St. Louis Business Journal
Family dysfunctions can be turned into workplace strengths

By Anna Navarro

May 1998 - One of the realities of our times is that between 20 million to 40 million Americans in the work force grew up in what most of us would agree are dysfunctional families-those where alcoholism, drug addiction and/or emotional, physical or sexual abuse occurred.

As a career strategist, I have observed that survivors who have worked through their painful childhoods often bring an amazing array of strengths to the workplace.

No one would ever choose to grow up in this kind of situation. But it is a tribute to the beauty and strength of the human spirit that some people manage to develop useful skills that directly result from these childhood traumas.

Here is a list of the strengths I have noticed in these survivors, along with the early life experiences that helped shape them:

Creativity - Children who grow up in tough family situations often escape into their imaginations as a way of coping with life. As a result they often have highly developed creative skills.

Independence - Children who are left to fend for themselves often develop the capacity to work alone to a great degree. This is a great asset in many work situations.

Perceptiveness - Children in dysfunctional families often need to be extremely observant to survive. They learn to be alert to signs that predict danger, realizing, for example, that a mother is angry when she bites her bottom lip, or that a father is likely to strike out if he jingles coins in his pocket. As children, this was a critical self-protective device; as adults, this can translate into being able to predict behavior from minimal cues, which can be very helpful in areas like negotiation or sales.

Ability to connect with plants and animals - For many children who can't depend on the adults in their lives, relationships with animals and even plants offer a safe haven. As adults, this can mean a capacity to respond and interact very sensitively with living creatures who are not human.

Not all of these traits apply to everyone who has grown up in a dysfunctional family but many of my clients with a troubled family history exhibit one or more of these patterns.

I want to emphasize that I am not a psychologist, counselor or therapist. These are my informal observations as a career strategist and a person who is constantly in awe of how human beings can grow flowers from the compost of difficult life experiences. It is not meant as a prescription for how adults from dysfunctional families should orient their careers but as an acknowledgement of their resilience in coping with adversity.

Before dysfunctional family traumas can be turned into the potential workplace strengths I have noted, most people have to go through a period of intense recovery, which is itself painful.This usually requires the help of psychologists, therapists or groups such as twelve step programs. Very few people can heal without outside assistance of some kind.

This kind of healing must, almost without exception, precede work or career issues. When people come to me to work on career issues without having first resolved serious dysfunctional family issues, I refer them to appropriate resources for that kind of help. And therapists often refer clients who have already been through this kind of healing to me-because once they have tackled their childhood traumas, their old careers sometimes no longer fit.

I've noticed that people with dysfunctional family backgrounds often start out in jobs that have a caretaking aspect. Even as children, they often are the most grown up and responsible individuals in the home. They may have fed themselves, gotten their siblings off to school, and even helped a parent who passed out on the floor into bed. When they grow up they often first gravitate to the helping professions-health care, education, social work.

But unless somewhere along the way they have learned to establish good boundaries, set limits and say no, these kind of jobs tend to eat away at them and become overwhelming. They often need help moving out of caretaking jobs and into careers which emphasize their other talents.

The case studies I'm about to share all represent individuals who dealt with their family issues before coming to work with me on career objectives. They all had reached a point in their recovery where they were in touch with their own likes and dislikes, could make decisions and act on them. All found strengths derived from miserable childhoods:

• There was a customer service manager for a large catalogue retailer. Now that's the ultimate caretaker! She was very good at what she did but unhappy on the job. As the only child of a single mother who often left her alone while she went out drinking, my client amused herself by cutting out magazine pictures and making collages of a dream family. Using her visual creativity and the ability to be self-directed, she moved into catalogue production, working with graphics, copy writing and layout at the same company.

• Or the attorney who was unhappy with the adversarial nature of his career which required an ego strength he didn't possess. Using a capacity to observe details which he'd developed in order to predict and hide from his father's abusive rages, he became a private investigator and made more money than he ever did as a lawyer.

• My favorite example is the woman who managed a health care clinic, juggling dozens of responsibilities at the same time. It wore her down. She ultimately chose a career as a zoologist specializing in reptiles. One of her peak experiences growing up had been escaping to the creek in her back yard when her parents fought.

The basic challenge in working with survivors of dysfunctional families is helping them get in touch with what they want because they're used to focusing on the behavior and needs of others, thus the orientation to caretaker roles.

It cannot be emphasized too strongly that career work builds on a relatively healthy self, rather than the other way around. The notion of escaping your problems or your past though work is misdirected.

This is a very sensitive issue and a very personal one. I would never want to minimize the pain involved. Nor do I mean to present myself as Pollyanna who sees this as a simple transition.

In my work as a career strategist, one of my goals is to help my clients utilize strengths derived from their past life experiences, even if they have been difficult. Ultimately, no one can erase their history, so I try to help them make the most of it.

Anna Navarro is the founder of Work Transitions, a nationwide career consulting firm that trains independent career strategists and consults with individual clients.

This column was originally published by the St. Louis Business Journal. The actual title of the column and date in which it appeared in the Business Journal may be slightly different from what appears on WorkTransitions.com.