When Building Your Business Becomes the New Trigger | Your Trauma-Wise Career Guide Ep 46

You left the workplace because it was too triggering to survive. So why does building your business feel just as dysregulating? 

For a lot of trauma survivors, entrepreneurship isn't a passion project — it's an exit strategy. And when your business is your only way out, the urgency to make it work fast can activate the exact same threat responses you left employment to escape. In this episode, Cyndi names the structural tension that nobody in the business coaching world is talking about, and explores what it actually looks like to build something sustainable when your nervous system is part of the equation.

In this episode:

• Why trauma survivors often turn to entrepreneurship as a protective decision, not just a professional one
• What moving at the pace of your nervous system actually looks like in practice
• How urgency becomes its own trigger — and what it costs you when you push past your capacity
• What a trauma-informed approach to offer design, revenue models, and timelines looks like
• The triathlon analogy that reframes everything about pacing as a trauma survivor entrepreneur

TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 - The hook: when urgency becomes the new dysregulator 1:00 - Welcome & who this episode is for 2:00 - Why trauma survivors choose entrepreneurship 5:00 - Moving at the speed of your nervous system 11:00 - Growth discomfort vs. dysregulation — knowing the difference 12:30 - The triathlon analogy: pacing when you carry extra weight 19:00 - When urgency becomes the new trigger 24:00 - How survival mode shows up in your business decisions 26:30 - Building a business that holds both realities 27:00 - Five trauma-informed tips for entrepreneurs 30:00 - Reflection question & CTA

 Ready to talk about what support might actually help? Book a free discovery call: https://calendly.com/cyndibennettconsulting/30min?month=2026-03

Cyndi Bennett, MBA, M.Ed. is a trauma survivor and trauma-informed career coach. She hosts Your Trauma-Wise Career Guide podcast and leads the Resilient Career Academy, helping trauma survivors translate their healing wisdom into professional advancement. Cyndi's approach is grounded in her own 21+ years of navigating healing alongside a corporate career.

When you're ready, here are 3 ways I can help you grow your career journey:

1. Free trauma-informed career development resources from my website! Visit https://www.cyndibennettconsulting.com for always up-to-date tips.
2. Ready to build a fulfilling career with trauma-informed support? Join The Resilient Career Academy Learning Community, where trauma survivors support each other, share resources, and develop career resilience in a safe, understanding environment
3. Ready for personalized trauma-informed career coaching? Explore my range of virtual coaching packages designed for different stages of your career journey. Visit my website to find the right support for where you are now. [Visit my website: https://www.cyndibennettconsulting.com/1-on-1-coaching]

DISCLOSURE: Some links I share might contain resources that you might find helpful. Whenever possible I use referral links, which means if you click any of the links in this video or description and make a purchase we may receive a small commission or other compensation at no cost to you.

