When Your Personal Issues Show Up at Work

Have you ever noticed some of the same feelings at home also can sometimes be felt at work? Victimization, ‘I’m not good enough’, or ‘I don’t belong’……?

Have you ever noticed similar behavior tendencies at home and work, such as avoidance, compliance, or isolation?

If you have ever noticed or wondered about home and work feeling familiar at times, you are on to something, because our early childhood learnings are what creates our current feelings and tendencies at work. For example, if we felt low self-worth from our early childhood experiences, we may feel like we don’t deserve a raise or have the tools to prove we deserve a raise at work. Also, people can feel like a victim at work if this is how they felt in their family of origin. For many people, what we learn in our family of origin continues to play out in the workplace, and until we focus on healing our sense of self, this is very difficult to deeply change in the workplace. In essence, our personal self largely affects our work self.

So, what does that mean for people who are wildly successful at work, but train wrecks or emotionally avoidant in their personal life? This group of people may sometimes be seen as hardworking, conscientious leaders in their career, but can also easily be emotionally unavailable, or ‘high functioning addicts’ or ‘narcissists’ or something else in their overall life. As a brief explanation, successful people at work who are unavailable, unconscious, or incapable in their personal life use work success to overcompensate from their empty feelings of lack of self and lack of meaningful relationships. We all work in some ways to ‘fill the hole’ of emptiness that we feel inside when we don’t know how to deeply connect with ourselves and others, and these ways of filling the hole are commonly seen in professionally successful people, workaholics, other addictions, other distractions, emotional avoidance, etc. 

What we see over and over when we focus on our own deep personal growth work, is that when we focus on healing and growing our personal self, our work self becomes integrated, organic, and authentic, and we feel a passion for our work. Healthy intimate personal relationships create healthier workplace relationships, which grows a business, and improves job satisfaction, productivity, and adds to our Sense of Self.

It all begins with focusing on the healing and building of our Sense of Self.

If you want to learn how to build yourself in healthy and meaningful ways, and see what may be holding you back at home, work, on the course, or on the field, contact Dr. Sophia Caudle at 919-698-7061 or join my Community Consultation Wednesdays at 1pm EST. Register here at www.drsophiashealingshop.com