The Resilient Career with Cyndi Bennett

Summary

Your manager smiles and says “I knew you’d have it handled.” You thank her. You don’t mention that you were still working on it after midnight. That you woke at four and checked a number you had already checked three times. That when your colleague stayed behind and asked how you were really doing, you said “I’m okay, it’s just a busy week” and then opened the next document.

People see the presentation. The finished project. The person they can count on. They don’t see the lost sleep, the tears between meetings, or the evenings spent recovering just enough to do it again.

In this episode, Cyndi Bennett explores why being capable and dependable can become tangled up with feeling safe or valued, why praise may bring only a brief sense of relief before the exhaustion returns, and how you might begin making room for your own capacity alongside everything you are already committed to.

Key Thoughts

* The skills that make you excellent at your work and the patterns that make it hard to stop are not always separate things.

* Being the person everyone trusts can quietly become a way of managing safety, not just a reflection of commitment.

* When finishing something successfully only brings brief relief before the next deadline arrives, the exhaustion stays even when the work looks fine from the outside.

* An offer of help can feel harder to accept than it looks, especially when asking has not always been safe or useful in the past.

* Your capacity deserves to be part of the decision before you say yes, not something you absorb the cost of afterward.

* Being trusted does not have to mean being endlessly available.

* You can care about your work and your colleagues and your reputation while also needing something to change.

What This Means For You

If any part of this episode felt familiar, here are some things worth sitting with:

* The presentation can be excellent and the way you had to get through it can be costing you too much. Both deserve to be part of the conversation about how work is going.

* You don’t have to explain everything to make one request. Allowing someone to help can begin with one piece of work and a chance to see what happens.

* Have a sentence ready before the next request arrives. You do not have to find the words while you are already feeling the pressure to say yes. Something like “Let me check my current deadlines and get back to you this afternoon” gives you room before you commit.

* If a conversation about priorities feels possible, try naming the tradeoff. “I am working toward these two deadlines. If this new project takes priority, which one can move?” makes your capacity part of the decision.

* Your needs belong in the picture. Over time, keeping your needs out of view leaves you with less energy for your life and less room to think about what you actually want from your career.

Try This After Listening

The next time a request arrives and you feel the pull to say yes before you have checked in with yourself, try this before you respond.

Pause for one breath and ask: Do I have room for this, or am I about to absorb the cost of saying yes?

If the answer is that you are already at capacity, practice reaching for one sentence. Write it down somewhere you can find it. You do not need the perfect response. You need one that gives you a little time.

Continue the Conversation

If you want to keep exploring what overworking and people pleasing are costing your career, and what it might look like to build something different, the Resilient Career Academy is where that work continues. Subscribe free for articles and tools, or join the paid tier for supported career development that takes your whole experience into account.

Related Episodes Worth Revisiting

Episode 1: You’ve Learned You Have CPTSD. What Could That Mean for Your Career?Episode 54: What Nobody Warned Me About Building a Business After Trauma (Your Trauma-Wise Career Guide)Episode 61: How to Ask for What You’re Worth When You’ve Been Taught to Be Grateful Just to Have a Job (Your Trauma-Wise Career Guide)

A few days ago, someone left a comment on one of my YouTube Shorts that I’ve been thinking about ever since.

The video was from a conversation with Patrick LaRose about hypervigilance and the idea that some of the abilities we’ve developed through trauma can become “superpowers.”

But this person wasn’t experiencing hypervigilance as a superpower.

He described it as a curse. Something that had ruined his life. Something that left him overwhelmed whenever he went out in public.

He said he would have preferred to live an ordinary life.

My heart hurt for him.

Because I understood where he was coming from.

When something has caused us so much pain, especially over many years, hearing someone describe it as a “superpower” can feel impossible to reconcile with our own experience.

And I’ve been wondering whether what he really needed was for someone to acknowledge just how painful his experience has been.

Not to tell him that there’s something positive he can take away from it. Not to convince him that he should see things differently.

Just to recognize how much he’s been struggling.

His comment got me thinking about something much bigger than hypervigilance.

What happens when we’ve been trying so hard to get better, for so long, that we’re beginning to lose hope that anything will ever change?

That’s the conversation I want to have with you today.

If you’re new here, 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.

Through my own journey as a trauma survivor, I’ve also come to understand how complex trauma can influence the choices we make, the opportunities we pursue, and the expectations we place on ourselves.

I write this newsletter to help professionals who have experienced complex trauma and CPTSD understand the patterns affecting their work, explore practical ways to respond, and build careers they’re proud of with support, compassion, and room for their own definition of success.

