CPTSD understand how their experiences may be shaping their working lives and career decisions. For nurses, that can mean recognizing the pressure to keep pushing through, making room for their own professional goals, and exploring career options that fit their strengths, needs, and aspirations. Today, we’re exploring how childhood caretaking patterns can become part of your work identity, how the armor that helps you get through a shift can make your needs difficult to acknowledge, and what it might mean to include yourself in the care you give. When Caring for Others Became a Way to Be Safe Perhaps you were taking care of people long before you became a nurse. As a child, you may have learned to notice what someone needed before they asked. You watched expressions, listened for changes in tone, and tried to keep people comfortable. Being helpful might have brought approval, reduced conflict, or made the day feel more predictable. Your own needs could wait. Sometimes, expressing them made things harder. Over time, caring for others became something you did almost automatically. You simply knew how to be the responsible one, the helpful one, the person who could manage. Then you entered a profession where caring for others is central to the work. Your compassion, knowledge, and clinical skills matter. Alongside them, there may be an old expectation that you must keep giving, whatever it costs you. They need me. I can wait. You postpone the bathroom break. You offer to help before checking whether you have anything left to give. You feel uncomfortable resting while someone else is struggling. Sometimes there genuinely is no coverage or opportunity to step away. At other times, help may be available, yet accepting it still feels uncomfortable. Both deserve attention. If being needed once helped you feel safe, someone else’s unmet need may feel like something you must personally resolve. That can make it difficult to recognize where your responsibility ends, especially in a workplace where there is always more to do. When Being Capable Becomes Your Armor At work, you may be the nurse people turn to when things get difficult. You stay composed. You keep moving. You know how to put your feelings aside until later. Perhaps you have been doing that for years. The armor can be hard to recognize because it looks like competence. People see someone dependable. They may not see the effort involved, or how difficult it feels to say, “I need help.” You might hear yourself agreeing to another request before you have considered whether you can manage it. If I say no, will they think I don’t care? You might want to tell your manager that you are struggling, then decide against it. What if they stop trusting me? Being the person who handles things may have become so closely tied to your identity that having limits feels unsettling. If I’m not the person who always steps in, who am I? That question can follow you into professional growth. Learning something new involves asking questions, needing guidance, and allowing others to see what you do not yet know. Pursuing an opportunity may mean disappointing someone who wants you to stay exactly where you are. When being capable and available has helped you feel secure, those steps can carry more emotional weight than anyone else realizes. What You Carry Beyond the Shift You get home, but your thoughts are still at the hospital. You remember the child’s face. You think about your own son. Someone asks about your day, and you pause before answering. “Busy.” You may worry about upsetting the people you love, or simply feel too tired to find the words. Later, you open the information about that training. You read the same paragraph twice. I’ll look at it on my day off. But your day off already has a job: helping you recover enough to return. Repeated exposure to other people’s traumatic experiences can contribute to secondary traumatic stress. Recognizing that exposure is part of supporting professionals whose work brings them into contact with others’ trauma. National Child Traumatic Stress Network Alongside your own history, there may now be experiences from work that need attention too. Some may touch something familiar. Others may be painful because of what you witnessed that day. Yet the habit of putting others first can continue at home. My family needs me. They’ve had a long day too. You may care for everyone around you while struggling to find somewhere you can speak honestly about what you are carrying. Having that space could matter to your professional future as much as finding another training opportunity. It may help you understand what is exhausting you, what still matters to you, and what support you would like to explore. Making Room for Yourself in Your Career Recognizing these patterns can bring mixed feelings. You may value your generosity and dependability. You may also begin to notice how often your own development waits until everyone else has what they need. There is no requirement to change everything at once. If it feels helpful, you might notice one moment when you automatically put yourself last. Perhaps you dismiss a course you want to attend, agree to extra work, or decide against asking a question. What went through your mind just before that decision? Was there a practical barrier? Concern about how someone would respond? A familiar feeling that wanting something for yourself was asking too much? Your answer may offer a place to begin. The workplace matters here too. Staffing shortages, distressing events, compliance demands, and fear of being blamed or sued are pressures that deserve to be taken seriously. Understanding your own patterns does not make you responsible for resolving those conditions. It can, however, help you notice when you are carrying an additional expectation: that you must meet everyone’s needs without having any of your own. Your interests, learning, and hopes for the future belong in the conversation. If your needs had a place alongside everyone else’s, what might you want to explore in your nursing career? As you sit with that question, you may begin to notice how these patterns have shaped earlier career decisions too: an opportunity you passed over, support you hesitated to ask for, or a goal that kept coming last. If you’d like to explore those connections further, you’re welcome to read more at Resilient Career Academ

