Notice a 'Locus of Control Shift'
Applying Colin Ross's trauma model to our toxic workplaces.
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Survival Tool #43: Notice a ‘Locus of Control Shift’
A wealth of insights emerged during the workshop Steffi Bednarek and I co-facilitated on Saturday for professionals conflicted over their organisation’s role in the climate crisis — some of which I wrote about here for Resonant World.
One realisation that surfaced during the morning session really struck me:
Low self-worth undermines our capacity to speak up at work.
In my last corporate job, an all-pervasive sense of unworthiness and concomitant craving for recognition had reached pandemic levels — contributing to the low-level hum of insecurity that nobody questioned because it was so normalised.
This pattern was visible at fractal scales across all levels of the hierarchy — presenting most floridly among those at the very top — and contributed to the generalised atmosphere of torpor that fuelled double-digit staff attrition.
In such an environment, it was perhaps not surprising that people were mostly (though not always) pretty supine — and the “undiscussability of the undiscussable,” to use Steffi’s phrase, went largely unchallenged, particularly in relation to the company’s approach to the climate crisis.
If, deep down, we feel unworthy, then we’re going to find it harder to take a stand in any arena of our lives — including at work.
As Steffi pointed out during our workshop, we’ll default to assuming that the difficulties we’re experiencing are our fault. We’ll tell ourselves that, “If only I had been different, things would have worked out differently” — locating the problem in our own failings, rather than the nature of the organsation we serve.
That’s not to say that we shouldn’t be scrupulous in reviewing our behaviours, and owning our own unconscious patterns and projections. If anything, our toxic workplace ordeal demands we approach our shadow work even more diligently.(Resonant World#67: Placing My Shadow Materials on the Altar).
But we can also cultivate the capacity to notice whether we’ve fallen into the trap of consoling ourselves with the belief that “I’m bad” when actually it’s the system that’s rotten.
Locus of Control
Colin Ross’s Trauma Model Therapy offers a helpful framework for understanding the possible roots of this dynamic in early life — as I learned from a powerful presentation by Lisa Schwarz, developer of the Comprehensive Resource Model of therapy, to the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation a few yeas ago. (Resonant World #26: Inevitably, My Mind Was Blown).
Ross points out that when people have suffered childhood abuse, they blame themselves. Although the child was in no way responsible, it makes sense for them to imagine that they were “bad” and therefore deserving of the mistreatment, because that at least affords an illusion of control over the situation. The child can console themselves with the belief that the abuse will stop if they can only manage to be “good.”
Ross calls this a “locus of control shift” — and it serves an intelligent function, protecting the child from the overwhelming terror of recognising that they are being preyed upon by the very adults that are supposed to protect them, with no path of escape. But there’s a price: The child internalises a sense of being fundamentally unworthy, unloveable and undeserving, leading to all kinds of problems in adult relationships, including with authority figures at work. (Survival Tool#15: Befriend Your Defence Mechansims).
As Lisa Schartz pointed out in her presentation, citing Ross, people who have made this locus of control shift may adopt beliefs such as:
“I’m not lovable as I am”
“I have no impact on others”
“It’s my fault I wasn’t loved the right way”
“I’m the cause of not being lovable”
“I’m bad”
“I ‘m unforgivable”
“I can’t let myself off the hook”
“I’m not good enough”
We don’t need to have suffered severe, intentional abuse as children to internalise these kinds of patterns. Even those of us who were fortunate enough to have grown up in relatively secure, loving homes will inevitably have suffered various forms of attachment disruption because our parents at some stage lacked the capacity to attune to our inner world as precisely as we needed, because they never received such precise attunement themselves.
The accumulation of the “I am not good enough” and related narratives in the collective psyche has now reached such gargantuan proportions that we barely question why we routinely enter into agreements with our employers to work ourselves to exhaustion (and glorify this practice); give away our autonomy in multiple domains; passively submit to power-over (rather than competence-based) hierarchies; accept belittling treatment (uni-directional annual appraisals); and turn a blind eye to our corporation’s harmful social and environmental impacts.
There’s obviously no simple remedy for this state of affairs.
But we can begin by noticing how frequently and easily we give our power away to the corporation — and examine how that locus of control shift may occur in our other relationships, and whether it may have childhood roots.
As Thomas Hübl says, “Witnessing is the subtlest form of intervention.”
As soon the locus of control shift becomes conscious, new options emerge.
We won’t transform the system overnight.
But until we recognise the old patterns operating in ourselves and the people around us, there’s no hope of transformation at all.
Summary
Attachment disruption or abuse in early life can cause us to assume responsibility for problems in the workplace that aren’t our fault. Bringing this ‘locus of control shift’ into awareness helps us see the reality of our toxic workplace more clearly, and respond from more mature, adult and wise parts of ourseves.
The Resonant Man
and I are co-facilitating weekly men’s circles as part of our Resonant Man initiative, which take place each Sunday at 1900 GMT. We have a small group of committed men, and are opening the space for more participants who understand the value of working with fellow men to explore vision, creativity, relationships, transformational dialogue, brotherhood and collective healing. Please drop me a line if you’re interested in taking part. Cost is £125 per month including four live sessions and ongoing discussion between meetings. You can hear more about the initiative in this discussion that Jacob and I recorded in London a few weeks ago:I consult on surviving toxic workplaces; and can also help you navigate your toxic workplace via the Tarot. Click here to inquire:
I write Toxic Workplace Survival Guy during my spare time from working as an editor at nonprofit climate news service DeSmog (a model workplace). Subscribing, sharing, liking, commenting or buying me a coffee helps make this project sustainable. Thank you!