Strategies for People With Trauma to Succeed

If you grew up with trauma, you already know how past experiences can resurface and set off thoughts, reactions and habits that undermine your performance at work and stall career advancement. Hardly anyone discusses this, yet it’s a crucial part of adult life. Symptoms of childhood PTSD can seriously limit professional progress. Below I’ll outline how that happens and offer concrete ways to change course — not only so you have a real shot at success, meaning and financial stability, but because having fulfilling work, a sense of accomplishment and personal growth through your job are central to building a satisfying life.
Work can stabilize you at any stage. It can be a means to escape the chaos of a difficult childhood or of poverty — it certainly was for me — and it anchors you in the world through interaction with other people. Sure, some jobs are awful; I’ve had those, too, and I remember doing work I hated simply to get by. Still, work gets us out of bed, gets us into relationships, and offers a second chance to learn how life functions. It can be the place where you come into your own and flourish. If work currently triggers you so much you want to hide, know there is a path out — and I encourage you to aim for it. Even menial labor, done with engagement, can be healing: it can lift others, add good to the world, and restore dignity.
But how do people with traumatic pasts transform their work lives into places of joy and influence — into roles where they bring calm, order and kindness into chaotic or hard-hearted environments? How do they become contributors who earn money and make choices? Money matters because it gives you options. Being stuck and broke removes your freedom; without money you may remain trapped in harmful situations or relationships. Learning to earn through meaningful work gives you autonomy and security.
Here are some common ways childhood PTSD shows up at work and blocks progress.
1) You repeatedly take jobs with employers or organizations that most people would avoid. Some workplaces are abusive, exploitative or dishonest, and people who grew up adapting to unsafe or unacceptable home conditions can become experts at fitting into bad situations. It’s time to stop accommodating harmful environments. Get clear about your standards: what is an acceptable workplace, and what character do your managers need to have? For a long time I drifted into whatever job came along — depressed, desperate, or just taking what the first employer offered — and I paid the price for not exercising choice. Once I committed to healing (a process that has taken me decades), I slowly moved into roles that suited me better. I learned to deliver good customer service without having my emotions hijacked by triggers, and to use techniques afterward to calm myself. You can change your station by learning to manage your symptoms — but please do not stay in situations that will only worsen you emotionally. Weigh the practicalities (yes, sometimes you stay until you have another job lined up) against what abuse does to your spirit. Tolerating mistreatment erodes your confidence until you walk into interviews feeling devalued; that energy undermines your next move.
2) You find yourself working for someone who resembles an abusive parent and you fall into the old child role again. That might mean people-pleasing and overworking, rebelling and becoming resentful, freezing up, or suffering because you aren’t seen. I was often overlooked by bosses who didn’t advocate for me, and I didn’t learn early on that you have to ask for raises and new responsibilities. For years I felt insecure and failed to speak up; later I realized I needed to say what I deserved and, if refused, move on. Those family roles — the long-suffering Cinderella who never goes to the ball — can repeat at work until you wake up to the pattern. I remember a conference where everyone else went and I was told to transcribe the recording; that moment prompted me to leave. Healing allowed me to step into better roles.
3) Sometimes the boss is fine, but you keep expecting them to parent you — waiting for recognition, hoping they’ll notice your value and give you better tasks or a raise without you asking. This projection of family dynamics onto the workplace leads to resentment and underperformance. People can’t see your inner story, but they will notice how you behave: hunching away from opportunities, resisting feedback, or otherwise closing off. You can contain feelings and act appropriately even when your inner voice is panicked, but you also need to do the work to actually calm that inner state. We aren’t fully able to hide what our nervous systems are doing; others pick up on it. That’s why healing is necessary if you want to appear calm and dependable at work. Sometimes you do “fake it till you make it” at the start of a new job, and that can be useful — but remember people sense your underlying state.
