The damage a toxic workplace can do

If you are lucky enough to have never experienced a truly toxic workplace, you will be unaware of the detrimental effect it can have on your physical, mental, and emotional health.

Being surrounded by toxic people for the working day, can be as harmful as being in an abusive relationship at home because of the ways in which it can knock the confidence out of you and reduce you to a shell of the person you were when you walked into the company.

Let’s have a look at the damage a toxic work environment can do:

Physical health

When we are either working with toxic people, or in a workplace with unrealistic expectations of us, our physical health can suffer in many ways due to the stress it puts on our bodies.

Sleep – when our minds are in overdrive or we are feeling anxious about work, it can be that we either cannot easily fall asleep, we do not get enough sleep, or we get poor quality sleep. Sleep is the one habit that is essential for healthy work/life balance. Good sleeping habits and getting adequate sleep each night gives your body time to recover, rebuild and rest but without it, we can get irritable, distracted, and unable to focus on tasks throughout the day.

Poor eating habits – when we feel like we have no time, due to heavy workload, or we feel stressed or anxious, eating well can be one of the first things to go, as we stop preparing healthy food and start ordering or skipping meals. Poor food choices can lead to energy spikes throughout the day, snacking, overeating, undereating, or mindless eating, which then has negative implications on our bodies, our weight, and our health.

Drinking or harmful habits to relax or de-stress – for many people who work in toxic environments, they may come home so exhausted that they indulge in alcohol, binge watching TV or other detrimental habits. These can all result in us feeling even worse about ourselves physically as we cannot fully engage in work if we are recovering from the previous night’s drinking, binging or lack of sleep.

Mental health

Stress – Although stress and burnout is not a mental health disorder, it has huge ramifications on our mental health. When we are physically and mentally exhausted at work, we have no space for the things that make us feel better such as nurturing our relationships or self-care. Burnout causes physical or mental breakdown; it is as simple as that. When chronic stress persists for too long, our bodies and minds simply cannot cope and will shut down.

Mental health disorders – For people who suffer from mental health disorders such as depression, Bi-polar disorder, eating disorders or substance abuse/ addictions, being surrounded by a toxic environment all day can trigger our coping strategies which are often dangerous. Working in an office which is toxic can damage our self-esteem, knock our confidence, trigger anxiety, and decrease productivity due to feeling unsafe, worried, afraid and lacking security in the role.

Anxiety – Being afraid to go into work, worrying or crying at work, dreading meetings or fearing your boss or colleague, all induce anxiety. Overthinking, feeling overwhelmed, feeling stressed and worrying about being good enough are not things we should be wasting our energy on if our workplace wants us to work to our maximum potential.

How to find your way back to the person you were before the abuse

As I say to all my clients struggling in these situations, we have three choices:

Change mindset – find techniques to reduce your stress and to not worry so much about what is going on at work. Try to not overthink or over-analyse to allow yourself to be able to do your job effectively without causing yourself a breakdown or a serious health issue.

Change actions – If it is too much to deal with alone or is impossible to ignore (if the environment permeates the entire culture or your direct team members or boss are impacting your day-to-day life), take positive action to try change things. Speak to your boss, ask for support, ask for mediation, put in a grievance, try to resolve the conflict, have a difficult conversation, or take a sideways move so you can work on a different team.

Leave – If you have exhausted all options in trying to stay in the workplace without toxicity and nothing is changing, realistically the only option is to leave. Even if it will take a while or you are tied financially or through contracts, having the end goal of getting out will give you the hope that you can find something better, the grass IS always greener and you deserve to work somewhere that values your contributions, so get looking for a job!