Connect Therapy and Career

06/05/2026

Career shame is the experience of interpreting something about your career as evidence of personal inadequacy.

It can develop after a job loss, a stalled progression, a period outside the workforce, or a career decision someone now regrets. The career circumstance becomes fused with a judgment about who the person is.

Career shame is deeper than career dissatisfaction. Dissatisfaction concerns the work or situation. Shame turns the assessment inward.

I should be further ahead.
I have wasted my potential.
People will realize I am less successful than they assumed.

The emotional weight comes from what the career appears to reveal about the self.

Career shame is also socially produced.

People assess their careers against inherited ideas about what a successful life should look like. Those standards may come from family, a profession, a peer group, workplace culture, or social class.

It can affect people whose careers look successful. External achievement does not remove the possibility of feeling behind or embarrassed by the direction a career has taken.

Career shame can also distort career decisions.

Someone may pursue a promotion they do not want, remain in a profession that is harming them, conceal a job loss, or reject a necessary period of recovery because of how the decision may be interpreted.

Some career indecision is shaped by this. Leaving can feel like admitting failure. Beginning again can feel like evidence of falling behind.

Structural conditions can also become individualized as shame.

Layoffs, discrimination, inaccessible workplaces, caregiving demands, illness, or harmful organizational conditions can alter a career substantially. People may still interpret the outcome as a private failure.

The underlying question becomes: Which career choice will make my life work, and which one will make my career easier to defend?

Career shame can make the second question feel more urgent than the first.

05/24/2026

I picked up peonies from the farmers market this weekend.

A small thing, but it felt noticeable after a busy first quarter and a period of go-go-go.

My counselling practice has been busier than ever, and I have now completed the first half of UBC’s Organizational Coaching program (reflections to come). There have also been health and family things running in the background, as there often are.

Life keeps going, regardless of how busy work becomes.

I have been thinking about work-life balance lately, and how often we talk about it as an idealized lifestyle we will eventually be able to achieve. Clear separation between work and life, where work doesn’t take over the other parts of ourselves and our lives.

Life is complex and sometimes messy.

We go through different seasons in our lives and careers. Some periods ask more from us for a while, and holding on too tightly to this idea of balance isn’t always helpful.

You may be starting a business, raising young children, navigating health or family stress, or working without the kind of support that would make things easier.

I think where we run into trouble is when we start treating every season like it is supposed to feel sustainable in the exact same way.

A demanding season does not automatically mean something is wrong.

There is also a difference between temporary intensity and a way of living that slowly diminishes your capacity without you realizing it.

I have been thinking a lot lately about the difference between balance and alignment.

Balance can sometimes sound like everything should receive equal time, energy, and attention. Real life rarely works that way.

Alignment feels different to me. More honest and adaptive. It asks whether the way you are currently living and working still feels connected to what matters to you, even if the season itself is demanding.

There are periods where work will take up more space. There are also periods where recovery, relationships, health, family, or simply rest need to move closer to the centre again.

For me, this weekend, that meant slowing down long enough to notice the peonies from the farmers market instead of moving straight to the next thing.

05/16/2026

I used to think that being the best version of myself meant constantly improving. Becoming more disciplined, self-aware, productive, emotionally regulated, healed, resilient.

I lived as if there was a future version of me who would finally arrive untouched by uncertainty, exhaustion, contradiction, grief, or self-doubt.

I believed that if I worked on myself enough, I would eventually become a strong, confident woman who was unshakeable.

What I understand now is that growth does not remove your humanity.

You do not reach a point where you stop feeling hurt, confused, disappointed, overwhelmed, insecure, or afraid.

You become more capable of meeting those experiences without abandoning yourself inside them.

You stop treating every hard moment as proof that you are failing.

I think a lot of self-improvement culture reinforces the fantasy that healthy people eventually transcend ordinary human vulnerability.

That if you heal enough, optimize enough, regulate enough, you will finally become someone who moves through life untouched by emotional disruption.

But many forms of maturity begin when we stop trying to make ourselves unreachable by life.

There is something deeply human about still being affected by life.

Grief can disorient you because love was real.

Uncertainty can feel destabilizing because something important is at stake.

Disappointment can hurt because you allowed yourself to want something.

Exhaustion can be information that you have been trying to function beyond what your system can sustain.

None of that means you have failed to grow.

It may mean you are having an honest response to something real.

I no longer think the best version of myself is some future woman who cannot be shaken.

Maybe the best version of me was never a perfected version of me.

Maybe she is the version of me who no longer believes she has to become someone else to be worthy.

05/06/2026

I contributed to a recent Globe and Mail Nine to Five column on how to recover after being fired for a serious mistake early in your career.

One of the main points I made is that the goal in an interview is a non-event, not a confession.

A serious mistake does not usually need to be erased from a resume. Two years of work experience matters, and leaving it off can create a gap that raises more questions than the job itself.

The more useful work is learning how to explain what happened clearly and with proportion. That means taking responsibility without turning the interview into a detailed retelling of the mistake.

It also means being able to speak to what you learned and how you would handle a similar situation differently now.

I see a similar pattern with other difficult interview topics, including resume gaps or experience that is not an exact match. The goal is to respond honestly, stay grounded, and show how you learn.

Thank you to Andrea Yu for inviting me to contribute to this piece for The Globe and Mail.

The article may require access depending on your subscription or article limit.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/careers/career-advice/article-i-made-a-huge-mistake-and-was-fired-should-i-leave-that-job-off-my/

When explaining your departure, no one needs the full story. Prepare a concise, neutral and forward-looking, experts say

05/06/2026

I contributed to a recent Globe and Mail Nine to Five column on how to recover after being fired for a serious mistake early in your career.