Parentifying a boss is a disordered dynamic: work is a contractual relationship, not a family. Because childhood wounds produce fuzzy boundaries, people frequently recreate family needs at work — looking to employers to satisfy unmet emotional needs. That makes job loss feel like being cast out of family, which is devastating for those with wounded family histories. To counter this, do your homework, use practical tools, and get a mentor. Understand the contract: your employer pays for your work. You can seek a good relationship, but avoid reverting to the rejected child behavior that rarely leads to raises or advancement. Jobs run on contractual, often business-first logic: companies sometimes let people go for the business’s sake. Other bonds — family, loyal friends — are more permanent and support you in ways a job cannot.
My own career was constrained for a long time by trauma-driven behavior: I was often unreliable and emotionally charged, and so I didn’t move into leadership easily. I had to develop new skills and confidence. At one point, leaving an unsatisfying job led to a 50% pay increase at the next position. Later I returned to the old workplace and, though I earned more, the dynamics were unchanged — it felt like a bad boyfriend who never committed. Trauma often repeats in our choices: I’d pick partners who wouldn’t commit the way my family had been unreliable. Healing changed that pattern, and my life is much richer now. Your path to a better career can begin even if other areas aren’t fully healed.
4) You pull your energy into trying to make others see you instead of investing in your skills and options. If you’re trying to get recognition from a workplace that treats you like family, channel that energy into learning and expanding your abilities. Many people whose childhood wounds leaked into their employment found freedom by creating their own businesses, where roles are clearer and boundaries are simpler. I started companies — customer service training, video production — and taught myself critical skills (I learned video editing by Googling how to do it). The internet is an unparalleled learning resource; if you need money now, you can use it to acquire practical, marketable skills. Don’t waste your energy on a boss who doesn’t see you; invest it in learning things that open new doors.
5) You may be in a profession populated by traumatised people, and that environment keeps you in drama. Some fields — high-stakes nonprofits, emergency services, trauma-heavy healthcare settings — attract many people with childhood wounds. If you’re surrounded by high-drama colleagues while you’re healing, it can be exhausting and inhibiting. I once worked in a politicized nonprofit where so many coworkers were adult children of alcoholics that the workplace itself felt like a drama magnet. As I recovered, I had to leave that scene: constant crisis drained me. If your job is a trauma-heavy field, it’s okay to change careers midstream, and your experience can still inform meaningful new work. You can move into other roles that respect your insights without perpetuating the drama.
6) Trauma responses — fight, flight, freeze, fawn — can hijack your workplace behavior. Fight expresses as conflict and aggression; flight shows as avoidance or escape; freeze is passivity and tolerating abuse; fawn means appeasing and people-pleasing. If those reactions are intense, they’ll cripple your work performance: arguments, disappearing during stress, accepting mistreatment, or constantly trying to ingratiate yourself. The antidote is to notice your pattern, center yourself, and learn ways to calm, process, and re-engage. That way, when you’re hurt or triggered, you respond with thoughtful choices — leave, advocate or set boundaries — instead of reverting to an instinctive trauma script. Quiet quitting, for example, is a tragic waste if you care about work; if you’re going to work, make the most of it.
7) Keeping your life small so you can hide symptoms. Many people with unregulated trauma keep themselves in low-demand roles where their symptoms won’t be exposed: unchallenging tasks, solitary work, repetitive positions. While such jobs can be therapeutic at certain stages, staying small forever limits your life. Learning relational skills and re-regulation is valuable even if you love solitude; relationships matter when you’re older or ill and need support. Don’t let symptoms define the size of your life.
8) Emotional dysregulation is probably the single biggest barrier to advancement. Dysregulation drains you physically and mentally — like the aftereffects of crying all night — and private-life drama spills into the workplace. Even if you generally hold it together, others notice subtle signs: disheveled arrival, lackluster demeanor, or timing problems. People may be sympathetic, but chronic dysregulation reduces your chances of promotion. Developing re-regulation skills is essential across all areas of life — work, parenting, relationships. Dysregulation causes productivity roller-coasters: bursts of work followed by crashes. Yes, some jobs suit burst-workers, but if you want sustained professional growth, calming your nervous system is crucial.
