Your Trauma-Wise Career Guide

SummaryIn this solo episode, Cyndi Bennett takes on a topic she has been sitting with for a while: power, and what happens when someone gets it and uses it the wrong way. This is not a political episode or a narcissism episode. It is an honest, grounded conversation about what misused authority actually looks like in the workplace, what it costs the people around it, and why, for trauma survivors, those environments can feel so painfully familiar. Drawing from her own study of leadership and her work with trauma survivors navigating their careers, Cyndi also paints a clear picture of what power used well looks like, and why you deserve to be in spaces where that is the norm, not the exception.Key Thoughts* When someone gets a title and the dynamic shifts overnight, your body recognizes that pattern long before your mind can name it.* Power misused looks like taking up space. Power used well looks like making room.* The leaders who leave the deepest mark are almost never the ones who use their position to elevate themselves. They are the ones who use it to elevate everyone around them.* What gets taken first in a misused power dynamic is your voice. Not all at once, but gradually, until the cost of speaking starts to feel too high.* When you are inside a harmful dynamic long enough, it starts to feel like just how things are. That normalization is what makes it so hard to leave and so hard to trust the next place you step into.* Your nervous system is not overreacting. It is connecting dots that are real.* You are allowed to want workplaces where power is used well. For those of us who were told our needs were too much, that can feel like a radical idea. But it is simply the baseline.What This Means For YouIf any part of this episode is landing in a way that feels familiar, here are some things worth sitting with:* What you are experiencing is real. If you are in an environment right now where authority is being used against you rather than for you, you are not imagining it and you are not oversensitive. The impact on your nervous system is real, and it deserves to be taken seriously.* Learn to assess your environments from a place of clarity, not hypervigilance. Who has power in the spaces you are in? How are they using it? What does it cost you to be there? These are not paranoid questions. They are important ones, and you are allowed to ask them.* Notice what misused power takes from you. Your voice. Your sense of reality. Your sense of what is normal. Once you can name what has been chipped away, you can begin to understand why the healing work matters so much.* Hold on to examples of power done right. If you have ever worked with someone who made you feel like your voice belonged in the room, who shared credit freely and stayed curious about the people around them, that is not a unicorn. It is what leadership is supposed to look like, and it is worth holding as your reference point.* You get to want something different. Not someday, not when things settle down. Now. You are allowed to make decisions, over time, in the direction of environments where you can bring your whole self and not spend half your energy just trying to survive the room.Come Journey With UsIf this resonated with you and you would like to go deeper with the exact tools, resources, and community built specifically to support trauma survivors navigating their careers, consider joining us in the Resilient Career Academy. You don’t have to figure this out alone. There is a place where people understand exactly what you are carrying, and where your pace, your healing, and your story are not just welcomed, they are honored. Get full access to Resilient Career Academy at resilientcareers.substack.com/subscribe

SummaryIn this episode, Cyndi Bennett gets personal. She shares what happened after she did the hard work of getting regulated and reached out to repair things with a difficult coworker, and what his silence taught her. Drawing from her own experience and a conversation with mentor and dear friend Kimberly Weeks from episode 51, Cyndi walks through five specific behaviors that show up in narcissistic coworkers and explores why, for many trauma survivors, these patterns feel so familiar. Because for some of us, they are. This episode is not about diagnosing anyone. It is about learning to see clearly, and understanding why it took so long to see it in the first place.Key Thoughts* When a difficult coworker feels familiar, that familiarity is worth paying attention to. It often has roots that go back much further than this job.* Normalization is not the same as acceptance. Growing up around certain patterns teaches us to see them as just how things are, which makes them easy to miss later in life.* You cannot repair with someone who will not own their part. The absence of accountability is not a small thing. It is information.* Dismissiveness toward others’ experience and expertise is a pattern, not a personality quirk. And for those of us who grew up shrinking our knowing to keep the peace, it can feel almost invisible at first.* Going quiet in spaces where your voice belongs is not always about personality. Sometimes it is a response to a pattern you have been living inside for a long time.* Grandiosity is not confidence. It is an outsized sense of self that requires constant reinforcement, often at the expense of everyone around it.His non-response was not about me. It was not a reflection of my worth or my effort. It was a reflection of his unwillingness to do his part.What This Means For YouIf something in this episode is landing in a way that feels familiar, here are some things worth sitting with:* The familiarity is a signal, not a flaw. If a coworker’s behavior feels like something you have lived before, that recognition is not weakness. It is your nervous system connecting dots that your mind may not have caught up to yet. Pay attention to it.* Naming the patterns matters. Accountability, dismissiveness, talking over others, grandiosity, a habit of looking down to feel bigger. These are observable behaviors. Once you can name them, you can stop internalizing them as something you caused or something you deserve.* The instinct to keep trying has old roots. If you find yourself looking for the right angle, the right words, the right approach that will finally make someone meet you where you are, that instinct is worth getting curious about. It often started somewhere long before this workplace.* Repair requires two people. If you have done the work, gotten grounded, and reached out honestly, and the other person will not show up for that, the problem is not your approach. Seeing that clearly is not giving up. It is progress.* Recognition can be a lot to hold. If this episode connected something happening right now to something that happened a long time ago, be gentle with yourself in that. That kind of awareness is the beginning of something important, and it does not have to be processed all at once.Come Journey With UsIf this resonated with you and you would like to go deeper with the exact tools, resources, and community built specifically to support trauma survivors navigating their careers, consider joining us in the Resilient Career Academy. You don’t have to figure this out alone. There is a place where people understand exactly what you are carrying, and where your pace, your healing, and your story are not just welcomed, they are honored. Get full access to Resilient Career Academy at resilientcareers.substack.com/subscribe