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Is Now the Time to Talk About Trauma at Work?
In light of Virginia Giuffre’s posthumous memoir Nobody’s Girl and the renewed public attention following recent Epstein-related document releases, I’ve been sitting with one question: when is it time to talk about the impact of trauma in the workplace?
For many of us, stories like these don’t stay on the page. They echo into our teams, our leadership decisions, our capacity to focus, and our ability to feel safe in rooms where we’re expected to perform as if nothing ever happened.
I previously volunteered to lead a Lunch & Learn on the many faces of trauma and how it shows up at work—often invisibly—at a former company. Yet I was told the company’s attorneys would not allow it due to fear of liability. I understand the concern. Leaders and organizations have a duty to protect employees from harm, and legal/HR teams are rightly careful about anything that could feel like therapy in the workplace.
But that moment clarified something important:
We can talk about trauma at work without asking people to relive it or disclose it. We can conduct trauma-informed training without getting into details of trauma. Avoiding the subject entirely doesn’t reduce risk—it just pushes the impact underground and perpetuates the problem.
Have You Ever Thought About What Trauma Truly Is?
Trauma is what happens when something really scary, upsetting, or overwhelming occurs, and it hurts us emotionally, mentally, or even physically. It can come from big events like assaults, accidents, natural disasters, or losing someone we love. It can also come from smaller, repeated things—like being bullied or feeling unsafe for a long time.
Trauma isn’t only what happens to us; it’s how our mind and body respond to what happened.
Think of it like a wound, but instead of being on the outside, it’s on the inside—in our hearts and minds. Healing a wound seems easy enough: ointment, a bandage, time.
But how do we heal the heart and the mind?
The Scale of Traumatic Incidents Is Larger Than We Think
Here’s what we know:
- 70% of individuals in the U.S. have experienced or will experience a traumaticevent at least once in their lives.
- The U.S. population is about 340 million people.
- That means roughly 238 million people in the U.S. are impacted by trauma in some form.
- If each of those 238 million people was a foot of measurement, that line would stretch about sixteen times from New York City to Los Angeles.
Even if you prefer more conservative estimates, the takeaway is the same: trauma is not a niche experience. It is a workforce reality.
Trauma doesn’t only have a clinical burden—its economic burden is staggering. The annual U.S. cost of PTSD alone has been estimated around $232 billion, once healthcare, lost productivity, and broader impacts are included—roughly on the order of three times the net worth of Warren Buffett, or hundreds of times the gross of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. These comparisons aren’t meant to sensationalize trauma. They’re meant to make one thing clear: trauma is already shaping our workplaces—whether we acknowledge it or not.
Trauma Doesn’t Need to Look “Extreme” to Be Real
The event need not rise to the level of war, disaster, or personal assault to affect someone profoundly. Trauma can be triggered by:
- Emotional or verbal abuse
- Workplace/school bullying or humiliation
- Traumatic grief (the untimely death of a parent, child, sibling, or partner)
- Living with serious medical conditions like cancer, autoimmune illness, or chronic pain
What is important to note is this:
- Trauma is not only the adverse event
- Trauma is the brain and body’s response to a real or perceived threat
- It’s a complex reaction at molecular, cellular, structural, and circuit levels in the brain—and subsequently the body
Think back to high school and remember how you felt when you accidentally fell in the cafeteria in front of the popular girls or the person you had a crush on. Multiply that by a million. That’s what trauma can feel like internally, even when someone appears “fine” externally.
How Does Trauma Show Up at Work?
Not everyone who experiences trauma develops PTSD. Yet trauma responses are widespread—and they don’t clock out at 5pm.
Post-trauma symptoms can show up emotionally, psychologically, and physically:
- Emotional: exhaustion, confusion, anxiety, sadness, numbness, terror
- Psychological: flashbacks, nightmares, uncontrollable thoughts, suicidality, major depression, panic disorder, PTSD
- Physical: headaches, digestive issues, insomnia, autoimmune disease, chronic pain, cardiovascular or neurological symptoms, and more
At work, these impacts may manifest as:
- lost productivity and concentration
- increased absenteeism
- difficulty trusting colleagues or leaders
- heightened reactivity—or complete shutdown
- burnout that doesn’t resolve with rest
And this is where it gets complicated: trauma is frequently mistaken for a bad attitude, lack of engagement, or poor performance.
Why I Care About This (Personally and Scientifically)
I obtained a PhD in neuroscience and neuropharmacology to understand the neurobiological source of pain.
What neuroscience tells us is simple and powerful:
- Experience shapes the brain
- Trauma can impair neuroplasticity—the brain’s ability to adapt and form new pathways
- Maladaptive survival circuits can remain “on” long after danger has passed, subconsciously reinforcing trauma responses
It is therefore logical to conclude that if negative experiences build distress pathways, positive corrective experiences can build new, healing pathways.
A Glimpse of What Works
I designed an experimental approach for a small cohort study and tested it in collaboration with a psychiatrist in 20 individuals experiencing post-trauma responses. We wanted to know whether adding targeted exercises to engage neuroplasticity (my approach) to traditional therapy and medication management would reduce symptoms more than therapy and medication alone.
