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toxicity is toxic – and is painful

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

Here is my hand.

emotional abuse impacts our physical health

Emotional abuse impacts our physical health

“There’s a problem we must talk about.” and I was about to collapse. I couldn’t imagine what I could have done wrong.
 
Childhood patterns emerged from my subconscious.
 
Leaving a toxic person, unless we’re well-grounded inside, is far from easy. However, there are occasions when it is simply impossible. For example, when that abusive, toxic person is our parent.
 
The extra problem with it is that as children, we cannot recognise and connect the dots. Also, how we handle the emotional abuse when we grow into it is shaped by what we see from others. At least, this is my observation. I wasn’t lucky. My “role model” who showed me how to handle emotional abuse was a fully submissive one. Therefore, I had a pattern of giving in to the abuser to follow. While inside, I felt it wasn’t all right at all. I knew something was off but couldn’t understand it. And I was unable to handle the controversy – how the heck to I dare to question both my parents -, and the abuse itself.
 
My body was honest. Now I can see. Stomach aches and nausea every morning when I had to go to school. The feeling of inadequacy, that whatever I do, I cannot be good enough. I cannot be good enough, neither for them nor anyone else. Nausea still sometimes knocks on my door when I find myself in similar thinking and emotional patterns.
 
My body was honest. My mind was rationalising, “they are my parent and always (must be) right”. Then there were others, those who said “it’s just simply how they are” and “this is how they show their love”. And of course, there was barely anyone who believed how they indeed acted and behaved behind closed doors. It was unimaginable for those who only see their “nice face”, never the rage, the belittling and deliberately hurtful words.
 
My body was honest. Three times I was signed up for appendicitis surgery. I was presenting all the symptoms but having perfect blood results. Thanks to all the doctors how did not make the surgery. However, I was still rationalising: “I must be too sensitive, unable to handle stress”, blaming myself for not handling it all well.
 
It wasn’t my fault. Now I know. Abuse is never ok.
 
My body was honest. And still, it is. After a long healing journey, now I am mostly able to handle stress without switching into fight/flight/freeze mode. Mostly.
 
Last Thursday I was told, “There’s a problem we must talk about.” I thought I would collapse then and there in severe humiliation and immediately started questioning myself and him what I had done wrong? The instincts from my childhood kicked in. Which shows I am not as ok as I would like to be. Especially that he was joking, just like he had done many previous times. I still got scared that day.
 
My body was honest last Thursday.
 
Listen to your body!
 
Emotional abuse impacts our physical health.

Here is my hand.