September 23, 2024 • 45 mins
Work makes up a large component of our lives. It's estimated that 1/3 of our waking lives will be spent working, so when that environment is toxic or harmful, it takes it's toll. Especially in our 20s, a toxic workplace can be quite a negative, formative experience and leave us with poor confidence, imposter syndrome and chronic burnout. In today's episode we discuss the psychological impact of bad jobs, including:
- The burnout cycle
- Psychological enmeshment with a workplace
- Long term impact on self esteem and future employment
- Tips for surviving a toxic workplace
- Tips on how to thrive afterwards, despite the trauma
I also share my own lived experience with a toxic workplace and what I wish I'd known before. Listen now!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show.
(00:26):
Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners. Wherever
you are in the world, it is so great to
have you here. Back for another episode as we of
course break down the Psychology of your twenties. So a
few weeks ago, I got a DM from one of
you the listeners about a really toxic workplace. This listener,
(00:49):
and she's given me permission to talk about her story.
She told me about how she had recently quit a
job that she'd had for two years, and she said
to me, this job she felt more like a terrible
relationship than a job, than a way of making money.
And she was telling me all these details about how
her managers would call her after work hours to get
(01:11):
her to respond to feedback. They would ask her to
work weekends to do the tasks that they were unable
to do, saying that this was all part of her
job description, this is what she signed up for. And
at the same time, she wasn't really getting any perks,
she was getting paid very poorly. They wouldn't invite her
to any of like the workplace events. They would like
(01:33):
criticize her openly in front of other employees, like terrible,
terrible things. And she quit that job three months ago,
and in that period of time, she's been looking for
a new job, and she has found that, you know,
even applying for new jobs, even looking through new job
applications would make her anxious, Going into job interviews would
(01:55):
make her panic, would make her want to cry, run away, escape,
And this all letter to believe that you may be
her previous job had caused her like a degree of trauma,
and reading her messages, I had to agree with her,
and I realized that there are probably a lot of
other people going through this right now. And yet we
(02:16):
haven't done an episode on how to deal with this situation,
how to deal with a really toxic workplace. We talk
a lot on this podcast about finding your calling, how
to accelerate at work, how to navigate career anxiety, but
we haven't really spoken about what to do when you
have a great job, you have maybe your dream job,
(02:38):
you finally found a sustainable, secure, profession, and it turns
out that the workplace that you've walked into is incredibly toxic.
Now you're kind of in that state where you're dreading
going to work, your confidence is shattered, you want to quit,
but you don't have the means, you don't know how.
And this is exactly what I want to discussed today.
(03:01):
It's something that a lot of us go through during
the early days of our career, especially in our twenties,
and how do we survive a terrible job, but also
not just how do we survive when we're currently in it,
how do we move on from that experience and kind
of find a job that respects you and that you love.
Work is a massive part of our identity, so when
(03:22):
it's going wrong, it's hard for other things to not
be going wrong as well. I've had experiences like this,
and I'll share one of those experiences that I've had
later on, because it really can lead us, you know,
leave us to be quite quite broken, for lack of
a better word. And there is also, of course, a
lot of evidence for this being the case. And whilst
(03:44):
there is a lot of evidence, there is little acknowledgment
of that evidence. So a lot of the time, we
might be in this situation thinking that we're overreacting, thinking
that we're being dramatic. But time and time again, we
see studies, case studies, surveys, poll that show that a
lot of people experience during this, experience this during their lifetime,
(04:05):
and also it impacts them greatly. So we're going to
discuss all of that evidence and the psychology that links
toxic workplaces to our psychology and our mental health. How
to tell if your workplace is toxic, the different types
of toxicity at a job, and also, of course again
how to survive and how to thrive afterwards. I have
(04:27):
a number of tips to share. I have a number
of lived experiences to share as well. So if you
can relate to having a seriously traumatic former job, former boss,
current job, current boss, current workplace, stay with us. Without
further ado, let's get into toxic workplaces. Experiencing a toxic
(04:52):
workplace or a toxic work environment takes a huge and
an unspoken toll on our mental wellbeing, and it really
does actually surprise me how little we tend to discuss
this fact. We talk a lot about relationship trauma, friendship trauma,
experiences with mental health or with physical illness. But work
is also a significant pillar of our life. But you know,
(05:15):
when we have a toxic relationship with our workplace or
in a work environment, we don't really speak about how
negatively formative it can be. You know, when that is
not going well, it begins to affect everything else. But
you kind of feel silly talking about it. You feel
silly having to explain it. You know, everyone's job sucks,
no one likes to work. But I want to assure
(05:36):
you right now, a toxic workplace does bring a certain
kind of emotional experience and it is not an easy
thing to go through to really kind of, you know,
examine and illustrate why that is. Consider this recent statistic
from Gettysburg College in the US. This statistic suggests that
(05:57):
you and I we are probably going to spend around
and ninety thousand hours at work across our lifetime. That
is about one third of our lives. If one third
of your waking hours were spent in a place where
you didn't feel welcome, you were constantly stressed, you are
under intense pressure or scrutiny, you are treated poorly, you
(06:21):
are going to see that manifest in all other areas
of your life. But at the same time, there is
this expectation that you should be able to detach if
we just build up our lives enough beyond work, if
we get a few hobbies, if we turn off our emails.
You know, as soon as our shift ends or it
hits five o'clock, we should be successfully able to turn
(06:44):
off completely and like shape shift back into the normal
version of ourselves. Most of us, though, no, that is
not true. We know that it's very hard to have
that separation because when you spend that much time in
a job, a profession, and environment, it will ultimately influence
your personality, your thoughts, your beliefs, even your sense of hope,
(07:05):
and it also becomes kind of like a defining feature
of how other people identify you as well. You know,
what's the first question that you are inevitably going to
be asked in a new social situation at basically every party,
every social situation, every conference that you go to. What
do you do for work? It is inescapable. This can
(07:29):
create a psychological state that we know as enmeshment. So
in meshment, this concept was originally used to describe codependency
in families, and especially in families where there was a
lack of boundaries, and it meant that there was kind
of no way of separating. You know, a parent and
a child or a sibling. Everything was intertwined. They did
(07:51):
everything together. They had all the same beliefs, they had
the same routine in their lives were enmeshed. This can
also happen with your your job or with the workplace.
When a disproportionate amount of time is spent at work,
is spent talking about work, is focused on your career,
is spent with co workers, there needs to be a
(08:14):
natural separation of some sort. Otherwise we do kind of
end up tying everything back to our job and that
it's going to directly impact their self worth and our
self worth. It's important to remember that I think the
current culture around work is very different to what it
was a few years back. It is very hard to disconnect. Actually,
(08:35):
in Australia we just passed right to disconnect laws, which
basically means that if you don't answer your boss's text
at seven pm, they like can't fire you, they can't
say anything about it, which is an amazing step forward.
But a lot of us will still check our work
emails after seven pm on the weekends because it's so
much more accessible. And I think because I don't know,
(08:58):
I just feel like previously our career was just the
thing that we did to make money. Now there's a
lot more glory to it. It's the thing that you
can brag about. It's this thing that identifies you, it's
this thing that others use to kind of place you
in their life. This is all basically a long way
of saying that you know, work is such a huge
(09:18):
part of who you are, and more so the further
along you get into this decade. It's a very common
experience that as you age, the circles that represent friends, play, socializing, hobbies,
free time, leisure, those circles get a lot smaller, and
the circles representing work, responsibility, career they get larger. And sorry,
(09:42):
one more point on this as well. When you are
in the early stages of your career, you want to
do everything right, and you want to be good, and
you want to be praised and you want to be promoted.
You know, you're also probably the least experienced. You don't
have as much knowledge, and that can again also lead
to a real hustle called the mentality of like you
know I have to be the one staying late. I
(10:03):
have to be the one who never makes mistakes. I
have to put up with whatever is thrown my way,
including a toxic culture or a bad work environment, because
you know everyone has done it before me. This is
just how it is, this is what is expected. I
can't say anything. I cannot say anything because all jobs
are like this. I just have to put up with it.
(10:26):
And in those circumstances you have to take very special
care of your wellbeing. I want to kind of tell
you a story of my worst job. I want to
tell you a story of my most toxic workplace. So
the worst job I have ever worked, by far was
back when I was at university in Canberra and I
worked at a restaurant and I'm not going home and
(10:47):
said the name. I'm not going to say the name,
but it was a stake restaurant and it was very expensive.
