I used to think I was bad at dealing with stress.
Every Sunday evening, I feel anxious about the week ahead. My chest tightens when certain emails appear in my inbox. Before the meeting, I rehearsed what I wanted to say over and over again, trying to avoid saying the wrong thing.
At that time I blamed myself.
I told myself I needed to be tougher, calmer, better, more resilient. Everyone else seemed to be managing, so I assumed the problem must be mine.
What I didn’t realize at the time was how deeply a toxic workplace can affect your sense of self.
Everything looked fine from the outside. The organization was respected. The leadership team was ‘successful’ and admired. The person at the center of most of my stress is charismatic, confident and highly respected by others.
It made my own experience even harder to believe.
There was no obvious bullying. No screaming. No dramatic event can I point to and say, “This is why I’m struggling.” Instead, it was a slow accumulation of small things.
Conversations that make me feel strangely ashamed. Criticism is disguised as ‘advice’. Moments where I would walk away confused, wondering if I had misunderstood what had just happened.
Sometimes I was warmly complimented. Other times I’ve been ignored or subtly underestimated. Team dynamics made me feel paranoid and left out. Incongruity makes me constantly try to prove myself.
I became more caring, more compassionate, more self-critical. I thought if I communicated perfectly and performed well enough, things would improve.
Eventually, I realized that I was starting to lose faith in myself. I second guess the easy decision. I apologized constantly. I was emotionally exhausted from monitoring other people’s moods and trying to avoid conflict.
Then one day in a team meeting I remember having a moment where I realized that my work environment growing up replicated my home environment. Different people of course, but same character. The charismatic boss is the narcissist, surrounded by ‘enablers’—all eager to minimize, justify, or excuse toxic behavior. In that At the moment I saw it for what it was–Narcissistic abuse in the workplace.
Looking back now, I can see how an unhealthy environment often causes us to disconnect from our own instincts. We become so focused on keeping the peace, pleasing others, or avoiding criticism or even our ambitions that we stop noticing what our mind and body are telling us.
Been trying to talk to me for a long time.
The turning point came when a friend asked me, “Do you actually feel safe there?”
I remember being surprised by the question because I had never thought about mental safety in the workplace before. I assumed professionalism meant tolerating discomfort. Pushed through. adapt
But deep down, I knew the answer.
No, I didn’t feel safe.
Not physically, but mentally.
I did not feel able to speak openly without consequences. I wasn’t comfortable making mistakes. I no longer felt calm, grounded or safe. Everyone competed for the boss’s approval, which I could see was used strategically.
Admitting that was painful, but it was also the beginning of something important.
For the first time, I stopped seeing my anxiety as a personal failing and began to recognize it as fact.
My body was responding to an environment that kept me in constant self-doubt.
Healing didn’t happen overnight. It took time to rebuild confidence and reconnect with my own voice. But gradually, I stopped discounting what I felt.
And I stopped blaming myself for being affected by it.
I think a lot of people are carrying workplace experiences that they haven’t fully acknowledged because the damage doesn’t always look dramatic from the outside. Sometimes it just looks like gradually getting smaller, quieter and more unsure of yourself. Professional experience should increase confidence…not decrease it.
After I left, I felt almost instant relief and my sense of self-confidence and self-confidence quickly returned. Renewing the feeling that it wasn’t mine or my fault. I had an understandable reaction to a toxic situation, full of toxic, narcissistic dynamics.
And the experience only helped inform my understanding and ability to recognize it later, Talking to others who feel the same at work. It is not unusual that we find ourselves in ‘familiar dynamics’ even at work. But what seems familiar is not healthy.
If you recognize yourself in this, I hope you know this:
You are not vulnerable to being affected by an unhealthy environment.
All of us, as human beings, are deeply affected by the spaces and relationships in which we spend our lives And sometimes the first step toward healing is simply allowing yourself to tell the truth about what those places or situations did to you.
