Entrepreneurship

My Truth On Trauma, Creativity, and the Cost of Building from Nothing

Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Some nights I lie down and my mind is already somewhere else.

Instead of dreaming, I am planning. Instead of resting, I am creating the next offering. I am often worrying about the day, berating myself for not doing more, for getting something wrong. Often repeating an age-old story about not being good enough for the work or the people in my life. This is a familiar voice.

Usually, at the edge of my sleep, there is a promise to do better the next day — to do more — to try again — to keep going. There are ideas floating around, waiting to be executed somewhere between 2AM and 4AM. There is a question about money that followed me from my desk to my bed. There is a list — not written down — just floating there, in the dark, asking to be tended.

It is difficult to explain this to people who do not live this way. I don’t try.

My brain does not clock out. There is no end of day. There is no purging of the worry from my mind. No grace in the silence.

I am always creating.

Creating as survival. As proof. If I stop, something I cannot afford to lose will disappear. Everything will be lost if I stop.

Entrepreneurship is sold to us as freedom. Freedom of time. Freedom of money. Freedom of expression.

But for so many of us — especially those of us who live in bodies shaped by trauma, scarcity, neurodivergence, and responsibility — this does not feel like freedom. This is bondage. It feels like:

Sell. Market. Post. Network. Be visible. Be consistent. Be authentic — but also strategic. Create. Create. Create. Deliver. Perform. Show up. Repeat. Again. Again. Again. And underneath all of that?

Survival. When I show up, it is because this is one of my methods of surviving. Instead of flow, ease, joy — there is the weight of what happens if I stop doing all of these things that I do.

When we build from the overflow, the weight isn’t nearly as heavy — we can float through the work and creativity. But because a trust fall cannot exist, I feel every pound of the responsibility to keep going — because my survival is hanging in front of me —falling is not an option.

I am building from: I don’t have a plan B. If this doesn’t work, I don’t know what happens next. People depend on me. I cannot afford to fail. I depend on me.

So our creativity gets braided with the urgency. My ideas that come from stillness are aware that the stillness is interconnected in waves of fear, demand, panic. And that wave is constant.

Is what I produce evidence of hard work? The entrepreneurship road? My creativity? Is this scarcity? Is this trauma? Is this ADHD?

I don’t know. I just know my mind doesn’t stop. And regardless of what I do, I am still responsible for myself and for many others.

And I know my urgency isn’t just mine. I know that what I carry is older.

My grandmothers did not have ease and flow. They certainly did not have overflow. They had making ends meet. They had the one paycheck that needed to stretch to take care of everyone. And if they had dreams for a better life — we will never know, because they never spoke about it and certainly did not have anyone to help them make those dreams come true. The conditions for growth were not available. The conditions for health, wealth, stability, ease — were not available. They died — one too soon, one slowly and painfully — without ever knowing what financial safety felt like. Without ever knowing what it felt like to have enough. And definitely not more than enough. I’ve known it — in waves and pockets. And I am trying to get there again.

I’ve worked. I’ve married. I’ve strategized. I’ve paid off debt and obtained more and repeated the cycle.

Scarcity is in my blood. Fear of homelessness is in my blood. Working three things at once so that no single thing can take you down — that is in my blood. My body does not know financial safety. It has never had the evidence of long-term financial abundance.

So when I produce constantly — when the ideas don’t stop, when I am building the next thing before the current thing is finished, when rest feels dangerous — I am responding to this capitalistic hell. I am responding to the algorithm. I am responding to my own ambition. And I am responding to a lineage that never got to stop worrying about survival. I am trying to do in one lifetime what should have been possible across several. I am trying to become, for myself, the proof that it is possible to make it to the other side of scarcity.

And that is enormous. It is too enormous for one nervous system. And I carry this anyway.

Let me locate myself in this.

I am a licensed clinical social worker. I run a solo private practice where I offer therapy, consultation, mentorship, and supervision — primarily for clinicians. I am a writer. I publish on Instagram, on Substack, and I have three books. I create and lead my own trainings. I have begun applying to speak in rooms and on stages I once thought I would never enter.

I do a lot. And I want a lot from this life. I want to thrive. I want consistent, respectful income. I want joy in my work. Ease in my body. Excitement in my creation. I want my life to feel like mine.

I advocate, clinically and in writing, for rest, ease, and working from a regulated nervous system. And I also run at an extraordinary pace. I produce constantly. I plan constantly. I hold a container for others while simultaneously being a person who needs a container(s) herself.

The tension between what I teach and how I live is telling me something. And I am in the process of listening. I owe my self and my communities honesty about this gap.

