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Toxic Work Places: No Job Deserves Your Mental Health · You're Not Too Much

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Your emotional energy is not in your job description. There's no place on there
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that says, you must have a visceral reaction to your shitty
0:07
boss or we're not going to pay you. So we have a lot of people
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that come in and say, exactly that. I can't do this anymore. This is
0:14
too hard. But nobody ever talks about the other side of that.
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The burn it all down mentality works for people who have lots and lots of
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money stockpiled away. It does not work for the average person who
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is just trying to get by. All right, here we go.
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I'm gonna pretend I'm pushing Record. Cause that feels right. Okay, I'm pressing Record.
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Boop. Hi, everybody. I'm Lauren Howard.
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Welcome to Different, Not Broken, which is our
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podcast on exactly that. That there are a lot of people in this world walking
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around feeling broken. And the reality is you're just different, and that's fine.
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So if you follow, you know, mental health influencers, if that's a thing,
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sometimes you see it on LinkedIn, sometimes it comes up in other places. But you'll
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see this thing. The gist of is, no job is worth your
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mental health. And that is correct. That is objectively
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correct. No job should be so bad that it affects your
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mental health. No job should be so toxic. No job should be so
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abusive that it affects your mental health. Now, there are other things in jobs that
1:15
are not toxic or abusive that can affect your mental health. There are
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jobs that are just hard. A lot of social workers have really hard jobs because
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they see really horrific things every day. Teachers, that job is just hard.
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Nursing, that job is just hard. You could have the perfect employment environment
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for a nurse and still have it. Be a really, really difficult job
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that affects your mental health. My brother works in civil rights and
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discrimination law, and they see a lot of people, they do a lot of
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employment law. They see a lot of, like, sexual assault at work and things like
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that. Like, he loves his job, he loves his firm. He owns his own firm.
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They have a really good environment for their staff. It's still a really hard job,
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and it still affects people's mental health. So. So we're not talking about those situations.
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We're talking about the situations that affect your mental health when
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it is avoidable. So toxic work environment,
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workplace abuse, workplace trauma, chronic stress.
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And kind of the prevailing narrative
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in situations is that no job is worth your mental health.
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The logical end result to that is
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if a job is affecting your mental health, you should just quit. I mean,
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that's basically what they're saying, right, don't stay in a job that's bad for your
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mental health. We see this a lot, especially in our burnout groups. We have a
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lot of people that come in and say, like, I mean to say exactly that.
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I can't do this anymore. This is too hard. This
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is too hard. But nobody ever talks about the other
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side of that, which is, you're absolutely
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right. No job is worth your mental health. Your job should not be able to
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affect you in that way. It should not abuse you. It should not
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create horrible situations for you. But also,
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what's the alternative? And this is not me advocating
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for harsh or horrific work environments. I think you should get out of them as
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quickly as you possibly can. I think it is awful
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that they are doing that to you. They should not have the right to do
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that. You should be documenting everything that is going on. If you have not already
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talked to an attorney. Attorney. I think you should. In my experience, the time to
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talk to an attorney about an employment issue is before you're
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backed into a corner, when you can still just document and get
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yourself in a good position about it. You should never, ever, ever be
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in an abusive situation. I am not advocating for the abusive
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situation at all. I'm sorry that it exists. I am so sorry that it is
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happening to you. I wish you good luck of getting out of it. I
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hope that if there's any way that anybody can help you, even if that person
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is me, that you do get out of it. But also,
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what is the alternative to that job that is hurting your mental health right now?
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Is it eviction?
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Is it not being able to afford your medication? Is it losing your
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healthcare? Is the stress of not being sure how to pay your
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bills better or more preferable than
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the stress of going to that job every day?
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I don't know the answer to that. For some people, it may be more worth
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it to go get a job someplace
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that's going to pay you a lower wage just to get the break
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from the horror of what you're dealing with every day. And that's a valid
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choice. I don't want to say it's not. But what we end up doing when
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we put this blanket statement out there that no job is worth your mental health,
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it sets this tone that, well, if you really cared about yourself, if you were
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taking care of yourself, then you would just quit and figure it out a different
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way. And that's not realistic. People can't do that.