Where healing helps you discover your gifts: Your work should connect you to service — a way your natural strengths benefit others. It might take time to find that place. I remember the hospital parking lot attendant who changed my mood with a friendly word; his simple job was enormously meaningful to me. There are many people doing modest work who radiate kindness and lift others; a healed person can become that influence. People with complex PTSD make huge contributions yet often live in fear of being exposed or passed over. Those patterns are common but not immutable: with education, support and persistence you can change them and use even painful experiences as fuel to become who you were meant to be.
I teach people how to recognize and heal these workplace-related symptoms. My name is Anna — known as the Crappy Childhood Fairy — and I help adults who have PTSD from childhood identify and work through the tendencies that show up in jobs. Below I read a letter from a student, “Sue,” and respond.
Sue wrote: she has CPTSD and hides at work because her productivity is wildly inconsistent. She works from home and manages to complete tasks through self-coercion and harsh self-talk. She feels like a fraud, especially because she finds large, complex projects easier than small, routine tasks. She’s a single mother of three teenagers (and one additional child last year), and she’s on a good salary she doubts she could replace. She’s trapped in a cycle of daily stress, accomplishing the visible work quietly while secretly hoping someone will notice and accept her truth even if it costs her job. She asked if there’s a way out.
Sue — there is. First, enormous respect for supporting three teens and another child on your own while holding a job. That is one of the most important jobs there is. You’ve already shown resilience. You also described an inner urge to be “found out” and self-sabotage, which I hear in many people with CPTSD: a fantasy that disclosure will relieve the shame, even if it costs something. You haven’t done that — you reached out, which is a brave, constructive step.
Let’s reframe the issue. It sounds like you struggle with detail-oriented, small tasks because trauma-related dysregulation makes it hard to track details and keep energy steady. Meanwhile the big-picture, complex tasks play to your strengths. That’s valuable information. Many successful teams pair big-picture people with detail-oriented partners. If you can, pair up with someone who complements your style. If that’s not immediately possible, aim to either develop systems that support the details or negotiate a role that leans into your strengths. Also, rotate the shame: stop beating yourself up and recognize that your pattern — big things are easier than small ones — is manageable and common.
Build confidence by earning it honestly: align your work with integrity so you can go to bed knowing you did an honest day’s work, tailored to your neurology. If you ever choose to leave your job, do so from a place of strength and choice rather than burnout. Choice grows from healing.
Here are practical strategies I recommend for your inconsistent workflow:
– Accept your work rhythm. Many people — with and without CPTSD — work in intense bursts followed by downtime. If that’s you, call it your style. Some workplaces are flexible about productivity as long as results are delivered. If your employer needs you at fixed hours, consider accommodations or workarounds; you don’t necessarily have to disclose a diagnosis. Ask for flexibility only if you think it will help rather than harm your standing.
– Improve focus with tools: noise-cancelling headphones (they’re life-changing); instrumental or ambient sounds (no lyrics if words hijack your brain); turn off notifications on devices; use a timer and work in focused intervals (the Pomodoro Technique — 25 minutes on, 5 minutes off — is widely helpful); use a Kanban-style app (I use KanbanFlow) to visualize tasks, color-code by time, and start a timer per task.
– Block chunks of time for different kinds of work: people-facing tasks during reserved slots, and uninterrupted creative time for content creation. Protect deep work hours from email and social media.
– Keep your workspace reasonably tidy. Visual clutter triggers me; a somewhat organized desk reduces the sense of a thousand demands screaming for attention.
– Adopt a daily practice of focused writing and meditation in the morning and evening. I know you may feel you don’t have thirty minutes twice a day, but the investment returns time because calm attention is what saves time. My daily practice techniques are available with my courses and have helped many people reset their nervous systems and productivity.
A few more concrete points: Don’t feel obligated to reveal CPTSD to your employer unless you believe disclosure will create supportive changes. If you do need accommodations, try to propose specific practical supports (quiet space, flexible hours) rather than labeling yourself upfront.