  2. 2d ago

    Introduction to CPTSD in the Workplace

    Imagine spending years building something you’re proud of. You’ve invested your time, developed your skills, earned the trust of others, and created a career that means something to you. Then, seemingly without warning, things that once felt manageable become overwhelming. A meeting you would have walked into confidently now fills you with dread. A conversation with your manager leaves you questioning your abilities. You sit down to complete work you’ve done hundreds of times before, but your mind won’t cooperate. You know how to do your job. You’ve proven that over and over again. So why does it suddenly feel so difficult? For those of us living with Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD), the answer may have less to do with our professional capabilities and more to do with what is happening in our nervous systems. And sometimes, we don’t recognize that connection until our careers begin to feel like they’re slipping through our fingers. When Work Stopped Feeling Like My Safe Place I’m Cyndi Bennett, a trauma-informed career coach and Founder of the Resilient Career Academy. For most of my career, work was where I felt the most competent and confident. I knew what I was doing. I loved the work. I had built a successful career in a large financial corporation, and my professional identity was an important part of how I understood myself. Then, in 2019, everything changed. I began experiencing an overwhelming flood of previously inaccessible memories of childhood trauma. Although I knew I had experienced abuse, I hadn’t understood the extent of what I was carrying or how profoundly it could affect my everyday life. I knew very little about trauma or what was happening in my nervous system. Suddenly, the skills I had relied on throughout my career didn’t seem to be working anymore. I struggled to concentrate. I experienced emotional flashbacks and dissociation. Situations I had previously navigated with confidence began triggering intense fear and insecurity. I went from being someone who could manage enormous responsibilities to struggling with tasks that had once been routine. And I was terrified. Not only because of what I was experiencing internally, but because I was afraid of losing the career I had worked so hard to build. I couldn’t understand how I could still possess the same knowledge, skills, and experience yet feel so incapable of using them. What I didn’t know then was that my professional capabilities hadn’t disappeared. My ability to access them was being affected by a nervous system overwhelmed by trauma. That distinction would eventually change the way I understood my career, my healing, and the support I needed. What We’re Exploring Together In this article, I want to introduce the connection between CPTSD and our experiences at work, including why workplace situations can activate trauma responses, how those responses may affect our performance and relationships, and why understanding what is happening can help us begin developing more choices. I also want to share what my own experiences taught me about the importance of support and why trauma-informed career development became such an important part of my work. If you’re beginning to recognize these patterns in your own career, I invite you to subscribe for free to Resilient Career Academy. We explore how CPTSD can affect our professional lives and the practical skills that can help us navigate work with greater awareness, confidence, and choice. How CPTSD Can Show Up at Work One of the things I’ve learned is that CPTSD doesn’t stay neatly contained outside our professional lives. We bring our nervous systems to work with us. And our nervous systems bring everything they’ve learned about relationships, authority, expectations, conflict, safety, and belonging. For someone who experienced childhood trauma, certain workplace situations may activate responses that developed much earlier in life. A manager’s disappointed expression might trigger an intense fear of having done something wrong. Constructive feedback might feel like rejection. A disagreement with a coworker might activate an urge to withdraw, defend ourselves, or do whatever is necessary to restore the relationship. Even positive opportunities, such as promotions, leadership responsibilities, or increased visibility, can sometimes activate fear. These responses aren’t necessarily conscious decisions. Our nervous systems may recognize similarities between a present situation and an earlier experience of danger, even when the circumstances are very different. When that happens, we may find ourselves responding automatically rather than choosing how we want to respond. At work, that can look like: * Overworking or perfectionism: Feeling compelled to prove our value or prevent criticism by doing more than is expected. * People-pleasing: Agreeing to responsibilities we don’t have the capacity for because saying