I used to stay late at the office, working overtime and outworking everyone in my department just to earn a little praise. I even worked for free for a period of time, ran myself straight into burnout, and still felt like it was never enough. I was afraid to apply to big companies because I thought I wasn’t good enough for them. I was too shy to ask for a raise. I spent endless hours perfecting tasks that didn’t really need to be perfect. And through it all, I felt like a complete impostor — like I was taking up space I didn’t deserve.

Does any of this sound familiar?

I spent years hustling, undercharging, trying desperately to “earn” my place under the sun — complaining, and feeling powerless to change anything. And it could have gone on like this for the rest of my life, if not for the turning point when I finally understood why my entire career path had become a cycle of struggle and endless suffering.

As an adult, I was busy providing for myself and my family, focused only on daily tasks. I didn’t have the time or energy to reflect on why things kept unfolding the way they did, or whether something in my past was still quietly controlling my present. But when life becomes unbearable, you’re forced to stop and ask yourself some hard questions:

• Why do I work so much and still struggle to make ends meet?
• Why does everyone else leave the office earlier while I’m still there late at night?
• Why do I allow my boss to yell at me and scold me publicly (sometimes for no reason, simply because she needed an outlet)?
• Why do I feel like I’m about to faint when I have to negotiate my pay or working conditions?
• Why do I keep striving for more, yet always feel undeserving of it?

Many of us explain our career struggles through circumstances: “That’s just how the job market is,” “I’m unlucky with bosses,” or “Maybe I’m just not ambitious enough.” But if you dig deeper, you often find the real roots of these problems in childhood.
If a child grows up in an environment where they are humiliated, ignored, or punished for expressing themselves, they learn certain “rules of survival”: don’t stand out, don’t ask for too much, be convenient, endure everything. And while these rules once helped you survive, in adulthood they start working against you. They prevent you from asking for fair pay, setting healthy boundaries, and believing in your worth and abilities.

Childhood experience — especially an abusive one (whether physical, emotional, psychological, or neglect) — directly shapes how a person perceives themselves and their possibilities as an adult. And it inevitably shows up in career and money.
If you grew up in a toxic or unsafe environment, many of your current career difficulties may actually be echoes of that past. To test this, try answering these questions honestly:

• It’s hard for me to believe I deserve a high salary or a good position.
• I often settle for less (low pay, poor conditions) just so I don’t risk losing my job.
• I’m afraid to ask for a raise or discuss money because deep down it feels like “I don’t have the right.”
• I frequently feel like an impostor, as if I’ll soon be exposed and people will realize I don’t belong.
• I avoid conflict and struggle to defend my ideas or boundaries at work.
• I find it difficult to celebrate my successes — I usually think they’re just luck or a mistake.
• I tend toward perfectionism: I fear mistakes because to me a mistake = failure.
• I often sabotage myself by procrastinating, missing deadlines, or abandoning projects.
• I overwork just to gain approval or avoid disappointing others.
• Sometimes I feel like something deep inside me forbids me from being successful or happy.

Sadly, most of these were true for me.
If you also recognized yourself here and know you have a history of abuse or neglect, my experience may help you see a way forward.

Here’s what I did to dramatically change my career and start earning far more:
I learned that the fear of asking for more, the tendency to work until burnout, the impostor feelings, and the tolerance of toxic bosses are not random flaws. They are parts of your shadow: the pieces of yourself you had to hide or suppress in order to survive a dangerous childhood.

As a child, you couldn’t afford to be bold, demanding, or ambitious, because it wasn’t safe. So you buried those qualities deep inside. But as an adult, those same suppressed parts live in your shadow and keep sabotaging your career.

I turned to shadow work as a method of exploring my unconscious behaviors, and it completely shifted my life. It helped me become aware of:

• what exactly has been holding me back,
• why it’s been holding me back,
• and what I can actually do about it.

Shadow work is powerful because it doesn’t just offer surface-level advice like “be confident” or “negotiate more.” Instead, it works with the hidden root of the problem: the wounded inner child who still believes that success is unsafe. When you heal that wound, career growth stops being a constant uphill battle — and instead becomes a natural expression of who you truly are.

✨ If this resonates with you, I wrote a book called The Shadow of Wealth. It dives deeper into exactly these struggles — how childhood wounds quietly limit your earning potential, and how to get to the next level through Shadow Work. If you’ve ever felt stuck in underpaying jobs, trapped in burnout, or afraid to step into bigger opportunities, this book can guide you step by step to transform your inner blocks and finally allow yourself to thrive.