The Toxic Workplace as an “Initiatory Ordeal”

Offering an empowering reframe.

Mar 04, 2024

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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 endorsed this project by becoming a paid subscriber.

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Survival Tool#7: Reframe Your Predicament

Toxic workplaces make no sense.

The cruel behaviours.

The passive aggression.

The flawed decisions.

The relentless tension.

The sheer wasted potential of it all.

You can see how wrong it all is.

And yet in the toxic workplace, the unnecessary suffering, stress and anxiety people endure passes as “normal.”

This distorted reality is precisely the opposite of the conditions humans need to function and relate in healthy ways.

The conflict between “what is” and “what should be” can be hard to bear.

But there is a way to reframe your predicament.

To bring meaning where chaos reigns.

And this move can make all the difference between going down, and walking tall.

Rite of Passage

In many cultures, young people undergo initiation rights.

They are sent off into the forest, alone, to face the wild animals – and malevolent spirits. The hunger, darkness, loneliness, and cold.

These ordeals are dangerous. Some die.

But it is the very real fear of death that gives these rituals their initiatory quality.

You do not emerge from an initiatory ordeal the same as you went in.

You have crossed a threshold in your own process of maturation and empowerment.

You are stronger, wiser, and more formidable.

You are becoming the person you were always destined to be.

You have passed a test.

Your Former Self

Before you found yourself in a toxic workplace, you had no idea what the words “toxic workplace” really meant.

How insidious, corrosive and draining such an environment can be.

How ruthlessly seemingly “nice” people can behave – or how wilfully blind they can be.

You did not understand the subtle power dynamics that underpin the oppressive structures that ensure the smooth running of the corporation.

You nodded sympathetically when others told you about their toxic workplaces, but you silently assumed “that couldn’t happen to me.”

You were sheltered.

You were untested.

You were naïve.

You had not yet confronted the unconscious patterns lurking in the shadows of your organisation, nor had you realised how self-interest among your colleagues and bosses would prevail every single time, regardless of the cost to you and others.

The “Initiatory Quality” of the Toxic Workplace

Your toxic workplace experience can be your initiatory ordeal — the moment where you evolve into a wiser, stronger and more compassionate version of yourself.

But on one condition:

You must accept what is happening.

As if you had chosen it.

Just as the young people venturing into the forest chose to walk that path.

This can be hard to swallow.

Every fibre of our being rebels at the injustice of it all.

But if you can allow the possibility that your toxic workplace is here to teach you something, your relationship to the situation begins to shift.

Don’t grasp at the lesson too early:

The wisdom you will acquire through your toxic workplace ordeal will only become clear in retrospect.

It may take months, even years, for the full depth of the new perspectives you have acquired to make themselves fully available.

For now, have faith.

Know that your toxic workplace ordeal is an initiation into a mystery you cannot yet grasp.

And you are not alone on your path.

Toxic Workplace Survival Guy is here every step of the way, as your guide.

Toxic Workplace Survival Guy