One of the main points I made is that the goal in an interview is a non-event, not a confession.

A serious mistake does not usually need to be erased from a resume. Two years of work experience matters, and leaving it off can create a gap that raises more questions than the job itself.

The more useful work is learning how to explain what happened clearly and with proportion. That means taking responsibility without turning the interview into a detailed retelling of the mistake.

It also means being able to speak to what you learned and how you would handle a similar situation differently now.

I see a similar pattern with other difficult interview topics, including resume gaps or experience that is not an exact match. The goal is to respond honestly, stay grounded, and show how you learn.

Thank you to Andrea Yu for inviting me to contribute to this piece for .

Link in bio.

The article may require access depending on your subscription or article limit.

04/11/2026

Many professionals describe themselves by saying, “I am an executive,” “I am a lawyer,” “I am a nurse,” or “I am a software developer” without realizing how easily that wording can fuse identity with work.

Sometimes, when I am working with clients whose sense of self has become closely tied to their role, I suggest a small shift in language:

“I work as a ________”

instead of

“I am a ________”

It can sound minor, but it often changes more than people expect.

For many people, work becomes closely tied to identity because it is where they have invested so much of themselves over time. It may be where they have developed a sense of competence, come to feel recognized, found purpose, or learned to understand themselves in relation to others.

That is part of what gives work meaning. It is also part of what can make work-related distress so destabilizing.

When the connection between work and identity becomes too tight, workplace experiences can start to register as judgments about personal worth rather than information about a role or an environment.

A difficult manager can start to feel like evidence that something is wrong with you.

A missed promotion can begin to feel like a verdict on your value.

A layoff, role change, or period of instability can become psychologically disruptive far beyond the practical loss. The threat can extend into the identity that has formed around the role and the way someone has come to understand themselves through it.

This is part of why work stress can cut so deeply. Sometimes the issue is not only pressure or disappointment. Sometimes the role has taken up too much space in how someone understands themselves.

Creating some distance between the person and the role can help restore perspective. The goal is not to minimize the importance of work, but to loosen a connection that has become too all-encompassing.

A role is something you do. It is not the full measure of who you are.

That distinction can reduce how much power work has over the way someone sees themselves.

04/05/2026

Time off from work does not always feel the way people expect it to.

Sometimes a long weekend feels restful. Sometimes it is the first real chance to notice how much strain has been building underneath the surface.

That is part of what can make work stress and burnout so easy to minimize while they are happening. People keep functioning and meeting expectations. They focus on getting through what is in front of them.

Then the pace changes, and the impact becomes harder to ignore.

One of my favourite ways to rest is spending time with my dogs. We took a walk by the river this morning, and the sun on my face felt especially good after what has felt like a long rainy season.

For those celebrating Easter, happy Easter. For those with a long weekend, I hope there is some room to slow down, rest, and reconnect with what matters to you.

03/14/2026

Conversations about burnout often begin with the assumption that the problem originates inside the workplace.

From that perspective, the solution appears straightforward: learn to “leave work at work” and improve work-life balance.

In my clinical work with professionals, this commonly repeated advice rarely proves effective.

Experiences outside of work influence attention and judgment throughout the workday. When a family member is ill, a relationship is falling apart, or financial strain and uncertainty are present, attention is naturally pulled away from the tasks in front of us.

What happens at work does not remain contained there either. Conversations replay in the mind long after the workday ends, and difficult interactions may linger into the evening or resurface while trying to fall asleep.

Work strain may also appear as increased irritability or being short with a spouse or children. By the end of the day, the same cognitive and emotional resources used at work have already been heavily taxed.

Work and life function within the same psychological system. The same cognitive capacity, nervous system regulation, emotional bandwidth, and identity structures support both.

When pressure develops in one area, its effects extend into the other. The separation of work and life is a false binary, similar to the outdated belief that the mind and body operate independently.

Understanding burnout therefore requires looking beyond the workplace alone. Professional demands, personal responsibilities, and identity investment in work draw on the same internal resources over time.

I wrote more about this interaction, why work stress, career, and mental health cannot be understood as separate domains, and why this distinction matters.

Read the full article: Work and Life Are Inseparable: Why Work Stress, Career, and Mental Health Are Deeply Connected
https://connecttherapyandcareer.com/blog/work-life-burnout-mental-health

03/10/2026

When someone says “it’s all in your head,” the implication is that it isn’t real. That the reaction is exaggerated, or that the problem would disappear if you simply thought about it differently.

For professionals living with chronic work stress, the phrase ends up being literally accurate. That is precisely what makes it serious.

Many notice it first in their thinking. Decisions that used to resolve quickly start taking more effort. Judgement feels slightly less certain. The work itself has not changed, but the cognitive load of doing it has.

Most people assume it is age, or something personal they cannot quite place.

Research on chronic stress shows something more specific. Prolonged activation of the stress response is associated with measurable changes in brain function, particularly in areas such as the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus, which support planning, complex judgement, and memory.

These are physiological responses to sustained stress exposure. Not simply a feeling of being overwhelmed.

When people dismiss stress with the phrase “it’s all in your head,” the assumption is that this makes it less real.

The neuroscience points in the opposite direction.

The phrase was right. Just not in the way it was meant.

03/09/2026

Grateful to be featured in the Friday Member Spotlight by the .

The Chamber plays an important role in connecting local businesses and strengthening the entrepreneurial community in Squamish. I appreciate the work they do to support small business owners and founders in the region.

Erica Nye, RCC, CCC
Founder and Clinical Director
Connect Therapy & Career