Childhood strategies we bring to work
The strategies you developed as a child to stay safe are the same strategies you’re using at work right now.
The child who learned that anger was dangerous becomes the adult who avoids conflict at all costs, and then resents everyone for walking over them.
The child who learned that visibility meant criticism becomes the adult who never speaks up in meetings, and then wonders why they’re overlooked for promotion.
The child who learned that love was conditional on performance becomes the adult who works eighty-hour weeks, and calls it “dedication”, or “commitment”, or “passion”.
The child who learned to read the room and manage the emotions of others becomes the adult who is brilliant at office politics, and exhausted by Wednesday afternoon.
They’re necessary, useful, adaptive strategies from childhood that have never been updated. They made perfect sense when you were eight. They make considerably less sense when you’re running a department.
But the parts that hold these strategies don’t know that. They are, psychologically speaking, still eight years old. Still scanning for the same dangers. Still running the same programmes.
Until someone (that’s you, by the way) turns toward them and says: “I see you. You can stop now. I’ve got this.”