What I Got Wrong
Might a trauma-informed approach have changed the outcome?
I write Toxic Workplace Survival Guy because I want to help as many people as possible do as I did: survive long enough to emerge with my soul, dignity and career intact, on my own terms. A big thank-you to all those who’ve become paid subscribers — you make this work possible.
This edition builds on a post I wrote this week for Resonant World:
Survival Tool #26: Become Trauma-informed
Though I tried not to show it, I’d felt an inward cringe.
I know that feeling well: It’s the unmistakable sign that I’m in the presence of wisdom that I should’ve acted on years ago, but didn’t.
I was interviewing Kosha Joubert and Maria Leister of the Pocket Project about their new course in Applied Trauma-informed Leadership, which starts tomorrow and runs until mid-October. (You can watch our conversation, recorded on June 24, on YouTube here).1
As Kosha explained, one of the key capacities of a trauma-informed leader is to recognise when a conflict has activated trauma histories in ourselves and our colleagues.
Here’s Kosha:
“There’s so many moments where I have watched colleagues, or myself, run into conflict, and then stay there in a reactive space — and deepen that conflict, harden that conflict, rather than noticing: “Oh wow, this is the place of walls, this is the place of distancing, this is the place of sand in the system that we’re entering. This is a super-interesting space. Let’s slow down, let’s stay with.…Let’s put down the weapons, let’s bring in more space for conversation, for settling nervous systems. Now let’s see together what could a solution look like.”
How might the world change, Kosha asked, if we could bring this attitude of “let’s stay with” into our teams, organisations and communities?
Conflict Mindset
I cringed at Kosha’s words because it was suddenly brutally obvious to me how far I’d lacked this capacity during my toxic workplace ordeal.
The way I was spoken to, and treated by colleagues, had hurt. (Survival Tool #20: Connect with Your Tears).
For a long time, my emotional state would oscillate between anxiety over what might happen next; grief for the loss of what had seemed like a golden opportunity, in an organisation I’d loved; and anger at the indifference of colleagues I’d once admired.
And I can see, in retrospect, that those hurt feelings did cause me to harden.
I came to view my workplace through a lens of conflict.
Spontaneity seemed dangerous.
Strategy was the new order of the day.
It felt a lot like war.
‘Bismarck is Sunk’
At the height of my ordeal, I became obsessed by a YouTube clip of the final scene of Sink the Bismarck!, the 1960 black-and-white film based on the Royal Navy’s battle to destroy the Bismarck, Germany’s monster warship, during World War Two.
The film ends in a decisive victory as HMS Dorsetshire fires torpedoes to finish the stricken Bismark, which goes to the bottom faster than her hundreds of sailors can escape.
On board King George V, Admiral Tovey coolly orders the Dorsetshire to sweep for survivors, then gives an order to his ship’s wireless operator in the kind of English accent that now only exists in films, and some boarding schools:
“Make to admiralty... Bismarck is sunk. Fleet is returning to Scapa Flow.”
I could’ve listened to that line a hundred times and it wouldn’t have felt any less comforting than the first time I’d heard it.
There’s one level in which it seems preposterous — even offensive — to have drawn any analogy, even in jest, between my workplace travails and the events of a world war, even if only in the privacy of my own home.
And yet the clip held an irresistible appeal.
Looking back, I can see how the film’s ending mirrored my own desire for a clear-cut victory after the months of tension I’d experienced in my workplace, where I’d felt a once rewarding role morph into a surreal landscape of confusion, frustration, and uncertainty.
After many years of feeling respected by my colleagues, I’d started to experience shame. And this — the most unbearable of emotions — had made my conflict mindset even more rigid.
Perceiving my professional identity under existential threat, I’d searched the British cultural repertoire for a representation of honour and agency restored.
And it’s maybe no coincidence that I found that through the idiom of war.
Blinkered by the Past
I’ve since spent enough time immersed in intensive study of collective and inter-generational trauma with the facilitator Thomas Hübl and his team to have learned a lot about how the unresolved trauma of the past can blinker us in the present. (Resonant World #10: How Collective Healing Works).
On a very intimate level, I’ve connected with how the unprocessed family grief I’d carried for my great-uncle Lionel, murdered by the SS in Italy in 1944, had lived on in my system — entirely outside my conscious awareness — until ancestral work unblocked an energetic channel carrying the pain and horror of his death.
In a subsequent unfolding of that process, I’d recognised an echo between the strong trigger I can experience when I don’t feel I’m being respected, and the moment when Lionel realised that the officers who’d recaptured him were not going to respect his status as a prisoner of war, but haul him out of a truck and shoot him, instead.
Taking a broader view, I wonder now how far my affinity with the Bismarck story is another example of how susceptible as individuals we can be to the cultural conditioning sculpted by our collective trauma.