What about the detail-problem? If small tasks are your weakness and big projects your strength, consider teaming up with a detail-oriented colleague, or outsourcing parts when possible, or building checklists and templates that reduce cognitive load. Celebrate your big-task wins and look for structural supports for the small ones.
Now a few job-related patterns to be aware of and heal if present:
– Wearing your past on your sleeve: constantly discussing or invoking past trauma, dressing in ways that reflect low self-worth, or over-sharing early in relationships can stigmatize you professionally. You don’t need to hide your history as shameful, but consider pacing disclosures. Your past is a part of you but not your entire professional identity.
– Overfunctioning vs. underfunctioning: Overfunctioners do too much to prove worth and then burn out or become resentful when not reciprocated. Underfunctioning appears as inconsistent focus, missing commitments, chronic lateness, or avoidance. Both can stem from trauma. Aim for balanced functioning by setting realistic boundaries, asking for support, and learning to re-regulate when triggered.
– Feeling overwhelmed and frozen: Emotional flashbacks can present as wakes of panic and paralysis. My own morning routine — a short written practice followed by meditation, a shower, and then a prioritized task list — helps me begin the day one step at a time. Use a planning tool (KanbanFlow or similar), color-code tasks by length, and use the Pomodoro timer to get started. Starting is often the hard part.
– Doing grunt work you are overqualified for: If fear of exposure keeps you in low-responsibility roles, that’s underfunctioning. With healing, you can take respectful risks and apply for roles that better match your capabilities.
– Not asking for what you want: Many of us avoid asking for promotion, better duties, or reassignment because advocating feels triggering. Learning to manage your reactions and to request changes calmly is essential.
– Dysregulation on the job: This is a core problem. Dysregulation can look like emotional extremes, numbness, chronic health complaints, an inability to read social cues, or productivity crashes after highs. Mastering re-regulation — recognizing when your nervous system has flipped and using techniques to calm it — has been transformative in my life. If you get dysregulated, give yourself permission to use rapid calming methods and to repair afterward rather than punish yourself.
A few practical focus tools I use and recommend:
– Noise-cancelling headphones and instrumental or ambient audio.
– Turning off device notifications during focused work.
– Pomodoro intervals (25 minutes work / 5 minutes break).
– A Kanban application to visualize, estimate and time tasks.
– Scheduled deep work blocks with no meetings or emails.
– Tidying up periodically so the visual field doesn’t scream “to-do.”
– A brief daily writing-and-meditation routine to organize your mind.
Remember: education and credentials matter but so does practical, self-taught skill. I learned video editing by searching the internet. If you need immediate income, use online resources to learn marketable skills quickly.
Back to Sue: keep the perspective that your inconsistent energy is a work-style that many people share. Build systems that support you, seek teammates who complement your strengths, and practice small, consistent habits that restore integrity in your work. Reach out for help when you need support, and protect your spirit so abuse doesn’t wear you down.
If you want to send a question, email [email protected] with “Ask the Fairy” in the subject and the staff will forward it. This topic — having a career and advancing while carrying childhood trauma — is huge. Many of the patterns that hold people back are common, but they can change. With knowledge, support and persistence, you can heal the tendencies that limit you and use your experiences, even the painful ones, to become fully yourself. Healing opens the door to meaningful work, financial security, and the ability to offer calm, competence and kindness to the world.

