Is Work Triggering your Inner Child?
Have you ever struggled in the workplace? Work could be triggering the experiences of your inner child.
If you had a toxic family and difficult childhood, the modern workplace can be tricky.
The modern workplace can represent faceless, unaccountable power, much like toxic families. Often there are rules which don’t make sense and aren’t explained.
Does this resonate with you?
Read more about why you might you struggle below.
An inner child at work
Inner child at work?
Your inner child is the part of you that formed during your early years — especially during moments of joy, fear, shame, neglect, or trauma. Even though you grew up, emotionally you might still carry the pain, fear, unmet needs, or coping mechanisms from childhood.
Being triggered means that your response is highly emotionally charged and linked your childhood experiences.
But if those experiences are triggered, it doesn’t mean that what’s happening at work is okay. Your workplace may also be toxic! It’s just that how you respond and your experience of it could be influenced by your childhood. And this is what you can work on in therapy.
My own inner child was often triggered by performance metrics and games. Battling against them by refusing to participate didn’t change them, it just slowed my career.
What triggers your inner child?
Below I outline 3 common scenarios that could be reminding you of early experiences, triggering your inner child.
“If the people we relied on to care for us abused their power, it sets us up for trouble with authority figures.”
1. Badly behaved managers
As 80% of UK bosses lack any formal management or leadership training it’s, sadly, not shocking if your manager behaves badly, potentially creating a difficult and triggering relationship with them.
Parents are usually the first authority figures in our lives. But if the people we relied on to look out for us abused their power, it sets us up to be reminded of it or 'triggered' by other badly behaved authority figures.
The part of you that gets triggered is the small child who was powerless in the face of more powerful adults. As an adult, you naturally want to protect that part of yourself
2. Being undervalued
Not being recognised at work can include not being promoted, supported, being given too much work, or work going unnoticed. Concerns about this might be dismissed so you feel invisible.
Of course this is wrong, but it feels triggering when it repeats a similar childhood experience of not being accepted, seen, or valued.
It’s normal to want to be valued at work but if your self-worth is contingent on this, it might reflect what you didn’t get growing up. Perhaps your parents were unengaged, preoccupied, or absent in some way. Or maybe love and attention was contingent on you performing.
3. Performance measures and reviews
These systems are quite toxic and inhumane – rating and measuring ‘performance’ using numbers that decide career progression. Too ambiguous to be of value, they’re biased by the person doing them and/or the toxicity of the system in which they’re done.
The ‘written’ rules might differ from what happens, creating inconsistency and confusion that mimics dysfunctional parenting.
Feeling overly reactive about feedback on your performance, might be reminding you of the dehumanising, judgemental, lack of control, and powerlessness you experienced growing up.
Understanding your Inner child
If your inner child is triggered, work issues can take up too much space in your emotions and head! Your reactions might be disproportionate to a present work situation that reminds you of how you felt growing up.
Putting things right in the present may feel like a way to resolve the past. But you’re not able to do that because you can’t change the past. An example would be to keep trying to be seen and valued at work and getting nowhere.
You might not be aware that this has become a pattern. But you can overcome it.
How to heal
Knowing more about your inner child and how they get triggered in the present, will enable you to look after that part of yourself so that your responses to work can be rooted in the present.
It’s common to try and ignore the pain of our past, hoping it will go away. Or to numb the pain in unhealthy ways. But your inner child, wanting to be heard and seen, will find a way to escape.
I’ve worked with numerous clients in ways that encouraged them to connect with their own inner child. This connection is crucial because it allows your adult self to respond to the feelings and needs of your younger self in ways that are different to what you experienced as a child.
When clients were able to recognise and understand that they were a small child, they began to view themselves with compassion and take better care of their adult selves.
Part of my EMDR therapy is to access the experiences of younger parts, welcome them, and help them heal by processing what they went through.
Overall…
In a nutshell, it could be that any difficult experiences at work are exacerbated by your difficult childhood. This can happen when you're not aware of how and why what's happening at work is reminding you of how you felt as a child.
I've highlighted three examples of how modern work culture could trigger your inner child.
How does this happen for you? I’d love to hear your thoughts below.
It's important to remember that this doesn't mean that any bad stuff happening at work is okay. But just that your experience of it could be made worse by your history.
Therapy can help you to become aware of the triggers, soothe your inner child and - ultimately - resolve the childhood trauma so that your inner child stays in the past.
If you’re curious about how to understand your inner child and want to process the past, then please feel free to contact me.