So a lot of like CEOs and government people and
people in town for work who wanted to spend big
on a meal would come to this restaurant. And it
looked very lovely from the outside, it looked very like
(11:07):
designer luxury, but behind the scenes it was just awful.
It was a walking hr disaster. There were like three
things that made it really really terrible. Firstly, there was
a group of people, group of women who had worked
there for like years, some of them for like five years,
(11:28):
super clicky, and they were all like managers and supervisors,
and they were all friends and they would go on
holiday together. They were honestly just terrific. So new people
would start like myself, and they would kind of almost Oh,
they also lived together. I remember that being part of it.
Some of them lived in the same house, and you
would start and they would like vet you to just
(11:50):
see if you were like one of them, and if
even one of them didn't like you, they didn't think
that you were like working hard enough, or you weren't
going to like pick up their shifts, so do whatever
they said. They would make your life awful. I remember
one time getting yelled at by one of the senior
girls who worked there for coming into work and immediately
(12:12):
making myself a glass of water because I used to
ride my bike all the way from like Uni and
it would be really really hot in the summertime, and
I would have to wear this black outfit and I'd
ride my bike from Uni to work, and I would
make myself a glass of water, make myself a drink
glass of water, and she was like, you are incredibly entitled.
(12:33):
You don't even have your apron on, you haven't even
like clocked in yet. And it was just that kind
of stuff, like they wanted to make your life difficult,
and like during the busy period, all the junior staff
would be working and they would be like out the
back gossiping. So that was the first component, was the click.
Then there was the boss. And I cannot even begin
(12:55):
to tell you how much I dislike this man and
the dread I would have when working with him alone.
And he would like deliberately try and make you uncomfortable
as a joke, and like you'd be scheduled to finish
at nine, but if he did just one small thing
to annoy him, or you know, you wouldn't laugh at
his joke, he'd make you stay until eleven, just with him,
(13:17):
just you and him, in this like one restaurant, and
he would make you wipe down everything again and again
and again, and then make you go down in the
elevator with him and make these like disgusting jokes whilst
no one was like there he was so gross. He
was so gross, and he would yell at you, he
would pretend to trip you, and when we were closed,
he'd like bring all of his buddies to get drunk,
(13:40):
and you would have to stay on shift to like
serve them free alcohol, otherwise you would get fired. And
you know, oh my god, sorry I'm going on about
this man, but he is a terrible man. And I
remember for years afterwards, if I thought I would see him,
I would like I would be scared. You know, those
people you just look at and like there's nothing in
the eyes. That was it. And then finally they were
(14:02):
just the customers, you know. They were so rude, and
I think that they definitely expected a lot from their
experience because they were paying for the experience. But the
kitchen was understaffed. We were off and down three people
because all the senior people would be in the break
room and our boss was like never going to stand
up for us. And that time was so terrible for
(14:23):
me because every night I would go to work and
I would get paid not very much, and I would
just cry before I had to ride my bike over
and I wanted to quit so badly, and I would
get anxious walking through the door. Everyone was so on edge,
so there wasn't even like a camaraderie or a friendship
that could sustain you when it got bad. And I
(14:46):
was like in my early twenties at the time, so
it just felt like, you know, this is something I
have to tolerate. I have to just take it because I'm
trying to finish my degree. And you know, I was
just like getting sick, sick with worry about going away
and thinking that this was like everything to me, this job.
Like I'd be thinking about like something missed, some mistake
(15:06):
I did, and how I could fix that like the
next day, and like all these things, and it just
took such a significant toll. And in hindsight, you know,
I still have nightmares. I oh my god, remembering this.
I had a nightmare last night about this colleague who
I worked with, and that was like how many years ago,
seven six seven years ago, and she was like following
(15:28):
me around my house like that was literally a dream
I had about her last night, and I was so
I was so scared, like not outside the dream but
back at the job to quit. And on my last shift,
I called in sick actually, which I think was like
one of three times I have ever done that, And
then I blocked all of their numbers and all of
their Facebook profiles because that was how they used to
(15:50):
like talk to us back then. And I just was like,
I'm never gonna I don't want to interact with you
ever again. And I know that I am not the
only one who has had this experience. This is just
one example, a hospitality example, right, And I think my
experience the toxicity came from the people. There was this
(16:11):
level of harassment and bullying and intimidation that takes an
emotional toll, specifically because it has to do with an
underlying sense of security and I would even say safety
when I was there, and the uncertainty that each shift would,
you know, bring something new and not in a fun way,
(16:31):
but in like a destructive, anxiety inducing way. I don't
think anyone who worked at this restaurant at the time
was like having a good time. And interestingly, I actually
read a study the other day that was conducted in
China back in twenty twenty one, and what the study
said was that when a workplace in general, when the
(16:52):
culture is toxic, the feeling becomes toxic amongst the coworkers,
and it means that they are more likely to ostracize, bully,
be quite cruel because they themselves feel like they have
so little control and they are so dissatisfied. That is
often the root of workplace bullying and workplace intimidation and
(17:14):
just meanness and cruelty is that these individuals recognize that
they're actually not happy themselves, but there's this like sadistic
need to see that unhappiness reflected back in someone else.
And this can extend all the way from the top
of night and I mean like your bosses, you know,
(17:35):
they start to feel this shift as well, and they
start to act in a way that's just like very
unkind they and you don't feel respected, you don't feel
like you can speak up, You feel completely stuck. This
really links back to me towards a theme or a
lack of respect, and that also extends to other kinds
(17:55):
of workplaces, you know, not just hospitality jobs, but corporate jobs,
where people don't respect your boundaries. They ask you to
work when you know you can't. They assign you things
that you just don't have the skills or the capacity
to do, and then they criticize you. That make you
feel small. That is a very hard thing to go
(18:16):
through and still maintain your sense of self esteem. You know,
I've heard from a lot of people whose biggest complaint
about their toxic workplace has been the unreasonable workload and
the expectations that made them feel like they were on
a constant treadmill, and this treadmill was getting faster and faster.
And I would categorize a boss that does this as
(18:38):
using fear based leadership, pushing people to their limits out
of a fear of repercussion, you know, getting fired, being humiliated,
being criticized, rather than giving people space to expand, It's
all about consequences rather than growth. That treadmill I'm speaking
about that puts us into a hyper aroused and stressed
(19:02):
elevated state because you are essentially running on cortisol and adrenaline.
If you've ever wondered why after you go through a
super stressful, busy period at work or at school, you
immediately get sick. That is why your body requires mental
and of course physical rest to switch off, to restore
(19:23):
to pleated reserves, and more importantly, to calm down that
stress response, because that stress response is incredibly harsh on
our bodies. When we aren't given that chance, it weakens
our immune system, It makes us worse at fighting illnesses,
or more susceptible to certain diseases, certain sicknesses. So it's
(19:45):
not just that this is having a mental consequence. You
are going to also see a physical result of this
bad environment. Then there is you know, overworking as well,
which feels very similar to the above. Right, this culture
of like you need to give this company every thing
you need to be on one hundred percent of the time,
there tends to be a belief that overworking and to
(20:09):
an extent, burnout is an occupational hazard of some jobs,
the same way that you know you're more likely to
be injured working in a mine or doing something dangerous
like working on an oil rig, and you accept that
that is part of the role. If you're a doctor,
a lawyer, a nurse, over time and burnout just you know,
(20:30):
you just have to accept that. But that is also
becoming the norm for almost all jobs these days. And
I'm not talking about staying thirty minutes to finish off
your emails, but late nights, working weekends, without being compensated,
without getting support. The biggest contributor to burnout. According to
the University of California, Berkeley, the biggest number one thing
(20:53):
is overworking an excessive workload, and they have even made
the claim, which I think think we should take with
a grain of salt, but the University of California probably
knows more than me. They've made the claim that burnout
is contributing to the deaths of millions of people each
year because of its all round negative impact on your health.
(21:16):
You know, I want to say this not to scare you,
but to remind you that you are not being dramatic
if you find yourself completely depleted by the expectation to
work long hours and the inability to say no because
you are a junior, because this is how it's always
been done. I'm going to take a short break, but
when we return, I want to talk about some of
(21:37):
the further consequences of that for all elements of our health.
Whether it's excessive workload, bullying, intimidation, micromanagement, poor communication, a
bad culture. All forms of toxic workplaces leave their mark,
(22:00):
and you don't even have to have been there for
a long time for that to be the case. According
to the American Psychological Association, when we encounter these environments.