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It makes people feel like there's something wrong with them. That
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they have not been able to generate the stockpiles of
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money necessary, generate the Runway or the nest egg
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necessary to be able to be unemployed for any amount of
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time. That's not realistic. I think most people have at best
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have two weeks worth of reserves because
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of the way we pay people shit in this country than the way we haven't
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created better ways to generate your own wealth. You know, if you have generational
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wealth, then yeah, you probably can just quit that job. If you're an executive
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and you've been on an incredible comp plan for many, many years, then
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yeah, maybe you could just quit that job. The reality for most people is not
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that. And so it becomes a different
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situation. No job is worth your mental health. So
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instead of quitting the job and putting
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up middle fingers and leaving and putting yourself in a different dire
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situation, don't give the job your mental health.
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Don't give it access to your mental health. That is a choice.
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It's a choice that a lot of people don't realize. And I, and I, when
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I say it's a choice, I don't want to make it seem like it's your
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fault that this job has abused you, because it's not. Our
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corporate environments are built to be toxic because it means they can pay you shit,
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run you into the ground until you physically can't take it anymore, and then they
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will just replace you with somebody else who they are paying less than they were
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paying you. That is not on you. That is the way our corporate environments
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are structured. So it is not on you that you are being abused. However,
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reacting to the things that they do that make you feel
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small or bad or insignificant is a
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choice that you get to make. They are going to pay you whether
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they get your emotional energy or not. Your emotional energy is not in
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your job description. There is no place on there that says you, you must
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have a visceral reaction to your shitty boss or we're not
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going to pay you. You get paid the same whether they make bad decisions
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or not. You get paid the same whether your boss is a turd
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or not. You can make the choice that if he wants you to do something
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stupid and you don't want to do it, that you're either not going to do
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it and face the consequences or you're going to do it and just not care
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if they typically throw extra work on you
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because they expect that that's your responsibility and you've done it before.
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You can set the boundary and say, I'm sorry, I can't do that this time
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and then just decide not to care if they are upset about it.
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You can make the choice not to give them the
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emotional reaction that you have been giving them. Because I've talked to a
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lot of people about burnout in toxic work environments over the last several years,
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and there is one thing in that conversation that always holds true. It
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is never the work. It is never the work that people
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are doing that burns them out. It is never the
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actual functions of their job. It is the
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mental gymnastics around the job that they have to do.
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It's the anticipating the shitty thing that someone else is going to do. It's
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dealing with the fallout from the boss who didn't communicate before he made a bad
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decision. It's the fact that you worry when you're not on the clock.
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It's the fact that you think that if you do less, they're going to fire
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you. That you aren't sure how to set boundaries with them because they've blown
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past them every other time. It's the things that have nothing to do with
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your actual job. So rather than
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jumping ship, which I still encourage you to do in time
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with planning, and I want to say, I wish I had done this.
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I did not do this when I was in the situation where I really
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felt like I just couldn't do it anymore, that it became too toxic, I was
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too burned out. I couldn't set the boundaries with them. I burned it all
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down. Now I don't regret doing that. Burning it all down is what
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got me here. It got me to the life I'm living now that I love
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more than anything in the world. But I wish I had done it differently.
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Only in that the way that I did it gave them the power
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and let them decide when I was done. I let them
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push me to the point where I couldn't do it anymore. Whereas if I had
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taken the step back and said, oh, you want to send out a marketing campaign
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that's definitely going to piss people off, cool, it's your money.
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And just not cared about it. Knowing that the plan was to leave,
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knowing that I was not going to get through another year of this, knowing that
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I needed to find another place to live from a career perspective, not in my
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house, I could have saved myself a lot of heartache. I could have saved myself
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a lot of burnout. That job was not worth my mental health.
