How Traumatised Kids Become Anxious Co-workers

Estimated Reading Time: 12 minutes

Hello friends. I now present to you a (ehem . . . my) real-life account of how trauma in kids can cause anxiety and insecurity in the workplace as adults.

“If ya don’t find it, I’m gonna find it myself and beat ya with it, goddamnit!”

I speed-walked back to the garage and stood at one end, looking over all of the walls, then looking beside the dryer, then on top of Papá’s workbench, then on the side of the car, then panicking more by the second, heart pounding so loud I could hear it.

I searched those same spots twice more. I simply couldn’t see it.

She had asked me to find the window squeegee. I was hoping I had it right: a T-shaped object, the base being a red wooden stick and the top a long metal piece holding a pink flap of rubber, used for cleaning windows. I pictured it clearly in my mind, like an image on a television screen, and could not match it to any object in my view.

And I was dead meat.

Nana. One minute she was singing cheery, made-up songs while baking the most delightful cookies, and the next, hiding us in closets convinced the car parked in front of the house belonged to a CIA agent specifically assigned to watch our every move. 

“Them damn sneaky sons-a-bitches” she’d say. 

She carried a pistol in a lamb’s wool pocket-sized handbag for protection, referred to all convenient stores as ‘The Piggly Wiggly,’ smoked Pall Malls cigarettes like a chimney, called purses ‘pocket-books’ (which I found to be absurd they wouldn’t fit in a pocket and clearly weren’t reading material), stood fur coats up in the back seat of the car when driving about town so “they will think it’s a guard dog,” and had no hesitation marching down to my elementary school, gun in tow, cursing out my school principal, Mr. Ballinger, when a bully of a boy threw a piece of glass at me nearly hitting my left eyeball, or that time I came home from school with a terrible case of head lice—for the fourth time. Her confrontations were always a tad humiliating. 

“Don’t ya dare make excuses, goddamnit!” she said to Mr. Ballinger, the man we kids called “Nest Head”. “Get that boy the hell outta this school, or bring him to me! I’ll take care of him! Lemme talk to his mother. I’ll bet she’s a treat.”

She tended to be an expert on society as well, especially after the consumption of a few glasses of red wine. 

“I’ll tell ya what the problem is,” she’d say. “It’s all those goddamned hoodlums runnin’ the streets.” Or “It’s all those goddamned freaks a nature – that Lennon with the eyeglasses. He’s sumpn’ else.” Or, “It’s all them goddamned chupacabras, suckin’ everybody’s blood.” 

I knew if I didn’t go out there quickly and let Nana know that the mysterious squeegee wasn’t, in fact, in the garage, she’d soon present me with a guillotine and demand I, ever so kindly, place my stringy-haired little head into it.

Knees knocking and heart jumping out of my chest, I walked out to the backyard and regretfully bore the terrible news:

“I looked everywhere, Nana. It’s not in there. Are you sure you . . .”

“Goddamnit Brandy! Goddamned good for nothin’ . . . I told ya if I find it . . .”

Her voice trailed off as she stomped back to the garage and I waited, begging God that she couldn’t find it. Just when my heart started to beat at a reasonable rate she returned, squeegee in hand, gritting her teeth, furiously flexing her jaw muscles—a telling sign that serious evil was about to commence.

“Where’d you find . . . ”

“Git yer ass out there, right now, git in the yard!”

I had no choice but to obey her commands, as a good dog would, and quickly. She may have only been 4’11”, but I was still shorter. She was a fucking tornado when angry. I closed my eyes in anticipation of whatever creative punishment I was about to endure. I could hear the shriek of the nozzle as she prepared for a clean hard stream from the garden hose. She turned the spigot on and blasted me, soaking me from head to toe, nearly blowing me over.

“Now, yer gonna stand there ’til yer mother gits here, ya hear? Dontcha move. That’ll teach ya.” 

The sun was starting to set, so I thanked the heavens Mum wouldn’t be too long, barring her forgetting to pick us up as she’d done in the past for an impromptu date. I prayed my clothes would miraculously dry in time, as I knew Mum would be reasonably upset if I were to get into Alice, her red 1974 Toyota Celica, soaking the seats with my dripping retribution.