This week, we’re focusing on recognizing CPTSD and how childhood trauma may have followed us into our careers, and what it can mean when understanding those patterns hasn’t yet eased the pain.

If you’d like to keep having these conversations with me, subscribe for free here.

When Understanding Doesn’t Make the Pain Go Away

This week, we’ve been talking about what happens when we discover that we have CPTSD and begin recognizing how childhood trauma may have followed us into our careers.

For some of us, that discovery can explain things we’ve struggled to understand for years. Why feedback from a supervisor can feel so threatening. Why we anticipate problems before they happen. Why setting boundaries can leave us feeling guilty or afraid. Why we sometimes shut down, become overwhelmed, or find ourselves trying desperately to keep everyone happy. Why we may unintentionally sabotage our careers, pulling back from opportunities we want because being seen, taking a risk, or succeeding doesn’t feel safe.

We may begin recognizing patterns that have been part of our lives for so long that we assumed they were simply who we were.

And that understanding can bring relief.

But it can also bring grief.

We may begin looking back at all the years we spent struggling without understanding why. The opportunities we passed up. The relationships that were difficult to navigate. The energy we spent trying to manage things that other people didn’t seem to struggle with.

And then comes another question.

Now that I understand what’s happening, what am I supposed to do about it?

Because understanding why we struggle doesn’t automatically make the struggle go away.

We can recognize a trauma response and still experience it. We can understand why something triggers us and still find ourselves overwhelmed when it happens.

And when we’ve already spent years trying to change, it can be difficult to believe that learning one more thing will make any difference.

I Want You to Know That I See You

If you’ve spent years struggling with the effects of complex trauma, I want you to know something…

I see you.

I see how hard you’ve been trying to make sense of what’s happening to you. How exhausting it can be to walk into work already anticipating what might go wrong. How much energy it can take to manage your reactions, navigate relationships, and get through an ordinary workday.

I see the effort that other people may never recognize.

The times you’ve pushed through when you were overwhelmed. The opportunities you’ve avoided because something didn’t feel safe. The conversations you’ve replayed over and over, wondering whether you said or did something wrong.

And I see how discouraging it can be when you’ve tried so many things and still find yourself struggling.

I’m not going to tell you that your trauma was a gift. Or that you should be grateful for the abilities you developed because of it.

You don’t have to find a silver lining in your suffering.

What happened to you matters. What you’re experiencing now matters. And so does what you want your life and career to become.

I also want you to know that I believe change is possible.

That doesn’t mean the work will be easy, or that there’s a single solution that works for everyone. It means there are ways we can begin understanding these patterns, developing different responses, and creating conditions that support us instead of continually working against us.

And we don’t have to figure out how to do all of that alone.

There Is a Path Forward

One of the things I’ve learned through my own healing journey is that understanding what’s happening is an important beginning.

But awareness alone doesn’t create the changes we’re hoping for.

We also need opportunities to learn different ways of responding, practice what we’re learning, and discover what kinds of support will help us along the way.

That’s part of why I developed the 5 R Framework for building a more resilient career.

It’s a process we can use to begin working with the patterns that complex trauma may have created in our professional lives.

Recognize the Pattern. We begin noticing what’s happening. What situations trigger us? What do we experience in our bodies, thoughts, emotions, and behaviors? What patterns keep showing up?

Root Out the Cause. We explore what’s contributing to the response. Is something in our current environment genuinely unsafe? Is an earlier experience influencing how we’re interpreting what’s happening now? What choices and resources are available to us?

Rebuild the Response. We begin identifying other ways of responding that may help us navigate the situation. This might involve regulation skills, boundaries, communication, environmental changes, or additional support.

Rehearse It Live. We practice in real situations, starting with steps that feel manageable and safe enough. We don’t have to tackle the most difficult situation first.

Reinforce for Good. We reflect on what happened, learn from the experience, make adjustments, and continue practicing. Over time, some responses may become more accessible and familiar.

This isn’t a process we complete once and never revisit.

We may find ourselves working through these steps many times, with different situations and different patterns.

And there may be times when we need professional support, additional resources, or changes in our environment before we’re able to move forward.

But the important thing I want us to recognize is that there are things we can begin working on, even when we don’t yet know what the outcome will be.

We don’t have to figure out the entire journey before taking the next step.

Sometimes We Reach the Limits of What We Can Do Alone

I’ve been thinking about this in relation to my own experience as a trauma survivor building a business.

