Why Your Toxic Workplace Can't Do Endings
Crossing thresholds consciously will minimise the hurt.
I write Toxic Workplace Survival Guy because toxic workplaces make me angry. I want to help as many people as possible do as I did: survive long enough to emerge with my mental health, dignity and career intact, on my own terms. A big thank-you to all those who’ve become paid subscribers.
Live Event: I’m delighted to share that I’ll be making my first live appearance as Toxic Workplace Survival Guy next month, at Love and Grief in the Shadow of Psychedelic Narcissism, an online event hosted by Dr Rosalind Watts’ Acer Integration community on Thursday, 23 May 2024 19:00-21:30 BST. Tickets here.
Survival Tool#16: Approach Endings Consciously
Endings are important.
This is a truth that’s taken me years to learn.
For much of my earlier life, I found myself succumbing to the impulse to move on to the next phase — whether in work, relationships, or where I lived — without taking much time to appropriately honour what had gone before.
With the benefit of hindsight, I can now see that the quality of attention we bring to the end of something is just as important as how we begin it.
Bear this in mind during your toxic workplace ordeal.
You’ll face a number of endings before you finally leave your toxic workplace for good.
Examples include:
The end of a honeymoon period in your job as your initial enthusiasm slowly cedes to the realisation that you’re stuck (for now) in a toxic workplace. (Survival Tool#1: Admit Your Workplace is Toxic).
The end of a valued working relationship with a manager or team, as you find yourself under the sway of figures who do not respect healthy boundaries, micro-manage, and try to intimidate you.
The end of your ability to remain congruent (inner state matching outer actions) at work, now that the level of toxicity in your organisation has become so acute that you know deep down you no longer belong.
The end of your employment in the toxic workplace.
It serves us to notice when we’re approaching such thresholds, and pay close attention as we transition through them.
Being Realistic
We’re wired for connection, and young parts of us naturally want some acknowledgement from the people around us that an ending's taking place — particularly those who sit above us in the organisational chart.
Good managers know this, and will make sure that you know that they know the change has happened. Even a simple acknowledgement, delivered in the right way, is often enough.
But in a toxic workplace, no such acknowledgement will be forthcoming.
That’s because your feelings don’t matter.
Your inner life and values are of no importance to superiors whose deadness to their own interiority is the main reason why the toxic company culture has taken root.(Survival Tool#8: See Through the Confusion).
People who are cut off from their own empathy in this way simply won’t think about the importance an ending may hold for you.
As ever, Toxic Workplace Survival Guy holds such people in compassion: They developed the ‘strategic survival personality’ that’s propelled them so high, and is now treating you as an object, due to attachment disruption and trauma in early life.1
But compassion needs to be balanced with self-preservation, as narcissism expert Dr Ramani Durvasula has often rightly observed. (Survival Rule#6: Toxic Workplace? Buy this Book.)
By becoming aware of the importance of endings, and recognising that our toxic workplace won’t honour them, we can guard against unrealistic expectations, and take steps to approach transitions more consciously.
Conscious Crossings
The first step is to scan for any endings that may be on the horizon.
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