Stuck in a Job You Hate？ It’s Not Just Burnout. It’s Trauma.

When you find yourself trapped in a job you can’t stand, people around you assume you’re simply exhausted, overworked, or in need of a break. But if you carry childhood trauma, what looks like burnout can actually be far deeper. Trauma can quietly drain your drive, stop you from trying new things, keep you stuck in bad situations, and block you from earning what you deserve—the money that would buy you real choices in life. A job you loathe saps your energy and obscures the options right in front of you. That’s why rest alone never fixes it. It’s not about the hours you put in; it’s about patterns that began long before your first paycheck.
You know that sensation: the alarm goes off and your body is already saying “no.” You drag yourself through the day, imagining you’ll give up, but the moment you actually consider resigning, you freeze. Or you hear the ping of an email—and I’ve been there. Every tiny notification felt like an extra weight; I’d think, “Oh, there’s another message”—that was the sign I was burnt out. It made me tremble. It felt like one more task to do when I wanted to do nothing. So you tell yourself to be grateful for having a job. You tell yourself you’re overreacting. But deep down, you know it’s more than just stress. Something inside you has dimmed: the spark, the confidence, the sense of possibility.
It’s easy to blame the job—and sometimes the job really is the problem. But when the pattern repeats, when you hate every job you’ve held or keep choosing places that drain you, that’s a signal. Something deeper keeps you small, tired, and afraid to move. I stayed in a job I liked at first for ten years, only to realize I wouldn’t be promoted even though I was qualified. The role was never intended to convert contractor status into a proper employee position. So even as a single parent, I had to buy private health insurance for myself and my children. I was never part of the group that went out to lunch every day. I never got credit for the late nights I worked to finish other people’s projects. I really believed that doing good work and being nice would make people like me—and that a manager would eventually help me move up, pay me enough to live on what I’d earned, and allow me to be present for my children the way I needed. But I stayed ten years and privately called myself Cinderella. I didn’t say it out loud, but that’s how I felt. I was writing other people’s projects while they were the ones getting promoted and going to those lunches. I was never treated equally. The last two years of that decade-long job were pure exhaustion.
It wasn’t until recently that my spirit began to revive—like a last gasp. I resisted, spoke up, and finally interviewed elsewhere. I was ready to be let go because I had two offers and I wanted a little recognition from people I used to collaborate with online—to show them that all along I could do much more than they’d assumed. But the person responsible for making sure I was operating from a place of joy and achievement was me. Failing to see that and staying where you feel burned out and unappreciated—those are trauma symptoms.
Yes, burnout can come from working too much. That’s true. But for many people with trauma histories, burnout is only the surface symptom of something deeper. Trauma reshapes how you see yourself, what you believe you deserve, and how much risk you can tolerate. It can whisper that staying small is your safest option. And if you try to do better and fail, the pain could be unbearable—that’s the lesson trauma teaches you. That’s why so many people remain in miserable jobs long after they know it’s wrong. It’s not laziness or indecision; it’s a powerful survival habit. Growing up in chaos, the safest choice often feels like whatever is familiar—even if that familiarity hurts. Familiar things don’t demand much from your working memory. Think of it like learning a new software: you might avoid the new program because it will take energy to learn. Sometimes you say, “No, it doesn’t matter if the new thing is better—I can’t learn it because I need every scrap of energy to make a few videos or run a workshop.” After surviving for so long, success can actually feel threatening.
So you call it burnout. You tell yourself you need a vacation. But rest is just a bandaid on the symptom. The real issue isn’t simply overwork: it’s that your ability to expect better from life has been crushed by your experiences and by the ways you’ve silenced yourself when things hurt. That suppression turns your mind dull and your thinking foggy. These are the patterns that keep people stuck in jobs they hate. Here are five of them you can begin to work on now.
First: aiming too low. Trauma makes setting big goals feel dangerous. So instead of pursuing roles that match your talents, you take the safe route. You settle for the position you already know you can do, telling yourself not to apply, not to speak up, not to reach higher. Over time this becomes your identity. You stop seeing yourself as someone with potential and begin to live like you’re lucky anyone tolerates you at all. Stopping the expectation of good things is not humility; it’s a trauma pattern that “protects” you from disappointment.
Second: staying too long. You know when a job isn’t right—you feel it in your body before you admit it to yourself. The dread that comes before Monday, the mid-day energy collapse, the small, nagging resentments—these are signs. Yet instead of leaving, you rationalize: “It’s not that bad,” or “I’ll stay until the next review.” Or you cling on because leaving feels risky; maybe you’ve been through times with not enough money to cover the next month’s rent and you fear repeating that. This is often tied to trauma and abandonment wounds—the old fear that if you leave, there will be nothing. You need to start building a bridge from one situation to another so your nervous system can learn that change is possible. Don’t waste more time, energy, and self-respect by avoiding steps toward that bridge.
