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 more

Have 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 more

Are 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 more

Bumper 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

IRRATIONAL 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 more