It can lead employees that means you and I to
become and this is their words, sick, scared, and to
look for ways to quit. They also consistently report about
(22:22):
sixty five percent of the people they spoke to that
their mental wellbeing declines during these periods. Toxic workplaces take excitement,
they take our energy, they take our willingness and our
desire to do well, and they turn it interfere, and
they turn it interfere because we need money and we
need a job to survive. So when that is not
(22:45):
going well, every other element of our lives feels threatened.
You know, we've already spoken about that cost when it
comes to burnout. But burnout is more than just one feeling.
It actually develops in twelve stages. So the term burnout
was created, discovered, I don't know, initiated, whatever you want
to say, by the psychologist Herbert Freudenberg. And in his
(23:09):
initial theory back in the day, he suggests that we
often don't even notice burnout until we get to the
final few stages, so stage ten, eleven, and twelve, and
this is the time when we really feel it. We
are sick, we are tired, all the time, we are
confused and able to regulate our anxiety. It's a downward
(23:32):
spiral that we're heading, but it actually begins a lot earlier,
and it begins with things that we would see as positive, right,
excessive ambition, trying to meet the expectations or fit into
the environment. It's like a toxic relationship where we think
we are in the wrong and we try to fix
ourselves by working harder, only to eventually realize, you know,
(23:53):
it was actually never me, it was always this other party.
The early stages of burnout also include trying to put
more on your plate, neglecting basic needs or chores, just
saying I'm too busy for that. Feeling like you don't
have enough time in your day, withdrawing from friends, finding
that there is conflict in other areas of your life
(24:13):
as well, with your partner, with your roommates, with your friends.
And then the emptiness sets in. And it may only
be when we are in this final state and we're
looking back at the last few weeks, we're looking back
at the last months, and we think, oh, oh, my goodness,
(24:33):
this has been coming for a long time. You know.
Hindsight is often the first time that we notice this pattern,
and this is what can lead us to the dark,
dark path of chronic burnout or a burnout cycle. So
if you are someone who finds that they get burnt
out like every three to four months, maybe like clockwork,
(24:57):
but you know, then you feel a little bit better
a couple of weeks, so you put everything back on
your plate and you try to adapt, and then you
know you feel burnt out again. You're not going through
a different cycle, different stages of burnout because you're actually
not even recovering. You've probably never even escaped the burnout
to begin with. You've just gone back to an earlier stage.
(25:19):
You are in the burnout cycle, and that cycle involves
momentary recovery met by escalation. People in overwhelming or toxic
workplaces are more likely to report this kind of experience,
and sometimes it can last years. Toxic workplaces can even
(25:39):
at times create PTSD or lasting trauma after you have
left that environment. A friend of my dad's actually had
such a traumatic experience at a job. You know, it
was like ten years ago and he has never been
able to recover from that. On a smaller scale, I
had a friend who just recently got out of this
(26:01):
terrible job, maybe like six months ago, and oh my goodness,
I just hated her boss. Never met her boss, hated him.
He would single her out, he had such he was
just mean. He just obviously did not like her for
whatever reason, and he made it very known. And then
one day he just made her redundant out of the blue.
(26:23):
After that, of course, you know, it really echoes that
story we said before. She had to find a new job,
and it was so interesting yet quite sad to watch her,
you know, apply for jobs and to watch her to
struggle and struggle and struggle and feel like she wasn't qualified,
she wasn't confident enough, because her expectations for herself had
(26:46):
sunk to his level and left a mark on her
self worth. And you know, the more we care about
someone's opinion because they are in a position of authority
or we rely on their good opinion for our future,
the more weight we put on it, the more a
negative opinion can really scar us. And it didn't matter
what we said, her friends said, you know, it didn't
(27:08):
matter that we thought she was talented, skillful, charismatic. Her
inner critic had taken her boss's words and spoken them
back to her in her own voice, So what do
we do to heal from these situations? You know, unless
you are suddenly a millionaire, which congratulations, Please let me know.
(27:29):
If that's the case, congrats, But unless that is your case,
we need to work. You can't always just quit a
secure job, even if you want to, even if you're
really struggling. That's why toxic workplaces have their own place
in hell. I also think that, you know, having a
job is also an important part of our purpose, our identity.
So you want to have a positive environment that you
(27:50):
can thrive in, that you can achieve your goals in.
So what do we do to kind of cope in
a situation where that's not the case, and how do
we cope afterwards. One of the best things that a
friend of mine has ever said to me ever, is
if someone treats you badly, they are not going to
treat you any better the harder you work. And that
(28:14):
left me gobsmacked because I think about my toxic job jobs.
I only spoke about one, but there have been others,
and I think about them, and I think about how
the whole time I was the one pushing myself to
fit in, I was working so hard thinking that I
was the problem, when actually it was the environment that
was the common denominator amongst not just my experience, but
(28:38):
many others in many ways. And I've said it before,
but a toxic workplace, in a toxic relationship like share
a lot of traits. They make you doubt your own
self worth, They make you feel like you are the problem.
They make it hard to leave, They blame you, they
tear you down. They know they are of course different
as well. But I think when you consider it in
(28:59):
this way, you begin to realize that you deserve more.
Your job is actually just as important in some ways
as the relationship that you choose, And the same way
that you deserve the absolute best from a partner from
a friend, you deserve the absolute best from a workplace.
(29:19):
I think with toxic jobs, this is not a matter
of trying to convince someone to be nicer, to fix
the attitude problem for you. It's not a matter of
trying to convince a workplace to overhaul their culture. It
is a situation where you know they've probably been asked
before and they wouldn't do it. You are not the
first person to suffer, and not the first person with
(29:41):
these problems. So whilst you are in it, your main
goal is to and I know it might sound quite selfish,
but it's to seriously just get through it. Put your
head down and get through it, because you cannot bear
the burden of a disorganized and toxic environment. My first
big tip is to take control of what you can
(30:03):
and find value outside of work. Make it a mission
to have fun, to do things you enjoy, to put
joy and excitement back into the hours that you're not
in the workplace. There is definitely an inclination when we're
going through this experience to come home and just be first.
(30:23):
So you're exhausted, you're emotionally burnt out, and obviously the
reaction to that is just a rest and is to lifestill,
and is to just enter a catatonic state. I get
that feeling, and I get that urge. I want you
to treat that as the first option and then to
explore the second option. And the second option is to,
almost in defiance, say I'm not going to let this
(30:45):
shitty job ruin my life. I'm not going to let
this shitty job mean that I cannot experience great beauty
and excitement and fun and passion and all the best
feelings beyond this environment. So you cannot control how a
boss treats you, you cannot control how a workplace values you.
(31:07):
But you can control, you know, what you do before
you go to bed. You can control the hours before
you go to work, where you drive to the beach,
you watch the sunrise, you get coffee early morning, coffee
with a friend, you go to the movies after work
instead of just you know, coming home and sitting back
on the couch. Fill those hours that you can control
(31:29):
with the life. I also would really suggest to limit
your emotional investment in your job by doing something that
we call acting your wage. Obviously it's a play on words.
Act your age, act your wage. You know, if someone
is as much as you can, if someone is not
paying you for the extra effort, they're not appreciating you
(31:51):
for the extra effort, don't do it. Do not do it.
You might think that this is counterintuitive. You might be like,
you know, I want to get it head in my career.
I understand that, but is this the place in which
your effort is going to be most recognized or could
you take that effort and that time that you're spent
trying to impress your terrible boss, trying to impress your
(32:13):
terrible coworkers, and could you put it towards having an
extra hour to apply for new jobs, having an extra
hour to practice self care, having an extra hour to
call a friend or to call your mum, instead of
feeling like your life is just this job. It's hard
to detach when you're in it, but I want you
to really be reminded that your job does not care
(32:38):
about you all that much. There are certain people within
an organization or within your workplace that might care about you,
but as a whole, it's a company. It's an organization.
It's something that has a mission that isn't to do
with you. And I know it sounds quite pessimistic, but
if you were to leave tomorrow, they would find a placement.
(33:01):
And so do not treat this like a family. Do
not treat it like it's this giving friendship and let
them guilt you into staying. This is a job. You're
entitled to act your wage, and oh my goodness, please
take a sick day when you can. This was something
that I wish wish I had done when I was
working full time at my corporate job. I had so
(33:24):
much sickly by the time I left. And you've got
to remember that sickly you have been, that you've paid
for those days, right, that is money that they have
not paid you, which they have kept for themselves. And
if you leave, and maybe this is just in Australia,
but if you leave, they get to keep the money
that they have deducted from your paycheck for the days
(33:46):
that you need to call and sick. So please take
a sick day. This is just a job. I promise
you that in ten years time or after you quit.