If you have complex PTSD and it’s active, and you haven’t yet developed a reliable way to check in with yourself and get honest feedback from someone who truly cares—whether that’s a buddy in a daily practice group or a sponsor in a 12-step program, somebody you trust to help you ask, “Is this just me? Should I really be this angry right now?”—then you will benefit enormously from a compassionate second opinion. When your behavior comes across as extremely difficult, even if others are required by policy to treat you fairly, it’s still unfair to expect colleagues to have to cope constantly with someone who creates so much workplace anxiety. Try to see it from that angle: it’s very hard to collaborate with a person who leads with anger, starts conflict, becomes emotionally dysregulated on the job, and triggers the calm that others have worked hard to cultivate. If your job is consistently toxic and makes you furious all the time, consider changing it—no savior is coming to rescue you; if you want a healthier environment, start preparing practically to make that move. If you decide to stay, you’ll be faced repeatedly with small, improvisational decisions—should I let that go, should I set a boundary, can I just keep being professional? As you recover and your nervous system settles, your judgment will sharpen and you’ll develop the equanimity and generosity of spirit that allow you to be kind and steady with people who are edgy, often preventing a minor friction from escalating into a major fight. There’s a delicate balance between holding a boundary and becoming a doormat, and that confusion is common for folks with childhood trauma. Daily practice helps move reactive stress responses downstream so you can think clearly and make lucid choices about the daily irritations. You’ll be astonished how quickly a life that once felt off-course can shift into a better trajectory through those small, reliable decisions—the moments when you show up as the steady, trustworthy person who can say no to mistreatment calmly, without fireworks.
I used to run a video production company and meditated twice a day; one of those sits was often around 4 or 5 p.m. Video schedules sometimes demand long evenings, but because I owned the business I could insist on my practice—I knew that skipping it turned me into someone grumpy, unfocused, hostile and intimidating. When I paused to meditate I returned to clarity, kindness, and a better working mind, which is exactly how I wanted to operate. So about 5:00 I’d call a break and everyone understood that Anna needed to meditate. For years I had missed that evening sit because I was afraid to assert it, but once I started asking for it—framed not as blame but simply as, “It’s 9:00 and when that time comes I need a short break to do this, are we good?”—people were surprisingly accommodating. You might not run your own company, but you could be surprised how much respect and even curiosity healthy boundary-setting can elicit: colleagues may notice and ask how you do it, which often inspires them to take care of themselves too.
A big part of dysregulation at work is how it makes you handle criticism: growth requires tolerating feedback about mistakes or ways to improve, and being dysregulated makes that extremely painful. It also causes vagueness around money—walking into a job without clearly stating your pay needs means you’re unlikely to get what you deserve. Re-regulation looks like being able to ask for the compensation you require, calmly and clearly, rather than withdrawing or preemptively getting defensive. Another area where dysregulation wreaks havoc is sexual and relational boundaries: whether you’re facing harassment, ambiguous after-work hangouts, or unclear vibes with a coworker, ambiguity at work is toxic. Work is not the place to be vague about whether something is a date, flirtation, or harassment. When trauma makes us habitually avoid clarity—out of fear of rejection or because we’ve learned to keep things nebulous to avoid being hurt—we set ourselves up for trouble. Honesty is a powerful tool: you can set limits gently, saying something like, “This feels like a date; I’m not comfortable with that,” and in many cases the situation dissolves without drama. If you must process the emotional fallout of setting a boundary, do it with trusted people outside of work rather than explaining yourself until the boundary erodes.
A fourth domain where trauma can stall career progress is the impact of other people in your life—often a partner—whose instability or drama undermines the professional image you need to maintain. That can look like a controlling or abusive partner, frequent emergencies, or a home life you’re constantly hiding. If your energy is drained by caregiving or crisis management at home—an addicted partner, a failing marriage, an extremely troubled child—it will sabotage your work. I’ve shown up for work late, exhausted, with swollen eyes from a night of crying, basically operating with an emotional hangover; those patterns used to recur until my trauma work helped me re-regulate. In my experience, relationships with active, serious addiction twice led to career derailment—one partner relapsed years into the relationship, the other was secretly using the whole time, and both episodes were devastating to my professional life and reputation. Once I drew firmer boundaries about who I would let into my life—even if that meant choosing to be single and, at times, a single parent—I stopped living in constant crisis. That reduction in chaos allowed my career to recover, because I no longer expended so much energy managing intense external drama. If you’ve never known a steady, drama-free life at work, you’ll be amazed by how much mental bandwidth and emotional energy you gain when the background chaos subsides; it’s a major gift of healing.
