The Glass Cage

by Sharn Somasiri
View the authors Profile

If you have experienced race or gender based discrimination at work, you already know the calculation.

Do I speak up? And what will it cost me if I do?

Your job. Your reference. Your professional reputation. Your next opportunity.

Most people make that calculation and stay silent. Not because nothing happened. Because they cannot afford the price of saying so out loud.

And for those who do report it — they enter a process that was never designed to deliver justice. One that places the entire burden on the individual while the organisation that caused the harm continues operating, largely untouched by consequence.

But here is what nobody talks about enough. Whether you reported it or not, you are still carrying it.

It does not stay at work. It follows you home, into your next role, into your relationships, your sleep, your sense of self. Your nervous system learned that certain environments were not safe — and it has not forgotten.

You find yourself second-guessing your own perception of reality. Shrinking in spaces where you once felt confident. Bracing for the next thing, even when the next thing never comes.

This is not you being too sensitive. This is the documented psychological and physiological cost of sustained discrimination — and it accumulates long after the situation that caused it has ended.

You are not alone in this. And you do not have to keep carrying it without support.

This is The Glass Cage — a series about what race and gender based discrimination in the corporate world really costs the people inside it, and what moving forward can look like.

If any of this resonates, I would love to hear from you.

Drop me a message or find me at ? breatheagaincoaching.com