For the past decade, I fully threw myself into the world of HR. Or, as it’s often rebranded these days, “People & Culture.” I’ve navigated challenging organizational dynamics, championed employee well-being, and tried my best to create environments where people could thrive.
But underneath the policies and perks, I kept noticing something harder to name.
Burnout. Perfectionism. The low hum of unprocessed trauma.
These weren’t just employee engagement issues. They were patterns I saw in others, and felt in myself. They were woven into the fabric of so many workplaces I encountered… quiet, persistent, and often unspoken.
Eventually, I realized I didn’t want to just improve workplaces from the inside. I wanted to understand the deeper roots of these patterns; the individual and collective stories that shape how we show up at work and in the world.
So, I made a shift. I applied to a Master’s in Counselling program. And I began the slow work of reconnecting to my own story, while learning how to support others in making sense of theirs.
Burnout, Trauma, and Perfectionism: The Unseen Workplace Trio
Burnout isn’t always about late nights or looming deadlines. Sometimes it’s about chronic overfunctioning. Sometimes it’s the cost of never feeling safe enough to slow down.
Perfectionism often gets rewarded in the workplace, but it can also be a survival strategy. A way of proving your worth. A way of staying in control. A way of outrunning the fear of what might happen if we’re not always performing.
And trauma? It doesn’t stay neatly tucked away in childhood or crisis. It moves with us. Into meetings, performance reviews, leadership retreats. Into the silence between emails. Into the bodies of the people doing their best to hold it all together.
A Relational Approach to Workplace Wellness
Through my counselling studies, and through my own unlearning, I’ve become more curious about how we create cultures of care.
For me, that starts with a relational and intersectional lens. One that sees burnout not as a personal failure, but often as a relational rupture. One that recognizes how race, gender, class, neurodivergence, and trauma histories shape the way we move through work. One that makes space for nuance, and lets go of one-size-fits-all solutions.
Workplaces are made of people. And people need connection, trust, and belonging to truly thrive.
What You Can Expect from This Blog
This blog is part reflection, part research, and part reckoning.
I’ll be exploring the layered experiences that shape workplace dynamics — especially the ones that don’t make it into leadership development slide decks. Expect posts on:
The neuroscience of stress and burnout
Relational ways to cope with overwhelm
Epigenetics and how intergenerational trauma shows up at work
Embodied workplace behaviours
The hidden impacts of perfectionism and parentification
What it really takes to build psychologically safe cultures
This isn’t about quick fixes. It’s about being with the complexity. Naming what’s hard. And imagining what could be possible when we center humanity, and de-center productivity.
Thanks for being here. Let’s keep unraveling, together.