Mental Health in the Workplace: How Trauma Plays a Role

Mental health work really has revolutionized my perspective about the many environments trauma can show up in, including work.

Experiencing Trauma Across Various Work Environments

Mental health work really has revolutionized my perspective about the many environments trauma can show up in, including work. I have worked in many different work environments from fast food, retail, the military, tech field, sales, tech manager, you name it. Despite the fact my work history spans about 11 years, I have found moments at each job in which my trauma showed up. Some in less obvious ways than others, but there nonetheless.

What I find most interesting about all of this is that the military was not where my trauma showed up the most. That’s not to say it didn’t show up because in the six years I spent in the Marine Corps it showed up plenty. However, the trauma was easier to manage because I didn’t feel alone in it. I had Marines next to me that were also going through the same environment I was.

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When things were overwhelming we would often make a joke out of the situation. I think that’s what makes the military so resilient in high pressure environments. It’s difficult to rattle a group of people that start having fun when things get tough. But that is dependent on the culture.

That’s only the case because the military culture requires teamwork for the very survival of those service members. I have often told people close to me that the military world feels like another planet. Leaving it was another trauma on its own, but that’s a story for another day.

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Navigating High-Pressure Roles and Burnout

In 2018 I started working for Dish Network as a field service technician. I have to say it is the most physically demanding job I ever worked. Not just because of the heavy ladders I had to lug around in often times tight spaces, but the brutal temperatures I was exposed to in the winter and summer. Illinois is home to some of the worst winter and summer conditions. So as you might imagine installing new satellite TV systems outside when it is either -10 or 110 degrees Fahrenheit can take a physical and mental toll on a person.

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Once I figured out how to better prepare for and deal with the conditions I got really good at the job. I was often times a top performer in the office. This eventually got me noticed and when the manager position opened up 3 years in I was promoted. I was riding really high at that point because as I was getting ready to transition out of the Reserves, I needed another responsibility to take its place.

This felt like a very natural transition, especially because my boss was a veteran too. The issue for me here is that my trauma has made me a perfectionist.

Growing up in the unstable household I grew up in made me very careful not to make mistakes. Because as a child making a mistake could make my home even less stable than it already was. The other side of the perfectionist coin is that when I do inevitably make mistakes because I’m a human being, I would really beat myself up about it.

As I got settled into the manager role, I quickly realized that my boss was a workaholic. In an effort to gain his approval, I tried to work at his pace, which meant working on my days off, being awake at 5 am to see performance reports, and have answers ready for when my boss asked about them. I kept up with him I would say for about 6 months before I started to struggle to keep up. I was in charge of about 15 technicians through most of my time as a manager.

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I had to find time to visit all of them at least twice a month, do monthly presentations on their performances, schedule 1 on 1 meetings to ensure development, do monthly vehicle inspections, and also manage and close the office once the technicians returned from their routes. Which by the way was almost always past 9pm.

I tried to do all of those things perfectly every day, and for about 6 months I was able to do that pretty successfully. But eventually, I started burning out. I could never recharge enough to come back to work with more energy than when I left. Eventually my boss and his boss started to notice and rather than ask me how they could help me, they separately told me to focus on different things which would contradict each other and land me in trouble with both of them. I lasted about another 6 months before I found myself with nothing left to give and in a deep depression. I had never quit a job before because I couldn’t keep up, and suddenly here I was.

On my last day my boss pulled me aside and asked:

“You’re a hard worker, why are you really leaving?”

and I went on to explain that the dynamic was just not workable for me. Anything I did was a lose-lose situation.

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The Journey Towards Healing and Self-Love

This is what separated the military work culture from the civilian work culture for me. I could not share my burden with anyone. I didn’t have a group of people I could joke with to boost my morale. It was just constant isolation topped with high stress and negativity.

Fortunately for me, I had just started therapy which carried me through that rough patch in my life.

The lesson in all of this I think is that I waited too long to leave. My need for approval kept me somewhere that was unhealthy for me. I wasn’t even looking for another job until I had nothing left in the tank.

This is why learning self love and what that means for you specifically is such a big step in the healing process. Setting up and enforcing personal boundaries is self love, and this has become my northern star in every environment including work. I know that my work ethic will be appreciated elsewhere, and I cant be afraid to seek it.

Editor’s note: How have you learn to love yourself? If not, what can you do to start? Let us know in the comments!