Transcript

Cyndi: [00:00:00] For a lot of trauma survivors, entrepreneurship isn't a passion 
project. It's an exit strategy, and when your business is your only way out, the 
urgency to move fast can become just as dysregulating as the workplace you 
left.
Did you know that trauma impacts how we navigate our careers, but most career 
advice ignores this reality? Imagine feeling confident and safe at work while 
honoring your healing journey. Welcome to Your Trauma-Wise Career Guide, 
the podcast that reimagines career development for trauma survivors. I'm your 
host, Cyndi Bennett, a trauma survivor turned trauma informed career coach 
and founder of the Resilient Career Academy. If you're navigating your career 
while honoring your healing journey, you are in the right place.
Welcome back to your Trauma Wise Career [00:01:00] Guide. I'm Cyndi 
Bennett, your host, and today we're talking about something that is a common 
challenge for trauma survivors who've made the bold, brave, audacious move to 
leave they're paying job to launch off into entrepreneurship-- the tension 
between the urgency to make your business work and the limitations of your 
nervous system.
Today we're going to explore: why this tension exists, what moving at the pace 
of your nervous system really means, when urgency becomes the new trigger, 
and how you build a business that can hold both realities. So let's dive into it.
The first thing I want to talk about is [00:02:00] your motivation behind 
entrepreneurship. What were the things that caused you to make that big, bold, 
brave decision of leaving your day job? Was it your environment? Was there 
toxic leadership? Was there unpredictable environments? Was there a lack of 
autonomy? Those are things that can cause you to want to leave the workplace.
Perhaps there were difficulties managing your trauma symptoms in the 
workplace and there wasn't a choice to work from home. Maybe you were just 
playing exhausted from trying to mask how difficult it was to manage your 
trauma symptoms in the workplace. Whatever your reason for really making 
that decision that, it would be better to leave and to create my own business than 
to stay here and to have to deal with what I'm continuing to deal with and it's 
not getting [00:03:00] any better.
I want you to know that entrepreneurship is a protective decision, not just a 
professional decision. Sometimes we think that if we can just escape, if we can 
move away from the challenges that we're facing in the workplace, things will 
be better. And maybe sometimes it does get better for a little while and 
sometimes you need to take some time to really recover from a toxic work 
environment or nervous system dysregulation, right? We need to do that when 
we're in a bad space.
But it also can be a survival strategy. It's the survival strategy to flee. If we can 
just get away from it. And we can just flee it. If we can just move away from it, 
things will be better. And that's what we tell ourselves when we start a business, 
right?
But once you've made that move to start your business, sometimes we 
[00:04:00] have this "aha" moment where we say, "oh, shoot, I am now 
responsible for making sure that I can make a living." And it causes this almost 
panic or this urgency of: "I got to go, we got to move fast, we got to make 
money."
And that can be really dysregulating for trauma survivors. When you have that 
aha moment and you realize that there's 10,000 things that you need to do in 
order to set up your business before you can get a paycheck, that creates a sense 
of urgency, which can in itself become triggering for trauma survivors.
Let me define urgency because I think it's really important. Urgency relates to 
something that's important, that requires swift action. That's what urgency 
means. And it's [00:05:00] understandable that there's a sense of urgency as it 
relates to bringing in an income so you can support your family and pay your 
bills and all the things. But rushing to build something from nothing comes with 
an inherent sense of danger, which impacts your sense of safety and your 
autonomy that you were seeking in the first place.
This isn't a mindset problem, it's a structural tension. It's the tension between 
what I need to do to survive and the pace that I can move at from my nervous 
system.
When I talk to trauma survivors who've chosen to leave their full-time jobs to 
go into entrepreneurship, I want to support their decision. But I also want them 
to go into it with their eyes wide open about some challenges that they can face 
that are inherent to being a trauma survivor and starting a business. [00:06:00] I 
don't want them to be surprised by the hardship that comes through the work of 
setting this up. I want them to know, hey this is going to be great, you're gonna 
be great at it, but also there's gonna be some things that I don't want you to be 
surprised by when they come up.
I'm not trying to be a Debbie Downer here, but I'm just trying to prepare folks 
for what is ahead of them so that they can be aware of it and acknowledge okay, 
but I don't want you to believe or think that you are not capable of doing this 