no feels threatening. * Avoidance or shutdown: Struggling to initiate tasks, respond to messages, or participate in conversations when we’re overwhelmed. * Hypervigilance: Constantly monitoring our environment, our manager’s mood, or other people’s reactions for signs that something might be wrong. * Difficulty receiving feedback: Experiencing correction as a threat to our competence, belonging, or security. * Challenges with concentration and memory: Finding it difficult to think clearly or access information when our nervous systems are highly activated. Not everyone with CPTSD experiences these patterns, and these behaviors can have other explanations. But when trauma is part of our history, understanding that connection may give us a different place to begin. Instead of asking, “What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I handle this?” We can begin asking, “What’s happening in my nervous system, and what might I need to navigate this situation differently?” That shift matters. Because when we understand what’s happening beneath our responses, we have more information about what to do next. The Conversation That Changed Something for Me When I was struggling most intensely, I began withdrawing from the people around me, including the team I was leading. I had spent years learning how to protect myself by keeping people at a distance. I often describe that protection as titanium armor. The armor had served a purpose. It helped me maintain control and keep difficult experiences from reaching parts of me that felt vulnerable. But it also made receiving support incredibly difficult. Eventually, I realized I needed to talk with my manager. I remember walking into her office feeling physically sick with fear. I told her about what I was experiencing, how much I was struggling, and how concerned I was about my ability to continue performing my responsibilities. I even told her I would understand if she needed to find someone else to do the work. Her response surprised me. She told me she had hired the right person for the job. She still believed I was capable and qualified. And then she asked a question I’ll never forget. “How can I help?” Those four words meant more to me than I can adequately explain. At a time when I was questioning everything about myself, someone I respected still saw my capabilities. She didn’t need me to prove that I deserved support. She simply wanted to understand what would help. That conversation didn’t resolve everything I was experiencing. I still needed therapy, time, and opportunities to develop new skills. But it helped me begin to understand that receiving support didn’t have to mean surrendering my professional identity. I could be struggling and still be capable. I could need help and still have value. And perhaps most importantly, I didn’t have to navigate every difficult moment alone. I also recognize that not everyone has a manager who can respond this way. Disclosing a trauma history at work is a personal decision, and there may be very real reasons to protect that information. We can advocate for what we need without necessarily sharing the details of why we need it. Why Support Matters Beyond the Therapy Room As my healing continued, I learned something else. Having a trauma therapist was incredibly important, but I was still navigating situations at work that activated my nervous system between appointments. I needed to understand what to do when I was triggered during a meeting, overwhelmed by a conversation, or struggling to concentrate while responsibilities continued piling up. For a time, my manager provided an important source of support. When she left the company, I experienced just how much I had come to rely on that relationship. Her departure activated deep attachment wounds, and I withdrew again. My dissociation became severe, and it took the intervention of a trusted friend and coworker to help me recognize how much support I needed. I returned to therapy and eventually sought additional support from a trauma recovery coach. But that experience left me thinking about a much larger question. What happens to trauma survivors who are trying to maintain their careers while learning how to manage trauma responses, especially when they don’t have access to supportive managers, coaches, or other resources? What do we do when a trigger happens at 10:30 on a Tuesday morning, and we still have meetings to attend, decisions to make, and work to complete? That question became central to my work. Therapy and other healing supports can help us understand and process our experiences. But we may also need practical skills and appropriate support for navigating the professional situations we encounter every day. We may need to learn how to recognize when we’re becoming activated, identify what is happening in the present, regulate our responses, communicate our needs, establish boundaries, and make career decisions without automatically responding from fear. And