No one likes being in wet blue jeans, but being outside alone later than normally allowed was strangely beautiful: the quiet as the sky changed color while the sun slowly disappeared, the birds returning home to their nests in the junipers and cypress, the crickets beginning their nightly mating call serenades, and being able to spend a little extra time with Rusty, the Cocker Spaniel, who would have to spend the rest of the night out there alone in the cold. 

Rusty, who received this level of treatment from Nana on the daily, looked on with sad, empathetic eyes as he lay next to the tree he was chained to. We understood each other—we spoke the same language–two sensitive souls who just couldn’t get it right. Rusty preferred depositing his morning shit on the painted concrete patio rather than the dewy grass, never ceasing to invoke a fiery rage within my grandmother’s soul. So she tied him up to the tree. I suppose if I had such fuzzy feet, with fluffy hair between my toes, I too would prefer to relieve myself upon dry ground rather than becoming wet upon waking.

“Do you want me to give you somethin’ to cry about?!”

Every day Rusty would do this deed and every day he’d get a beating with a small shovel, or a strong hosing down, or a loud screaming at. I would often hide my tears since the one time Nana saw me sniveling about Rusty’s ill-treatment, she sternly asked me her standard go-to question, “Do you want me to give you somethin’ to cry about?!” I needed no more reason, so I learned to hide my face in a book, or behind a closed door in the bathroom.

I couldn’t understand why Rusty would make the same mistake over and over and over, and I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. I also wondered why Nana wouldn’t just try another training tactic since obviously, this one wasn’t working (hello Einstein). So he remained tied to the tree.

Good ole Rusty may not have been the wisest of pups, but he taught me three lessons I will hold dear until I die:

1. Sometimes the one thing you’re looking for is right in front of you.
2. No matter the circumstance at hand, relish in the beauty of the sky at sunset.
3. Never shit on concrete.

And Nana, my fierce but seriously wounded and toxic protector, also taught me a few things: 

1. Don’t stop looking until you find the answer (or the squeegee).
2. Be afraid, very afraid of authority figures (a real shitshow as an adult in the workplace).
3. Never shit on concrete, no matter how tempting it may be.

Looking back on that fear, that deep shame and humiliation I felt so often as a child, it was all the same Super-Sized Combo Meal of feelings I have experienced working as an employee in any type of job in any capacity I’ve had in my adult years.

I felt like an idiot: I belonged at the kid’s table, not organizing meetings for Clint Eastwood’s financial advisor.

In Los Angeles in my Mid-20s, I worked as an Executive Assistant to a prominent entertainment business manager. My heart would race every time my boss would arrive at work and walk into his office. I would turn beet-red any time his eyes accidentally met mine; if I’d had a tail it would have been perpetually tucked between my legs to keep from piddling. Whether it be simply patching a call through to his office, handing him a file folder of checks requiring his signature, or having to let him know I had made a simple, fixable mistake, each time my body reacted as if he was going to blast me with the hose in front of my co-workers and leave me there to dry in my wet work slacks and pantyhose. (How I hated wearing those damn things.) Being perceived by him, no matter the circumstance, felt traumatic in my scared body. I trembled. And because my brain believed I was under this much stress (fight, flight, freeze, fawn), I was prone to making more mistakes than I otherwise would have made. I felt like an idiot: I belonged at the kid’s table, not organizing meetings for Clint Eastwood’s financial advisor. 

So, I left that job. Because, fuck that job. 

The night I left that job I took my work slacks and all five pairs of pantyhose down to a beach near LAX and burned them in a bonfire. Yes, you bet your sweet ass I did that. And I haven’t worn anything similar since. Torture devices, they were, and I was proclaiming my freedom. My FREEDOM!

Then I looked for work in the feature film industry, thinking it would be more relaxed, with more weirdos, and I could feel more like I belonged. And I did to a certain extent.