From my shoulders, chest, abdomen, spine — the weight of what I carry is felt.

I say I want: flow, ease, freedom, rest, joy, consistent income. And all of that is true. But my system is running on: hypervigilance, overworking, emotional labor, caretaking, constant output, fear of falling.

I am building businesses with a nervous system that is trying to stay safe.

And as a Black lesbian, I am always — every day — trying to stay safe.

I am creating from an authentic place — genuinely people-first, genuinely called to this work. And I also know I have to keep producing to survive. Both of those things are true. And holding them both at once is its own labor that I am not adding to our job description.

What happens when we don’t address this.

We burn out. We fail ourselves. We at times fail others. We lose access to our creativity. We resent the work we once only dreamed about. We overcommit and under-rest. Chronic anxiety takes up permanent residence in the body. We feel like we can never do enough. Or be enough. We question whether we can keep going. We get physically ill. We get soul tired and emotionally spent.

And the most painful part? We start to believe the problem is us. That we are not disciplined enough. Not focused enough. Not organized enough. Not liked or respected enough. Not enough to have a better life.

I do not know what our systems were created for— why humans were created at all. But I am certain it cannot be this. A nervous system shaped by trauma, scarcity, survival, and algorithmic demands. This hell! A system that knows more dysregulation than regulation. Swinging between the hypervigilance that produces twenty ideas at 2AM—— and the collapse that makes it impossible to focus on anything by 2PM.

This is a trauma response masked as being an entrepreneur.

Not all of this is trauma. Some of this is capitalism. Some of this is the algorithm. Some of this is the lie that constant visibility equals success. And I’ll be honest. Some of this is also a choice.

I am not a victim of this pace. I built it.

I chose the six, ten, twelve offerings. I said yes to every hat that I wear. I said yes to the speaking engagements and the consultation and the training and the books and the next thing already forming in my mind before this one is finished.

Nobody made me. I made me do each thing. And that is the part that is hardest to sit with — because if I built this, I have to ask why. And the honest answer is purpose, passion, creativity, and FEAR.

The honest answer is: I don’t know what safety feels like without production. I don’t know how to trust that I will be okay if I slow down. And so I don’t slow down.

A note for my IFS colleagues.

If you are reading this through the lens of parts work, I want to say something directly:

I am not unblended here. And I don’t need to be. Not every activated part needs to be separated from. Not every wave of feeling requires distance or a return to the seat of Self before it can be honored. Sometimes the work is to be with it all — fully, without flinching. To let the urgency, the grief, the desire, the exhaustion all be present at once. To allow honesty to sit on the throne and rest. All of my parts making sense together. All of them telling the truth together. My system is stable enough and strong enough to be with it all.

And I think that is worth naming in a world that is quick to pathologize the fullness of our human experience.

What I am learning.

Here is what I am practicing. And what I offer to anyone else carrying this weight.

Name what is driving you. Before the next idea — pause. Ask: is this coming from fear or desire? Is this urgency or alignment? Do I actually want this, or do I feel like I need it? Not to criticize or change. Just to notice.

Separate creativity from survival — as much as possible. Everything cannot be the thing that saves you. Not every idea needs to become income. Fuck conversion. Some things are allowed to just be yours.

Build fewer things, but build them deeper. More is not always better. What if you chose one to three core offerings and let everything else support those? Depth creates sustainability. Constant newness creates exhaustion.

Create nervous system space — even when life doesn’t slow down. Instead of quitting— pause. Have days where you don’t produce. Moments where your body is not being asked to perform. Your nervous system needs evidence that it is not always in danger.

Tell the truth about your capacity. And let that shape your business.

Your system is not broken. If you crave ease, flow, intuition, relationship, honesty, trust — that is wisdom. That is your system telling you what it was built for. It is revealing the longing.

We deserve to build lives that do not feel like constant survival. We deserve to make money without abandoning our inner peace. We deserve work that feels like ours — not just something we have to keep producing to stay afloat.

I think about my grandmothers sometimes when I am at my desk.

What they would have built, if building had been available to them. What they dreamed about in the spaces beyond survival. Whether they ever stopped dreaming, or just stopped believing the dream was for them.

I am building for myself. And I am building in memory of them and all who could not. Some days that is too much weight for me.

And I am learning — slowly, imperfectly that I am allowed to want more. That wanting more does not dishonor the work, the passion, the purpose. It completes what my ancestors started. It help me to move through this life with hope.

I don’t know any other way yet. But I know my journey to freedom begins with telling the truth about what this life has cost me. And as I sit with that truth — I will continue to build something better for myself. Because that is all I know to do.

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