It did.
It helped.
After six months, participants who engaged neuroplastic mechanisms showed:
- Significant reductions in post-trauma symptoms
- Improved daily function and overall quality of life
How to Safely Train Your Workforce About Trauma
Trauma-informed training isn’t a story-sharing session. It isn’t group therapy. It doesn’t require anyone to describe what may or may not have happened to them.
Done responsibly, training can:
- Define trauma and normalize its prevalence—without asking anyone to self-identify
- Explain how trauma affects the brain and behavior (focus, memory, trust, reactivity, shutdown, perfectionism)
- Offer practical workplace tools: psychological safety, predictable communication, boundaries, consent-based feedback, clear paths to support
- Set explicit guardrails:
- No sharing required
- No graphic examples
- Opt-out anytime
- Resources named up front
Shift culture from judgment to understanding—because performance issues are often pain issues in disguise. Avoiding detail doesn’t dilute the value. It increases safety while still giving leaders what they need.
What Leaders Can Do Now
You don’t need to be a clinician to build a trauma-informed workplace. You just need to be human, and intentional.
A trauma-aware culture starts with:
- Normalizing that trauma is common
- Training managers to recognize trauma-shaped behaviors without pathologizing people
- Reducing shame in seeking support (EAP, coaching, mental health days)
- Building psychological safety into feedback and change management
- Stopping the equation of “professionalism” with emotional invisibility
Trauma-informed workplaces are not “soft.” They are strategic, high-retention, high-performance environments built for real humans.
Closing Thoughts
If Nobody’s Girl and the renewed Epstein coverage have reminded us of anything, it’s that trauma isn’t rare—and it isn’t someone else’s problem. Abuse of women and men, from neglect to sexual assault to trafficking, exists everywhere. It occurs in our homes and neighborhoods, regardless of socioeconomic status. Survivors are not outside our companies—they are our colleagues, our leaders, our teams, and sometimes ourselves.
So yes—now is the time to talk about trauma at work.
And more importantly, now is the time to stop looking away, confront harm where it lives, and lead differently—until systemic abuse against both women and men is no longer tolerated or normalized.
#TraumaInformed #WorkplaceWellbeing #MentalHealthAtWork #PsychologicalSafety #Leadership #Neuroscience #Neuroplasticity #TraumaAwareness #FutureOfWork #PeopleOps #HRLeadership #CultureChange #EmployeeWellbeing #ResilientTeams
When Unresolved Trauma Meets the Season of “Togetherness”
Wn Unresolved Trauma Meets the Season of “Togetherness:” Why the Holidays Are Not Always Peaceful
The holiday season often magnifies what already lives beneath the surface. For individuals with trauma histories, depression, anxiety, or chronic stress exposure, this time of year introduces a perfect storm of triggers: disrupted routines, relational expectations, sensory overload, and emotional memory.
Although the nervous system does not interpret holidays symbolically, it responds to familiarity, tone, environment, and perceived safety. When these cues resemble earlier emotional or physical threats, the brain activates survival circuits — not because something is “wrong,” but because your brain and body are doing what they were trained to do.
Metacognition: The Bridge Between Trauma and Change
One of the most powerful — and underused — tools in mental health recovery is metacognition. Metacognition is the ability to observe one’s thoughts, emotions, and bodily reactions as experiences, rather than automatically identifying with them. Metacognition is the internal shift from: “This feeling is happening, therefore it is true” to “This feeling is happening — and I can notice it.”
The above distinction is critical for individuals who have experienced trauma. Trauma narrows awareness and accelerates reaction. Conversely, metacognition slows down neural networks just enough to interrupt automatic survival responses that no longer serve us. Neurologically, this matters because attention directs plasticity.
How Metacognition Drives Neuroplastic Change
Neuroplasticity refers to the brain’s capacity to reorganize itself in response to experience. But plasticity does not occur randomly — it follows what the brain repeatedly attends to, reacts to, and rehearses. When a trauma response is triggered and acted out automatically, survival circuits are reinforced. The brain learns, “This pattern keeps me safe.”
Metacognition, in contrast, introduces a different experience. When you notice a reaction and pause without immediately responding:
• Limbic activation decreases
• Prefrontal and insular networks come online
• The nervous system receives a signal of containment rather than threat
Taken together, this sequence creates a new learning event.
Repeated moments of noticing rather than reacting can reshape neural pathways over time. The brain begins to associate triggers with observation instead of danger in an experience-dependent way. During the holidays, when triggers are frequent, these moments of awareness can become especially powerful drivers of change.
Trauma, Mental Illness, and the Cost of Autopilot
For those who have experienced trauma or other mental health conditions, the brain operates in predictive mode. It anticipates threat and prepares responses long before conscious thought can engage. This is why people often say: “I know logically I’m safe, but my body doesn’t agree.”
Metacognition creates space between prediction and response. It does not eliminate emotion; it changes the relationship to it. Instead of reinforcing fear-based plasticity, metacognitive awareness allows the brain to update its predictions: “This situation resembles the past, but the outcome is different.” This updated prediction is how neural networks learn.