'cause you're ultimately capable of doing this.
I want you to know that starting a business is hard, but so is surviving trauma, 
and you've already survived that. You've proven that you have the courage, the 
bravery, the persistence the tenacity, the [00:07:00] relentlessness required to be 
a successful entrepreneur. You already have that. These are the skills that you 
already have, that are needed in order to build a successful business, and you 
already have them. These are tools in your toolbox that you will use often in 
setting up your business.
So I'm not saying you can't be a successful business owner because you've 
experienced trauma. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is there are 
specific challenges related to being a trauma survivor and starting a business. 
And I want to talk about that because I want you to be prepared for when these 
challenges come up. I want you to know and to just say, "Hey, I get that. Cyndi 
told me that was gonna happen. Okay, here's my strategy for that." I want you to 
be prepared for how to handle that so that you [00:08:00] continue to move 
forward.
And one of those things that we want to talk about here, is being able to move at 
the speed of your nervous system. Because when you're setting up your 
business, there is that sense of urgency that you need money to survive, which 
you do, okay? There's no doubt about it. Whether you're drawing off of your 
savings, maybe you got a business loan to be able to start off with, or maybe 
you're drawing off your retirement benefits, ... however it is that you've gotten 
the money to start this business or to leave your full-time job, there is a 
pressure, there's an urgency to build this so that you can start bringing in that 
first paycheck. There is an urgency that will come.
When you're a trauma survivor building a business, you have a nervous system 
that has been informed by trauma. And what that might look like for [00:09:00]
you is: maybe everything seems dangerous. You may have a limited window of 
tolerance, meaning you may have a limited space that represents your optimal 
functioning. You may have challenges with regulation. You may have a limited 
capacity to learn because you have so many other things that are going on that 
are causing dysregulation, right? And when you're dysregulated, it's impossible 
to learn new things. It's impossible to try new things. Every new thing may 
seem overwhelming to you, and that is normal. That's normal for us as trauma 
survivors. So I just want you to be aware of that, okay?
You're moving into a new thing. It's new and exciting, but also there's this sense 
of urgency. So your nervous system has a job to do. Your nervous system's job 
is to keep you safe, and it's going to do that. When that sense of [00:10:00]
urgency causes you to move faster than your nervous system can manage, it will 
cause you to move out of your window of tolerance into either hyper- arousal, 
where you're moving all over the place and you can't seem to get things done, or 
hypo-arousal, where your whole nervous system might shut down and you may 
not be able to get out of bed in the morning or you have no energy. You might 
experience: decision paralysis, you might experience procrastination on 
visibility tasks, you might have physical symptoms like anxiety before sales 
calls because it's a life and death situation, which it feels like at the time, you 
might crash after a productive sprint and it might take you days or weeks to 
recover from that. These are things that may happen or may be happening to 
you already.
[00:11:00] I'm just trying to build your awareness of the things that you might 
experience if you have a nervous system that is informed by trauma.
The challenge here is to recognize that there is a difference between discomfort 
related to growth and dysregulation that signals us to stop. There's a difference 
between them. When you're being stretched and you're growing, it can be 
uncomfortable.
And as Dr. Becky Kennedy says, you're in the learning zone, and everything in 
the learning zone is uncomfortable. And the more you can tolerate the 
discomfort of being in the learning zone, the more you'll learn. And this is a big 
learning opportunity for you.
You're going into something new. You have to learn everything from scratch if 
you've never been an entrepreneur before. Everything is new for you. You may 
not know all the things. You might still be trying to figure it all [00:12:00] out. 
That's a lot. That's a lot on your nervous system all at one time.
So just notice that and recognize, hey, there's a lot that needs to be done, but 
also we're gonna move at a pace that is right for us. Sometimes when we try to 
move too fast, we set ourselves back and then we have to take a break or we 
have to recover and it takes a long time.
But there's one thing that I've learned back in the day when I was much younger 
and much thinner, I used to participate in triathlons. Notice I said participate 
and not compete, right? So I participated as an Athena athlete, which means that 
I had a much larger body type than maybe some of the other triathletes that 