You one of the big things is one of my
big regrets is oh my god, I wish I'd actually
taken a mental health day when I need it. I
wish that I had taken care of my emotions. I
also think that if you are in a unique environment
in which the main problem is criticism, the main problem
(34:09):
is being shut down, not being appreciated, it's not being congratulated,
or being quite bored, not feeling challenged, try and provide
some self congratulation so you know, self reinforcement is one
of the most valuable psychological tools I've ever learned. Self approval,
you know, actually congratulating yourself, celebrating yourself, especially when you're
(34:33):
in an environment where you're like, I don't think that these
people are going to do that for me. Some of
the reasons that one of the big reasons that we
become quite burdened by a negative work environment is we
begin to expect that our validation needs to come from
our employer, because our career is a core piller of
our identity, and we don't really know where to search
(34:55):
without validation beyond the workplace. And I'm gonna make a
caveat here. This is a especially the case if you
were quite a high achiever. You were very you know,
a good student, you were an a student, you were
you know, just excelling, You're a gifted child. You were
used to praise. You like praise. You like to be congratulated,
(35:16):
and when you don't have that, it feels like you're
quite worthless. So try and get into the habit of
being like, I'm really proud that I got all of
that done today. I'm really proud that I tried really hard.
I'm really proud of the extra effort that I put
in to this thing. For me, I'm really proud of
my work. You don't need to be reliant on someone
else to tell you that you've done a good job
(35:36):
if you know you've done a good job. Now. This
final tip actually came from my friend who I was
speaking about, who was made redundant a few months back,
and while she was in that terrible, terrible job, she said,
the one really amazing thing that worked for her was
having an exit strategy. So the exit strategy is basically
(35:57):
a timeline that you have for when you want to quit.
It's quite unreasonable to be in a toxic workplace for
a lot of us and to be like, I'm just
going to quit tomorrow because we need money to survive,
and that's I think what contributes to us feeling quite
trapped is a sense of almost dependency on this thing
that we hate. We are dependent on this terrible boss,
(36:17):
this terrible job. You need to start looking to the
future and creating that timeline for leaving. So a timeline
for leaving is not just like an immediate goal of
getting a new job. It's a structured way of thinking
about how you're going to get there and how you
break it down. If you've listened to our episode on
five ways to reinvent yourself in your twenties, you have
(36:38):
heard the strategy. The way to do it is to
break your goals down, your goal being to leave into
one day, one week, one month, six month goals. So
the six month goal is to be out of there,
but the one month goal is to have a few
job interviews lined up. The one week goal is to
apply for five different jobs a week, and our day
(37:00):
goal is to be filling out your resume, to be
thinking about who could be your references, to be taking
five minutes to just search through jobs and bookmarking them
for later. You need to have a sense of Okay,
there is an end insight. I am going to actively
start working towards leaving this workplace, and you'll find that
(37:21):
suddenly it becomes a lot easier to detach. You can
start like to give less fucks. Sorry to swear, but seriously,
it's when you start to just be like, this actually
is a job because I can see what else is
out there and you're not in this toxic relationship, lind
to what is better? All right, We're going to take
another short break, but when we come back and want
to talk about the strategies that you can use in
(37:43):
the aftermath, even after we leave a toxic, awful, terrible environment.
Sometimes the emotional impact lingers. So we're going to talk
about how to heal from that and much much more
after this short break. Recovering from any situation that has
(38:03):
perhaps brought you trauma, emotional turmoil, emotional conflict really involves
finding closure. As humans, we like things to have a
neat storybook ending. We like to be able to put
a memory away and say, that makes sense, that makes
sense that I had to go through that, That makes
sense as to why that happened, and I can move
(38:26):
on from that now. When we go through things that
are very much out of our control or quite turbulent
and hurtful, it's very hard to find that conclusion. It's
very hard to also find a sense of meaning often
because there isn't any There is no meaning behind you
having to experience a toxic workplace like it's just an
(38:46):
unnecessary trauma. So instead you need to find that closure
for yourself. You can't necessarily go to your bad boss
or your bad colleague and say why did you treat
me that way? Why were you so cruel to me?
You can't go and talk to this of your company
and say why did you pay me so little, Why
did you disregard my needs? Instead? You need to find
(39:07):
that cognitive closure for yourself that's going to allow you
to transition away from what's finished to something new. The
easiest way to do that is to acknowledge the impact.
Is to acknowledge, Yeah, I did go through that, and
that was really really difficult. And even if this is
a disenfranchised trauma, so kind of a trauma that other
people don't understand, even if it's not on people's list
(39:29):
of what's serious, to me, it was and it impacted me,
and it was really hard, And I'm allowed to feel
sorry for myself. I'm allowed to feel sad about it,
and then I need to move on. Another thing that's
important here is sometimes when we have been in that environment,
we have almost been gaslet into feeling like it's normal.
(39:51):
We've been gaslet into feeling like we were the problem.
As I said before, we've been gaslet into being like, no,
I'm just going to shake this off. This was just
a bit over dramatic on my behalf. So you need
to find evidence and collect evidence from other people, people
you trust that you can believe your experience. So talk
(40:12):
to your friends, talk to your family who spoke to
you through that time and say, you know, hey, I'm
kind of doubting whether it was really that bad, And
they will look you in the eye and say, no,
that was terrible. What you were experiencing was objectively awful.
You had every right to leave. You had every right
so walk away, because you know, again, sometimes we are
in that environment and we almost become indoctrinated. I feel
(40:36):
like there are quite a few companies that are quite
cult like in this way. I think about BuzzFeed flash,
you know, throwback from the past. But remember when BuzzFeed
was like a huge thing, and then afterwards all these
people came out and were like, you know, I thought
it was the best job ever, but it was actually
incredibly taxing and awful. Sometimes when you're in an environment,
(40:58):
the only thing in the way to get through is
to kind of put a positive spin on things and
to glamorize. You know, if your brain and if you
were fully conscious of how terrible the experience was, you
would have wouldn't have been able to cope. So we
put up walls, We compartmentalize to survive. So make sure
that you understand that your reaction was valid. Your reaction
(41:22):
was also completely appropriate by getting objective people in your
life to confirm that for you moving forward. And I
will caveat this by saying you it's not your fault
that a workplace or a job was toxic. You did
not deserve it. But try and be picky from now
on if you can notice the warning signs of when
(41:44):
a job might adopt a certain culture that is un friendly,
the big warning signs, or when they are immediately like
in a job application or even in an interview. M
willing to compromise on anything. They're inflexible about salary, they're
inflexible about hours, they're inflexible about working from home, when
(42:05):
they call themselves a family, when honestly trust your intuition.
When you walk into the building or you have the
interview and they feel quite disinterested in you, or you
feel like they can't you know, the people that are
interviewing you themselves have only been there for a little while.
That really indicates high turnover. Start to be picky with
(42:26):
the job that you choose. And I know that this
is a luxury if you can afford to take a
little bit of time to really try and secure a
job that you really really like through networking or through anything.
I think it pays off in the long run. And
it pays off because you know, you don't have to
feel like you've been forced into another job that's the
same experience, and that's the same vibe in the same environment,
(42:50):
and then six months later you're back in the same spot.
It's not always available to everyone, but I do think
when we exit one job or one career or one environment,
it is a really good opportunity to reflect on what
we want from work and to really rethink our values
when it comes to work, rethink the balance that we
would like to strike, especially if you have a redundancy, right,
(43:11):
that's a gift. So a few times in our lives
and our working lives, do we have a period of
months where we can actually just exist and not have
to work and can travel or could you take a
little bit more time, So embrace that luxury, embrace that
experience and just take a rest. If you can take
a rest, recover, talk to your friends, spend more time
(43:34):
with yourself, building back up that identity that maybe you
have lost throughout this experience. I think that that is
all I have for you guys today. I think that
there is all my best tips for handling a toxic workplace.
I'm honestly quite sorry if you can relate to this.
I know it is very, very difficult. But you're not
(43:54):
being dramatic, You're not overreacting. I hope I don't need
to say that anymore than I or an you have.
But it is a really difficult thing to go through
because work is such a foundational part of who we
are in this day and age. So it's okay, take
care of yourself. You will find a better job you feel,
We'll find a better workplace, and this will pass. If
(44:15):
you enjoyed this episode, make sure that you are following
along for future episodes. We also have a bunch of
episodes around like finding a job in your twenties, Career
Anxiety in your twenties, how to find your calling. If
like that's a follow up episode that might be helpful,
make sure that you're following us on Instagram as well
at that Psychology podcast and message if you have any feedback,
(44:35):
If you have any thoughts on this episode, if you've
had an experience yourself, we would love to hear from
you and leave a review. If you feel cold to
do so, make sure you're following along, leave a review.