  3. 5d ago

    Returning to Work After a Sabbatical: What Five Weeks Away Helped Me See | Newsletter #13

    Have you ever stood over an open suitcase, trying to decide what absolutely needs to go because you are not paying for another piece of luggage? You run through the trip in your head. What’s the weather supposed to be? Will you need a jacket? How much walking will you be doing? Can one pair of shoes work for everything? You’ve figured out what you need for the daytime outings. But what about the evenings? What are you going to do when you get back to the hotel room at night? Well, there’s that article you could work on. A few emails you could catch up on. Maybe you could make some progress on that project once you’re settled in for the evening. And just like that, your computer starts looking like an essential item. That’s where I found myself before the first trip of my five-week sabbatical. But this time, with more fear and trepidation than leaving a laptop behind probably warrants, I decided it was staying home. I wanted to be present with my husband, even if part of my brain was convinced I would spend the rest of my sabbatical catching up. And as we traveled, something unexpected happened. Without work filling every available space, there was room to think about the future of my coaching business. What could it look like? What possibilities had I been too busy to consider? Making Room for What Could Be Maybe you recognize that busyness, too. Between getting through the workday, taking care of the people who depend on you, and keeping up with everything else, when is there room to think about what you want next? You can spend so much time managing the life you have that you rarely get to consider what you’d like your future to look like. You may know exactly what needs your attention today. But if someone asked what you want your work to make possible over the next few years, would you know where to begin? In What Do You Want From Your Career When Survival Is No Longer the Only Goal?, we explore that question without asking you to abandon the stability you’ve worked hard to build. The article offers a place to begin noticing what you want more room for. Paid members can go further with a worked example and The Beyond-Survival Career Reflection Guide, a companion worksheet for exploring possibilities and choosing one manageable next step. Help Choose the Podcast Art With all the traveling during my sabbatical, there was less time to work on The Resilient Career than I’d imagined. Since returning home, I’ve been working hard to get everything in place for the new podcast. The Resilient Career launches October 27! You’ll be able to watch on YouTube, listen here on Substack, or tune in wherever you get your podcasts. Before launch day, there’s one decision you can help with: the podcast art! Take a look at the two options below and cast your vote. Option 1: Green shirt, purple background Option 2: Blue shirt, navy background Thanks for helping bring this podcast to life. Your vote gives me a little more direction as launch day gets closer! And beyond the artwork, what would you like us to talk about on The Resilient Career? What questions about work or your career have been on your mind? Reply to this email or leave a comment. Your questions can help shape future episodes. Until next time, Take good care. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit resilientcareers.substack.com/subscribe

  4. Oct 10

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

    “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 Myself If 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 Are Think 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 Entangled This conversation can become even more complicated for those of us who’ve experienced complex trauma. When we’ve spent years trying to prove our competence, earn approval, or establish a sense of security, our professional accomplishments can become deeply connected to how we measure our worth. Maybe we’ve learned to feel valuable when we’re needed. Maybe being the dependable one gives us a sense of belonging. Or perhaps our professional achievements have become evidence we use to challenge an internal belief that we’re somehow not enough. I recognize how powerful that can be. And I also wonder what happens when the career we’ve relied on to provide that evidence begins to change. If we’re no longer achieving, producing, solving problems, or meeting other people’s expectations in the same ways, where do we look for that sense of value? That’s a question worth exploring before we reach the point of transition. Because the skills, talents, and qualities that made us valuable contributors throughout our careers don’t disappear when we leave a particular position. But we may need time to discover how we want to express those parts of ourselves differently. Preparing for More Than a Financial Transition When my husband and I met with our financial advisor, we were focused on whether we had enough money to retire. And that was an important conversation. But financial readiness is only one part of preparing for a major career transition. We may also need to consider what our days will look like, where we’ll find connection and community, what will give us a sense of purpose, and how we’ll navigate the changes in our professional identity. For someone who’s spent decades working within a structured environment, the idea of having fewer external expectations can be both appealing and unsettling. We may discover that we’ve become so accustomed to organizing our lives around our careers that we haven’t spent much time imagining what we want outside of them. And if we’re beginning to recognize how trauma responses have influenced our professional lives, there may be additional questions to explore. What parts of our professional identity reflect who we genuinely are? What parts developed because we were trying to feel safe, accepted, or capable? And which parts do we want to carry into the next chapter? These aren’t questions we have to answer overnight. But they’re worth considering while we still have opportunities to make intentional choices about what comes next. What Will Your Next Chapter Look Like? After spending decades building a career, transitioning into something different can bring up questions we haven’t had much reason to consider before. Who am I beyond my professional role? What do I want to do with the knowledge and experience I’ve accumulated? What would a meaningful next chapter look like for me? These are questions we can explore together through individual career coaching. Whether you’re considering retirement, a career change, consulting, entrepreneurship, or a different way to contribute, we can work together to explore your professional identity, identify what matters most to you, and develop a transition plan that reflects your goals, values, and circumstances. You don’t have to have all the answers before we begin. The Legacy We Want to Leave Behind As we approach the later chapters of our careers, many of us begin asking different questions about success. Earlier in our professional lives, we may have been focused on establishing ourselves, earning enough to support our families, advancing into new positions, or demonstrating what we were capable of accomplishing. But as we begin thinking about what comes next, our attention may shift. We may start wondering what difference we’ve made. What knowledge or experience do we want to pass along? What do we hope people will remember about the way we worked, led, supported others, or contributed? And is there something we’ve always wanted to do that we haven’t yet given ourselves permission to explore? Legacy can take many forms. For some, it may mean mentoring younger professionals or sharing decades of industry knowledge. For others, it might involve consulting, teaching, volunteering, advocating for changes in their profession, or building a business around something they care deeply about. And for some, leaving a meaningful legacy may have less to do with professional accomplishments and more to do with the relationships they’ve nurtured and the lives they’ve touched along the way. There’s no single definition of what a meaningful legacy should look like. We deserve the opportunity to define it for ourselves. We Still Have Something to Offer In my last newsletter, What Kind of Work Would Jazz You?, we explored the idea that each of us brings a unique combination of gifts, talents, interests, skills, and lived experiences into the world. That conversation becomes especially meaningful when we’re approaching a major career tr