Why the Holidays Are a Unique Neuroplastic Opportunity
The frequency of emotional activation during the holidays is often viewed as a problem. However, from a neuroscience perspective, they can also be perceived as opportunities. Each activation followed by awareness rather than self-attack becomes a corrective experience.
The choice to pause rather than to attack oneself is where self-compassion and metacognition intersect. When awareness is paired with kindness instead of shame, the nervous system remains regulated long enough for learning to occur. Shame occludes neuroplasticity; self-compassion ignites neuroplastic mechanisms.
From Rote Survival to Choice
Metacognition does not remove pain, memories, or mental illness. What it changes is how the brain processes those experiences. It shifts the system from:
• Reflex to reflection
• Prediction to presence
• Survival to empowered choice
As we practice metacognition, these shifts accumulate over time. Neural networks reorganize. Emotional responses soften. Recovery becomes less about control and more about awareness.
What This Means If You’re Struggling This Season
If the holidays are difficult for you, it does not mean you are regressing. It may mean your nervous system is being activated more often — and that gives you more chances to notice, pause, and respond differently. Each moment of metacognitive awareness is not just insight. It is neuroplastic input.
And every time you meet awareness with compassion rather than judgment, you are teaching your brain something new. And, this is how change begins — quietly, biologically, and over time.
When Unresolved Trauma Meets the Season of “Togetherness:” Why the Holidays Are Not Always Peaceful
The holiday season often magnifies what already lives beneath the surface. For individuals with trauma histories, depression, anxiety, or chronic stress exposure, this time of year introduces a perfect storm of triggers: disrupted routines, relational expectations, sensory overload, and emotional memory.
Although the nervous system does not interpret holidays symbolically, it responds to familiarity, tone, environment, and perceived safety. When these cues resemble earlier emotional or physical threats, the brain activates survival circuits — not because something is “wrong,” but because your brain and body are doing what they were trained to do.
Metacognition: The Bridge Between Trauma and Change
One of the most powerful — and underused — tools in mental health recovery is metacognition. Metacognition is the ability to observe one’s thoughts, emotions, and bodily reactions as experiences, rather than automatically identifying with them. Metacognition is the internal shift from: “This feeling is happening, therefore it is true” to “This feeling is happening — and I can notice it.”
The above distinction is critical for individuals who have experienced trauma. Trauma narrows awareness and accelerates reaction. Conversely, metacognition slows down neural networks just enough to interrupt automatic survival responses that no longer serve us. Neurologically, this matters because attention directs plasticity.
How Metacognition Drives Neuroplastic Change
Neuroplasticity refers to the brain’s capacity to reorganize itself in response to experience. But plasticity does not occur randomly — it follows what the brain repeatedly attends to, reacts to, and rehearses. When a trauma response is triggered and acted out automatically, survival circuits are reinforced. The brain learns, “This pattern keeps me safe.”
Metacognition, in contrast, introduces a different experience. When you notice a reaction and pause without immediately responding:
• Limbic activation decreases
• Prefrontal and insular networks come online
• The nervous system receives a signal of containment rather than threat
Taken together, this sequence creates a new learning event.
Repeated moments of noticing rather than reacting can reshape neural pathways over time. The brain begins to associate triggers with observation instead of danger in an experience-dependent way. During the holidays, when triggers are frequent, these moments of awareness can become especially powerful drivers of change.
Trauma, Mental Illness, and the Cost of Autopilot
For those who have experienced trauma or other mental health conditions, the brain operates in predictive mode. It anticipates threat and prepares responses long before conscious thought can engage. This is why people often say: “I know logically I’m safe, but my body doesn’t agree.”
Metacognition creates space between prediction and response. It does not eliminate emotion; it changes the relationship to it. Instead of reinforcing fear-based plasticity, metacognitive awareness allows the brain to update its predictions: “This situation resembles the past, but the outcome is different.” This updated prediction is how neural networks learn.
Why the Holidays Are a Unique Neuroplastic Opportunity
The frequency of emotional activation during the holidays is often viewed as a problem. However, from a neuroscience perspective, they can also be perceived as opportunities. Each activation followed by awareness rather than self-attack becomes a corrective experience.
The choice to pause rather than to attack oneself is where self-compassion and metacognition intersect. When awareness is paired with kindness instead of shame, the nervous system remains regulated long enough for learning to occur. Shame occludes neuroplasticity; self-compassion ignites neuroplastic mechanisms.
From Rote Survival to Choice
Metacognition does not remove pain, memories, or mental illness. What it changes is how the brain processes those experiences. It shifts the system from:
• Reflex to reflection
• Prediction to presence
• Survival to empowered choice
As we practice metacognition, these shifts accumulate over time. Neural networks reorganize. Emotional responses soften. Recovery becomes less about control and more about awareness.
What This Means If You’re Struggling This Season
If the holidays are difficult for you, it does not mean you are regressing. It may mean your nervous system is being activated more often — and that gives you more chances to notice, pause, and respond differently. Each moment of metacognitive awareness is not just insight. It is neuroplastic input.
And every time you meet awareness with compassion rather than judgment, you are teaching your brain something new. And, this is how change begins — quietly, biologically, and over time.