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And it took it, and it took it gladly. And if I
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had just drawn the line in the sand and said, cool,
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I get paid the same whether you're an idiot or not. I could have
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made a more coordinated decision. I could have had time to actually
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loop my husband in on what was happening instead of just unceremoniously
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burning it all down. He was far more gracious about my decision than I would
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have been if he had done the same thing. I want to be very clear
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about that. I expected that he was going to be big pissed, and instead he
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said, if they don't want you, then they don't deserve you and we'll figure it
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out. And he didn't even miss a beat. So just props to Kyle Howard for
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being supportive Husband of the year in 2021.
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That's what I should have done. In hindsight, I know that in hindsight, I. I
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can see that. I can see all of the times that I got so upset
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about things that didn't freaking matter because at the end of the day, they were
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still going to pay me. At the end of the day, they were still going
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to do what they want. It didn't matter if they were telling me the truth
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about things. It really didn't. Because they were lying to me anyway. Because they were
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lying to me anyway. If they had told me
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the truth, I wouldn't have been happier with the truth. The reason they were lying
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to me is because the truth was shitty. Rather than the narrative that no job
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is worth your mental health, which is true. No job
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deserves your mental health. Don't give it to them. Figure
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out where the choices are. Is this something
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that I can choose not to have an emotional reaction to?
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Is this something that I can choose to care less about?
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Is this something that I can set a boundary on? And if they have a
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problem with it, they can show me in my employment agreement where I am violating
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it. Is this something that I can put in place
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so that Outside of my 9 to 5, my 5 to 9 is not a
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freaking nightmare? And then I can use that extra bandwidth that
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I have cobbled together to go find the job
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that is better for me. The new job is still not worth your mental health,
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still doesn't deserve your mental health, but it's better for you.
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The burn it all down mentality works for people who have lots and lots of
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money stockpiled away. It does not work for the average person
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who is just trying to get by. And it makes that person
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feel like there is something wrong with them because they've been put in
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an untenable environment that was designed to be
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untenable. No job is worth your mental health.
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True. But the real story Is that no job
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deserves your mental health. So let's figure out how
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to not give it to them and then transition into something better
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long term. We see this really
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fascinating thing with a lot of our patients. A huge number of them are self
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employed. And what happened for the most part is that they
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do the very traditional workforce thing that they're told they always have to do.
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They either get out of school or, or go to a training program
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or, you know, get a job as a teenager or whatever, they
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start a career or a job or whatever, and they're in it for a number
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of years, maybe five years, maybe 10 years, maybe more. Sometimes a lot
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more than that. And from that experience, they pick
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out all of the things that they really like doing that they're really good at,
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and the stuff that they just hate. And the parts that they just
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hate are usually the very corporate
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bureaucracy stupid crap that
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neurodivergent brains tend to look at and go, why
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do we have to do this? And leadership goes, because that's the way we've always
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done it. The brain that looks at things differently goes, but can it be
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changed? Because the way that we do it is stupid. And that makes people
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mad. Because why are you questioning a system that's existed long
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before you? Because the system works. Well, if it worked, you wouldn't be questioning it.
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And then there's the other side of that, where sometimes people with brains that are
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good with pattern recognition or just brains that are a little different
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ask questions not because they're questioning the validity of
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something, but because they're better at following processes when they understand why they're doing
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them. And corporate hates that. They just
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want you to do what they told you. They said this was the instruction,
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follow the instruction. And your brain says, I will
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follow the instruction better if I understand why we're doing it. Is it possible that
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you could explain that? And corporate talking head says, that's none of your business.
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Why is that none of somebody's business? If they're trying to learn how to do
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their job better, why can't you just explain to them why you do the thing?
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Is it because you don't know, because you are also
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just following the instructions? Or is it because the answer is
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usually what the answer is, which is, that's the way we've always done
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it. I can't tell you how many times
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I have found processes at organizations,
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large organizations, government funded organizations, where you ask,
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can somebody tell me why things are this way? And the answer
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literally is, because that's the way We've always done it because nobody in the
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20 years before I got there has ever once
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said out loud, can someone tell me why we do this this way?
