How early lessons about work, worth and silence followed me into money, rest and receiving.
I was eighteen when a workplace experience reinforced something I had already begun learning much earlier:
Other people's needs came first, and mine were something to manage quietly.
I was unwell with chickenpox. Clearly unwell. Contagious. Exhausted.
And yet I went to work.
At the time, I didn't have language for nervous system responses, workplace culture, boundaries or moral injury.
I simply knew what I had learned to do:
Keep going. Don't make a fuss. Don't let your needs inconvenience anyone else.
Looking back, I can see that the workplace didn't create this belief from nothing.
It reinforced something the wider culture around me had already begun teaching me — that being hardworking meant enduring, being responsible meant coping, and needing support could feel dangerously close to failing.
That combination would shape far more than the way I worked.
Years later, I would begin to recognise its fingerprints in my relationship with rest, receiving, responsibility — and money.
Before the Workplace, I Had Already Learned to Cope
I grew up in Griffith, in the Riverina region of New South Wales, during the 1990s.
My experience was of a hardworking community where getting on with things was highly valued.
There was much to admire in that work ethic.
But the message I absorbed went beyond working hard.
You worked.
You kept up.
You didn't complain.
And asking for help could feel like admitting you weren't coping.
We didn't have the everyday language around mental health, burnout, boundaries and nervous system regulation that many of us have access to now.
At sixteen, I was living independently, supporting myself and completing an apprenticeship without the kind of scaffolding I now understand a young person needs.
I became capable because I had to.
And capability became a kind of armour.
I learned to work.
I learned to survive.
I learned to be responsible.
What I hadn't yet learned was that I was allowed to need things too.
Practical reflection: If you were praised for being mature, responsible or low-maintenance when you were young, consider what those qualities may have required you to suppress.
When Speaking Up Changed Something
From the outside, my workplace looked successful.
It was busy, respected and professionally accomplished.
My experience inside it was more complicated.
By the final stages of my apprenticeship, I was struggling.
Eventually, I spoke honestly about what I was experiencing.
I wasn't trying to create conflict. I believed telling the truth was the responsible thing to do.
But afterwards, something changed.
My experience was one of subtle distancing and exclusion.
There wasn't necessarily one dramatic event I could point to and say, There. That's what happened.
And perhaps that's partly why experiences like this can be so difficult to understand.
Sometimes there is no explosion.
There is simply a growing awareness that speaking honestly has changed your sense of belonging.
For someone already accustomed to surviving through competence and self-reliance, that can reinforce a powerful lesson:
Speaking up about what you need may cost you something.
Moral Injury Gave Me Another Way to Understand It
Years later, I came across the concept of moral injury.
The term is often used to describe distress associated with experiences that violate deeply held moral beliefs or values, including situations involving betrayal, powerlessness or being unable to act in accordance with what feels right.
I don't use the term to retrospectively diagnose my younger self or reduce a complicated experience to a clinical label.
But it has given me another lens through which to understand what happens when integrity, responsibility and belonging collide.
Sometimes the injury isn't simply:
Something difficult happened to me.
It can also be:
I did what I believed was right, and it didn't make me safer.
Or:
I knew something wasn't right, but I didn't feel able to act on that knowing.
That distinction has mattered to me.
Because it shifts the question from:
Why didn't I cope better?
to:
What choices actually felt available to me at the time?
The Day My Body Became an Inconvenience
One memory remains particularly vivid.
I was eighteen and had developed chickenpox.
I remember being expected to cover the visible signs and continue working.
I was unwell, exhausted and contagious.
It was also a busy time at work.
So I complied.
Looking back as an adult, it would be easy to ask:
Why didn't you just refuse?
Why didn't you go home?
But those questions assume that saying no felt like a safe and realistic option to the eighteen-year-old version of me.
It didn't.
I was young.
I was supporting myself.
I had learned to keep going.
And my livelihood and sense of belonging were connected to the workplace.
So I did what had worked for me before.
I put my needs aside.
This is something I understand very differently now.
Sometimes what looks like compliance from the outside makes much more sense when we understand the circumstances around it.
Practical reflection: When you judge yourself for not having spoken up in the past, ask instead: What did I believe might happen if I said no?
What My Nervous System Learned About Being "Good"
Experiences don't need to remain as perfectly remembered stories to influence us.
Repeated experiences can shape our expectations about relationships, work, safety and ourselves.
We learn what earns approval.
What creates conflict.
What keeps us connected.
And what we're allowed to need.
Bessel van der Kolk's work helped introduce me to ways of thinking about trauma that included bodily experience, rather than focusing only on the story we can consciously tell.
My later training, including completing Linda Thai's Certificate in Somatic Embodiment & Regulation in 2026, further deepened my interest in regulation, attachment, embodiment and protective responses.
Through my own personal and professional development, I began recognising patterns in myself:
Working harder when I felt uncertain.