A fifth way trauma undermines advancement is choosing jobs or supervisors that replay harmful family dynamics. People often unconsciously gravitate toward bosses, coworkers, or workplaces that echo the dysfunction they grew up with. For me, that pattern showed up as repeatedly working with clients or leaders who drank heavily—an energy that repeatedly triggered old wounds and sapped most of my vitality. I made a conscious choice not to work with people who seemed drunk or high because the associations were too damaging. Another recurring pattern was ending up under bosses who underestimated or invalidated me; as a freelancer or consultant, the relationship can be healthier because you’re not trapped in a parent–child dynamic and you can work on your skills without that overbearing role. Sometimes the only viable solution when you’re in a toxic dynamic that mimics childhood pain is to leave. Healing can help, but if the environment keeps retraumatizing you, finding a different role or employer is often the healthiest path. Consciously decide what kind of boss and coworkers suit you, and be willing to take the time to find them. I started my career cleaning houses and doing whatever jobs were necessary; we don’t always have immediate access to ideal situations, but we can aim for something better. When you’re in a role, your job is to help the project, team, or organization succeed—when you make your boss or workplace successful, you rise with them. If that effort isn’t recognized or rewarded, that environment isn’t right for you.
If I could give my career advice again, I’d encourage bravery in imagining a step up or a step out: if you can’t get the growth you deserve where you are, take the triggering but manageable step of finding something new, and do it without creating drama or lingering resentment. Learning to re-regulate your reactions makes these transitions calm and deliberate. Surround yourself with people who understand this work—whether through 12-step groups or communities of people healing from complex PTSD. Many people form buddy systems or daily-practice groups and meet on Zoom to support one another. If you want to be around folks who are actively improving their lives, there are membership groups and programs that create that container and mutual encouragement; they often include links in their descriptions or websites for more information.
I wish you liberation from the restraints of the past—the things others did to you and the ways you’ve held yourself back. Letting the best parts of you emerge matters not only for your own happiness but because the world needs each of us to become more fully ourselves so we can contribute our strengths. One common trauma-driven pattern is overfunctioning: doing too much—too many tasks, too much caretaking, too much managing—to compensate for other people’s unreliability or unloving behavior. Overfunctioning can damage your health and relationships; it often breeds resentment in others who may depend on the person who does everything. Even when you resolve to cut back, an overfunctioner can feel anxious with less to do, so change typically feels slow and partial.
A recent letter from a reader I’ll call Carrie illustrates this. She wrote: “Hey Ferri, I wanted your thoughts on compulsive busyness. I have done a lot of healing from my crabby childhood, but I still struggle with how I organize my schedule and time. I’ve arranged my life so my work gives me meaning and satisfaction, but I seem to juggle up to five different jobs or projects at once. Despite my conscious intention to change, I can’t break this cycle, and I’m beginning to think there’s a deep pattern at work.”