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The real answer is because Shirlene, who worked here 25
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years ago, decided to do it this way when she was the only person doing
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it. It is just the way I do it. When she trained
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somebody new, she trained them how to do it that way. This is how you
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need to do it too. And it worked for Charlene, so therefore Tim did it
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too. And now, 25 years later, we're still using this bad system that was
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probably a great system when it existed inside of one person's head.
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And now, years later, it's a really broken, fragmented system because it
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doesn't scale to the number of people who are doing it. That's where most
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processes come from. For the most part. If you just tell a
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neurodivergent person the actual reason why something is done and it's not stupid,
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they'll go, okay, that makes sense. And then just do it now. If it is
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stupid, what you get is probably like the logical
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byproduct of the fact that your process is stupid. I'm sorry, I'm not going to
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protect you from that. But those are worlds that nd
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brains don't always exist. Well, in first off, the answer that's the way
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it's always been done is just infuriating. It's just infuriating. It's a way
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to create corporate bloat that never goes away. But
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more than that, it doesn't sit well with people
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who are very analytical and whose brains naturally try
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to improve things, which is very common. The point to that being what we see
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a lot is people will survive corporate for as long as they do,
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get to the other side of it, decide they can't do it anymore, quit for
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whatever reason, maybe they get another opportunity, whatever, eventually end up either
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self employed, freelance, whatever, owning their own company. And through
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that company, they will do all of the things that they are
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really, truly excellent at and not any of the
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stupid corporate stuff that they hated, and they will build
15:48
exactly the company that they want to be working in
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with exactly the culture that they want to be working in. They will run
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it exactly the way that they think
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it should have been done before and strip out all the things that
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nobody needed anyway. And then they become very happy business
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owners as opposed to very unhappy
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corporate scapegoats. The point of that being
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there is a really strong chance that there is nothing
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wrong with you, that the World around you was not built for
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someone like you, and that means that it was built incorrectly,
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because we are supposed to include all those kinds of brains into
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our work and our world. I'm sure anybody who's
16:35
listening knows this, but in the event that you're brand new here and you've never
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heard me say this before, my dad was a psychiatrist. This wasn't
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specifically about neurodivergence, but we used to have a lot of patients come in with
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what would eventually be diagnosed as obsessive compulsive disorder.
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And for whatever reason, they
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tend to carry around a whole lot of shame about
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these behaviors that they couldn't control, that they just desperately wanted to control,
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that they couldn't control. A lot of time it was, like, about counting
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or precision, or things that had to be exactly right, or things that had to
17:07
be exactly clean, or sometimes things that had to be
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exactly not clean. Hoarding can be a sign of ocd. There's this very
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weird kind of balance there, but. And those patients would come in with these just
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very heavy shoulders and
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seem like the entire world was sitting on them. And
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what he used to say to them has stuck with me this whole time
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and sticks with me about almost every patient we see now,
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which is that without people like you, meaning these patients
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who. Who have OCD and felt so
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shameful of it, really, without people like you, we would all
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still be living in caves. We need brains like yours.
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Because people like me, I'm fine. When shit doesn't work, I don't
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care. Unless it's, like, deeply inconvenient, I'll just work
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around it. I don't care. I don't need it to be exactly right, doesn't bother
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me. But somebody like you, who sees precision, who knows how to
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achieve precision, who wants precision, who craves it, who likes
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to make processes better, who wants to build
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things that are bigger, stronger, faster, whatever. That's what your
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motivation is. Who notices when things are a little off, who
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it bothers when things are a little off. And so you have to make them
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exactly right. You're the reason we don't live in caves
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anymore. You advance society. People like me
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sit and keep it where it is, and you would see this total
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change in their countenance. This is. They all of a sudden went, you mean I'm
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not a problem? I'm not something to be ashamed of?
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And he'd be like, no. In fact, I'm probably something to be ashamed of. I'm
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the one who lets things be broken and doesn't care. You are the one who's
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fixing things. Now. Does it get troublesome? Does it interfere with people's ability to
18:50
harness it for good? At times? Absolutely. And so that's why we have
18:54
good treatments and we have therapy and we have exposure programs and we have all
18:57
sorts of things that can help. But the goal is to never make you someone
19:01
else. We need brains like yours.
