Returning to work after a damaging workplace experience

When I first started coaching one of my clients, she was fairly certain that her corporate career was over. She had left a senior role after a damaging experience at work, and what had happened had affected her far beyond the job itself. She was tired, anxious and hardly eating. Her confidence had taken a huge knock and, despite having years of experience behind her, she had started to question her own competence and judgement. Even things that had once been completely normal, like joining a conference call or walking into a corporate environment, had become things she worried about.

She had started thinking about doing something completely different. On the face of it, it made sense. It would allow her to create something of her own, work with people in a different way and, perhaps most importantly, stay away from the kind of environment that had caused her so much pain. But as we talked, another possibility began to emerge. What if she hadn't stopped wanting her career at all?

Identifying details in this example have been omitted to protect client confidentiality.

Do you miss your career or feel afraid to return?

There were parts of her old working life that still lit her up when she talked about them. She loved operating at a senior level. She loved the pace, the challenge and the buzz of corporate life. She liked having responsibility and being around big conversations and decisions. She hadn't lost her ambition or suddenly become someone who wanted a quiet working life. What had changed was how safe and confident she felt operating in that world.

Her circumstances were individual, but the question they raised isn't.

After a damaging experience at work, how do you know whether you genuinely no longer want the career you built, or whether what you really don't want is to experience what happened to you again?

When something has affected you badly enough, it can become very difficult to separate “I don't want to do that anymore” from “I never want to feel like that again.”

They're not necessarily the same thing.

Sometimes, walking away is absolutely the right decision. There are careers we outgrow and priorities that change. But if you've spent years building a career and then stepped away because you were bullied, harassed, burnt out, became unwell, or simply reached a point where you couldn't continue as you were, I think it's worth asking yourself what you're actually walking away from.

Is it the work? The industry? The responsibility? The culture? Or is it the version of yourself that you felt you had to become to survive in that environment? Because if there's still a part of you that misses it, perhaps the question isn't whether you should go back. Perhaps it's how you could go back differently.

Rebuilding confidence when returning to work

This is where returning can become complicated. Rebuilding your confidence isn't necessarily just about feeling capable of doing the job again. You may also need to believe that you can return without losing yourself again.

If you've taken time away and done a lot of work on yourself, you may have become calmer. You may understand yourself better. You might have reconnected with parts of your personality that disappeared somewhere underneath the pressure to perform, compete, prove yourself or fit in. Perhaps you've learnt to listen to yourself more, to recognise when something doesn't feel right and to be kinder to yourself when things are difficult.

The thought of going back into a high-pressure environment can therefore feel as though you're being asked to put all of that down at the door and become the old version of yourself again. But you aren't the old version of yourself anymore, and you don't have to be.

There will probably still be parts of you that you need to draw on in a senior role. The drive that helped you get there in the first place. The ability to make decisions, be direct, organise, take control when necessary and keep going when things are difficult. I sometimes think of those as traits that many women have learnt to rely heavily on in corporate environments, particularly when they've spent their careers in male-dominated workplaces.

But you don't have to choose between those qualities and the softer parts of yourself. You can be decisive and empathetic. Direct and warm. Ambitious and collaborative. You can trust your intuition while still looking at the facts. You can lead without feeling that you constantly need to prove that you're strong enough to be there.

In fact, perhaps everything you've learnt about yourself means you can go back as a better leader than you were before.

Rethinking what you need from your career

A difficult experience can also give you reason to look at some of the things you've absorbed over the course of your career. What have you learnt about the kind of person you need to be to succeed? Which parts genuinely belong to you and which were adaptations to the environments you've worked in? What got rewarded? What did you learn to hide? And does the way you're working still feel like you?

We absorb a huge amount from the people and environments around us, often without realising it. We notice what gets someone promoted, what gets taken seriously, what leadership looks and sounds like, which behaviours are rewarded and which aren't. Over time, it can become difficult to distinguish between who we are and who we've learnt we need to be.

That doesn't mean everything you've learnt or adapted needs to be discarded. Some of it may have made you a brilliant leader. Some of it may have helped you navigate difficult situations, become more confident or develop strengths you genuinely value. The question is whether you're still choosing those ways of being, or simply carrying them because they helped you survive or succeed before.

Setting boundaries after a difficult workplace experience

I think this is one of the most useful questions to ask before returning.

Not “How do I make sure nobody ever treats me badly again?” because unfortunately we can't control other people's behaviour. And not simply “What should my next employer do differently?” because ultimately you also need to understand what you will do differently.

Perhaps you won't stay silent when something doesn't feel right. Perhaps you'll prioritise a healthier work-life balance, rather than repeatedly sacrificing evenings, weekends or your health because that's what everyone around you appears to be doing. Perhaps you won't laugh something off when it actually crosses one of your boundaries. Maybe you'll ask more questions about culture when you're interviewing for a role, pay attention to the way people behave rather than simply what the company says about its values, or recognise much earlier when you need support.

Your priorities may have changed too. What mattered to you five or ten years ago may not be what matters to you now. Success might still mean progression, responsibility and ambition, but perhaps the way you want to achieve it looks different.

That isn't about returning to work defensively, suspiciously, or waiting for something to go wrong. It's about knowing yourself well enough that you don't abandon yourself in order to belong.

The woman I mentioned at the beginning ultimately realised that she hadn't stopped wanting the career she'd worked incredibly hard to build. She still loved the challenge, responsibility and pace of that world. What she didn't want was to return to it in the same way.

Your answer may be completely different.

You might decide that you genuinely have outgrown your old career. You might want something completely new, or you might realise that you still want much of what you had before, just with different boundaries, priorities and expectations.

Either way, you don't necessarily have to throw away everything you built before the difficult experience. Take the time you need. Reflect on what's changed and what you need now. Decide what you want your life to look like and what you are no longer prepared to compromise in order to succeed.

Then look at the ladder again.

Because if you decide you do want to get back on it, you're not climbing it as the person you were before. You're taking a backpack (or very lovely handbag) with you this time, filled with everything you've learnt along the way: experience, self-awareness, boundaries, perspective, empathy, resilience and a much clearer understanding of who you are.

The question isn't whether you can become the old you again. It's what the person you are now could do with everything they know.

 How can coaching help you return to work?

When you've been through a difficult experience, it can be incredibly hard to separate what you genuinely want from what you're frightened of experiencing again.

Career coaching can give you the space to untangle the two, rebuild trust in yourself and explore what going back could look like without anyone telling you what you should do next. It can help you understand what's changed, what matters to you now, where your boundaries need to be and how you can use everything you've learnt about yourself to move forward with confidence.

The answer might be a completely different career, or it might be finding your way back to the one you loved – but this time, on your own terms.