  5. Oct 8

    Who Am I at Work When I’m Not Trying to Prove Myself?

    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 Myself I’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 Ourselves There’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting to demonstrate what we’re capable of. When we’re learning something new, we don’t always know whether we can do it. We develop confidence through experience, practice, and discovering what happens when we try. But for some of us who experienced complex trauma, the uncertainty can run deeper than whether we have the skills to accomplish a particular task. We may have grown up with experiences that taught us to question our abilities, our judgment, our value, or whether we were good enough. Perhaps our accomplishments were overlooked, our mistakes were magnified, or the expectations placed on us seemed impossible to satisfy. Those experiences can shape beliefs about ourselves that follow us into adulthood. I’m not smart enough. I’m not capable enough. I’m not good enough. And sometimes, without realizing it, we begin building careers around trying to overcome those beliefs. We work hard. We figure things out. We take on challenges that stretch us beyond what we thought we could do. We earn credentials, develop expertise, receive recognition, and accomplish things that once seemed impossible. Each accomplishment offers another piece of evidence that we are capable. But something unexpected can happen. We accumulate the evidence without changing what we believe about ourselves. And so we keep trying. When Accomplishment Doesn’t Change What We Believe Have you ever accomplished something you weren’t sure you could do, only to find that the feeling of accomplishment didn’t last very long? Maybe you earned the promotion you’d been working toward for years. You were excited, relieved, and proud of yourself. But before long, the questions started creeping back in. What if I can’t handle this new role? What if they realize I’m not as capable as they think I am? Or perhaps you completed a difficult project, received recognition for your work, and immediately started thinking about everything you could have done better. Instead of allowing the accomplishment to become evidence of your capability, you found reasons to discount it. * That wasn’t really that difficult. * Anyone could have done that. * I just got lucky. * But can I do it again? And before long, you’re looking for the next opportunity to prove yourself. This is one of the more exhausting ways complex trauma can influence our careers. We may be trying to use professional accomplishments to change beliefs about ourselves that were formed long before we ever entered the workplace. The accomplishments are real. The skills we’ve developed are real. The career we’ve built is real. But the beliefs we’re trying to overcome may not respond to evidence the way we expect them to. We can spend years becoming more capable without ever feeling more capable. And when that happens, the next accomplishment can start to feel like the one that will finally settle the question. Maybe this time I’ll believe it. When Proving Becomes Part of Our Professional Identity Over time, that need to prove ourselves can become more than something we do. It can become part of who we believe we have to be. We become the capable one. The dependable one. The one who figures things out. The person everyone turns to when there’s a problem because they know we’ll find a way to solve it. And those qualities may be completely real. We may be extraordinarily resourceful. We may learn quickly, notice things other people miss, solve complicated problems, or persist through situations that would have caused other people to give up. Those are strengths we’ve developed, and they’re worth recognizing. But there’s a difference between knowing we’re capable and needing to continually demonstrate our capability in order to believe it. When our professional identity becomes intertwined with proving ourselves, ordinary workplace situations can begin carrying an additional emotional burden. We’re not simply completing the project. We’re trying to convince ourselves that we’re capable of doing the work. We’re not simply learning something new. We’re trying to overcome the fear that we aren’t smart enough to figure it out. We’re not simply accepting an opportunity. We’re hoping it will finally make us feel like we deserve to be where we are. And when we make a mistake, we may experience it as something much bigger than a mistake. It can feel like evidence that the belief we’ve been trying so hard to overcome was right all along. That’s an enormous amount of pressure to place on ourselves. Let’s Recognize What Proving Has Given Us I don’t think we need to turn our drive to prove ourselves into another behavior we’re supposed to feel bad about. For many of us, that drive has taken us places. Maybe someone underestimated us, and we figured out how to do something they didn’t believe we could do. Maybe we weren’t given the same opportunities as others, so we created our own. Maybe we entered a room without the experience everyone else seemed to have and taught ourselves what

