Is Your Work Ethic a Trauma Response?

Detoxifying Success

Rockstar of the week:

Phoenix AZ: HVAC Manager - 5+ years leading the manufacturing of commercial HVAC systems, excellent tenure.

If you have a hiring need for this individual, want to be a rockstar of the week, or need help with anything else, email me at rob@zarrellco.com

Please note: I am not a licensed medical or mental health professional and cannot offer medical or psychological advice.

But working won’t heal you or fix your life problems.

Understanding how personal trauma impacts your work life will be beneficial to you.

In our second edition of Detoxifying Success (released Dec 31, 2024), I talked about my internal motor, also known as my work ethic, that was formed during my first job as an 11-year-old paperboy.

I didn’t mention my financial trauma in that one or that I went to a psychologist a while back and linked my work ethic to my financial trauma. 

When I was an early teenager there was a point where my parents asked me for assistance with the mortgage. It was a short amount of time, but it still stuck with me for awhile. 

From then on, I saw money as safety and not having it as a threat.

A scarcity mindset took root: if I didn’t work long hours, if I didn’t constantly say yes, if I didn’t prove myself through endless effort, the money might stop. And if the money stopped, bad things could happen.

That moment became my silent operating system.

I didn’t talk about it. I barely even thought about it, but it influenced everything. I said yes when I wanted to say no. I played it safe instead of speaking up. I worked late instead of asking for help. I prioritized professional approval over personal peace.

I realized I can still be successful without working long hours. And you can too.

Detoxifying success isn’t about doing less for the sake of it. It’s about doing what’s aligns with you. It’s about choosing work from a place of clarity, not compulsion. It’s about recognizing that productivity isn’t a personality and it’s not a path to healing.

If this resonates, maybe ask yourself:

• Is my drive coming from a place of peace or fear?

• What am I really afraid will happen if I slow down or say no?

• Do I feel safe being honest at work?

• What part of my “work ethic” is actually unprocessed fear?

We have to take a moment to look within and make meaningful changes instead of putting our noses to the grindstone and hope our lives magically get better.

I know Sami has some strong thoughts on this one..

Sami’s Take:

Asking if your work ethic is actually a trauma response in disguise is a profoundly important step to healing. If this question leads you to find your work ethic may not be as genuine as you thought, I have another question to ask. Why was becoming a “workaholic” your trauma response in the first place? 

I invite you to take a deeper look at it all.

Let’s use Rob’s example above about how his trauma first formed. When Rob was a teen he had to step up to help his parents pay a mortgage payment. This taught him at a young age to fear having enough money at a time where his source of income was very dependent on his physical body and how much he pushed his body to get work done. 

At first glance, it makes sense why he developed a workaholic trauma response where he’d push himself into long nights and weekends out of fear of not having enough. Great.

All done analyzing, right? 

Nice try, but no. Of course there’s more to the story. 

Why was one event of having to help his parents enough to traumatize Rob so badly he developed a long-standing workaholic habit? 

I too had to help my mom pay the bills when I was a teen. In fact, I had to help her many times and yet I don’t have the same trauma response Rob does. Aside from us being different people with different responses to things, why is my response so different? 

From what I can tell, it comes down to how our parents spoke to us about their money struggles. The truth is, long before his parents ever had to ask him for money, Rob’s parents stressed about money and hid it from him.

My mom also stressed about money but she did it loudly. I always knew when money was getting tight and then I also knew when we had extra and could splurge. It was stressful, but knowing the signs of low money helped me notice patterns and draw more than one conclusion about how money works. 

Rob’s parents didn’t talk about money. From Rob’s viewpoint, his parents were financially stable right up until that horrible day when his parents told him the truth: they were broke and it wasn’t the first time and probably wouldn’t be the last. More than just having to help his parents out, Rob also had part of his world cave in on him. 

His parents did well to shelter him from the stresses of money and bills, all things adults have to worry about. This is a kindness many parents are taught to extend to their children, but it can have negative consequences later on. 

My mom always did things a little differently. She hates to lie. She’s also bad at it. She couldn’t even lie to me and my sisters about Santa, the Easter Bunny, or the Tooth Fairy. She told us she wanted us to know she worked hard so she could buy us what we needed and have some extra for gifts for Christmas, candy for Easter, and cash for our baby teeth.

She made sure we understood how the system worked and when it rewarded us. 

As an adult looking back, I really appreciate what she did. I had more trust in her when I knew she wasn’t going to lie to me and it saved me from some of the common traumatic moments other kids experience when they finally learn their parents had been lying to them their whole lives. That was nice to have that trust with her, but I have to also admit, as a kid, it did cause me stress. 

I couldn’t relate to other kids when they wrote letters to Santa or burst through the classroom doors waving around a ten dollar bill with glitter on it from the tooth fairy. I also knew I couldn’t ask my mom to buy me the cool clothes and toys my peers had because she had already told me this month would be tight on money. 

What I’m trying to say is, neither form of parenting prevented me or Rob from stress and anxiety. It’s just I had mine young and he has his now. There’s big tradeoffs to both, neither is better or worse than the other and I don’t blame any of these parents for the resulting traumas. They all did what they felt was best at the time and I have a lot of respect for them. 

But this begs a bigger question- why is it that hardworking and intelligent adults can’t seem to get by with enough money for their families to prevent these types of traumas? 

What we’re really talking about here is the trauma of low-income and poverty. Rob’s parents hid their financial struggles from him in the hopes he’d have a happier childhood. As far as I can tell, that worked great for him right up until they couldn’t hide it anymore.

I had the slow drip-poverty trauma where each month I was reminded to cut back on snacks, flip off light switches, and decide if I wanted a five minute hot shower or a ten minute cold shower. Less surprises, but also lots of monthly anxiety that stacked up over the years leaving me with high cortisol and some related health issues. 

What are we learning with this deeper analysis?

We have a much bigger problem than money management and work ethic. We have a systemic issue born from imbalances within our wider financial structures and systems.

From our individual viewpoints this problem feels daunting and unavoidable. It makes it hard for us to see a way out of our toxic work habits and money stress. We’re just the little people, what are we supposed to do about it? 

I don’t know how to fix it all. I wish I did. What I do know, however, is understanding our trauma is important to understanding ourselves and to healing the damage this type of trauma creates in us.

When we can understand that our financial struggles are part of a much bigger problem we can begin to loosen up on the shame and guilt we pile on top of ourselves for not being able to “succeed”.

These issues started long before we ever joined the workforce and it’s not fair to just quietly take the beating for it all either. 

Learning to let go of that shame is so important in healing the trauma.

Please understand that this is not our doing alone. We entered into a workforce and society that already had these issues forming and if we want it to change we have to stop blaming ourselves and do the work to heal. Only from a place of healing will we be able to see what we can do to make our system better. 

I think we can get there and I hope by helping each other realize these things we can all come together for a better solution. 

Rob + Sami

ZARRELLCO.com 

If you're looking for a job or having trouble hiring please email me at rob@zarrellco.com