Work is only one domain of life, but is it really all that different from the others?

About how work may reactivate older patterns of relating, why professional environments can feel both emotionally intense and deeply fragile, and how burnout, repetition, and self-awareness become intertwined in the way we navigate professional life.

We often divide our lives into compartments — the professional, the personal, the social, the intimate. We develop different expectations for each of these domains. At times, we may even feel as though we are different people within them, behaving as different versions of ourselves depending on the context.

We come to believe this separation is evidence of maturity, adaptation, or professionalism. At work, for example, we are expected to behave in specific ways, and we are valued and evaluated according to those expectations.

While these separations do exist, there is inevitably some continuity across them — within ourselves, within others, and within the situations we encounter.

Have I been here before?

We speak of demanding bosses, intrusive coworkers, micromanagement, or the pain of being overlooked as though these experiences existed in isolation. Yet often there are invisible threads connecting these encounters to earlier experiences in our lives.

Workplaces may expose us to completely new people and experiences, but to some extent, many (not all) situations — and many people — are repetitions. A new boss may share striking similarities with important figures from our past. Certain workplaces may unconsciously revive older relational dynamics.

When we overlook these continuities, we may suffer intensely while believing that some wounded part of ourselves — and some “enemies” — exist only at work.

If we pause long enough, we may notice something about the magnitude of our own responses. We may become surprised by how deeply affected we are by a supervisor, an institution, or a workplace conflict. And we may wonder whether that present situation carries layers from our past.

When we pursue that line of thought, we may reach a point where we are able to give each component its proper weight: what started in the present, what comes from the past.

What is more, we may be able to remove some of the layers that are not necessarily called for in the current situation — both in ourselves and in others.

My boss at work may resemble the overcritical or neglectful parent whom I was never able to please, whose attention I could only obtain when I was perfect. But they are not the same person.

Why reenactments at work feel so intense — and so fragile

In many families, relationships are sustained by an assumption of permanence. People may show their best and worst selves while the relationship itself remains relatively durable. Of course, there are important exceptions, and many family relationships do fracture, but intimate relationships often contain some possibility of repair.

Parents do not literally fire children, nor children their parents. Spouses do not usually divorce after the first argument. If conflict emerges, there may still be room to restore the relationship.

Some work environments may resemble families more than many actual families do. Dysfunctional workplaces may, for example, have bosses who behave like “authoritarian parents” and who are satisfied only with highly submissive children. Under that kind of leadership, employees may not only feel that they are being treated like children, but they may also use older ways of coping under difficulty. Compliance, rebellion, helplessness, perfectionism, hypervigilance, withdrawal — all may reappear with surprising force.

Still, at work we cannot react the same way we might react within our families. Employment is inherently conditional. It depends on contracts, evaluations, probationary periods, letters of recommendation, references, and the judgment of people who may have enormous control over our future. To react angrily at work, for example, may cost us our job even when we had all the reasons — past and present — to feel angry.

Being caught in workplace dynamics without always having a feasible way out rapidly becomes a source of suffering that affects all domains of our lives. In many cases, it may result in burnout, anxiety, depression, or the opening of older wounds, including PTSD.

Navigating work difficulties with self-awareness

To say that our workplace difficulties will help us develop awareness of who we were and where we come from seems too pale a silver lining when we are in the thick of our suffering. That awareness, however, can help us navigate the actual problems before us.

We are often advised to navigate work difficulties professionally, but we may forget that we should also navigate them with awareness of ourselves.

To step back, pause, and understand how much of the present relates to the past may help us tolerate certain situations with greater clarity and proportion.

Sometimes the people and situations hurting us are not the original injury, but repetitions of something older. And understanding that may allow us to recognize that not every action around us is specifically designed to wound us. Many people are acting from their own fears, ambitions, limitations, or needs. We are caught in their world as much as they are caught in ours.

Likewise, our reactions may not always reflect who those people truly are, but rather what they represent to us and the reactivation of older ways of reacting. We may react with perfectionism, withdrawal, compliance, overachievement, or anger — the only ways we once knew how to survive.

To realize that some of our feelings, perceptions, and reactions may come from the past does not mean that we will reach a place where nothing affects us anymore or where difficult people suddenly become easy to work with.

It may, however, allow some distance from the immediacy of our reactions. It may help us respond with greater discernment rather than simply reenacting older patterns of feeling, thinking, and reacting.

To realize that parts of our past contribute to these situations does not mean that we can erase or reshape our ways of feeling, thinking, and reacting overnight.

Instead, that understanding should be accompanied by some compassion toward ourselves. That understanding can guide us toward an honest assessment of who we are and what actually works for us: what kind of leadership, what kind of environment, what kind of structure allows us to function well.

To know ourselves does not mean that we will stop compromising or that we will reject every environment that does not fully meet our needs. But it may give us a clearer sense of what to look for, what to avoid, and what we can realistically sustain over time.

With that knowledge, we may be better able to decide — with some balance between integrity and realism — what is possible and what is not, when to stay and when to move on.

- Helder Araujo MD PhD