  6. Oct 3

    Trauma-Informed Career Development: What Kind of Work Would Jazz You? | Newsletter #11

    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 Myself I’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 Title Think 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 Gifts I 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 question I find much more interesting than “What am I qualified to do?” Where could I use this unique combination of gifts, talents, abilities, interests, and lived experience in a way that jazzes me? But What If I Don’t Think I Have Any Special Gifts? Maybe you read all of that and thought: That’s a nice idea, Cyndi. I’m just not sure it applies to me. I think we need to talk about that. Because some of us may genuinely struggle to believe we’re uniquely equipped at all. When someone asks what we’re good at, our mind goes blank. We can identify talent in everyone around us, but when the attention turns toward us, suddenly we can’t think of anything. Or the things we’re good at seem so ordinary that we don’t count them. Anybody can do that. That’s not really a skill. It’s easy. It’s not anything special. But here’s something worth considering: Maybe it feels easy because it’s one of your gifts. We’re experiencing our abilities from the inside. We don’t necessarily know what it’s like for someone who doesn’t think the way we think or see what we see. And for some trauma survivors, there may be another layer. We may have spent years becoming experts at identifying what was wrong with us. What needed fixing. Where we weren’t enough. What we needed to do better. How we needed to change to be accepted, valued, successful, safe, or loved. When we’ve spent that much time looking for deficiencies, being asked to look for gifts can feel almost unbelievable. You mean there’s something already in me that’s valuable? Sometimes the idea that we might have been uniquely equipped feels too good to be true. So I’m not going to ask you to suddenly believe something about yourself that you don’t believe yet. Let’s look for evidence instead. Start Looking for the Clues Maybe you don’t know what your gifts are yet. That’s different from not having them. So instead of trying to declare what your unique equipping is, I invite you to become curious about it. Grab a notebook, open a blank document, or just sit with these questions for a while. What seems to come naturally to me? What do you do that feels relatively easy to you but seems harder for other people? Maybe you organize information quickly. Maybe you make people feel comfortable. Maybe you can connect dots like nobody’s business. Maybe you can look at a complicated problem and immediately see where to start. Don’t dismiss something because it seems too easy to count. That might be exactly why we need to pay attention. What do people consistently come to me for? Think beyond your job description. What do coworkers, friends, family members, clients, or leaders ask for your help with? * Advice? * Problem-solving? * Explaining something? * Making a decision? * Creating a plan? * Handling a difficult conversation? * Seeing something they’ve missed? Sometimes other people have been giving us clues about our gifts for years. What has my life taught me? Think about the knowledge and abilities you’ve developed through living. That can include your education and professional experience, but it doesn’t stop there. What have you had to figure out? What have you learned through relationships, challenges, transitions, caregiving, leadership, entrepreneurship, healing, failure, starting over, or navigating systems that weren’t designed with you in mind? What do you understand now that an earlier version of you didn’t? What am I deeply curious about? What subjects do you keep coming back to? What do you read about when nobody assigns it? What problems make you think, There has to be a better way to do this? What could you spend hours talking about without someone having to keep the conversation going? Curiosity can be a clue. What jazzes me? And now we get to my favorite question. Think about moments when you’ve been doing something and felt more energized afterward. What were you doing? Who were you doing it with? What part of the experience gave you energy? Was it creating? Teaching? Solving? Leading? Helping? Analyzing? Building? Connecting? Advocating? Imagining? Don’t worry about whether you can turn the answer into a job yet. We’re collecting clues. Now Look for the Intersections Once you have some answers, resist the urge to immediately search for a job title. Look across everything you’ve written. What keeps appearing? Where do your gifts and talents intersect with what you’ve learned through living? Where does your curiosity overlap with something you’re unusually good at? Where do your experiences give you a perspective someone else might not have? What kinds of problems allow several pieces of your unique equipping to come together at once? And perhaps most importantly: Where do you find yourself thinking, “I’d love to do more of that”? That’s where I would start exploring. Not because every interest needs to become a care