There have been so many things I’ve needed to learn.

Marketing. Developing a podcast. Understanding technology. Figuring out how to reach the peo…

My First Substack Live with Patrick LaRose

I joined Patrick LaRose, nurse, coach, and creator of The Second Shift, for my first Substack Live this month. We planned for 30 minutes and talked for nearly an hour. Apparently, we had a few things to say. LOL.

We explored how trauma patterns can shape our careers, including people-pleasing, perfectionism, staying small around authority, and feeling like we always have something to prove. We talked about nursing and leadership, but these experiences can follow us into any workplace.

One thread kept coming up:

Looking capable on the outside doesn’t tell anyone how hard we’re working underneath it all.

We also talked about what change can look like. Recognizing a pattern is a beginning. Practicing a different response takes time, support, and small steps that account for our capacity. And those steps deserve to be celebrated.

We made room for another question, too: what strengths have we been overlooking because they come so naturally that we assume everyone has them?

I left feeling grateful for the conversation and excited to have more of them. If you’ve been struggling at work while wondering why you can’t simply push through, I hope you’ll hear this:

Your struggles don’t erase your capabilities. Your voice, your needs, and your career matter.

Have you ever set out on a hike that seemed simple enough?

You pick a trailhead, glance at the map, and decide to do the loop around the lake. Nothing too ambitious. Just some fresh air, a little movement, and time to clear your head.

At first, you settle into it. You hear your footsteps on the dirt, catch glimpses of water through the trees, and feel your shoulders begin to loosen.

Then you come to a fork in the path.

There’s a sign, but it’s weathered and hard to read. Both trails look well-traveled. One seems to follow the lake, but the other could curve back toward it just beyond the trees.

You look behind you, then down each path. Was there something on the map I missed?

A few minutes ago, you were enjoying yourself. Now you’re wondering whether you can trust your own sense of direction.

You don’t want to turn back. But you don’t want to spend the next hour walking the wrong way, either.

That uneasy feeling can show up in your career, too. You might find yourself looking for the choice that feels safest before you’ve had a chance to consider where you want to go.

And you may not recognize how much your early experiences have shaped which paths feel safe enough to consider.

In this article, we’ll explore how childhood trauma can influence the career choices you make, why those patterns can be difficult to recognize, and what understanding them can make possible.

The Map You Learned to Follow

At a confusing fork in the trail, your first concern may be whether you can get back safely. You check the map, look for markers, and try to work out which route you can trust.

When you grow up experiencing childhood trauma, the search for safety can become a pattern that shapes your life without your awareness.

You may never consciously ask, What do I need to do to be safe here? Yet that question can quietly influence what you notice, what feels possible, and which choices you make.

As a child, you may have learned to read someone’s mood before speaking. To be useful, so you were less likely to be criticized. To get everything right because mistakes brought consequences. Or to keep your wishes to yourself because expressing them could lead to conflict.

You may have learned to make yourself small so your confidence, abilities, or independence wouldn’t be perceived as a threat by the person in power. You may have learned to stay invisible because being overlooked felt safer than being noticed.

At work, those lessons can make visibility feel risky. You might downplay an accomplishment, hold back an idea, or avoid a promotion that would put you in the spotlight. You may want recognition and still feel an urge to hide when attention turns toward you.

With repetition, those responses can become automatic. You may carry them into adulthood without recognizing where they began.

When you make career decisions, you might experience them as being practical, responsible, or realistic. You may feel certain that an opportunity “isn’t for someone like me” without noticing the fear of criticism or rejection beneath that certainty.

That’s part of what makes these patterns difficult to recognize. You’re making a decision that feels sensible, while an old need for safety may be helping determine which options you allow yourself to consider.

A job with clear expectations might feel reassuring because you know exactly how to avoid getting something wrong. Being indispensable might feel like protection against being let go. Staying quiet about your ambitions might seem safer than risking someone’s judgment.

You might choose work you know you can do rather than work you’re curious about. You might stay with an unpredictable boss because you’ve become skilled at anticipating what they need. Or you might dismiss an opportunity before you’ve had time to consider whether you want it.

From the outside, these can look like straightforward career preferences. Inside, the stakes may feel much higher.

Will I be accepted? Can I keep everyone happy? What happens if I fail?

Safety belongs in every career decision. Income, stability, benefits, and respectful working conditions matter. But when avoiding criticism, conflict, or rejection takes up most of your attention, there may be little room left to ask what interests you or what kind of working life you want.

That can be painful to recognize, especially if you’ve worked hard to build a career that looks successful.