After all, I should know the difference between a real war, and my workplace.
In a former life, I spent years working as a journalist covering conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and various countries in Africa, and had at times experienced the electrifying sensation of life-threatening danger.
The sense of threat in my toxic workplace was very different — imbued with an insidious, unresolvable quality that seemed to colour my every waking moment, seeping far beyond the confines of office hours, and sucking up much of the space in my marriage. (Survival Tool #9: Don’t Let Your Anger Come Out Sideways).
Nevertheless, that low-level hum of constant unease was enough to trigger my most primitive survival instincts. It was only a short step from there to my unconscious impulse to compensate for my insecurity by reaching down into the collective national psyche for an entirely disproportionate template of wartime triumph.
Evil enemies vanquished through superior courage, strategy and moral fibre.
Order restored.
Bismarck is sunk.
Fleet is returning to Scapa Flow.
Needless to say, it didn’t work out that way.
‘Grow my Cup’
I didn’t sink any Bismarcks, and it was I who ended up leaving the company — of my own volition. My body knew that it was time for me to go, even before my mind had recognised that there was little prospect of the kind of reconciliation process with the people in the organisation whose opinion mattered that I’d have needed to stay. In any case, after what I’d experienced, I had a strong desire for change. (Survival Tool #4: Confide with Care) (Survival Tool #11: Read the Room).
I don’t regret what happened — I’m a lot happier in my new role.
And yet, I now have a deeper appreciation for the truth of Kosha’s message.
Through the last few years of intensive trauma work, contemplative practice and transparent dialogue, I’ve “grown my cup” — to quote Thomas Hübl — giving me a greater capacity to host the kind of anger, fear and shame I experienced in my toxic workplace, rather than hardening myself against it, in an effort not to feel. (Survival Tool #15: Befriend Your Defence Mechanisms).
I now know that nothing essential about who I am was ever threatened — nor ever could be — by the behaviours I encountered in my workplace.
It was only an illusory version of myself that was ever in danger.
And it was past time for that illusory self to die, anyway.
I believe that if I were to ever face a similar situation again — and I pray that I never do — then I would have more capacity to observe myself defaulting into a conflict mindset, and possibly find more creative avenues, more options, in response. (Survival Tool #7: Reframe Your Predicament).
The situation might not have ended any differently. But I might have suffered less, and caused less suffering for the people who walked through the ordeal with me.
If any of this lands for you, then I cannot recommend Kosha and Maria’s work highly enough — and there’s still time to join their Applied Trauma-informed Leadership course, which starts tomorrow. (My friend climate psychologist Steffi Bednarek is also hosting a module, along with many other amazing teachers (Resonant World #65: A New Lens on the Climate Crisis).)
In the meantime, I invite you to contemplate the moments in your own toxic workplace ordeal where you slip into survival mode, your vision narrows, and you start reacting from a place of fear, grief, anger or shame.
And remember what I learned: Coldly strategising may feel like a more rationale response than lashing out in response to overwhelming emotion in the moment — but it can be a defence against unwanted feelings, too.
As Kosha stated, we can choose instead to become more fluid, and attuned to the flow of energy in our organisation, and the state of the nervous systems of our colleagues, then listen for inner guidance on what to do next.
Here’s Kosha again:
“Where is energy flowing? Where do I feel closed? Where do I feel intimate? Where do I feel related? And where do I feel that energy is repeating itself? I might feel bored, I might feel distant, I might feel numb. I might feel super-high levels of anxiety, and feel very isolated in that. And I learn to distinguish this in myself, in others, in the world around me. And noticing that when there is flow, I can flow into creativity, I know that the new becomes possible, I can create from that point. When there is stuckness, there’s repetitiveness, it’s as if it needs more care, it needs my love, it needs my attention, it needs a slowing down…ethical leadership is to be aligned with that flow.”
Flow can be hard to find in our toxic workplaces, but — if we can slow down enough, and be patient — it will always appear, like an underground stream emerging into the light.
Summary:
Develop the capacity to recognise how conflicts in your toxic workplace trigger patterns of individual, trans-generational and collective trauma in yourself and your colleagues. Notice how these trauma responses can harden your position. Remember that you can’t win through fighting, and learn to align with the flow.
The Resonant Man: Summer Dialogues
Jacob Kishere and I are hosting the second men’s circle in our Resonant Man Initiative this Sunday, July 14.
Sessions will include a space-opening meditation, and a combination of big-group and small-group dialogue.
The free Zoom sessions start at 7pm BST (11am PST / 2pm EST) and last 90 minutes.
Sunday, July 14: Speaking from our Deepest Listening
You can hear us discussing our intent with the sessions with Seth Dellinger here:
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!
If anyone buys the course through this link, I get a few pennies, which is great since I took a big pay cut to leave my toxic workplace.