Finding rest surprisingly difficult.
Feeling responsible for keeping things together.
Being highly attuned to what other people needed.
Finding it much harder to recognise when I had reached my own capacity.
None of these qualities is inherently unhealthy.
Being hardworking, caring and responsible can be strengths.
The difficulty comes when they stop feeling like choices.
When you don't know how to put responsibility down.
When rest brings guilt.
When someone's disappointment feels like evidence you've done something wrong.
When being needed feels safer than needing.
That is where an old survival strategy can quietly follow us into adult life.
Then I Saw the Same Pattern in Money
This was the connection I didn't expect.
My beliefs about work and worth hadn't stayed in the workplace.
They had travelled into my relationship with money.
And that makes sense to me now.
If safety has become connected with being useful, earning can become entangled with overworking.
If having needs feels uncomfortable, spending money on yourself can bring guilt.
If receiving has historically carried obligation or uncertainty, being paid can feel surprisingly exposing.
And if uncertainty automatically makes you work harder, financial anxiety can keep you endlessly productive without ever allowing you to feel secure.
This is why I sometimes describe money difficulties as relational patterns wearing a money costume.
The money itself still matters.
Real financial hardship matters.
Income, debt, housing costs, caregiving responsibilities, financial inequality and access to resources matter.
No amount of nervous system regulation replaces practical financial support when the problem is genuinely financial.
But sometimes the numbers aren't the whole story.
Underneath them may be a much older question:
Am I still safe if I'm not constantly producing?
Or:
Can I receive without immediately giving something back?
Or perhaps:
Can I have needs without risking belonging?
These are the questions that eventually led me to look at money very differently.
Safe Enough to Have Needs
This lived experience is part of what has informed my Enoughness framework.
Safe Enough With Money
I don't have to solve everything while I'm activated.
Safety isn't about convincing myself that nothing difficult will happen.
It's about creating enough steadiness to recognise the choices I have now.
Good Enough With Money
Being responsible is not the same as being responsible for everything.
That distinction is particularly important when you've built an identity around being the dependable one.
Worthy Enough With Money
Receiving, resting and having boundaries aren't things I have to earn.
For me, this reaches closest to what my younger self needed to know.
My needs don't become legitimate only when everyone else's have been met.
Rest isn't a reward for reaching exhaustion.
And saying no doesn't automatically make me uncaring.
What Naming This Changed for Me
There can be something profoundly relieving about discovering that a pattern you've treated as a personal flaw has a history.
Naming that history doesn't erase personal responsibility.
It gives us context.
And context can create choice.
Instead of asking:
Why can't I just relax?
I can ask:
What makes rest difficult for me?
Instead of:
Why do I always take responsibility for everything?
I can ask:
When did responsibility become connected with safety?
Instead of:
Why does receiving make me uncomfortable?
I can become curious about what receiving has meant in my relationships.
Those questions have been far more useful to me than demanding that I simply become better at boundaries, money or rest.
And perhaps this is the part of my story I most want to share.
If you learned early that being capable kept you safe, capability can become difficult to loosen.
If you learned that other people's needs came first, having needs of your own can feel uncomfortable long after the original circumstances have changed.
And if speaking honestly once affected your sense of belonging or security, finding your voice again may take time.
What I Know Now That I Didn't Know Then
I can look back at that eighteen-year-old now with knowledge she didn't have.
I understand workplace dynamics differently.
I understand boundaries differently.
I understand stress and protective responses differently.
Most importantly, I understand that the choices available to us today aren't always the choices we felt we had then.
The work isn't to criticise my younger self for not having stronger boundaries.
It's recognising that I have choices now that she didn't yet know how to access.
And today I can hold something she couldn't:
My needs matter too.
Not more than everyone else's.
Not instead of everyone else's.
But alongside them.
Perhaps that's where Enoughness really begins.
Not with becoming fearless.
Not with never overworking again.
Not with perfectly healed boundaries.
But with discovering that you can have needs, limits, a voice and a place in the room — all at the same time.
And you don't have to prove your worth by silently enduring.
If This Story Feels Familiar
This article is the personal story underneath much of what I've been exploring in my recent writing about money and the body.
In 12 Signs Money Stress Lives in the Body, I explored the everyday physical signs that financial stress can bring.
In Why Does Money Stress Feel Physical?, I looked more closely at why money can activate stress responses.
And in How Trauma Affects Money in Everyday Life, I explored how experiences around safety, responsibility and relationships can influence everyday financial behaviour.
For me, these aren't separate conversations.
Work, worth, money, receiving, responsibility, rest and belonging can become deeply intertwined.
If you'd like a gentle place to explore those connections in your own life, my reflective guide Money, Safety & the Body: The Missing Link was created for that purpose.
Explore Money, Safety & the Body: The Missing Link
If you'd like to explore these patterns therapeutically, you can also learn more about working with me.