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We need you to be comfortable in your brain. We
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can't have you unhappy or out of control of
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the things that you do because your brain is taking you for a
19:16
ride. We can't have that. But that doesn't mean
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that the way you are built is not the way we
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want you. It's not the way that we love you. It's not the way that
19:27
we appreciate you. There's nothing wrong with you.
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There might be places, areas where you need help, and that's where good help is.
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But without people like you, we would still be living in caves.
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And now we'll go to Allison, who has this week's
19:45
small talk. A question I hate is, what are you doing this
19:49
weekend? Or did you do anything exciting this weekend?
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I know these questions are well meaning, but I freeze every time
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someone asks, how do I know what to share? What if I sound
20:00
really boring? I'm sure there is a way to reframe this, but my
20:03
brain is stuck. I also, to be very
20:07
transparent, hate it when people ask me these questions because
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I never know what's going on and I freeze in the same way
20:15
that I do. And my husband does not understand this, even though he also does
20:18
the same thing. So bite me. But he'll come in and say
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like, what are we gonna have for dinner? And I will have had a
20:26
super long day where I'm making decisions for 800 different
20:29
things at all times. And my answer is I don't care. And if I have
20:33
to decide, I don't want to eat because it is so
20:36
stressful. I could literally make strategic
20:40
direction decisions for an entire organization and our entire budget
20:44
without missing a beat, without worrying about a thing with calculate all the numbers
20:48
in my head. Totally good. But if you ask me what I want for dinner,
20:52
I am not hungry anymore because it is too much stress to be
20:56
responsible to pick my food and also pick the food that everybody else
21:00
wants and also deal with everybody's different personal
21:03
preferences. It's too much stress. I can't handle it. I don't want it. And
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so I have just started saying if the follow up question to
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this is going to be that I have to pick, or nobody
21:14
is going to know what to do. Then I am no longer hungry, and I
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do not want to eat. And that seems to be enough of an incentive for
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all of the rest of the people in my house to figure out what they
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want to eat. And then I just go along with it, because guess what? It's
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one meal. If it's not good, we'll
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have another. I don't care. There's
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nothing about dinner that I care enough about to be involved in that decision.
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Not when I've got 37,000 other things going on.
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Now, if it's like a special dinner for someone or we're, you know,
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we're. We're making a big deal or we're celebrating or something, okay, then I will
21:48
absolutely be involved in that. But I do not care if you show up to
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my house with Filet mignon or McDonald's. I don't care. At the end,
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I will be full. I do not care. Please do not make me pick. And
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so I think it's very much the same thing. What are you doing this weekend?
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First off, I never know. I am not in charge of those decisions. I don't
22:05
want to be in charge of those decisions. Second off,
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plans could change in a heartbeat. Third off, likely,
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there's nothing I want to do. And if there's something I want to
22:17
do, it's usually something I want to achieve, but not anything
22:21
that I actually actively want to do. I also feel like it is
22:25
important to note that the person who. Or one of the people who is
22:29
often responsible for telling me what to do on the weekend, who is a small
22:32
human, is staring at me from the balcony above my office and
22:36
giving me weird looks, trying to figure out why I would
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say that I don't care what we do on the weekend. As if I have
22:43
any control over any of that. She ran away now. Now that she's been
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spotted, I don't think. Well, in blank space. And that's
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probably what you're running up against, too. Blank space is
22:53
overwhelming. Now, if you come to me and say, do you want to go to
22:56
the movies or do you want to go ice skating this weekend?