You don’t have to judge yourself for the choices you’ve made. You can begin by asking:

How much of this path have I chosen because it suits me, and how much have I chosen because it felt like the safest way forward?

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 what’s holding them back at work and build careers they’re proud of.

Sometimes that work begins with a question that’s hard to say out loud:

How much of my career have I chosen around what I want, and how much around what I’ve needed to do to feel safe?

You may have become indispensable. You may have learned to keep your abilities out of sight. You might have spent so long responding to what other people expected that you’re unsure what you would choose for yourself.

That’s what we’re exploring here: how early experiences can influence the work you choose, the opportunities you pursue, and what you believe is possible for your future.

When Being Good at Something Keeps You Stuck

You’re looking at a job posting, and for a moment, you feel excited.

The work sounds interesting. You have ideas already. You can almost picture yourself doing it.

Then you imagine being interviewed. Being evaluated. Being expected to prove that you belong.

Within minutes, you’ve closed the tab.

Later that day, someone asks you to take on another task in your current job. You’re already stretched thin, but you hear yourself say, “Of course.”

The opportunity you wanted felt risky. The extra work you didn’t want felt difficult to refuse.

If being useful once helped protect you from criticism or rejection, you may feel more secure when other people need you. You become the person who fixes things, fills the gaps, and rarely asks for anything in return.

Your abilities are real. So is the exhaustion of feeling that you must keep demonstrating your value.

For someone else, safety may have meant hiding those abilities.

Perhaps doing well attracted resentment, scrutiny, or demands you couldn’t escape. You learned to let someone else take the credit, keep your ideas to yourself, or act as though an achievement didn’t matter.

Now you might want a promotion and still feel relief when nobody suggests you for it. You might feel hurt when your contribution goes unnoticed, then uncomfortable when someone praises you publicly.

That push-and-pull can be confusing. It can leave you wondering why you keep stepping away from things you thought you wanted.

You don’t have to assume that every hesitation is an old protective response. A promotion may bring responsibilities you don’t want. Extra work may genuinely interest you. The question is whether you feel able to consider your preferences alongside the possible consequences.

Am I free to say no when I’m capable of helping? Am I free to be seen when I have something to contribute?

When You Haven’t Had Room to Discover Who You Are

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

For some children, that question opens up possibilities. They get to imagine, experiment, change their minds, and discover what interests them.

For a child experiencing trauma, attention may be focused on a different set of questions.

* What mood is everyone in today?

* What do I need to do to keep things calm?

* Is it safe to ask for something?

When so much attention goes toward getting through the day, there may be little room left to explore preferences, try unfamiliar activities, or imagine a future.

You may also learn to hide the things you enjoy or do well. An interest becomes somethin…

Summary

You are sitting in the parking lot after your appointment. On the passenger seat is a paper with two words written across the top. Complex PTSD. You pick up your phone and start searching. Symptoms. Treatment. How long to get better. Then you type one more search before you pull out of the lot. Complex PTSD and work. And you find the same symptom lists you just read. Nothing about how to walk back into that office at two o’clock.

That is where this podcast begins.

In this opening episode of The Resilient Career, Cyndi Bennett explores why ordinary work situations can feel so much harder after a CPTSD diagnosis, what the fear of being found out is quietly costing your career, and seven ways complex trauma may be shaping your working life without you ever realizing it. This is not therapy and it is not another podcast telling you to push through. It is a conversation about understanding the patterns beneath your professional life so you can make different choices.

Key Thoughts

* What you are experiencing at work right now may not be a capability problem. It may be a capacity problem shaped by patterns that developed for good reasons.

* The fear that everyone can see you falling apart may not match what is actually visible to the people around you.

* Hiding the struggle takes energy too. The more you spend keeping things looking fine, the less you have for the work itself.

* Your need to feel safe can quietly start making career decisions for you without your awareness or consent.

* The seven patterns explored in this episode are not diagnostic criteria. They are possibilities worth getting curious about.

* Emotional regulation is a set of skills. Like other skills it can be learned, practiced and strengthened over time with the right support.

* What you are experiencing now does not have to be how work feels forever.

What This Means For You

If any part of this episode felt familiar, here are some things worth sitting with:

* You are not broken. You are a person having a hard time after carrying more than most people around you will ever know. That is someone who deserves support, not a verdict about capability.

* Start with one moment, not the whole pattern. You do not need to understand everything at once. Notice one situation this week that feels hardest, and get curious about what might be underneath it.

