moving past corporate trauma

We often think of trauma as catastrophic events, but trauma isn't always dramatic or immediately obvious. 

Big T Trauma refers to severe, life-threatening incidents like assault, war, or natural disasters. These experiences commonly lead to diagnoses such as PTSD and are widely recognized in clinical psychology, thanks to foundational researchers like Judith Herman, Bessel van der Kolk, and the American Psychiatric Association (APA). 

Big T trauma and PTSD in the workplace are most commonly associated with emergency services, first responders and military, but this doesn't mean that Big T trauma doesn't also sometimes in the corporate world. 

Corporate trauma will more often fit the bill of little t trauma. Little t trauma describes chronic, cumulative experiences that repeatedly undermine an individual's sense of safety, autonomy, or worth. Examples include workplace bullying, constant criticism, excessive workload, ongoing invalidation, and systemic silencing. 

Researchers Peter Levine and Gabor Maté suggest that trauma is defined not just by the event itself but by how the body and nervous system respond over time.

Corporate trauma emerges gradually within organizational cultures that normalize harm under the guise of productivity, professionalism, or performance. Though rarely visible as immediate crisis, corporate trauma steadily erodes trust, psychological safety, and individual wellbeing.

Naming corporate trauma clearly helps validate experiences that are often minimized. It creates the necessary urgency for leaders and organizations to proactively address these issues, protecting people and culture before harm escalates.

Corporate trauma (little t) can be defined as the psychological and emotional harm that individuals or groups experience as a result of toxic, high-pressure, or dehumanizing work environments. It’s not a clinical diagnosis,  but it captures a real and often unspoken impact of harmful organizational culture and practices.

We define Corporate PTSD as the long term psychological damage and/or long lasting after-effects of a traumatic workplace experience, (or a series of adverse events in the workplace) that impact the way we show up at work. 

Through our work as change consultants we have seen a lot. We have worked with some workplaces where they described the tenure of a certain leader as "reign of terror", and others where individuals in leadership roles had been arrested as a result of their actions towards others in the workplace.

Not all of the workplaces we have experience have had this level of trauma, but we have also seen and lived in corporate toxicity ourselves to know that it doesn't need to get that bad to have long lasting effects that continue to surface long after we have left the workplaces. We have also seen and heard enough from others where everyone knows things are bad, but they are too scared to do anything about it. 

This is why we are undertaking this work. We want to raise awareness, and on the individual level give people voices if they have felt silenced. On the organizational level, we hope to be able to create enough visibility around the issue that we can one day start to make change to it.