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I'll be like, oh, probably. Definitely the movies. Because I got weak ankles and I
23:04
can't hold up ice skates. So ice skates not gonna work. If you come up
23:07
to me and say, do you want to go to. This was an actual
23:11
decision we had to make recently. Do you want to go apple picking or do
23:15
you want to go to the World's largest
23:19
arcade that is near our house up here, but also is
23:22
a petri dish of every communicable respiratory
23:26
illness that every child has ever had in the entire New England
23:29
area. That is a very simple choice. So
23:33
what you're probably responding to is that there are too many choices, but
23:37
if somebody gave you two choices, you would be fine. I will also
23:41
say that if someone asks me what I want to do this weekend,
23:45
my answer is probably going to be nothing, because I genuinely want to do
23:49
nothing. I do things a lot, and they require a lot
23:52
of my brain and a lot of my energy and a lot of decision making.
23:57
And the idea of not having that responsibility or any of those
24:01
responsibilities for two whole days.
24:04
Amazing. Is it likely that I won't get two whole
24:07
days without having to make decisions? No. Is it likely that I will get three
24:11
whole hours without having to make decisions? Also no. But
24:16
often my answer is nothing, because
24:19
I want it to be nothing. The other thing that I get
24:23
a lot is, do you have any plans for this weekend? To which
24:27
I respond, God, I hope not, because
24:31
plans are awful. Plans mean you have to
24:34
do things, and I don't want to do things.
24:39
Sometimes we do have plans occasionally. Very occasionally. Like,
24:42
not that long ago, my husband and I went to go see Pat
24:45
Noswalt. He was in town and we went to go see him and we had
24:49
actual plans. And the fun thing was
24:53
I forgot about them until, like, the morning of
24:57
when my husband reminded me that the tickets that I had purchased
25:01
voluntarily were that night. It's not like my husband,
25:05
like, surprised me with tickets to this show I wanted to go to. I had
25:08
been like, hey, do you want to go see Patton Oswald? He was like, yeah,
25:11
sure. And so I bought the tickets and then promptly forgot
25:14
about them. Thankfully, he remembered and coordinated,
25:18
like, childcare and stuff. That was nice of him.
25:22
There is also a good chance that if I have plans, I do not remember
25:25
until someone reminds me. The actual point here was that
25:29
what you're fighting against is thinking in blank space and the fact that there are
25:33
way too many choices. And so you can either
25:36
saying you have no plans, which is totally fine and not only
25:40
acceptable, but admirable, or you can come up with
25:44
something that maybe you want to do, or you can have two options in your
25:47
pocket ready to go in the event that somebody asks you this thing, so you
25:51
always have two choices that are available to you,
25:54
or you can just say, I don't know, I don't make plans. Life is too
25:58
chaotic for that. And that's totally fine. These
26:01
are all not even bizarre. Like, that's kind of like a
26:05
pleasant social thing that comes up, that is somebody trying to make
26:08
conversation with you, but the reality is that they don't actually care that much
26:12
about your answer. Whatever is fine. It'll be a jumping off point for the rest
26:16
of the conversation. And when you're me and make it very clear that plans would
26:19
be your nightmare, like, the conversation unfolds naturally from
26:23
there because they're like, please tell me why you refuse to wear shoes. And I'm
26:27
like, I would love to. Thanks for being here, guys.
26:30
Have a good day. Love you. Mean it.
26:38
So I was born on December 29th. So I'm one of those people who has
26:42
the end of the year birthday that doesn't exist. Which is fine, because I hate
26:45
my birthday, and I never want to pay attention to my birthday. And if nobody
26:49
draws any attention to my birthday whatsoever, I'm like, happy. And when people
26:52
do, I'm like, shut up. This is dumb. I don't like it anyway. I'm
26:56
a total shit on my birthday the whole time. Like, I'm grouchy, and
27:00
everybody's like, what do you want to do? And I'm like, I want to do
27:02
nothing. Don't talk to me. I just want a nap. I don't want to do
27:05
nothing. Don't talk to me. That said, it was supposed to
27:08
be the first or second week of January, but my
27:12
mother had me induced for the tax write off. If the baby is born
27:16
before December 31, the whole year is a tax write off.
27:20
But if the baby is born after the first of the year, just the portion
27:24
of the year since the baby was born is a tax write
27:27
off. And so she had me induced over a week early,
27:31
in case you want to know when I got gifted my
27:35
first dose of generational trauma.