How Can Past Trauma Affect Me at Work Now?

Summary: Past trauma can affect you at work now by influencing your behavior and emotions in certain situations and circumstances that evoke elements of the trauma you experienced.

Key Points:

• When we live through a significant traumatic event in the past – during our early years, childhood, or adulthood – it can change the way we think, feel, and behave in the present.
• We may not even know our behavior changes in specific circumstances.
• If you have past trauma, those changes can impair your work performance.
• When you learn the signs of past trauma, you can recognize them in yourself, and get help, and recognize them in others, and offer compassionate support.

Trauma Awareness: How We Can Understand and Help Others

When we talk about trauma in the workplace, what we mean in this context is not necessarily traumatic events that occur in the workplace, but rather, how traumatic events individuals experience in the past affect how they act at work now.

Traumatic events can and do happen at work – more on that below – but that’s not the main focus of this article. Our goal is to help people understand that past trauma affects present behavior, and how to recognize trauma-derived behavior at work both in yourself and in others.

To frame our discussion, let’s clarify what we mean when we say trauma or traumatic event. Here’s a definition of trauma as it relates to an individual provided by the Substance Abuse and Menta Health Services Administration (SAMHSA):

“Individual trauma arises from an event, series of events, or set of circumstances experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or life-threatening with lasting adverse effects on the individual’s functioning and mental, physical, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being.”

Traumatic events can happen in a variety of times and places during our lives:

Times:

• Early trauma occurs between birth and ages 2-3
• Childhood trauma occurs from toddlerhood though adolescence
  • Childhood traumatic events are called Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)
• Traumatic events may happen at any time during adulthood

Places:

• Home
• Work
• Community
• Out in the world

An experience of trauma affects how a person experiences the world. They may react to situations and circumstances differently than others at home, at school, in peer and romantic relationships, and at work.

In this article, we’ll focus on the impact a traumatic experience may have on individual behavior in the workplace. First, let’s take a look at the prevalence of traumatic experiences reported by members of the general public.

Traumatic Events and Experiences: How Many People Have Past Trauma?

Traumatic experiences include things like living through war, terrorism, natural disasters, growing up witnessing neighborhood violence, and other events that elicit genuine fear for physical and emotional safety and survival.

We collected the following sets of data from a non-profit organization called Workplaces Respond To Domestic & Sexual Violence (WRDSR) that has the following mission:

“The National Resource Center offers free resources, training, and technical assistance to employers, workers, and advocates to prevent and respond to domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking, and sexual harassment (DVSASSH) impacting the workplace.”

The information they gather on trauma helps further our conversation and understand the scope of the problem in our modern workplace. If you or one of your coworkers has experienced events that fall into the categories below, then you or them may show signs of trauma at work, in relationships, and other areas of life that you have, as yet, not had the knowledge to identify.

Again, we’re not specifically talking about trauma that happens at work – although that counts – we’re talking about any past trauma that affects present behavior.

These are the current prevalences of past trauma – in addition to those we list above – that can affect work performance.

Traumatic Experiences: Events That Can Later Affect How You Behave at Work

Domestic Violence:

Reported personal experience of physical violence, stalking, or sexual assault by an intimate partner:

• 50% of women (59 million)
• 24% of men (31 million)
• By race, women:
  • Multi-racial: 63.8%
  • American Indian and Alaska Native: 57.7%
  • Black: 57.7%
  • White: 53.6%
  • Hispanic: 48.4%
  • Asian or Pacific Islander: 27.2%
• By race, men:
  • Black: 57.6%
  • Multi-racial; 51.5%
  • American Indian or Alaska Native: 51.1%
  • White: 44.0%
  • Hispanic: 40.3%
  • Asian or Pacific Islander: 24.8%

Sexual Assault, Not Perpetrated By Intimate Partner:

• Women: 54.3%
• Men: 30.7%

Sexual Coercion Not By Intimate Partner:

• Women: 25%
• Men: 11%

Sexual coercion includes being worn down by an individual in the workplace persistently asking for sex, and/or when a person in position of authority or influence use that dynamic – e.g. implied threats to job security, implied impact on performance review, eligibility for advancement or raises – to pressure someone for sex.

Sexual Harassment at Work:

• Women: 25% to 85%
• Among U.S. government employees:
  • Women: 18%
  • Men: 6%

Stalking:

• Women: 33% (38.9 million)
• Men: 17% (19 million)
• Knew perpetrator: 67%
• Perpetrator was current/former intimate partner: 43.4%
• Perpetrator was acquaintance: 40.6%
  • Was professional acquaintance: 9.4%
• Types of stalking reported:
  • Phone calls, voice messages/voicemails, text messages: 66%
  • Unwanted emails or direct messages: 55%
  • Monitored on social media: 32%
• Lost days of work because of stalking: 13%

These figures clearly demonstrate that a significant proportion of the general working public has past trauma that may affect work performance. Now let’s take a look at how that can play out on a day-to-day basis.

