The Trauma of the Everyday

This chapter examines how everyday professional practices within social work can become sources of cumulative and often unrecognised trauma for neurodivergent practitioners. Moving beyond dominant accounts of vicarious trauma and moral injury, it focusses on the less visible but persistent harms created by sensory environments, communication norms, expectations of professionalism, and organisational cultures shaped by neuronormative assumptions. Through illustrative narratives and applied theory, the chapter explores how experiences such as sensory overload, masking, communication mismatch, stigma, and energy depletion interact to erode wellbeing, professional confidence, and career sustainability over time. Particular attention is given to how these everyday traumas are intensified by intersectional marginalisation, including race, gender, sexuality, class, and late diagnosis. The chapter introduces the concept of energy accounting as an alternative framework for understanding stress, shifting responsibility from individual resilience to organisational design and culture. Readers will gain a deeper understanding of how seemingly ordinary workplace practices can cause significant harm, alongside practical and ethical insights into how social work organisations can move towards sensory safety, relational awareness, and cultures that actively support neurodivergent practitioners to thrive rather than endure.