were there.
And I was still required to [00:13:00] run the same course. But I had extra 
weight that I had to carry. It makes sense that I might be moving a little bit 
slower than folks that didn't have to carry the weight, right? And so what I had 
to learn as a result of that, that my body had limitations because of the weight 
that I carried, right? And it required me to learn to pace myself.
Because when I tried to keep up with the people that didn't have to carry the 
same weight that I did, I couldn't finish the race. There was no way for me to 
finish the race because I would burn through all of my energy. I would burn 
through all of the fuel that you consumed during a race. I would burn through 
all that, just trying to keep up with something that I couldn't manage. I couldn't 
manage the pace that they were running because I had weight that they didn't 
have.
[00:14:00] So I had to be really wise about when I can push things and when I 
needed to hold back. And it was a push and a pull and a wisdom issue about 
when I can move fast. Hey, you know what, as a plus size athlete, you can get a 
lot of momentum going when you're going downhill, and there's no work 
involved, you just let the weight take over and you can move downhill pretty 
fast.
But when you're going uphill, that causes you to use calories that other folks 
don't have to use when they're going uphill because they don't have the weight 
behind them and they don't have to carry that weight and use the extra energy in 
order to push that load uphill.
That makes sense to you. This is the same thing. This analogy is the same. 
When you're a trauma survivor, you carry extra weight. You carry the weight of 
your past on your back while you're [00:15:00] trying to do this thing that other 
people do, and they don't have that weight.
And so you have to pace yourself. You have to move at the speed of your 
nervous system so that you can continue to move forward and finish the race. 
Participating in this race is not about how fast you can get done because if you 
don't complete the race, then you haven't won.
The goal is to complete the race. The goal is to set up your business and to be 
able to make money. It's not to move as fast as you can and not be able to 
support it. That is the ying and the yang of what you're into right now and 
hopefully that analogy, made sense to you.
You don't want to push too fast because you can't sustain it. But also you don't 
want to move too slow and then have extra energy at the [00:16:00] end, right? 
You want to move at a pace that you can maintain for the whole race, and you 
need endurance. You need persistence. You need tenacity. You need all the 
things that you have gained as a trauma survivor just by surviving. You already 
have that.
Let's say for example, you take some training on how to start your business, 
which when you don't know what you're doing is wise, right? But also many of 
these programs that teach you how to start your business are not traumainformed. They don't account for the limitations of your nervous system. They 
don't account for all the other things that you are managing and all the rest of 
the areas that you're using your capacity in, like healing, for example. Or trying 
to manage your trauma symptoms. Or trying to manage your dysregulation. 
They don't [00:17:00] account for that. That takes energy too. And they don't 
account for that, right? So I want you to be aware of that.
So when they are teaching you things, they have you moving at a pace where it 
is beneficial for those people who don't carry the weight of that. They're moving 
you at a very quick pace. Maybe it's an eight week course, maybe it's a 12 week 
course, but they're moving you at a pace that is exhausting for trauma survivors 
who are walking around with this hundred pound back from their past. They're 
not taking into consideration that weight that you're carrying.
You cannot, as a trauma survivor, sustain that pace. I have been through 
multiple training programs. I've been through training programs about how to 
start your business. I've been through training programs about how to set up 
your email marketing. I've been through programs about how to do courses and 
how to set up a membership program, and how to do launches. I've done a lot of 
different courses [00:18:00] just trying to learn what it is that I need to do to set 
up my business and to be successful. They were big programs and none of them 
were trauma-informed.
None of them took into account what I was carrying as a trauma survivor or 
what the capacity of my nervous system was, or what my window of tolerance 
was for getting all those things done.
Sometimes I went through those programs and I felt like I failed because I 
couldn't keep up. And that's the same with triathlons. You can think, "I'm 
failing, because I'm not keeping up from them." But guess what? You're not 
competing against them. You're competing against those who are in the same 
category as you are. You're competing against those who have some of the same 
challenges that you have. That's your category that you're in, right?