block I’m exhausted from this unending loop of too many looming deadlines and working under constant time pressure. Even if I could drop just one project, life would feel noticeably lighter, yet choosing which one to let go of feels like an impossible moral dilemma. My day begins early and runs straight through dinner, then I take a short break and often return to do a little more. I wouldn’t label myself a workaholic — which is kind of ironic — but I do suspect I’m hooked on keeping multiple options open and rarely saying no to potentially great opportunities. I recognize this pace can’t last forever, yet I have no clear idea how to change it, and I wonder how much it’s rooted in a rough childhood. I seem unusually skilled at keeping backup plans in play. Thank you for any thoughts you might share. Carrie, oh Carrie, I feel you so deeply. I know what you mean about hedging bets and juggling several projects at once. Maybe it’s projection, but one reason I revel in having many projects is that I crave variety; another is that I need to feel like something fresh is always unfolding. A lot of the things I chase — especially as someone who works for themselves, which it sounds like you do too — sometimes sputter out, other times take off spectacularly, and some become long, grueling efforts that eventually have to be abandoned. Some are arduous and later pay off, but figuring that out takes time. I feed on the rush of uncertainty: will this catch fire if I hustle? Could this be pushed to succeed? Should I mold it this way? Right now I’m imagining a couple of new courses for the fall, and every day I tuck them onto my to-do list knowing I can’t tackle them yet because I’m writing a book at the moment. I want to do it, but of course everything can’t happen simultaneously, so I understand the pressure to drive yourself onward. I also hear you when you say there might be a deep block — so the question becomes: what are you actually avoiding? You’ll likely need some quiet reflection to explore that. Let me unpack some things you mentioned. You’re weary of the nonstop churn of excessive deadlines and urgent, pressured work. That chronic stress often signals avoidance; sometimes people fear wide-open empty spaces in life — no partner, too much free time — and I once named that fear for myself: it felt like a pack of wolves closing in. To manage that, I used a daily-practice technique a lot of people here do; if you haven’t encountered it, there’s information in the description area. It’s a set of practices to soothe dysregulation and to allow genuine feelings to surface slowly and safely. It helps strip away all the clutter — false stories, anxieties, resentments — so the truth of how you feel can emerge cleanly. By repeatedly doing this work you gradually clear the mind’s grime. It sounds like you hold many competing takes on your situation: part of you likes the energy, part hates the pressure, and if you could end one project life would be easier. That suggests that—perhaps unconsciously—you keep things ramped up to a certain pitch. You might increase the tension even more at times, and at other moments lower it, but something about the current level seems to suit your aims. First, consider that maybe nothing is broken — this might simply be how you’re wired. That’s a real possibility. Your day begins early and stretches past dinner before you return to more work; you don’t call yourself a workaholic, though you suspect an addiction to hedging bets. So far you’ve noticed a drive to keep a steady stream of projects so something will likely pay off — probably for financial security. In a recent conversation I mentioned how, early in adulthood, I used to overstock my cupboards because I’d been hungry as a child. Having money and options felt like doors out of a cage; growing up poor, I know how liberating it is to have enough resources so you’re never trapped in a bad job or relationship for financial reasons. For people with cptsd the goal is to reach that place of freedom, to never have to stay somewhere harmful because of money. You want new chances, and you sense it isn’t sustainable — though you didn’t specify why: is it hurting your health, straining a relationship, or making you miserable? You said you don’t know how to change it, and you wonder how much ties back to your childhood; that seems plausible, and it sounds as if you’re quite adept at keeping options open. It appears you need a sense of safety, a feeling that you have choices about workload; sometimes even when objective security exists, anxiety keeps driving you forward. I strongly invite you to try the daily practice I mentioned and observe the effects. Write down whatever preoccupies you — anxieties, angers, big or small worries — ask for them to be removed, then sit in meditation and let your mind settle and reorganize. What I’ve described here is only a brief sketch; take the free course — there’s an hour of instruction and 25 FAQ videos — and join the thousands who use this method. Learning it opens the door to free live Zoom sessions every two weeks, where we practice together and I answer questions. I’m deeply committed to helping anyone who wants to learn this and find the same release I found; it’s a practical, cost-free approach — all you need is paper and a pen — that helps your thoughts become clearer. As you practice, life tends to become truer: some feared outcomes may unravel, some good things may strengthen, burdens might simply lift, or a persistent weight may reveal a specific action you need to take. There’s no guaranteed result, just a settling of the nervous system so you’re not constantly driven by anxiety. I hope you give it a try and tell me how it goes and what you discover for yourself. I recognize myself in what you describe: I work a lot and sometimes grumble, but I’m deeply connected to my mission, and I suspect I, too, hedge my bets. These days I love the mission so profoundly and feel the limits of my time so acutely that I keep working to develop this whole program to heal childhood PTSD and share it with as many people as possible. For as long as I’m able — physically and mentally — I intend to do this work, and my life is gradually aligning around it. That might be a path for you, Carrie; I hope this helps you find clarity.