Toxic workplace

Have you ever worked in a toxic workplace? I have.

Interestingly, the problem wasn’t with my colleagues or boss. It was another department with whom we shared the office. It was their culture that made me sick. The tone of the language around me 8 hours a day made me physically unwell: it was too contradictory to my values. Each day I was dragging myself to work with a knot in my stomach, feeling nauseous, hoping one day somehow it would turn better.

Then I realised I couldn’t change them. And I didn’t want to give up my values.

It has become my shortest job.

Toxic positivity

There is no healing without seeing and acknowledging the bad stuff.

Therefore, seeing only the positive means denying the truth. It is hurtful.

However, I would be careful to call out someone’s toxic positivity.

They might be using it to soothe their own pain. I have been there. I had times in my life when clinging to looking at the “bright side of life” was the key to my emotional survival. It wasn’t others telling me, but I was telling myself.

Read more here: emotional abuse impacts our physical health