And so you need to do things differently in order to be successful. That's what I 
[00:19:00] want to challenge you to do, is to really think about how you need to 
move differently, the pace that you need to move at, the priorities that you need 
to set, or the things that you need to eliminate in order to be successful.
There are certain things that I do in my business where I will eliminate a 
required task for a launch because I don't have the capacity in my nervous 
system when I'm launching a new program to do the extra thing, and so I make 
a strategic decision. I have a choice. Choice is very important to us, right? I 
have a choice that I can make to defer that activity to maybe the next launch. 
Maybe I'll have more capacity to do it in the next launch because I don't have to 
build all of the [00:20:00] deliverables for this initial launch. I can make the 
decision based upon the capacity of my nervous system.
For us, as trauma survivors, learning how to move at the pace of our own 
nervous system, not anybody else's, our own nervous systems, is a critical skill 
for success for us as business owners. We have to learn how to pay attention to 
when we notice. Noticing is a really big skill. When we can notice when we're 
starting to move outside of our window of tolerance, outside of that window of 
excellence, where we're at our best, when we start creeping up towards hyper 
arousal, we start to have this overwhelming anxiety. And we start to question 
ourselves, we start to question our abilities to be able to do this.
But then if you're [00:21:00] on the bottom end too, if you're over capacity... 
and this has hit me so many times, I cannot even tell you. When I think, "ah, I 
can do that, no problem, and I can do this, and I can do this, and I can do this, 
and I don't take into account how overcommitted I am to do it, I get 
overwhelmed and I shut down and then I don't do any of it. And that happens.
You have this sweet spot, called the window of tolerance. Learning how to 
recognize when you're on the edges of that window of tolerance is a really 
important and critical skill for trauma survivors, especially when they're going 
into business. Because you're the only one doing the thing. Unless you've hired 
somebody to help you do the things and you have that ability to pay somebody 
to do it, which most new entrepreneurs don't have, you're the [00:22:00] one 
that has to do all the things. You're the one that has to make all the decisions.
This brings up that sense of urgency. " Man, I have a whole list of things that 
need to get done in order to just be able to get a paycheck, maybe get a 
paycheck. And at the beginning when you're just building your skills, you're 
building your reputation, it may not be a big pay paycheck. It may not even pay 
all your bills, and so it creates a sense of urgency.
For some of us as trauma survivors, urgency is already a trigger. It's already a 
trigger. Let's think about this way: when you were in the workplace, how did 
you react when you had an impending deadline, and you're not ready? I have a 
part that tells me, you're not ready, you're not ready, you're not ready, you're not 
ready... all the time on repeat. Hey, we have this urgent deadline. It's this date, 
[00:23:00] and you're not ready.
What does that do inside of you? Does it set off alarm bells? Does it set off 
extra anxiety? It does for me. And when I have so much anxiety that I can't 
think straight, that means I'm outside my window of tolerance. So this urgency 
to get your business set up is a stressor. And it puts pressure on your nervous 
system.
And when your business is your exit strategy, the pressure to make it work fast 
can feel like life or death. It can feel like survival. So you're in survival mode. 
And then what happens is when we're in survival mode, our frontal cortex goes 
offline, isn't that great?
We lose the ability to think straight. We lose the ability to strategize. We lose 
the ability to prioritize. We lose the ability to think straight when [00:24:00]
we're not regulated. When we're in survival strategy, when we're hyper aroused 
or hypo aroused, we lose the ability for critical decision making.
Now this might show up in our business as underpricing out of fear. Not getting 
the proper value that we bring to the table. It might show up as overcommitting 
to clients because you feel like you gotta do everything, even when you know 
you're over capacity. It might be, it might show up as avoiding sales calls 
because they feel threatening to you. It might be launching your business before 
you're ready or not launching your business when you are ready, because you're 
afraid of what could happen.
This is something that you can mindfully manage. You can mindfully manage 
this. It's not something that's impossible to overcome, and I want you to hear 
that. [00:25:00] You may discover a whole new set of triggers as an 
entrepreneur, that you didn't experience when you were a worker in the 
workplace. And that's okay. These are just new triggers that you add to your 
workplace trigger tracker, and then you come up with strategies for managing 