It makes our day. I really hope that this has
helped you through what you're going through. Until next time,
remember to be kind, be safe, be gentle to yourself,
and we will talk very very soon
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show.
(00:26):
Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners. Wherever
you are in the world, it is so great to
have you here. Back for another episode as we of
course break down the Psychology of your twenties. So a
few weeks ago, I got a DM from one of
you the listeners about a really toxic workplace. This listener,
(00:49):
and she's given me permission to talk about her story.
She told me about how she had recently quit a
job that she'd had for two years, and she said
to me, this job she felt more like a terrible
relationship than a job, than a way of making money.
And she was telling me all these details about how
her managers would call her after work hours to get
(01:11):
her to respond to feedback. They would ask her to
work weekends to do the tasks that they were unable
to do, saying that this was all part of her
job description, this is what she signed up for. And
at the same time, she wasn't really getting any perks,
she was getting paid very poorly. They wouldn't invite her
to any of like the workplace events. They would like
(01:33):
criticize her openly in front of other employees, like terrible,
terrible things. And she quit that job three months ago,
and in that period of time, she's been looking for
a new job, and she has found that, you know,
even applying for new jobs, even looking through new job
applications would make her anxious, Going into job interviews would
(01:55):
make her panic, would make her want to cry, run away, escape,
And this all letter to believe that you may be
her previous job had caused her like a degree of trauma,
and reading her messages, I had to agree with her,
and I realized that there are probably a lot of
other people going through this right now. And yet we
(02:16):
haven't done an episode on how to deal with this situation,
how to deal with a really toxic workplace. We talk
a lot on this podcast about finding your calling, how
to accelerate at work, how to navigate career anxiety, but
we haven't really spoken about what to do when you
have a great job, you have maybe your dream job,
(02:38):
you finally found a sustainable, secure, profession, and it turns
out that the workplace that you've walked into is incredibly toxic.
Now you're kind of in that state where you're dreading
going to work, your confidence is shattered, you want to quit,
but you don't have the means, you don't know how.
And this is exactly what I want to discussed today.
(03:01):
It's something that a lot of us go through during
the early days of our career, especially in our twenties,
and how do we survive a terrible job, but also
not just how do we survive when we're currently in it,
how do we move on from that experience and kind
of find a job that respects you and that you love.
Work is a massive part of our identity, so when
(03:22):
it's going wrong, it's hard for other things to not
be going wrong as well. I've had experiences like this,
and I'll share one of those experiences that I've had
later on, because it really can lead us, you know,
leave us to be quite quite broken, for lack of
a better word. And there is also, of course, a
lot of evidence for this being the case. And whilst
(03:44):
there is a lot of evidence, there is little acknowledgment
of that evidence. So a lot of the time, we
might be in this situation thinking that we're overreacting, thinking
that we're being dramatic. But time and time again, we
see studies, case studies, surveys, poll that show that a
lot of people experience during this, experience this during their lifetime,
(04:05):
and also it impacts them greatly. So we're going to
discuss all of that evidence and the psychology that links
toxic workplaces to our psychology and our mental health. How
to tell if your workplace is toxic, the different types
of toxicity at a job, and also, of course again
how to survive and how to thrive afterwards. I have
(04:27):
a number of tips to share. I have a number
of lived experiences to share as well. So if you
can relate to having a seriously traumatic former job, former boss,
current job, current boss, current workplace, stay with us. Without
further ado, let's get into toxic workplaces. Experiencing a toxic
(04:52):
workplace or a toxic work environment takes a huge and
an unspoken toll on our mental wellbeing, and it really
does actually surprise me how little we tend to discuss
this fact. We talk a lot about relationship trauma, friendship trauma,
experiences with mental health or with physical illness. But work
is also a significant pillar of our life. But you know,
(05:15):
when we have a toxic relationship with our workplace or
in a work environment, we don't really speak about how
negatively formative it can be. You know, when that is
not going well, it begins to affect everything else. But
you kind of feel silly talking about it. You feel
silly having to explain it. You know, everyone's job sucks,
no one likes to work. But I want to assure
(05:36):
you right now, a toxic workplace does bring a certain
kind of emotional experience and it is not an easy
thing to go through to really kind of, you know,
examine and illustrate why that is. Consider this recent statistic
from Gettysburg College in the US. This statistic suggests that
(05:57):
you and I we are probably going to spend around
and ninety thousand hours at work across our lifetime. That
is about one third of our lives. If one third
of your waking hours were spent in a place where
you didn't feel welcome, you were constantly stressed, you are
under intense pressure or scrutiny, you are treated poorly, you
(06:21):
are going to see that manifest in all other areas
of your life. But at the same time, there is
this expectation that you should be able to detach if
we just build up our lives enough beyond work, if
we get a few hobbies, if we turn off our emails.
You know, as soon as our shift ends or it
hits five o'clock, we should be successfully able to turn
(06:44):
off completely and like shape shift back into the normal
version of ourselves. Most of us, though, no, that is
not true. We know that it's very hard to have
that separation because when you spend that much time in
a job, a profession, and environment, it will ultimately influence
your personality, your thoughts, your beliefs, even your sense of hope,
(07:05):
and it also becomes kind of like a defining feature
of how other people identify you as well. You know,
what's the first question that you are inevitably going to
be asked in a new social situation at basically every party,
every social situation, every conference that you go to. What
do you do for work? It is inescapable. This can
(07:29):
create a psychological state that we know as enmeshment. So
in meshment, this concept was originally used to describe codependency
in families, and especially in families where there was a
lack of boundaries, and it meant that there was kind
of no way of separating. You know, a parent and
a child or a sibling. Everything was intertwined. They did
(07:51):
everything together. They had all the same beliefs, they had
the same routine in their lives were enmeshed. This can
also happen with your your job or with the workplace.
When a disproportionate amount of time is spent at work,
is spent talking about work, is focused on your career,
is spent with co workers, there needs to be a
(08:14):
natural separation of some sort. Otherwise we do kind of
end up tying everything back to our job and that
it's going to directly impact their self worth and our
self worth. It's important to remember that I think the
current culture around work is very different to what it
was a few years back. It is very hard to disconnect. Actually,
(08:35):
in Australia we just passed right to disconnect laws, which
basically means that if you don't answer your boss's text
at seven pm, they like can't fire you, they can't
say anything about it, which is an amazing step forward.
But a lot of us will still check our work
emails after seven pm on the weekends because it's so
much more accessible. And I think because I don't know,
(08:58):
I just feel like previously our career was just the
thing that we did to make money. Now there's a
lot more glory to it. It's the thing that you
can brag about. It's this thing that identifies you, it's
this thing that others use to kind of place you
in their life. This is all basically a long way
of saying that you know, work is such a huge
(09:18):
part of who you are, and more so the further
along you get into this decade. It's a very common
experience that as you age, the circles that represent friends, play, socializing, hobbies,
free time, leisure, those circles get a lot smaller, and
the circles representing work, responsibility, career they get larger. And sorry,
(09:42):
one more point on this as well. When you are
in the early stages of your career, you want to
do everything right, and you want to be good, and
you want to be praised and you want to be promoted.
You know, you're also probably the least experienced. You don't
have as much knowledge, and that can again also lead
to a real hustle called the mentality of like you
know I have to be the one staying late. I
(10:03):
have to be the one who never makes mistakes. I
have to put up with whatever is thrown my way,
including a toxic culture or a bad work environment, because
you know everyone has done it before me. This is
just how it is, this is what is expected. I
can't say anything. I cannot say anything because all jobs
are like this. I just have to put up with it.
(10:26):
And in those circumstances you have to take very special
care of your wellbeing. I want to kind of tell
you a story of my worst job. I want to
tell you a story of my most toxic workplace. So
the worst job I have ever worked, by far was
back when I was at university in Canberra and I
worked at a restaurant and I'm not going home and
(10:47):
said the name. I'm not going to say the name,
but it was a stake restaurant and it was very expensive.
So a lot of like CEOs and government people and
people in town for work who wanted to spend big
on a meal would come to this restaurant. And it
looked very lovely from the outside, it looked very like
(11:07):
designer luxury, but behind the scenes it was just awful.
It was a walking hr disaster. There were like three
things that made it really really terrible. Firstly, there was
a group of people, group of women who had worked
there for like years, some of them for like five years,
(11:28):
super clicky, and they were all like managers and supervisors,
and they were all friends and they would go on
holiday together. They were honestly just terrific. So new people
would start like myself, and they would kind of almost Oh,
they also lived together. I remember that being part of it.
