How Do You Think Trauma Affects Your Career?

[Cool Cat]

I've sometimes found it driving me in TOTALLY opposite directions.

In some ways, it has sometimes made any real level of stress impossible. Or making me feel so worthless I don't apply for anything.

In other ways, I try to achieve stuff to get the attention and love I didn't get as a kid, or to validate myself.

What do you think?

 

[Pencil]

In some ways, it has sometimes made any real level of stress impossible. Or making me feel so worthless I don't apply for anything.

In other ways, I try to achieve stuff to get the attention and love I didn't get as a kid, or to validate myself.

Ditto. Ditto. Ditto. Ditto.

Thanks to PTSD I never had a career. I've had a variety of jobs. Most look great on my CV but they took their toll. I can't deal with stress, and especially not office politics, which is an obstacle course that is part and parcel of any position. I'm just not equipped to deal with it.

My 'career' is one area in my life I'm Really Depressed about.

 

[Hope4Now]

PTSD stuff is destroying my career. I've done well until the past 1.5 years when everything fell apart. I am trying to heal without leaving my job, but it seems that is becoming less likely as time goes on. Sadly, my job is one of the things that actually gives me a sense of self-worth, so having it start to fall apart is really frightening and hard.

 

[shrinkingviolet]

As a child, I over achieved, trying to be perfect as to get attention from my parents. They had their own issues, so I felt pretty much on my own. They never abused me but I don't feel like they were there for me either. As for my career, I picked it as a result of the trauma in my life, feeling having been a victim I could be more empathetic and could turn something negative into a positive. But sometimes, it makes things more difficult and I get burnt out. I often wonder how things would be for me today if it all hadn't happened. Would I be the same person, have gone the same path? Don't know if thinking this way is helpful or harmful because the past can't be rewritten.

 

[Nighthawk]

It has destroyed my career. My abilty to handle any minor stress. Not sure I can work again.

 

[Cool Cat]

Yeah I find it causes me to go between extremes of over and under achieving

 

[Chava]

Over-work to fill void and places I don't want to be.

 

[Tanishq]

I hear everyone here.

PTSD has affected me in many ways I can't imagine.

 

[Deleted member 1860]

Choosing a career that doesn't push my intellectual abilities but provides stability while I pursue what I'm passionate about. It evens out.

 

[Ronin]

I never know when to stop. In things that don't even matter that much. It used to be give it all (I was tempted to say 'all or nothing' but nothing never was an option so all it is) and I just failed to get the same standard doesn't apply everywhere else.

So perhaps summable as 'darned perfectionism' but that doesn't feel as doing the answering justice.

 

[jaccat]

Perfectionism, yes, feeling not good enough, yes. It's taken me 10 years longer than most to feel worth enough to be promoted, but now I'm beginning to progress I realise that my perfectionism makes me more reliable and more vulnerable from the point of view of my managers. I'll always push myself to the limit of my abilities but I'm at risk of meltdown if it fails.

I don't regret it taking me longer to get going. As my life turned out, if it had happened earlier I wouldn't have been able to sustain it alongside caring for my dad. Also, I have seen so many others pushed through it and failing for lack of knowledge and experience, which I now have tons of.

However, had I a decent sense of self-worth I almost certainly wouldn't have chosen that career in the first place.

 

[Anrish]

It affects my career in many ways. I have to avoid triggering topics - so I will not be able to work at certain departments in the force. ...but when they want you to promote, you have to have worked in different places. And the best department to get a promotion is homicide, sexual assault etc....where I could never work! ...I'll rather remain a small light in the fraud and economic crime department because I'm not able to face the other stuff.