* Have one sentence ready. When you need space at work, “Let me think about that and get back to you by end of day” is a complete response. It gives you room to steady yourself without explaining anything.

* Bring your workday into therapy. You do not need a polished explanation. “I am having a hard time getting through meetings” is enough to begin.

* The patterns can change. Because they were learned, you can learn other ways of responding too. That kind of change usually happens gradually, one small shift at a time.

Try This After Listening

Pick one work moment this week and sit with these five questions:

* What happened? Describe the observable facts.

* What did I do? Name the response without judgment.

* What was I trying to prevent? Treat the answer as a possibility, not a verdict.

* What did it cost? Consider your capacity, your contribution, or your choices.

* What could I try? Choose one small, context-appropriate alternative.

Your Free Resource

Get the free Workplace Trigger Tracker Toolkit at resilientcareers.substack.com/start-here. It gives you a place to record the situations, interactions, and people that affect you at work, along with a picklist of coping strategies to try out. It is the tool Cyndi wishes she had when she first learned she had CPTSD.

Come Journey With Us

If you recognized yourself in this episode and want to go deeper with the exact tools, resources, and community built specifically to support professionals navigating CPTSD and complex trauma at work, consider joining us in the Resilient Career Academy. You do not have to figure this out alone. There is a place where people understand exactly what you are carrying, and where your pace, your healing, and your story are not just welcomed, they are honored.

Subscribe free at resilientcareers.substack.com

Related Episodes of Your Trauma-Wise Career Guide Podcast

Episode 52: I Don’t Know What I Want and That’s Not Your FaultEpisode 60: How to Stay Professionally Visible When You Want to Disappear

There is a word that quietly shapes more careers than most people realize. Should.

I should be further along by now. I should be able to speak up in meetings. I should know how to set limits. I shouldn’t get so upset when someone criticizes my work.

And then comes all the career advice layered on top of it. Just be more confident. Advocate for yourself. Stop people-pleasing. Don’t take things so personally.

Sounds simple enough. But what happens when you already know what you should do, and knowing isn’t the problem?

What happens when you try to speak up and your mind goes blank? When you want to say no but the words won’t come? When you’re ready for the next opportunity but something inside keeps telling you it’s safer to stay right where you are?

What if traditional career advice has been overlooking something important?

If you live with CPTSD or the effects of complex trauma, your past doesn’t stay neatly outside the office. It shows up in how you respond to feedback, authority, conflict, and change. It influences the jobs you choose, the behavior you tolerate, the limits you set, and what you believe you’re capable of professionally. And most career advice has no framework for any of that.

The Resilient Career is where we talk about what’s actually happening beneath the surface.

Hosted by career coach and trauma survivor Cyndi Bennett, this podcast explores the intersection of CPTSD, complex trauma, and work. Together, we’ll get curious about the patterns that may be shaping your professional life and explore practical, trauma-informed strategies for navigating them. Because awareness alone doesn’t create change, and knowing the right career strategy doesn’t mean your nervous system is ready to put it into practice.

This is not therapy. And it is not another podcast telling you to push through.

It is a conversation about understanding yourself well enough to build a career that no longer requires you to abandon yourself in order to succeed.

Topics include CPTSD at work, complex trauma, workplace trauma, toxic workplaces, people-pleasing, perfectionism, hypervigilance, burnout, limits at work, difficult managers, self-advocacy, career confidence, trauma-informed leadership, career transitions, entrepreneurship as a trauma survivor, and career resilience.

Subscribe now and join the conversation. Because your past may be part of your story. It doesn’t have to write the rest of your career.

October Community Update

Have you ever looked at your calendar and realized that several things you’ve been working toward are suddenly happening at once?

That’s how this season feels for me. There are new conversations on the horizon, a podcast I’ve been preparing to share, and an opportunity to connect with fellow trauma survivors in a space that means a great deal to me.

As I’ve been thinking about all of this, I’ve also been reconsidering how we stay connected here. I want what lands in your inbox to be useful, relevant, and worth your time. More on that in a moment.

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.

Let’s Connect: What’s Coming Up

Navigating work and life with complex trauma can feel isolating.

Connecting with people who understand can remind us that we don’t have to figure everything out on our own.

That sense of community matters to me, and I want to keep creating opportunities for us to learn from and support one another.

Here are a few ways we can connect in the weeks ahead:

Sunday: A Live Conversation With Patrick LaRose

I’m so excited to be going live with Patrick LaRose, host of The Second Shift, to talk about how trauma triggers show up at work and how they can shape the trajectory of our careers.

