Childhood Abuse Leads To Increased Workplace Stress?

Mar 04, 2024

Little is said about the fact that adults who were abused during their childhood are subject to much higher stress at their workplaces compared to those who were raised without abuse. (More about the effects of childhood abuse can be found in the articles “Can Childhood Trauma Lead to Serious Adult Illnesses?” and “Deprivation Traumas and Their Surprising Consequences.”)

Parents, during our childhood, serve as authoritative figures, precisely as bosses do. For those who had a healthy relationship with their parents and felt secure during their childhood, a workplace conflict, say, a boss disliking their solution or action, is just a problem to be solved.

However, those who were abused and accustomed to severe retaliation for the smallest mistakes, a single harsh word or a sharper tone from a boss instantly triggers childhood fears. In such cases, the adult who experienced abuse in childhood tends to overreact.

Instead of simply correcting the mistake, they become uncontrollably angry as childhood fears resurface cloaked in rage, or they withdraw and exhibit intense stress reactions. Whichever solution one chooses, both cases result in much more stressful work and cooperation with the boss compared to someone who was not abused as a child.

It’s not hard to deduce that those who choose anger as a coping mechanism to make stress bearable due to their excessive emotional reactions will often conflict with their superiors and, consequently, are likely to change jobs frequently. This typically prevents them from building stable, well-functioning careers.

Those who withdraw often become desperate, burn out, fall ill as they strive increasingly frantically to meet real or perceived expectations due to their overwhelming fear. Regrettably, many bosses exploit the insecurity of introverted individuals because they realize that constant dissatisfaction, incessant demands, and implicit or explicit threats compel uncertain people to go above and beyond to comply. These subordinates behave like this because they feel threatened just as they did in their childhood.

No matter how shortsighted this perspective is, sadly, it's a clear working model, as we are beginning to see the proportion of abused children in society (for those interested in this subject, I recommend Dr. Nadine Burke-Harris’s TED talk).

Those who have not been abused in childhood flee from abusive bosses recognizing that such behavior from authoritative figures is not normal. This is also true for those who have processed their childhood abuse and learned to defend themselves. Hence, we often see that not the best, most professional individuals remain with aggressive and abusive bosses in the long term; rather, it's those who were abused and cannot defend themselves adequately. (More about border defense in “Border Defense – Do Our Psychic Bastions Even Exist?”) Several problems arise in such organizations, and over time, the entire organization begins to operate increasingly inefficiently and unprofessionally, but that’s a topic for another article.

Returning to childhood abuse and the pitfalls of collaborating with authority figures, if we notice that we have exaggerated reactions at our workplace, if we are constantly in conflict with our bosses, if we go to work with a stomach cramp, if we are burned out, it may be worthwhile to use some method of self-exploration to uncover those childhood traumas and experiences that actually make us feel endangered.

It’s not a painless, easy task, but it’s worth undertaking so we don’t have to bear much greater stress than necessary at our workplace until retirement.

– Eszter