Articles/Blogs

Is Now the Time to Talk About Trauma at Work?

In the 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:

1. Define trauma and normalize its prevalence—without asking      anyone to self-identify
2. Explain how trauma affects the brain and behavior (focus, memory, trust, reactivity, shutdown, perfectionism)
3. Offer practical workplace tools: psychological safety,   predictable communication, boundaries, consent-based feedback, clear paths      to support
4. 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:

1. Normalizing that trauma is common
2. Training managers to recognize trauma-shaped behaviors      without pathologizing people
3. Reducing shame in seeking support (EAP, coaching, mental      health days)
4. Building psychological safety into feedback and change management
5. 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