Toxic Workplace PTSD — Kim Bielak
Did you know that our body doesn’t do a great job of distinguishing between running from a lion and an urgent email when it comes to responding to stress? So when many of today’s workplace environments make us feel that everything is urgent and important (and at an unconscious level, even life-threatening), it keeps us in an almost consistent state of “fight-or-flight” that most of us have just learned to accept as “normal.” On top of it, In today’s “always-on” culture, our bodies also have a really big problem ever turning it off.
But why is recognizing this and then setting boundaries around it often still so hard? No matter what advances we make in technology, productivity, and even standards of living, we somehow only use them to find a way to work more, rather than less. Our companies have become more competitive and often create a culture of fire drills, staying late, and answering emails at night and over the weekend. Even our “leisure time” has become productive — whether it be a side hustle, something we can post on Instagram, or meditating 20 minutes twice a day because we’re told it makes us better.
The thing is, even though we complain about being busy, unconsciously we often use it as a defense mechanism against other difficult feelings (loneliness, failure, shame) and end up wearing it as a status symbol because we feel like we have something to prove (and I’ll be the first to admit I frequently fall into this trap, too). It’s a vicious cycle — your boss or colleagues are too busy, so to justify that you’re working hard enough, you have to be too busy, too. Your friends are too busy, so to justify that you’re important enough, you have to be too busy, too. The irony is, when everything feels like an emergency, we’re too frantic and “too busy” to step back and see that it may not actually be true.
Ready to flip the script?
1. Step back and ask yourself: What am I feeling in my body? Am I tense? Do I feel stress? Now, is this actually a situation that is life or death, or can I take a breath and do it with more ease?
2. Identify: What is ACTUALLY important. More than that, what is actually REALISTIC? If your workplace is creating unrealistic expectations for your time, work with your manager to delegate and reprioritize so that the scope of your work fits into a realistic frame that allows you to actually show up the way you want.
3. Set boundaries. Back to what is “really” important, take a hard look at what priorities your current lifestyle is reflecting. Is your work coming before your family? Your hobbies? Your mental health? If that’s not how you actually want to prioritize your life, put structures and rules in place that reflect what you actually believe — not what others think you should.
What if instead we stopped and decided to be the people that set the example that working 40 hours and not answering emails at night is “enough.” Leaving early to go to your kid’s practice, take that spin class, take vacation or take maternity leave should be celebrated, not something to feel guilty about.
What if we glorified being healthy, happy and having enough, as much as we glorify being busy and constantly wanting more as we do today?
Originally published at https://kimbielak.com on March 5, 2021.