Some of them lived in the same house, and you
would start and they would like vet you to just
(11:50):
see if you were like one of them, and if
even one of them didn't like you, they didn't think
that you were like working hard enough, or you weren't
going to like pick up their shifts, so do whatever
they said. They would make your life awful. I remember
one time getting yelled at by one of the senior
girls who worked there for coming into work and immediately
(12:12):
making myself a glass of water because I used to
ride my bike all the way from like Uni and
it would be really really hot in the summertime, and
I would have to wear this black outfit and I'd
ride my bike from Uni to work, and I would
make myself a glass of water, make myself a drink
glass of water, and she was like, you are incredibly entitled.
(12:33):
You don't even have your apron on, you haven't even
like clocked in yet. And it was just that kind
of stuff, like they wanted to make your life difficult,
and like during the busy period, all the junior staff
would be working and they would be like out the
back gossiping. So that was the first component, was the click.
Then there was the boss. And I cannot even begin
(12:55):
to tell you how much I dislike this man and
the dread I would have when working with him alone.
And he would like deliberately try and make you uncomfortable
as a joke, and like you'd be scheduled to finish
at nine, but if he did just one small thing
to annoy him, or you know, you wouldn't laugh at
his joke, he'd make you stay until eleven, just with him,
(13:17):
just you and him, in this like one restaurant, and
he would make you wipe down everything again and again
and again, and then make you go down in the
elevator with him and make these like disgusting jokes whilst
no one was like there he was so gross. He
was so gross, and he would yell at you, he
would pretend to trip you, and when we were closed,
he'd like bring all of his buddies to get drunk,
(13:40):
and you would have to stay on shift to like
serve them free alcohol, otherwise you would get fired. And
you know, oh my god, sorry I'm going on about
this man, but he is a terrible man. And I
remember for years afterwards, if I thought I would see him,
I would like I would be scared. You know, those
people you just look at and like there's nothing in
the eyes. That was it. And then finally they were
(14:02):
just the customers, you know. They were so rude, and
I think that they definitely expected a lot from their
experience because they were paying for the experience. But the
kitchen was understaffed. We were off and down three people
because all the senior people would be in the break
room and our boss was like never going to stand
up for us. And that time was so terrible for
(14:23):
me because every night I would go to work and
I would get paid not very much, and I would
just cry before I had to ride my bike over
and I wanted to quit so badly, and I would
get anxious walking through the door. Everyone was so on edge,
so there wasn't even like a camaraderie or a friendship
that could sustain you when it got bad. And I
(14:46):
was like in my early twenties at the time, so
it just felt like, you know, this is something I
have to tolerate. I have to just take it because I'm
trying to finish my degree. And you know, I was
just like getting sick, sick with worry about going away
and thinking that this was like everything to me, this job.
Like I'd be thinking about like something missed, some mistake
(15:06):
I did, and how I could fix that like the
next day, and like all these things, and it just
took such a significant toll. And in hindsight, you know,
I still have nightmares. I oh my god, remembering this.
I had a nightmare last night about this colleague who
I worked with, and that was like how many years ago,
seven six seven years ago, and she was like following
(15:28):
me around my house like that was literally a dream
I had about her last night, and I was so
I was so scared, like not outside the dream but
back at the job to quit. And on my last shift,
I called in sick actually, which I think was like
one of three times I have ever done that, And
then I blocked all of their numbers and all of
their Facebook profiles because that was how they used to
(15:50):
like talk to us back then. And I just was like,
I'm never gonna I don't want to interact with you
ever again. And I know that I am not the
only one who has had this experience. This is just
one example, a hospitality example, right, And I think my
experience the toxicity came from the people. There was this
(16:11):
level of harassment and bullying and intimidation that takes an
emotional toll, specifically because it has to do with an
underlying sense of security and I would even say safety
when I was there, and the uncertainty that each shift would,
you know, bring something new and not in a fun way,
(16:31):
but in like a destructive, anxiety inducing way. I don't
think anyone who worked at this restaurant at the time
was like having a good time. And interestingly, I actually
read a study the other day that was conducted in
China back in twenty twenty one, and what the study
said was that when a workplace in general, when the
(16:52):
culture is toxic, the feeling becomes toxic amongst the coworkers,
and it means that they are more likely to ostracize, bully,
be quite cruel because they themselves feel like they have
so little control and they are so dissatisfied. That is
often the root of workplace bullying and workplace intimidation and
(17:14):
just meanness and cruelty is that these individuals recognize that
they're actually not happy themselves, but there's this like sadistic
need to see that unhappiness reflected back in someone else.
And this can extend all the way from the top
of night and I mean like your bosses, you know,
(17:35):
they start to feel this shift as well, and they
start to act in a way that's just like very
unkind they and you don't feel respected, you don't feel
like you can speak up, You feel completely stuck. This
really links back to me towards a theme or a
lack of respect, and that also extends to other kinds
(17:55):
of workplaces, you know, not just hospitality jobs, but corporate jobs,
where people don't respect your boundaries. They ask you to
work when you know you can't. They assign you things
that you just don't have the skills or the capacity
to do, and then they criticize you. That make you
feel small. That is a very hard thing to go
(18:16):
through and still maintain your sense of self esteem. You know,
I've heard from a lot of people whose biggest complaint
about their toxic workplace has been the unreasonable workload and
the expectations that made them feel like they were on
a constant treadmill, and this treadmill was getting faster and faster.
And I would categorize a boss that does this as
(18:38):
using fear based leadership, pushing people to their limits out
of a fear of repercussion, you know, getting fired, being humiliated,
being criticized, rather than giving people space to expand, It's
all about consequences rather than growth. That treadmill I'm speaking
about that puts us into a hyper aroused and stressed
(19:02):
elevated state because you are essentially running on cortisol and adrenaline.
If you've ever wondered why after you go through a
super stressful, busy period at work or at school, you
immediately get sick. That is why your body requires mental
and of course physical rest to switch off, to restore
(19:23):
to pleated reserves, and more importantly, to calm down that
stress response, because that stress response is incredibly harsh on
our bodies. When we aren't given that chance, it weakens
our immune system, It makes us worse at fighting illnesses,
or more susceptible to certain diseases, certain sicknesses. So it's
(19:45):
not just that this is having a mental consequence. You
are going to also see a physical result of this
bad environment. Then there is you know, overworking as well,
which feels very similar to the above. Right, this culture
of like you need to give this company every thing
you need to be on one hundred percent of the time,
there tends to be a belief that overworking and to
(20:09):
an extent, burnout is an occupational hazard of some jobs,
the same way that you know you're more likely to
be injured working in a mine or doing something dangerous
like working on an oil rig, and you accept that
that is part of the role. If you're a doctor,
a lawyer, a nurse, over time and burnout just you know,
(20:30):
you just have to accept that. But that is also
becoming the norm for almost all jobs these days. And
I'm not talking about staying thirty minutes to finish off
your emails, but late nights, working weekends, without being compensated,
without getting support. The biggest contributor to burnout. According to
the University of California, Berkeley, the biggest number one thing
(20:53):
is overworking an excessive workload, and they have even made
the claim, which I think think we should take with
a grain of salt, but the University of California probably
knows more than me. They've made the claim that burnout
is contributing to the deaths of millions of people each
year because of its all round negative impact on your health.
(21:16):
You know, I want to say this not to scare you,
but to remind you that you are not being dramatic
if you find yourself completely depleted by the expectation to
work long hours and the inability to say no because
you are a junior, because this is how it's always
been done. I'm going to take a short break, but
when we return, I want to talk about some of
(21:37):
the further consequences of that for all elements of our health.
Whether it's excessive workload, bullying, intimidation, micromanagement, poor communication, a
bad culture. All forms of toxic workplaces leave their mark,
(22:00):
and you don't even have to have been there for
a long time for that to be the case. According
to the American Psychological Association, when we encounter these environments.
It can lead employees that means you and I to
become and this is their words, sick, scared, and to
look for ways to quit. They also consistently report about
(22:22):
sixty five percent of the people they spoke to that
their mental wellbeing declines during these periods. Toxic workplaces take excitement,
they take our energy, they take our willingness and our
desire to do well, and they turn it interfere, and
they turn it interfere because we need money and we
need a job to survive. So when that is not
(22:45):
going well, every other element of our lives feels threatened.
You know, we've already spoken about that cost when it
comes to burnout. But burnout is more than just one feeling.
