The Real Reason You're Stuck: Golden Handcuffs and the Sunk Cost Trap
Can I be honest with you for a second?
I spent almost 20 years in information technology. Twenty years. I had the degree, the certifications, the salary, the title.
From the outside, I had it together. And on the inside? That job was slowly killing me.
My health was suffering. I wasn't sleeping. I was snapping at my family — people I love — because I was so tense and drained that I had nothing left to give by the time I got home. I was not present. I was not fulfilled. And yet, I stayed.Because I felt like I couldn't leave.If that sounds familiar to you, I want you to watch this clip from our recent Career Refresh webinar, where my colleague Colleen Patel and I named exactly what keeps so many women stuck — and why it's not weakness, and it's not laziness. It has a name. Two of them, actually.
Let's name what's actually happening
In the webinar, we polled the room on the biggest reasons people stay in jobs that are draining them. And you know what? The answers were almost perfectly evenly split. Which tells me something important: there isn't one thing keeping you stuck. There are several. And they tend to show up in pairs.
The Golden Handcuffs 🔐
This is the voice that says, "I can't afford to leave." The salary. The benefits. The stability you've built. You tell yourself meaningful work means starting over and taking a pay cut — so you stay put.
The Sunk Cost Trap ⏳
This one says, "I've put too much in to walk away now." The degree. The certifications. The years. It feels like leaving would mean throwing all of that away — and that feels unbearable.I lived in both of those traps at the same time. I was good at my job — I want to be clear about that. Being good at something and being fulfilled by it are two completely different things, and for a long time I confused the two.
You can be excellent at a job that is quietly emptying you out. That's not a character flaw. That's just a mismatch — and mismatches can be fixed.
"But it's a secure job."
This one comes up so often, and I get it. I really do. In the webinar, I mentioned Rite Aid — a huge pharmacy chain right here in our region. For years, pharmacy felt like one of the most bulletproof careers there is. And then Rite Aid closed, and suddenly hundreds of pharmacists who had built their lives around that "security" were scrambling.Job security is, in a lot of cases, a story we tell ourselves. That's not meant to be scary — it's actually freeing, once it sinks in. If the floor isn't as solid as you thought, you have more permission to move than you realized.
3–7×
The World Economic Forum found that most people will make a full career pivot — not just a job change — three to seven times in their lifetime. We were taught to find one good job and stay. That advice is simply no longer true.
The financial piece — this is where Colleen comes in
Here's what I love about doing this work alongside Colleen Patel: she comes at this from the money side, and it turns out we're doing almost the exact same thing with our clients. The very first thing both of us do — whether we're talking about your career or your finances — is help you face the fear of actually looking at what you have.Because that's where the paralysis lives. Not in reality, but in the avoidance of it.
A word from Colleen Patel, Financial Coach
"The goal of financial health isn't just to build wealth, and it's not just to increase income. It is to give yourself options. If you are burned out, you want to use your money to ease that burnout — and to give yourself different options going forward."
When I finally made my own pivot out of IT, one of the first things I did was quietly start putting money into an account I couldn't easily see. Not a lot — just something. That money eventually paid for my coaching certification. It bridged my transition when I went full-time. Looking back, it's almost hard to believe how much a small, consistent habit changed what was possible for me.
Colleen calls it building your runway. I love that. Because a career pivot isn't a leap off a cliff — it's a takeoff. And takeoffs require runway.
So what do you do with all of this?
First: just name it. If you read those two trap descriptions above and felt a pang of recognition, that's information. That recognition is the beginning of movement.
Second: know that you are not alone, and you are not stuck forever. Most adults will change careers multiple times. People pivot at 35, at 48, at 57. I have worked with women across all of those ages, and I can tell you that "too old" is a story, not a fact. So is "too invested to leave."
And third: if nothing you've tried has fixed the feeling — not setting better boundaries, not trying new things, not telling yourself it'll get better — it might just be time to talk to someone. That's what I'm here for.
CareerJoy is closer than you think. I promise.