Patrick and I share a deep appreciation for nurses and others in the medical community. If you’re a nurse, first responder, or healthcare professional, I hope you’ll join us for a conversation about the ways trauma can affect our working lives.

Join us live in the Substack app on Sunday, October 25, at 1 p.m. CDT / 2 p.m. EDT. We look forward to seeing you there!

Tuesday, October 27: The Resilient Career with Cyndi Bennett | CPTSD, Trauma, & Resilience at Work Podcast Launches

Why does work feel so hard when you know you’re capable?

If you’ve ever spiraled after feedback from your boss, overthought an interaction, or struggled to set a boundary, you know that complex trauma doesn’t stay neatly outside the office.

That’s what we’ll explore on The Resilient Career with Cyndi Bennett | CPTSD, Trauma, & Resilience at Work, podcast launching Tuesday, October 27.

As a career coach and trauma survivor, I’ll bring both my professional experience and my lived understanding to conversations about workplace triggers, difficult managers, people-pleasing, boundaries, and career confidence.

My hope is that these conversations help you understand the patterns beneath your professional life so you can make choices that support both your career and your well-being.

Your past may be part of your story. It doesn’t have to write the rest of your career.

Speaking at the Healing Together Conference 2027

I’m also preparing to speak at the Healing Together Conference 2027, a gathering for people living with dissociative identity disorder (DID) and those who support them.

This opportunity is personal for me. I live with a DID diagnosis, and I’m grateful for the chance to bring together my lived experience and my work as a trauma-informed career coach.

One question at the heart of my work is: What might become possible when we stop assuming the ways we struggle mean we are incapable, and start understanding what our systems need to succeed?

My presentation is Building a Career That Fits the Whole System: A Practical Guide for Plural People and Those Who Support Them.

I‘ll have a table there to promote The Resilient Career Academy, so please consider this a personal invitation to visit me in person. I would treasure an opportunity to connect.

The conference takes place February 26–28, 2027, at the DoubleTree by Hilton Orlando at SeaWorld in Orlando, Florida, with virtual attendance available.

Presentation time to be announced.

Explore Healing Together 2027

In Case You Missed It

Recently, we’ve been exploring the many ways complex trauma can shape our working lives, from workplace triggers and professional identity to what we want from our careers beyond simply getting through the day.

We’ve also looked at how these patterns can show up in caring professions, including nursing.

If you missed an article or want to revisit a topic that spoke to you, you can catch up in the Resilient Career Academy publication.

Inside the Resilient Career Academy

I’m planning upcoming webinars for the Resilient Career Academy, and I’d love your help deciding what to offer first. My goal is to focus on what you’re navigating right now and give you practical strategies to take your next step. Here is a list of topics I am considering:

* When Work Triggers You: Recognize the Pattern and Find Your Next Step

* Boundaries at Work When Saying No Feels Unsafe

* Beyond Survival: Figuring Out What You Want From Your Career

* When Your Business Triggers You: Recognize the Pattern and Find Your Next Step

These are potential topics, with dates and details still to come. Paid subscribers can attend these webinars at no additional cost. Free subscribers are welcome to register for a fee.

Cast your vote below to help shape what we explore next. There’s no deadline to share your preference. Your vote will help shape upcoming webinars, whenever you find this issue.

Not seeing what you need here? Message me and let me know what you’re navigating or what you’d like us to explore. I’d love to hear from you.

You can explore the Resilient Career Academy membership here.

One Question for You: What Would Make These Emails Most Valuable?

As the podcast launches and this community grows, I’ve been thinking about the role of this newsletter.

I’ve considered moving to a monthly roundup, so you have one place to catch up on recent content and see what’s coming next. But I’ve also been reminded that connection isn’t just about how often an email arrives. It’s also about feeling understood, finding something that helps, and knowing you’re part of a community where you don’t have to navigate these experiences alone.

Rather than making that decision without you, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

When you open an email from me, what do you most hope to find?

Is it a personal story, a practical strategy you can try at work, a deeper exploration of CPTSD and careers, a podcast recommendation, or news about opportunities to connect?

And how often would hearing from me feel genuinely useful?

You can simply reply to this email. I read your responses, and they’ll help me decide how to make our time together here more meaningful.

Thank you for being here and for helping shape this community. Whether you join a conversation, share what’s on your mind, or quietly read along, I’m glad you’re part of it.

Take good care of yourself. I look forward to hearing from you.

Warmly,Cyndi

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 s…

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…

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.