Recovery After Workplace Trauma: Tips to Support Control Over Your Daily Life

Trauma can profoundly affect our thoughts, feelings, and physical reactions, making everyday tasks feel overwhelming. While a traumatic incident can take place at work (often the case for those in first responder roles or public-facing positions), it has a ripple effect across all areas of life. It can disrupt sleep, concentration, motivation, energy levels, routines, relationships, and identity.

Recovery isn’t just about returning to work. It’s about re-engaging in everyday activities that bring structure, meaning, and enjoyment. For some, that may involve returning to a previous role after a mental injury claim. For others, recovery may include redefining roles or exploring new ones. In both cases, recovery happens through intentional re-engagement in daily life.

Support in recovery is a collaboration. A therapist can provide structure and guide the process, but it’s up to individuals to define how to apply strategies to their own life. Every person is shaped by their individual roles, interests, environments, history, and goals. When tools are adapted to fit your life, rather than forcing life to fit the tools, change becomes more sustainable.

No one can do the recovery work for someone else, but that’s not a disadvantage. It means individuals ultimately have control over how recovery unfolds.

How Trauma Affects Daily Function

Symptoms resulting from trauma often disrupt everyday life, commonly affecting domains of self-care, productivity, and leisure. Increased physical and emotional reactions can cause even simple or familiar tasks to feel exhausting and overwhelming. Daily routines break down because the nervous system prioritizes safety over everything else, decreasing capacity for planning, decision making, relationships, relaxation, fun, or need-to-dos.

Self-care may sound like a band-aid solution, but it really is an important, self-directed part of recovery. When we talk about self-care as a way to manage trauma, we’re referring to activities that can help rebuild a sense of control over the body and mind. Engaging in routines that keep you healthy and bring you joy strengthens your resilience to stress and restores autonomy and choice. As routines are reactivated, the nervous system begins to relearn that the environment is consistent and safe, energy is available, and tasks can be managed reliably.

However, this can be easier said than done. Trauma has a number of impacts on function, including cognitive functioning, emotional regulation, sleep disturbances, and more. Regaining control over daily life requires work and intentional practice to overcome these barriers, and it can be done with the right strategies and support.

Practical Strategies to Support Control Over Body and Mind

Trauma kicks the nervous system off into a constant state of protection. The following strategies focus on helping individuals notice what the body and mind are doing, interrupt automatic reactions, and regulate responses. The goal is not to eliminate stress responses, but to learn how to work with them at home, in the community, in relationships, and eventually at work.

1. Practice mindfulness, breathing, and grounding techniques

Mindfulness is about focusing your attention on the present moment. When you focus on your body’s physical sensations, your thoughts, and the environment, you can increase awareness of automatic reactions and increase capacity to separate actions from thoughts and feelings, allowing one to to respond with more control. When trauma symptoms are present, mindfulness is often best used in conjunction with movement to increase feelings of control over your physical body and environment; it can be integrated into activities that you already do: simple movement (e.g., stretching, walking) and routine tasks (e.g., drinking a hot coffee, taking a shower)..

During a stress response when distress is high, grounding techniques can be used with mindfulness to re-anchor the body in the here and now. By using sensory input of your choice (such as touching a worry stone, naming things you can see in your environment, or using weighted pressure), grounding helps interrupt overwhelming reactions. Breathing is another tool at the physiological level that can break a heightened state of alert. Slow, controlled breaths slow a racing heart and reduce physical tension.

2. Reactivate routines and build stamina

Re-establishing daily routines helps the nervous system predict what comes next. Simple, consistent routines, like regular wake-up times, meals, and physical exercise, reduce hypervigilance and decision-fatigue. Rebuilding routines can feel daunting, as both physical and mental energy levels are often lower after trauma. Cognitive challenges, like reduced attention, focus, and memory, can make planning or problem-solving difficult. Physical challenges, such as disrupted sleep or poor nutrition, can make everyday tasks feel exhausting.

It’s important to start small and gradually build stamina. This can include progressively increasing task frequency, breaking tasks into smaller steps, spacing tasks throughout the day or week, or modifying your usual activities to make them feel safer and more accessible. Life roles may not look exactly the same as before a traumatic event. Being flexible and rebuilding routines thoughtfully creates a stable foundation for more complex or demanding activities in the future.

3. Reframe thoughts

Trauma can trigger automatic, negative thought patterns that amplify stress responses. Reframing involves noticing these thoughts and intentionally shifting perspective toward what is controllable or accurate. It’s not about forcing positivity. It’s about preventing spirals of worry, self-criticism, and fear.

Reframing starts with noticing the thought (e.g., “I will never be able to handle this task”), then labeling it as a thought generated by your brain rather than a fact (“I’m noticing a thought that I will never be able to handle this”). Next steps may include considering other ways of thinking about the thought, adding new perspectives to it, and perhaps clarifying realistic action steps in response (e.g. “I’ve handled similar challenges before and I managed them. I can start by breaking this into steps and tackling it one piece at a time”). By practicing this process consistently, individuals can reduce emotional intensity, strengthen coping skills, and increase confidence when facing challenging or stressful situations.

What Progress Looks Like

Recovery is rarely linear. Setbacks are normal, and it will take time to return to pre-trauma levels of function. As individuals retrain their body and mind, they may notice meaningful progress such as:

• Increased tolerance for everyday demands
• More predictable emotional responses
• Greater confidence in managing stress and triggers
• Increased focus, attention, and memory
• Improved engagement in meaningful roles and activities
• A restored sense of identity and purpose through connection to personal values, interests, and life goals

Returning to work in a sustainable manner may be the final goal. If so, Occupational Therapists can assist with ensuring that skills align with job demands and that workplace barriers are addressed, so that the transition back to work is safe and sustainable.

How Gowan Consulting Can Help

Gowan Consulting supports individuals in recovering from work-related trauma by providing practical, evidence-informed Occupational Therapy services that focus on restoring daily function, resilience, and confidence. Our approach is individualized, recognizing that recovery looks different for everyone. Occupational Therapists usually work alongside psychologists, bridging trauma-processing and return to the workplace with action-based strategies and skills.

 To learn more about how we can help with PTSD and other mental health concerns, please contact us. If you are ready to make a referral, please see our online referral portal.