Third: under-earning. This is one of the clearest ways trauma shows up at work. You can be competent, reliable, and brilliant—and still broke. Not because you can’t earn more, but because you learned not to expect it. You accept low offers. You don’t ask for raises because the idea seems terrifying, like it will break you. That’s a profound self-defeating belief. You tell yourself to be grateful; there are people with far less. Sound familiar? Or you wait for someone else—your boss, a mentor—to recognize your worth, but they might never do it. The truth is: you must do it for yourself. Low income creates a cascade: if you don’t earn enough, you can’t save; if you can’t save, you can’t afford to leave; if you can’t leave, you remain stuck in draining environments. Low pay keeps you living paycheck to paycheck not only financially but emotionally, always in survival mode and never able to recharge. That eats away at the confidence and physical energy needed to find something better.
Fourth: strained relationships. Trauma makes workplace relationships harder. Maybe you give too much, trying to please everyone so no one gets upset. Or you withdraw and do everything alone to avoid disappointment. Maybe you take criticism personally, or you bottle up frustration until you explode. The problem isn’t just conflict itself; it’s the cost of that tension. Relationships are how opportunities travel—promotions, mentorship, growth. When trauma makes you defensive or withdrawn, it closes those channels. You won’t get the feedback that helps you improve, nor the support to advance. You become stuck. Everyone has worked with people like this. Know what that looks like?
Fifth: a chronically dysregulated nervous system. When regulation is off, everything becomes harder. A simple request feels like an attack. A mistake feels catastrophic. A meeting feels like a judgment. You can’t think clearly enough to make decisions or calm down enough to see what’s actually true. That’s why nervous system regulation is so powerful: it doesn’t merely “fix” work; it restores your mind. It lets you respond instead of react, frees energy for action rather than panic, and enables you not just to survive the job but to see a path out of it. For many people, staying in a job they hate isn’t about motivation; it’s about long-standing stress patterns rooted in childhood. When you grow up managing chaos, your system adapts by staying alert and small—because small feels safe. You learn not to rock the boat. You learn that effort doesn’t always get rewarded. So in adulthood, that adaptation looks like staying silent when you’re mistreated, taking on responsibilities you shouldn’t, and performing far beneath your capability. Not because you want to, but because you can’t yet imagine a life in which you can do more and also be safe.
This is what some call “staying small” or self-sabotage. You align with people and situations that are unacceptable—total nonsense. That word captures it all. That’s why it’s not only about burnout. Psychological burnout can improve with rest, but trauma patterns live in the body and in your sense of what’s possible. You cannot rest your way out of that. You build a way out.
Regulation is the turning point. It strengthens you enough to see reality: what the job is, what your pattern is, and what’s genuinely possible. When you are regulated, you can tolerate the stress of change. You can hold boundaries without collapsing. You can plan next steps without derailing. That’s when real change begins—not by panicked quitting, but by gaining enough clarity to move forward intentionally. The good news is none of this is fixed forever. You don’t have to stay small, poor, or stuck. Each time you regulate, you widen the space for strength a little more. Each time you speak the truth—“this job isn’t right for me”—you reclaim a piece of power.
Healing doesn’t mean suddenly loving your work. It means waking up from the trance that tells you you have no options. You do. You can build skills. You can earn more. You can leave. You can start something new. You can reconstruct a life that isn’t just about surviving at work, but about putting your energy into something meaningful. There’s a practical exercise that helps you notice the potential you already know you have and to clarify the steps needed to reach it. It’s called One Year to Heal. It’s a free download linked in the description below this video—maybe you’ll need to click “More” to expand the full description. When you click it, you’ll see the complete description and the One Year to Heal exercise. Find it. Get your copy. You might really like it.
So if you’re stuck in a job you hate, don’t label it only as burnout. If rest helps, maybe it really was burnout in part, but look closer. Are your goals low? Do you stay too long? Are you underpaid? Are your relationships strained? Is your nervous system too dysregulated to think clearly? These patterns don’t define you; they’re old rules still steering your life. You can break out of this cage of trauma-derived beliefs. You can regulate. You can take steady, clear action toward something better. You can rebuild your confidence, your financial resources, and your safety. You don’t have to keep suffering at work that hurts you. You can learn the skills to gain freedom—because this is more than burnout. It’s old pain surfacing in your adult life, and you don’t have to live with it anymore. If you enjoyed this video, there’s another one you’ll like right here, and I’ll see you very soon. Many people fear that focusing on themselves will leave them lonely, bored, useless, or selfish—but avoiding yourself costs your power. And guess what? You’ll end up lonely, bored, and unable to be useful to anyone.