I first landed as a personal assistant to a couple of actors and though I burned the confining clothing, I still carried those same fears. Though it was a tad more relatable, not being in a stuffy office environment, that shame and feeling of utter stupidity still lived on in my body. If my boss would ask me for a particular type of tuna, I would drive to 10 different shops to find that particular brand of tuna. I would not return to my boss’s home without that tuna in hand for fear of being blasted with the hose in front of an audience of paparazzi on Venice Beach. This overwhelming fear took away my right to simply be a human being–to breathe, to make mistakes, to have excuses, to be late, to have flaws, to have needs, to be tired or even hungry. Somewhere along the line, the trauma convinced me I didn’t have the right to exist, to take up space. 

Friends, you don’t outgrow this shit. It takes work. Even after moving on from assisting to working on feature films as a Visual Effects Coordinator in my 30s, I still found myself to be a fearful, feral little mongrel when in the presence of whomever the authority figure of the day was, whether it be the producer I shared an office with, the director, or even a studio head (I once backed right into producer Brian Grazer stepping my heels right onto his toes . . . lucky for him, I was wearing sneakers). (Note: That incident should have been hilarious, but in my fucked up little brain it was tragic–I froze. And thank God I didn’t fart, because, geez.)

I moved from job to job, career to career, and still, there I was, with all my fears in all their bright shining bare-naked glory. 

While all this adulting-while-damaged was happening I read a lot of books. The first that made a major impact was Chögyam Trungpa’s “Shambala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior”. My takeaway from this book was the understanding that my openness, gentleness, and vulnerability made me much more courageous than putting up walls, masks, and mental barricades. Like the sumo wrestler vs. a man wearing a coat of armor: the sumo wrestler is naked before his opponent and uses his raw strength to win a battle; the man wearing a coat of armor is helpless if the armor fails–he is fully reliant on it to protect him, and is fully weak without it. It all made sense. It helped me to begin shedding the layers of robot shell I’d built to protect myself in order to survive. 

My last time working for an employer several years ago was by far the best. By that time, I’d had years of therapy, books, meditation, and experience behind me. It was the perfect environment for me to feel like I belonged at the adult table, and since I had mastered that level of the game internally, I was free to walk away and start a new chapter: being my own boss. 

I started a successful pet care business and have a team of incredible women who provide the care, while I provide the administrative work and the backup if they have an issue. I am now the mother-hen I never had. (I always did prefer the company of animals, Rusty included.) Writing policies that protect myself, my business, and the team is the most kind and powerful way of creating healthy boundaries. If an issue comes up, or a client tries to take advantage, I simply write a new policy. It’s a friggin’ thing of beauty, I’ll tell you. 

Being one’s own boss requires so much more time and heart investment: you don’t just “log out” when it’s closing time. For a short time, I was turning clients into authority figures, out of habit and muscle memory, freaking out if they asked a simple question, requested last-minute reservations, or asked for a discount because a pet sitter didn’t do something they never asked them to do (people gonna people). Once I caught on to these shitty little self-defeating shenanigans, I was able to convince my little kid brain that I was the boss, I was the protector, and if they didn’t like my policies, they could go elsewhere. Those policies (just like relationship boundaries) protect us both, and those who complain are usually the ones who want to take advantage, like sneaky snakes. 

And when I have a weak moment (which happens from time to time–hey, I’ve claimed my humanity, ya’ll) I can simply use the policies I’ve written and blame them, “Sorry, it’s company policy. I’d be happy to offer you _____ instead.” 

What do I have to lose? A client?

“People are in your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. Let them choose which one.”

I’m no longer scared to death to let people go . . . clients, friends, family members, team members. 

My kick-ass therapist Trisha (also a certified badass, FYI) always says, “People are in your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. Let them choose which one.” And I dig that. I now embrace that wisdom. People decide if they are a reason, season, or lifetime client, friend, or acquaintance by their actions. My only responsibility is to observe and respond . . . no longer to wait for a blast of the hose to hit me in the face, or to get busted (do people say that anymore?) for shitting on concrete (maybe Rusty was right, it can be quite tempting in the right circumstances).

For more tales of trauma in kids, family dysfunction, and how I’ve managed to overcome them, you may want to check out my blog post titled “Liar, Liar, Big Gaslighter”.

Rise above it. Take back your power. Embrace peace.