  7. Oct 1

    Why Does My Boss Trigger Me? CPTSD, Authority, and the Workplace

    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 Myself If 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 Trauma A 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 what happens to us. Our circumstances may be completely different, but something about the dynamic can feel familiar. A manager who closely monitors our work may activate an old response to being controlled. A boss who is difficult to read may leave us scanning for signs that something is wrong. Critical feedback may feel like more than information about our performance. An absent manager may activate the familiar belief that when we need help, we’re going to have to figure it out on our own. And sometimes, we may find ourselves working incredibly hard to stay in an authority figure’s good graces by saying yes, overdelivering, avoiding disagreement, or trying to become the employee they could never be disappointed in. None of this means every difficult interaction with a boss is about our past. It means our past may be one of the things our nervous system brings with us into the interaction. And that can help explain why two people can walk out of the exact same meeting having experienced it very differently. One person may leave thinking, That was uncomfortable. Another may leave with their heart racing, replaying every word, wondering what they did wrong, worrying about their job, or already figuring out what they need to do to make things okay. The meeting may be over. But their nervous system may still be responding to what it believes is at stake. Your Nervous System May Hear Something Your Manager Didn’t Say Have you ever received a message from your boss that simply said: “Do you have a few minutes to talk?” That’s it. No explanation. No context. Just a request to talk. And suddenly, your mind is off to the races. * What did I do? * Did I miss something? * Are they upset with me? * Am I in trouble? * Am I going to lose my job? By the time the meeting happens, we may have replayed our last several interactions, reviewed everything we’ve worked on recently, and prepared ourselves for a conversation that hasn’t even happened yet. Then we get on the call, and our manager says, “I wanted to get your thoughts on this project.” Nothing was wrong. But the response we experienced before that conversation was real. This is one of the ways our past experiences can shape what we hear in the present. Our manager may say, “I’d like you to make a few changes to this.” We may hear, “You didn’t do it right.” They may say, “I noticed something I want to give you some feedback on.” We may hear, “You messed up.” They may disagree with an idea we proposed. We may hear, “Your ideas aren’t valuable.” They may make a decision we don’t understand. We may hear, “You don’t matter here.” The words our manager actually says and the meaning our nervous system assigns to those words aren’t always the same thing. And that doesn’t mean we’re making it up. Our nervous system has learned from experience. If criticism once came with humiliation, if mistakes had consequences that felt dangerous, if someone’s changing tone told us we needed to prepare for what was coming next, or if keeping an authority figure happy helped us feel safer, it makes sense that we became really good at noticing those cues. The challenge is that the meaning we learned to assign to those cues may continue showing up long after our circumstances have changed. That’s why I think curiosity is so important here. Instead of immediately asking ourselves, Why am I reacting like this?, we can begin asking: * What did my manager actually say or do? * What meaning did I attach to it? * What did I immediately believe was going to happen next? * And what about this feels familiar? Those questions aren’t about talking ourselves out of our response. They’re about getting more information. Because sometimes our nervous system is responding to an old alarm. Sometimes it’s picking up on something happening in the present that deserves our attention. And sometimes it may be a little bit of both. The more we can understand what we’re responding to, the more choices we can begin to see about what to do next. What Boss Triggers Can Look Like at Work Once we start paying attention, we may notice that it isn’t simply our boss who triggers us. It may be something specific about the way they lead, communicate, respond, or use their authority that our nervous system recognizes. And different behaviors may activate very different responses. Control or Micromanagement Being closely monitored, having our decisions questioned, or feeling like we constantly have to account for what we’re doing can be especially activating if control was part of our earlier experiences. We may find ourselves becoming angry or defensive. We may shut down. We may feel an overwhelming need to prove that we’re capable. Or we may comply while quietly feeling smaller and smaller. That was part of what was happening for me when my manager asked me to account for my time. It wasn’t simply the re

