This week’s blog is personal for me because I am still sorting out a hard experience that I had in my day job. I am sharing this with you because I am still processing it myself, and I think many of you will be able to relate.
Rather than starting at the beginning, I want to start at the end and work my way backward, as detectives do at the scene of a crime.
First, Some Context
I work in Technology at a top-5 global financial institution. I’ve been here for twenty-five years and hold the title of Senior Vice President — and I share that not to impress anyone, because a corporate title doesn’t define my worth or tell the whole story of who I am. I was already someone before I earned that title. The title reflects the leadership I’ve demonstrated and the role I play in the organization. I mention it here because it matters to the story — specifically, because what happened this week happened to someone with that title, in a very public setting, and it still knocked me sideways.
What Happened
This week, during a routine project call with our business partners and vendors, there was an unfortunate incident involving one of my peers — a very public one. He started talking over me when I was attempting to offer a solution to a constraint we were facing.
I was shocked at first. He had never done this before, even in private, let alone in a large meeting. I paused, thinking perhaps I had interjected too soon. When I paused, he stopped — so I started again. He talked over me again. I started a third time and said, “I would appreciate it if you would not talk over me while I am speaking,” and just kept going. He said, “Cyndi, you are just going to make it worse.”
After that third interruption, I sent him a private message that said, “Shut the hell up.”
Yup. I did. I am not proud of that. Totally unprofessional.
My coworker then read my private message out loud to the entire meeting: “Cyndi, you can’t tell me to ‘shut the hell up’ — that is unprofessional.” At that point, the tech partner I deeply respect stepped in and said to both of us, “Guys, this is unprofessional,” and called for the meeting to end. I left.
Behind the Scenes: What Was Happening Inside Me
After the meeting, I was very upset. Several people messaged to check on me. I was NOT OK.
I did all the things I knew to do to re-regulate — breathing, going outside — but it took a long time before I was calm enough to talk.
I eventually reached out to my boss. We have been friends and business partners for over ten years and have a great deal of mutual respect for each other. I told him what happened and owned what I said in that text — because I was taking responsibility for my reaction, even as I was clear that I hadn’t started the situation. He told me I didn’t do anything wrong, which wasn’t entirely true, but it was what I needed to hear in that moment. He told me to take the rest of the afternoon off and get some fresh air.
Now I want to open the curtain and share what was happening within me as a trauma survivor.
My first reaction was: “What just happened, and did I do something wrong?”
As childhood trauma survivors, we often assume we are to blame when something goes sideways. We do this because, as children, we carry this belief that we are in control — and that by claiming responsibility for the problem, we can fix it. It takes a lot of work in therapy to undo that kind of thinking, but I’ve done that work. So I recognized that I didn’t initiate this situation, even though my response wasn’t one I was proud of. I took personal responsibility for my reaction because that is how I want to show up as a leader.
My second reaction was to reach out to repair.
I privately messaged the business partners who were on the call to apologize for what they had witnessed. I wasn’t taking responsibility for the whole situation — but I was tending to the relationships that mattered to me. When things go sideways in the workplace, especially if you are triggered, there is often collateral damage that also needs to be addressed. When you have worked hard as a trauma survivor to build working relationships, those relationships become precious — because connection doesn’t come easily for many of us.
Then my mind went on the spin cycle.
It wasn’t spiraling into a shame storm, but it was replaying the scenario over and over, reviewing it from every angle. Of course, a spinning mind does not contribute to restful sleep. This is where music became a tool for me — it gave my mind something else to focus on and activated a part of my brain other than the analytical one. Finally, around 12:30 a.m., my mind was quiet enough for me to sleep. I allowed myself to sleep in the next morning, because not enough sleep can be dysregulating, and that was the last thing I needed.
The Morning After
When I logged in the next day, I discovered that several of my business partners — even ones who hadn’t been in the meeting — had reached out to check on me. That meant the world to me. They cared. They reached out because they valued our relationship, and that mattered deeply to me.
I joined the daily stand-up meeting with my Project Management partners, intending to apologize, and they told me I had been treated badly and disrespectfully. Having their outside perspective was incredibly validating — they didn’t think badly of me, and they didn’t see me as the one who had created the problem. Throughout the morning, more check-ins came in, and my grief slowly turned to gratitude. I felt genuinely loved and cared for by my business partners. It was an unexpected and beautiful experience.
Separating the Past from the Present
My counterpart on the business side scheduled a 1:1 with me to make sure I was OK. By the time that meeting came around, I had already done the work of separating my “old” stuff from the present situation, and I had much more clarity.
This is something that is imperative for those of us with trauma histories: we have to keep the past in its place.
I am not saying to ignore or override your past experiences — they are valid and deserve to be worked through in therapy. What I am saying is that when a present-day situation triggers past experiences, it can feel far more intense than the situation itself warrants. For me, this event activated multiple triggers all at once — not having a voice, being humiliated, and not being heard. I recognized all those feelings, acknowledged that they were valid and rooted in real experiences, and consciously put them back in the “work on in therapy” box. Then I focused my attention on what was actually happening right now.
After doing that, I had much more emotional capacity to work with.
Stage One: Righting Your Emotional Ship
Something else shifted in me as I got more regulated. My focus turned — not with blame or shame, but with genuine curiosity — toward my coworker. I had not seen this kind of behavior from him in the nine months we’d worked together. He had always been respectful, professional, and aspirational. But something had shifted in him over the past couple of months, something my nervous system had noticed and I had dismissed. I’ll be exploring that more in an upcoming blog in this series.
For now, I want to focus on Stage One of working through situations like this: righting your emotional ship.
This stage is about returning to regulation, so your frontal cortex can come back online. I’ve tried to walk you through how I moved through that — not perfectly, but effectively. How you get regulated may look very different, and that is OK. The how matters far less than actually getting there.
This is exactly where the FREE Workplace Trigger Tracker can be a powerful tool. I use it myself. It helps you identify the specific triggers that show up for you in the workplace across different situations, and pair coping strategies to help you return to a regulated state more quickly. The more you use it, the more self-aware you become — and that self-awareness is everything.
In my case, I knew which triggers had been activated and I knew what I needed to do. That is the power of doing the work ahead of time. The reality for trauma survivors in the workplace is that we are not going to completely eliminate our triggers — but we can shorten the time we spend in a triggered state, and we can minimize the impact those triggers have on our careers and our relationships.
That is worth everything.
This is Part 1 of a 3-part series. In Part 2, we’ll explore the rupture and repair process — and what it actually looks like to restore trust after a workplace conflict. In Part 3, we’ll dig into the difference between true leadership and a position of power.
If you’d like support identifying and working through your workplace triggers, you can download the free Workplace Trigger Tracker at cyndibennettconsulting.com/resources.