It actually develops in twelve stages. So the term burnout
was created, discovered, I don't know, initiated, whatever you want
to say, by the psychologist Herbert Freudenberg. And in his
(23:09):
initial theory back in the day, he suggests that we
often don't even notice burnout until we get to the
final few stages, so stage ten, eleven, and twelve, and
this is the time when we really feel it. We
are sick, we are tired, all the time, we are
confused and able to regulate our anxiety. It's a downward
(23:32):
spiral that we're heading, but it actually begins a lot earlier,
and it begins with things that we would see as positive, right,
excessive ambition, trying to meet the expectations or fit into
the environment. It's like a toxic relationship where we think
we are in the wrong and we try to fix
ourselves by working harder, only to eventually realize, you know,
(23:53):
it was actually never me, it was always this other party.
The early stages of burnout also include trying to put
more on your plate, neglecting basic needs or chores, just
saying I'm too busy for that. Feeling like you don't
have enough time in your day, withdrawing from friends, finding
that there is conflict in other areas of your life
(24:13):
as well, with your partner, with your roommates, with your friends.
And then the emptiness sets in. And it may only
be when we are in this final state and we're
looking back at the last few weeks, we're looking back
at the last months, and we think, oh, oh, my goodness,
(24:33):
this has been coming for a long time. You know.
Hindsight is often the first time that we notice this pattern,
and this is what can lead us to the dark,
dark path of chronic burnout or a burnout cycle. So
if you are someone who finds that they get burnt
out like every three to four months, maybe like clockwork,
(24:57):
but you know, then you feel a little bit better
a couple of weeks, so you put everything back on
your plate and you try to adapt, and then you
know you feel burnt out again. You're not going through
a different cycle, different stages of burnout because you're actually
not even recovering. You've probably never even escaped the burnout
to begin with. You've just gone back to an earlier stage.
(25:19):
You are in the burnout cycle, and that cycle involves
momentary recovery met by escalation. People in overwhelming or toxic
workplaces are more likely to report this kind of experience,
and sometimes it can last years. Toxic workplaces can even
(25:39):
at times create PTSD or lasting trauma after you have
left that environment. A friend of my dad's actually had
such a traumatic experience at a job. You know, it
was like ten years ago and he has never been
able to recover from that. On a smaller scale, I
had a friend who just recently got out of this
(26:01):
terrible job, maybe like six months ago, and oh my goodness,
I just hated her boss. Never met her boss, hated him.
He would single her out, he had such he was
just mean. He just obviously did not like her for
whatever reason, and he made it very known. And then
one day he just made her redundant out of the blue.
(26:23):
After that, of course, you know, it really echoes that
story we said before. She had to find a new job,
and it was so interesting yet quite sad to watch her,
you know, apply for jobs and to watch her to
struggle and struggle and struggle and feel like she wasn't qualified,
she wasn't confident enough, because her expectations for herself had
(26:46):
sunk to his level and left a mark on her
self worth. And you know, the more we care about
someone's opinion because they are in a position of authority
or we rely on their good opinion for our future,
the more weight we put on it, the more a
negative opinion can really scar us. And it didn't matter
what we said, her friends said, you know, it didn't
(27:08):
matter that we thought she was talented, skillful, charismatic. Her
inner critic had taken her boss's words and spoken them
back to her in her own voice, So what do
we do to heal from these situations? You know, unless
you are suddenly a millionaire, which congratulations, Please let me know.
(27:29):
If that's the case, congrats, But unless that is your case,
we need to work. You can't always just quit a
secure job, even if you want to, even if you're
really struggling. That's why toxic workplaces have their own place
in hell. I also think that, you know, having a
job is also an important part of our purpose, our identity.
So you want to have a positive environment that you
(27:50):
can thrive in, that you can achieve your goals in.
So what do we do to kind of cope in
a situation where that's not the case, and how do
we cope afterwards. One of the best things that a
friend of mine has ever said to me ever, is
if someone treats you badly, they are not going to
treat you any better the harder you work. And that
(28:14):
left me gobsmacked because I think about my toxic job jobs.
I only spoke about one, but there have been others,
and I think about them, and I think about how
the whole time I was the one pushing myself to
fit in, I was working so hard thinking that I
was the problem, when actually it was the environment that
was the common denominator amongst not just my experience, but
(28:38):
many others in many ways. And I've said it before,
but a toxic workplace, in a toxic relationship like share
a lot of traits. They make you doubt your own
self worth, They make you feel like you are the problem.
They make it hard to leave, They blame you, they
tear you down. They know they are of course different
as well. But I think when you consider it in
(28:59):
this way, you begin to realize that you deserve more.
Your job is actually just as important in some ways
as the relationship that you choose, And the same way
that you deserve the absolute best from a partner from
a friend, you deserve the absolute best from a workplace.
(29:19):
I think with toxic jobs, this is not a matter
of trying to convince someone to be nicer, to fix
the attitude problem for you. It's not a matter of
trying to convince a workplace to overhaul their culture. It
is a situation where you know they've probably been asked
before and they wouldn't do it. You are not the
first person to suffer, and not the first person with
(29:41):
these problems. So whilst you are in it, your main
goal is to and I know it might sound quite selfish,
but it's to seriously just get through it. Put your
head down and get through it, because you cannot bear
the burden of a disorganized and toxic environment. My first
big tip is to take control of what you can
(30:03):
and find value outside of work. Make it a mission
to have fun, to do things you enjoy, to put
joy and excitement back into the hours that you're not
in the workplace. There is definitely an inclination when we're
going through this experience to come home and just be first.
(30:23):
So you're exhausted, you're emotionally burnt out, and obviously the
reaction to that is just a rest and is to lifestill,
and is to just enter a catatonic state. I get
that feeling, and I get that urge. I want you
to treat that as the first option and then to
explore the second option. And the second option is to,
almost in defiance, say I'm not going to let this
(30:45):
shitty job ruin my life. I'm not going to let
this shitty job mean that I cannot experience great beauty
and excitement and fun and passion and all the best
feelings beyond this environment. So you cannot control how a
boss treats you, you cannot control how a workplace values you.
(31:07):
But you can control, you know, what you do before
you go to bed. You can control the hours before
you go to work, where you drive to the beach,
you watch the sunrise, you get coffee early morning, coffee
with a friend, you go to the movies after work
instead of just you know, coming home and sitting back
on the couch. Fill those hours that you can control
(31:29):
with the life. I also would really suggest to limit
your emotional investment in your job by doing something that
we call acting your wage. Obviously it's a play on words.
Act your age, act your wage. You know, if someone
is as much as you can, if someone is not
paying you for the extra effort, they're not appreciating you
(31:51):
for the extra effort, don't do it. Do not do it.
You might think that this is counterintuitive. You might be like,
you know, I want to get it head in my career.
I understand that, but is this the place in which
your effort is going to be most recognized or could
you take that effort and that time that you're spent
trying to impress your terrible boss, trying to impress your
(32:13):
terrible coworkers, and could you put it towards having an
extra hour to apply for new jobs, having an extra
hour to practice self care, having an extra hour to
call a friend or to call your mum, instead of
feeling like your life is just this job. It's hard
to detach when you're in it, but I want you
to really be reminded that your job does not care
(32:38):
about you all that much. There are certain people within
an organization or within your workplace that might care about you,
but as a whole, it's a company. It's an organization.
It's something that has a mission that isn't to do
with you. And I know it sounds quite pessimistic, but
if you were to leave tomorrow, they would find a placement.
(33:01):
And so do not treat this like a family. Do
not treat it like it's this giving friendship and let
them guilt you into staying. This is a job. You're
entitled to act your wage, and oh my goodness, please
take a sick day when you can. This was something
that I wish wish I had done when I was
working full time at my corporate job. I had so
(33:24):
much sickly by the time I left. And you've got
to remember that sickly you have been, that you've paid
for those days, right, that is money that they have
not paid you, which they have kept for themselves. And
if you leave, and maybe this is just in Australia,
but if you leave, they get to keep the money
that they have deducted from your paycheck for the days
(33:46):
that you need to call and sick. So please take
a sick day. This is just a job. I promise
you that in ten years time or after you quit.