and handling them. But you already have proven that you have the skills to do 
that, and so it's just becomes business as usual for a trauma survivor.
But be aware that you may experience new triggers, or that these triggers might 
be different than what you experienced in the workplace. And there will be 
some new ones. For me, urgency is a trigger, but also showing up in public, 
showing up on social media is a trigger for me. Being seen can be a trigger. Or 
having to set a value for your service. [00:26:00] Seeing yourself as valuable 
could be a trigger.
How many times do trauma survivors have challenges with knowing what their 
worth is financially. Yikes, that can also be a trigger, right? But these are not 
triggers that you're not prepared to handle. These are not triggers that you don't 
have the skill to manage and handle. So I want you to hear that.
So now that we've talked about all that, how do you build a business that allows 
for the tension between wanting to get it built quickly so that you can bring in a 
paycheck and also staying within the limits of your nervous system capacity?
If you've been following me for any length of time, you'll know one of the 
things that I always say is that "the work develops the worker." As an 
entrepreneur, this is the work. You [00:27:00] don't have to choose between 
healing and being a business owner, because being a business owner and 
dealing with all the things that come up as a business owner is the healing work. 
It is the healing work. You're working through the challenges that you have to 
face. You're overcoming the triggers, you're creating the strategies for dealing 
with the triggers when they come up. You're processing them because you're 
healing as you're building, right? It's not either or, it's both and.
I want to provide you some trauma informed tips for entrepreneurship. Number 
one is set reasonable timeline expectations based on your nervous system's 
capacity. Number two, work within your zone of excellence. When are the 
times when you are at your best? [00:28:00] Is it in the morning? Is it in the 
evening? When are those times when you're at your best, at your sharpest? 
When you're the most regulated during the day? Work within those times. Your 
zone of excellence I call it. Number three, use revenue models that are 
sustainable for you. For me as an example, having back to back to back 
individual coaching sessions without a break is not sustainable for me. I can't do 
it. And so that's not sustainable. Maybe you have group coaching sessions. 
Whatever it is, have a revenue model that you can sustain. Number four, 
develop offers that you can consistently deliver on, even if you're having a bad 
day. Number five, establish support structures for regulation and business 
guidance. Have mentors have business people that you can join. Maybe you join 
a mastermind. Maybe it's a free mastermind of other business [00:29:00] owners 
that have some of the same challenges that you can bounce things off of, or ask 
questions to. Have that support structure to help you be successful.
I want to share with you a power powerful reframe: moving at the pace of your 
nervous system isn't moving too slowly. It is a strategic decision that helps you 
keep moving forward consistently.
So if you are on this exciting journey of building your own business and things 
seem challenging, it can be helpful to remind yourself of your why. Why did 
you decide to do this? It all comes down to: you believed in yourself. At some 
point, you believed in yourself that you were [00:30:00] capable of doing things 
better for yourself, that you can make it work better and differently for yourself. 
And I want you to hold onto that belief, especially during the tough times, 
because there will be tough times. But I want you to hold onto that tenaciously. 
Don't ever let that belief go, the belief that I can do it. I want you to hold onto 
that. Tell yourself "I've got this," even if you don't feel like it. I have a sticky 
note on the bottom of my monitor, it tells me "you've got this." Use sticky notes, 
use hangups to remind yourself of truth during hard times. You're gonna need it. 
But you can do this. You've got this.
Let me ask you a question: where in your business right now are you pushing 
beyond the [00:31:00] pace and capacity of your nervous system, and what is it 
costing you? If you are in the thick of it right now, trying to build something 
real while your nervous system is doing its best to protect you. I'd love to talk to 
you. A discovery call is a no pressure conversation about where you are and 
what support might actually help. To schedule a discovery call the link is in the 
show notes.
Thank you so much for joining us for Your Trauma-Wise Career guide. I'll see 
you next time.
You're not walking this path alone. Every step you take toward a trauma-wise 
career is an act of courage, and I'm here cheering you on. If today's episode 
resonated with you, share it with another survivor who needs to hear this 
message. Together we're rewriting the rules of career success. Keep rising. Keep 
healing. Keep [00:32:00] building.