In My Toxic Workplace, Who Can I Trust?

The answer is less depressing than it sounds.

Feb 22, 2024

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. I’m committed to sharing everything I learned the hard way. A big thank-you to all those who’ve endorsed this project by becoming a paid subscriber: Your generosity helps make Toxic Workplace Survival Guy sustainable.

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Survival Tool#4: Confide with Care

Toxic workplaces exist across a spectrum.

Just like physical landscapes, their terrain and topography vary enormously, requiring different approaches to traverse them, by different people, at different times.

In some cases, the level of toxicity is so extreme that everyone realises that they’re in a toxic workplace, keeps their head down, and does their best to survive.

But the picture is often more complex.

While there may be a background drone of tension, dissatisfaction and chronic insecurity, the worst poison festers in pockets.

The toxicity oozes most insidiously through certain teams.

That means it’s perfectly possible to be surrounded by co-workers who are blissfully ignorant of the level of toxicity you’re experiencing.

Or it can happen the other way around: You’re doing okay but you’ve got no idea of the living Hell consuming the worker on the next desk.

Be Clear-eyed

Understanding that toxicity is distributed unevenly in your workplace has important implications for your survival strategy.

Because your natural impulse in a toxic workplace will be to soothe yourself by seeking allies who can validate your experience, witness your struggle, and — if they’re powerful enough — intervene to change a situation on your behalf.

This is the most natural impulse in the world.

It is also one that will almost certainly prove fatal (at least to your chances of staying in that particular role).

It is essential therefore to be clear-eyed about who you can trust.

Your support system must be comprised of people outside your toxic workplace.

Friends, partners, relatives — people who love, respect and care about you, and who see you for the person you are, not the professional role you play, or the persona you adopt at work.

And yes, you may develop friendships with fellow inmates in your toxic workplace. These can be enormously nourishing, helping you to recognise that it’s not just you who feels the toxicity at every turn.

But I’m not talking about comfort here.

I’m talking about Trust.

With a capital T.

Trust is a big word.

Facing Reality

Trusting somebody means that you can be 100 percent certain that they will say and do the right thing by you.

That they will stay suppoortive even when they’re under pressure.

That they will go the extra mile for you.

That they will take risks, even make sacrifices, for you.

And the reality is, in a toxic workplace, you can’t trust anybody.

You can’t trust your ex-boss who you always got on with.

You can’t trust the powerful figures who always signaled that they respected — even liked you — and that you imagine might be able to make things right.

You can’t trust your co-workers.

And in no circumstances whatsoever can you trust HR.

All of these people will have their virtues. You may still harbour affection, even maintain friendships, with some of them, even long after you’ve escaped your toxic workplace.

But that’s not the same as trusting them to have your back.

Because just as you have watched people go down around you during your career without putting your own job on the line to help them, so they will watch you go down too.

It is simply the way it is in the workplace of late capitalism.

It may seem like everyone is working of their own free will.

But look a little more closely, and the unspoken, unwritten rules that keep everyone compliant apply universally — especially to those at the top.

And that’s why you’re on your own.

End of the Illusion

And that realisation is liberating.

Because the greatest danger in a toxic workplace is to ask it for something that it can’t give you: Security; safety; affirmation; connection; respect; right relationship; and an opportunity to satisfy your innate need to become, and to belong.

Of course, we all need these things.

They’re our natural birthrights.

And we’re schooled into believing that we can find these qualities in the workplace.

The foundations of our planet-wrecking breed of hyper-capitalism rests on this myth.

And, to a degree, we might satisfy some of those needs in the right work environment — in the friendships we forge; in doing work we’re proud of; in the recognition we receive; and the impact we make.

But there’ll come a time when the road runs out.

When you’re forced to confront the fact that the corporation is not your parent.

That your colleagues are not your family.

To the corporation, you were only ever a resource.

And your colleagues will never sacrifice themselves on your behalf.

They may listen. They may sincerely wish you the best. They may feel genuinely indignant, outraged, and even upset on your behalf.

But in the final analysis, in the corporate world, it is always every man and woman for themselves.

And nobody is going to buck the system to do what’s right — even for you.

Fact.

Freedom Beckons

That may sound depressing.

It may sound paranoid.

It may even make you feel more alone in your toxic workplace.

But when you realise the truth of this — really feel it in your body — you will discover a beautiful freedom, like a vein of gold, buried just underneath the pain.

Because you’ll realise that the people you looked up to, who you thought could protect you, or would fight for you, are just as trapped as you were.

In fact they are more trapped, because — unlike you — they don’t realise how trapped they are.

The reason they can watch you suffer, while doing nothing real to help, is because they’ve had to shut part of themselves down to maintain the position they have established in your toxic workplace.

The part that empathises, that feels.

The part where courage, and the will to deliver justice, reside.

But you have crossed a threshold that they have not.

You’re acutely aware how the toxic workplace is subtly draining your vitality.

You haven’t gone numb, dissociated, shutdown and glazed.

You’re still very much alive.

So alive, you’re a threat to the prevailaing, deadened culture of the toxic workplace.

That’s why the toxic workplace feels intolerable to you.

And why you are intolerable to it.

And as your illusions burn away, you begin to see that truth.

The truth that you’re already enough, whole, sovereign and free.

The truth that who you really are cannot be touched by the toxic workplace.

The truth that what seemed so overwhelming can be resolved.

You then realise that you may choose to play the game of the toxic workplace.

You may even be so immersed in the game that it seems very real.

But the outcome of this game cannot change who you are at your very core.

And so it’s never more than that — a game.

This recognition can be a laugh-out-loud moment. The kind mystics talk about when they finally get the Cosmic Joke.

That’s why this lesson cannot be learned intellectually.

The mind will resist it.

But if you feel even the slightest resonance with these words,

You’re already past the half-way point on your path to freedom.

Summary

“In the toxic workplace, you can trust nobody but yourself. Build a support network outside the office. And remember your colleagues — however much you may like and respect them — won’t put a toe over the line to help you when the chips are down.”

Toxic Workplace Survival Guy