healing at work
Cut Yourself a Break! How Perfectionism Could Be Your Career’s Fatal Flaw
Perfectionism! Do we have this in common? If you’re like me, you have taken on an unrelenting drive to make sure everything about you is beyond reproach, criticism, or correction. You always deliver and strive to exceed expectations of all. Your appearance is just so. Your weight is perfect (or you obsess about why it’s not). Your…
Read MoreHave You Ever Been Afraid of Your Own Anger at Work?
There’s no getting around it: Anger is scary. I’m not talking about moderate-to-severe daily annoyances. I’m talking about white hot rage, the kind where control is balanced at the edge of a cliff – at the base of which lie crashing surf, rocks, bones, and the remnants of careers and reputations. It’s bad enough being…
Read MoreAuthentic Joy at Work: How Your Career Can Help You Heal Your Life
As a society, we’re used to hearing negative messages about how our jobs and workplaces are hazardous to our health. There are endless studies about our worklife promotes stressful lifestyle habits, invades our restorative family and personal time, stresses us out through being at the mercy of toxic bosses and coworkers, compromises our privacy, etc.…
Read MoreAre Your Coworkers Treating You Like Their Emotional Dumping Ground?
One of our common experiences as adult survivors of a damaged past (ASDPs) is that, when it comes to friendships and work relationships, we often find ourselves in the “helper” role. Which can be a familiar place for us to be in emotionally. We unconsciously bring that role into our adult lives, especially at work,…
Read MoreBumper Car Moments
You know the feeling I’m just about to describe. You’ve been there too. You’re at work, and everything is going smoothly. You’re sailing through your day. Work is getting done. Meetings are productive and blessedly short. Everyone is smiling at each other. You can hear laughter in the halls. Your boss thinks you’re fantastic. And…
Read More“I’m Not An ASDP But…” Part 2: That Moment When You Discover That You’re One After All
(Disclaimer: If you’re an Adult Survivor of a Damaged Past (ASDP), some of what you will read below may feel familiar to you. But I also want to acknowledge the fact that your career success to date is as a result of a heroic effort to rise above your past. You have grown to be…
Read MoreWhen Friendly Advice Becomes Boundary-Busting Bossiness
One of the fundamental responsibilities of parents (human and otherwise) is to teach their children to thrive in life. In the savannah, among lions, it’s called survival. In society, it’s called success. But when you’re an Adult Survivor of a Damaged Past (ASDP), you likely learned success and survival secrets from parents and other influential…
Read MoreIRRATIONAL REACTIONS!!!!!! How to Protect Your Career From Blasts from the Past
We all have emotional buttons – those areas of sensitivity that, when touched, set our teeth on edge, make us bite our tongue before we say something that we can’t take back, force us to count to 5 or 10 or 75…whatever it takes to make sure our response is measured and reasonable. I’m not…
Read MoreThe One Question That Can Change Everything for ASDPs
When we were children just learning about life, the people with the most influence on our beliefs were the adults in our immediate circle – usually our parents, sometimes guardians, possibly other influential adults. But what if they were adult survivors of damaged pasts (ASDPs) themselves? The adults from their childhoods taught them harsh lessons…
Read More“I’m Not an ASDP But….”: How Your Damaged Past May Be Blocking You From Your Joyful Future
“I’m not an ASDP but…your message really resonated with me.” Yes, I’ve heard that before. I’ve read that before. Heck. Even I still have trouble admitting to one person, never mind a whole audience, that I’m an ASDP myself. There are times I still stumble over the acronym. Adult Survivor of a Damaged Past. But,…
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