  8. Sep 26

    CPTSD at Work: When Being Capable Becomes Part of Your Armor | Newsletter #10

    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 Yet If 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 Safer For 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 learned how to solve our own problems. We became resourceful. We learned how to keep functioning when things around us weren’t functioning particularly well. And then we entered the workplace, where many of those adaptations were rewarded. The employee who doesn’t need much direction can be seen as a self-starter. The person who always finds a solution becomes the problem-solver. The one who takes responsibility when something goes wrong becomes dependable. The person who can carry an enormous workload becomes the person everyone turns to when there is more work to be done. The workplace may have had no idea what it took for us to become that person. It just knew that we delivered. And every promotion, compliment, difficult assignment, and “Give it to Cyndi, she’ll figure it out” could reinforce something we’d already learned: Being capable works. It helps us feel in control. It reduces the need to depend on other people. It can protect us from the vulnerability of admitting we don’t know, can’t do something, or need support. And it may help us build a pretty successful career. That’s why I don’t think the answer is to stop being capable. The question is whether we still have a choice about when we put the armor on. Because there’s a significant difference between: I can figure this out myself. and I can’t let anyone see that I need help figuring this out. Between: I can carry this. and I can’t let anyone know this is too heavy. Between: I’m capable. and I have to be the capable one. And when that last one starts driving us, the armor that helped us succeed can also make it incredibly difficult for anyone to see when we’re struggling underneath it. What Happens When Everyone Believes the Armor? There is an interesting consequence to becoming the person who can always handle it. People start believing us. If we consistently show the people around us that we can figure things out, carry the extra load, solve the problem, and keep going no matter what is happening, eventually they stop wondering whether we need help. Why wouldn’t they? We’ve given them every reason to believe we’re fine. They may not see how much energy it takes to keep everything moving. They don’t know how long we stared at the computer trying to make our brain cooperate. They don’t see the anxiety before the meeting, the tears after we log off, or how little of ourselves may be left by the time we get home. They see the work getting done. They see capable. And this is where the armor can become incredibly isolating. We may desperately want someone to notice that we’re struggling while simultaneously doing everything we can to make sure they don’t. We may wish someone would offer to take something off our plate while continuing to reassure everyone that we’ve got it. We may feel hurt that nobody checks on us while presenting ourselves as the person nobody ever needs to check on. That’s a painful contradiction. And I don’t think it means the people around us are necessarily uncaring. They may simply be responding to what we’ve shown them. Our armor is doing exactly what we designed it to do. It’s protecting the parts of us we don’t feel safe enough to show. But protection can come with a cost. If no one can see that we’re struggling, they can’t respond to the struggle they can’t see. If no one knows we need support, they don’t have the opportunity to offer it. And if we’ve built our professional identity around being the person who can handle anything, taking off even one piece of that armor can feel incredibly vulnerable. Because then we’re faced with a different question: What happens if they see that I can’t handle everything? And maybe an even harder one: Will they still see me as capable when they see that I’m human? What If Both Can Be True? Somewhere along the way, many of us may have created a choice that was never really ours to make. * Either I’m capable, or I need help. * Either I’m strong, or I’m struggling. * Either I know what I’m doing, or I’m in over my head. * Either I can handle it, or I can’t. But what if those things were never opposites? We can be incredibly capable and still reach the edge of our capacity. We can be resourceful and still benefit from someone else’s expertise. We can know what we’re doing and still have moments when we don’t know what to do next. We can be strong and still need someone to stand beside us while we navigate something hard. Needing support doesn’t erase our capability. That has been an important shift for me. Taking off the armor doesn’t require me to hand over everything I’ve learned to do for myself. It doesn’t mean I suddenly become dependent on everyone around me or stop trusting my own ability to figure things out. Maybe it means I no longer have to prove my capability by how little I need from anyone else. I can ask the question instead

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Traditional career development wasn't built for trauma survivors — and it shows. Your Trauma-Wise Career Guide, hosted by trauma survivor and career coach Cyndi Bennett, MBA, M.Ed., offers trauma-informed strategies for building a sustainable professional life alongside your healing. resilientcareers.substack.com

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  • Creator
    Cyndi Bennett | Career Coaching for Trauma Survivors
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    81
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Cyndi Bennett
  • Show Website
    Your Trauma-Wise Career Guide