Cristina began her journey of self-discovery while working for a ‘Big Four’ tax consultancy. Long hours, disease, burnout and disconnection led her to study meditation, spiritual practices and transformational coaching. Today she’s a Polyvagal-informed Compassionate Inquiry Facilitator, Practitioner and the Director of Romanian Programs, trained in Somatic Therapy, Family Constellations, Dance and Movement Psychotherapy and the Neuro-Affective Relational Model (NARM).
This short edited excerpt of Cristina’s interview focuses on the early years of her career and how her inner child’s “need to be seen” drove her workaholism. Hear her full interview on The Gifts of Trauma.
“I’m here to touch people. To help them connect to their deep longings. While grounding and preparing for this conversation, I touched something deep within myself. So after listening to this podcast, please take a moment with yourself and connect with a deep question or longing that is alive in you.”
– Cristina Båra
I’d like to start by sharing a story. Last year I visited my father. He lives in the country and has a big library, big bookshelves and lots of books. I found an Irvin Yalom book I had bought as a gift for my sister. It was untouched. This author is very dear to me, so when I found it on the bookshelf, so many years later, it became a gift for myself. A seed that my younger self was giving to the future me, just waiting to be planted, to transform, to blossom into something beautiful.
At that time I was transitioning into coaching from my work in tax consulting. When I originally chose my career, it was selected to make my parents proud, specifically my father. He had, and still has, his own business. My sister is older than me, she studied art history and she was a painter. So I reasoned that the family needed someone to take over my father’s business and I decided to be that person. I studied economics and over time joined one of the world’s biggest tax consultancy firms. I remember wearing high heels and corporate business clothes and being proud of my role. I imagined that holding this role in this company would make my father proud of me, as it’s a field he understands and relates to.
But while I was proud of my role, I was not myself. I was so immersed in the endless stream of work I was on the verge of burnout, but I didn’t know it. Sometimes when you’re deep in the thing you’re doing, you don’t know you’re being overtaken by it. There’s a story about 2 fish, one older and one younger. “How’s the water?” Said the younger fish. The older fish replied. “What water?” When you’re swimming in the water for so long, you don’t know you’re in water. This’s what happened to me.
At that time I was a workaholic. I’d get home from work at 2:00 AM. I didn’t pay attention to my husband, or see how patient he was with me, because my work was so consuming. I was barely able to connect with my mother, who needed support. I was always working, never available. Work was the most important thing for me, but at the same time, as Besel Van Der Kolk writes, the body keeps the score. I started experiencing pain and I used food, and compulsive eating, to numb my pain. I wasn’t paying attention to what or when I was eating. I wasn’t sleeping much, and my mind was racing with thoughts. It was a very difficult time.
I was in great pain and my body was in bad shape, but it still took me a while to decide to go home. I didn’t even consider consulting a doctor. But one night on my way home, my taxi driver saw my pain and said, “Don’t you want to stop at Emergency, or go to the doctor?” I typically responded by saying, “I’ll be okay. It’s going to pass.” I was so used to taking on so much, it was very hard to stop. But something germinated in that moment in that taxi. I wasn’t sure, but I sensed something was wrong because I had never experienced such pain. So I went to the hospital where they said I needed emergency gallbladder surgery. They said I had a lot of tiny stones that were beginning to move which was causing my pain. I called my partner at that time, my husband now, and agreed to the surgery.
I was doubled over in pain and could barely see, but when they came to take me to surgery, I was working. My manager was calling me, asking me to make changes to a project and additional commitments. Even after my surgery, I didn’t stop. I was supposed to take a few weeks off to recover, but I believe I needed to go back to work. Over time, I realized that my work environment was not good for me, so I changed employers but stayed in the same field. It took me quite a while to realize I needed to make a much bigger change
I also gave some thought to what causes someone’s body to respond in that way and identified a lot of repressed anger related to boundaries, to not saying, “No.” To not saying,‘’Enough!’ And to not standing up for myself. I’m a fighter for other people, but it’s so much easier to stand up for others than it is to stand up for myself.
The need of a child to be seen is so big, no matter your age, that I pushed myself past my boundaries. There’s still a small part of me that really wants my father to say, ‘I’m proud of you. I see you.’ I get emotional when I talk about it as it’s very deep. It’s a part of me that’s saying, ‘I’m going to do this.” I feel that determination, the pain of not being seen, and my longing to be seen.This was and still is a big theme for me. But in reflecting on the need to be seen, I realize it’s never complete until you see yourself as that taxi driver saw me. The journey for me is seeing myself and keeping my inner ‘good mother’ activated. Noticing how I see myself, how I talk to myself when I’m doing day-to-day things. It takes a conscious effort to connect with my inner good mother and say, “I’m proud of you. You are loved;” Or, “You did the best you could today, considering the resources or the capacity you had,” Sometimes we have more capacity, sometimes less. That’s okay as well.
The Gifts of Trauma is a weekly podcast that features personal stories of trauma, transformation, healing, and the gifts revealed on the path to authenticity. Listen to the interview, and if you like it, please subscribe, leave a rating or review, and share it with others in your community.