You one of the big things is one of my
big regrets is oh my god, I wish I'd actually
taken a mental health day when I need it. I
wish that I had taken care of my emotions. I
also think that if you are in a unique environment
in which the main problem is criticism, the main problem
(34:09):
is being shut down, not being appreciated, it's not being congratulated,
or being quite bored, not feeling challenged, try and provide
some self congratulation so you know, self reinforcement is one
of the most valuable psychological tools I've ever learned. Self approval,
you know, actually congratulating yourself, celebrating yourself, especially when you're
(34:33):
in an environment where you're like, I don't think that these
people are going to do that for me. Some of
the reasons that one of the big reasons that we
become quite burdened by a negative work environment is we
begin to expect that our validation needs to come from
our employer, because our career is a core piller of
our identity, and we don't really know where to search
(34:55):
without validation beyond the workplace. And I'm gonna make a
caveat here. This is a especially the case if you
were quite a high achiever. You were very you know,
a good student, you were an a student, you were
you know, just excelling, You're a gifted child. You were
used to praise. You like praise. You like to be congratulated,
(35:16):
and when you don't have that, it feels like you're
quite worthless. So try and get into the habit of
being like, I'm really proud that I got all of
that done today. I'm really proud that I tried really hard.
I'm really proud of the extra effort that I put
in to this thing. For me, I'm really proud of
my work. You don't need to be reliant on someone
else to tell you that you've done a good job
(35:36):
if you know you've done a good job. Now. This
final tip actually came from my friend who I was
speaking about, who was made redundant a few months back,
and while she was in that terrible, terrible job, she said,
the one really amazing thing that worked for her was
having an exit strategy. So the exit strategy is basically
(35:57):
a timeline that you have for when you want to quit.
It's quite unreasonable to be in a toxic workplace for
a lot of us and to be like, I'm just
going to quit tomorrow because we need money to survive,
and that's I think what contributes to us feeling quite
trapped is a sense of almost dependency on this thing
that we hate. We are dependent on this terrible boss,
(36:17):
this terrible job. You need to start looking to the
future and creating that timeline for leaving. So a timeline
for leaving is not just like an immediate goal of
getting a new job. It's a structured way of thinking
about how you're going to get there and how you
break it down. If you've listened to our episode on
five ways to reinvent yourself in your twenties, you have
(36:38):
heard the strategy. The way to do it is to
break your goals down, your goal being to leave into
one day, one week, one month, six month goals. So
the six month goal is to be out of there,
but the one month goal is to have a few
job interviews lined up. The one week goal is to
apply for five different jobs a week, and our day
(37:00):
goal is to be filling out your resume, to be
thinking about who could be your references, to be taking
five minutes to just search through jobs and bookmarking them
for later. You need to have a sense of Okay,
there is an end insight. I am going to actively
start working towards leaving this workplace, and you'll find that
(37:21):
suddenly it becomes a lot easier to detach. You can
start like to give less fucks. Sorry to swear, but seriously,
it's when you start to just be like, this actually
is a job because I can see what else is
out there and you're not in this toxic relationship, lind
to what is better? All right, We're going to take
another short break, but when we come back and want
to talk about the strategies that you can use in
(37:43):
the aftermath, even after we leave a toxic, awful, terrible environment.
Sometimes the emotional impact lingers. So we're going to talk
about how to heal from that and much much more
after this short break. Recovering from any situation that has
(38:03):
perhaps brought you trauma, emotional turmoil, emotional conflict really involves
finding closure. As humans, we like things to have a
neat storybook ending. We like to be able to put
a memory away and say, that makes sense, that makes
sense that I had to go through that, That makes
sense as to why that happened, and I can move
(38:26):
on from that now. When we go through things that
are very much out of our control or quite turbulent
and hurtful, it's very hard to find that conclusion. It's
very hard to also find a sense of meaning often
because there isn't any There is no meaning behind you
having to experience a toxic workplace like it's just an
(38:46):
unnecessary trauma. So instead you need to find that closure
for yourself. You can't necessarily go to your bad boss
or your bad colleague and say why did you treat
me that way? Why were you so cruel to me?
You can't go and talk to this of your company
and say why did you pay me so little, Why
did you disregard my needs? Instead? You need to find
(39:07):
that cognitive closure for yourself that's going to allow you
to transition away from what's finished to something new. The
easiest way to do that is to acknowledge the impact.
Is to acknowledge, Yeah, I did go through that, and
that was really really difficult. And even if this is
a disenfranchised trauma, so kind of a trauma that other
people don't understand, even if it's not on people's list
(39:29):
of what's serious, to me, it was and it impacted me,
and it was really hard, And I'm allowed to feel
sorry for myself. I'm allowed to feel sad about it,
and then I need to move on. Another thing that's
important here is sometimes when we have been in that environment,
we have almost been gaslet into feeling like it's normal.
(39:51):
We've been gaslet into feeling like we were the problem.
As I said before, we've been gaslet into being like, no,
I'm just going to shake this off. This was just
a bit over dramatic on my behalf. So you need
to find evidence and collect evidence from other people, people
you trust that you can believe your experience. So talk
(40:12):
to your friends, talk to your family who spoke to
you through that time and say, you know, hey, I'm
kind of doubting whether it was really that bad, And
they will look you in the eye and say, no,
that was terrible. What you were experiencing was objectively awful.
You had every right to leave. You had every right
so walk away, because you know, again, sometimes we are
in that environment and we almost become indoctrinated. I feel
(40:36):
like there are quite a few companies that are quite
cult like in this way. I think about BuzzFeed flash,
you know, throwback from the past. But remember when BuzzFeed
was like a huge thing, and then afterwards all these
people came out and were like, you know, I thought
it was the best job ever, but it was actually
incredibly taxing and awful. Sometimes when you're in an environment,
(40:58):
the only thing in the way to get through is
to kind of put a positive spin on things and
to glamorize. You know, if your brain and if you
were fully conscious of how terrible the experience was, you
would have wouldn't have been able to cope. So we
put up walls, We compartmentalize to survive. So make sure
that you understand that your reaction was valid. Your reaction
(41:22):
was also completely appropriate by getting objective people in your
life to confirm that for you moving forward. And I
will caveat this by saying you it's not your fault
that a workplace or a job was toxic. You did
not deserve it. But try and be picky from now
on if you can notice the warning signs of when
(41:44):
a job might adopt a certain culture that is un friendly,
the big warning signs, or when they are immediately like
in a job application or even in an interview. M
willing to compromise on anything. They're inflexible about salary, they're
inflexible about hours, they're inflexible about working from home, when
(42:05):
they call themselves a family, when honestly trust your intuition.
When you walk into the building or you have the
interview and they feel quite disinterested in you, or you
feel like they can't you know, the people that are
interviewing you themselves have only been there for a little while.
That really indicates high turnover. Start to be picky with
(42:26):
the job that you choose. And I know that this
is a luxury if you can afford to take a
little bit of time to really try and secure a
job that you really really like through networking or through anything.
I think it pays off in the long run. And
it pays off because you know, you don't have to
feel like you've been forced into another job that's the
same experience, and that's the same vibe in the same environment,
(42:50):
and then six months later you're back in the same spot.
It's not always available to everyone, but I do think
when we exit one job or one career or one environment,
it is a really good opportunity to reflect on what
we want from work and to really rethink our values
when it comes to work, rethink the balance that we
would like to strike, especially if you have a redundancy, right,
(43:11):
that's a gift. So a few times in our lives
and our working lives, do we have a period of
months where we can actually just exist and not have
to work and can travel or could you take a
little bit more time, So embrace that luxury, embrace that
experience and just take a rest. If you can take
a rest, recover, talk to your friends, spend more time
(43:34):
with yourself, building back up that identity that maybe you
have lost throughout this experience. I think that that is
all I have for you guys today. I think that
there is all my best tips for handling a toxic workplace.
I'm honestly quite sorry if you can relate to this.
I know it is very, very difficult. But you're not
(43:54):
being dramatic, You're not overreacting. I hope I don't need
to say that anymore than I or an you have.
But it is a really difficult thing to go through
because work is such a foundational part of who we
are in this day and age. So it's okay, take
care of yourself. You will find a better job you feel,
We'll find a better workplace, and this will pass. If
(44:15):
you enjoyed this episode, make sure that you are following
along for future episodes. We also have a bunch of
episodes around like finding a job in your twenties, Career
Anxiety in your twenties, how to find your calling. If
like that's a follow up episode that might be helpful,
make sure that you're following us on Instagram as well
at that Psychology podcast and message if you have any feedback,
(44:35):
If you have any thoughts on this episode, if you've
had an experience yourself, we would love to hear from
you and leave a review. If you feel cold to
do so, make sure you're following along, leave a review.
It makes our day. I really hope that this has
helped you through what you're going through. Until next time,
remember to be kind, be safe, be gentle to yourself,
and we will talk very very soon
Host
Jemma Sbeghen
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