Four Signs of Past Trauma That Can Affect How People Act at Work

The WRDSR resource we share above includes and additional reference publication called “Recognize: How Trauma Responses Can Show Up in the Workplace” that identifies four specific behaviors trauma survivors may display at work: fight, fight, freeze, or fawn.

You may recognize fight, fight, and freeze as part of our natural fight or flight response. Freeze is actually a third component of that response, which kicks in when we’re in danger for our lives. People with past trauma often go into fight or flight mode when they encounter a situation, circumstance, person, or event that evokes their initial trauma. That’s one reason they may behave differently: automatic behaviors activate and override the parts of our brain responsible for decision-making and emotion regulation.

Here’s what you might see in yourself, or a coworker, in the workplace, when past trauma affects present behavior.

1. Fight. Watch for:

• • Irritability, anger.
  • Aggression, confrontation
  • Arguments
  • Insults
  • Paranoia
  • Gossip

When you see these behaviors in yourself or a coworker, try to understand them. Establish clear behavioral boundaries and norms, then consider offering compassion and support, rather than clapping back with similar behavior.

2. Flight. Watch for:

• • Procrastination, or consistently missing deadlines
  • Suddenly leaving a meeting/conference/event
  • Avoiding specific coworkers, bosses, or situations
  • Overworking alone, overcompensating by silent overperformance
  • Perfectionism
  • Deflection through humor or self-deprecation

When you see these behaviors in a coworker, check in with them. With deliverables, ask if they need more resources or information so they can meet deadlines. Validate their work and presence in the workplace as often and as genuinely as you can. Help them with practical work tasks, but also include them socially, in casual conversation, and ensure you don’t accidentally exclude them from events at or outside of work.

3. Freeze. Watch for:

• • Them literally freezing up, deer-in-headlights, when asked a question or put on the spot about a work task.
  • Inappropriate daydreaming, i.e., completely spacing out in meetings they need to pay attention to.
  • Paralysis by analysis. Overthinking, over-revising, over-explaining simple assignments or tasks.
  • Problems making both minor and major decisions
  • Inappropriate humor.

This is another check-in situation. Ask them if they need help preparing notes for meetings, going over presentations, or helping them through whatever triggers their freeze. If you’re in a management position, think about how to restructure meetings to leverage their strengths and get the benefit of their insight, skill, and other positive attributes/contributions to the workplace.

4. Fawn. By this we mean being overaccommodating. Watch for:

• • Change in personality when interacting with bosses/managers compared to interacting with peers.
  • Change in personality/interaction style when interacting with specific coworkers who aren’t managers or bosses.
  • Changes to watch for include:
    • Accepting bullying or intimidation
    • Not standing up for self or ideas
    • Trying to become friends with those who bully/intimidate, in order to avoid further bullying/intimidation
    • Ignoring sexual harassment
    • Volunteering for work to the point of overextension
    • Inability to advocate for self
    • Compromising personal beliefs or integrity to satisfy managers/bosses

This is another case where, if you have a good relationship with the person, you can help them by checking in. You can say, “…the way you handled that surprised me,” or “you don’t deserve to be treated like that,” or ask questions about how they felt during the atypical (for them) behavior you observed. Remind them that you value them, their work is important, and their personal feelings and beliefs are important to you. If you recognize these behaviors in yourself, it’s very important to recognize that you, yourself, may have past, unresolved trauma, and may need professional support.

We’ll discuss these behaviors further below.

Helping Yourself, Helping Your Coworkers

When you recognize trauma-influenced behavior in yourself, you can seek professional support by arranging for a psychiatric evaluation to detect past trauma or present posttraumatic stress disorder. However, when you recognize trauma-influenced or trauma-derived behavior in your coworkers and peers, it’s not that simple, and can be tricky.

If you know someone very well, you may be able to have a conversation that eventually finds its way to topics like past trauma or professional support for trauma.

But if you don’t know them well, leading with what you think you see and should happen is not a great approach. We don’t advise saying to someone you don’t know very well, “I recognize a trauma response in your behavior, and I really think you need therapy.”

Every person is different, but leading with that probably won’t help. Instead, you can take steps to make the workplace a safe place. The experts at Workplaces Respond To Domestic & Sexual Violence (WRDSR) advise that awareness of trauma and trauma responses can prompt employees and managers alike to create a trauma-informed workplace:

“A trauma-informed workplace can promote greater levels of engagement, productivity, and a positive and supportive workplace culture. Through this heightened awareness, sensitivity, and effort we can work to cultivate a culture of care in our organizations, where all employees are supported and can thrive.”

Past trauma can affect work performance. There’s no doubt about it. We understand, and know it happens because we hear it directly from our patients with a history of trauma. However, it’s possible to address trauma-derived behavior in the workplace by creating a “culture of care.” It’s also possible to address – and resolve – past personal trauma through professional psychiatric support delivered by providers trained and experienced in the nuances of trauma-informed care. You – and your coworkers – can learn to manage symptoms, modify behavior, meet your full work potential, and live a complete and fulfilling life despite early, childhood, or recent traumatic experiences.