I didn’t plan to tell this story publicly.

Not because I don’t believe in this work. I believe in it with everything I have. But there’s a difference between talking about mental health in the workplace in the abstract and putting your own story into it publicly. This is me putting my story into it.

May is Mental Health Awareness Month. This year, I’m not doing a generic post about the importance of wellness breaks. I’m talking about something that doesn’t get enough airtime in leadership circles: workplace trauma. What it is, what it costs, and what happens when the leader carrying it is the one running the organization.

What Happened to Me

I found myself in a role where I was expected to support an organization that was actively harming the people I was hired to protect. I wasn’t just navigating a difficult CEO or a demanding environment. I was being asked to go along with practices that were illegal — decisions that put employees at risk while I stood in the room as the HR professional who was supposed to be the safeguard.

The pressure to comply was relentless. And sustained pressure does what it’s designed to do — it erodes your confidence in your own judgment. That’s not weakness. That’s what a toxic system looks like from the inside.

What I couldn’t do was become complicit. I made the decision not to support that organization. That decision cost me. But it also saved me.

I didn’t leave clean. I carried that experience into everything that came after — how I responded to authority, how much I trusted my own instincts, how I led. It took honest, deliberate work to name what had happened and make sure it didn’t shape the organization I was about to build.

That’s why I do this work. Not from a textbook. From the inside of it.

Why I’m telling you this

Because I work with small business owners, nonprofit Executive Directors, and founders who carry versions of this story and don’t have a name for it yet. They describe what happened at a previous job and then minimize it. They’ve built organizations and teams, and some part of their unexamined history is running the show in ways they can’t quite see.

This month, I’m naming all of it. The signs, the statistics, the cost to leaders and the people they lead, and what actually changes when you decide to look at it honestly.

The risk of PTSD among employees has increased 121% since 2020. Sixty percent of workers currently report having a toxic boss — the highest number ever recorded. These numbers include the people running organizations, not just the people working inside them.[1][2]

What this series covers

Every Tuesday and Thursday in May, I’m publishing a new post:

  • What workplace trauma actually is — and how leaders carry it without knowing
  • How unhealed history shapes leadership decisions
  • The data behind what your team is quietly experiencing
  • Why conflict avoidance is a trauma response, not a management style
  • What it costs to manage HR without training or support
  • What post-traumatic growth looks like for leaders

If you lead a team, run a business, or serve a mission — this series is for you.

Workplace trauma turned me into the leader I needed back then. I didn’t have that leader. So I became her. That’s the whole story behind this work.

Watch the video that started this conversation: https://tinyurl.com/2ca59m8h

Bernadette Jones is a SHRM-SCP certified HR consultant, executive coach, and CEO of Visionova HR Consulting. She works with small California businesses and nonprofit organizations to build workplaces where people can do their best work.

Contact: bjones@visionovahr.com | visionovahr.com

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