How does workplace trauma really affect us? | Courtney Dvorak | TEDxOshkosh

[@athenagonzalez4254]

I didn’t realize I was gonna relate so much to this. She really is talking to me

[@B4igo-i7n]

The last 8 yrs of my career felt like going to prison every day. It took a huge toll on my mental and physical health. But what can you do? It's hard to transition to new jobs if there is little opportunity in your area. I hurt for ppl today in the workplace. I feel many jobs are responsible for making ppl live like they're enslaved instead of productive. Their are too many supervisors who think they're doing a good job by micromanaging everybody like they're number instead of ppl.

[@retrogamerdave362]

part of it comes from being thrust into an environment where you are expected to be competent but poorly supported in your development and where there is a stigma from being in a state of still developing. When you combine that with a couple of bosses in a row who have toxic behaviors you are brewing a perfect storm of anxiety and depression. But if you get good enough at your job to be unassailable then you eventually can escape all that

[@B4igo-i7n]

I feel your pain. My job was great until management cut positions and combined them without increasing our pay for doing twice the work. This made an unhappy and over competitive staff. Everyone was on edge thinking their job was next to be cut and others would start back stabbing to make sure it wasn't them.

[@Bellasie1]

Yes, that's why the workplace has become hellish. Not only you need to be doing the work you were hired to do, but just keeping afloat, unbroken and "unassailable" is like a full-time side hustle in and of itself!

[@Bellasie1]

She is so right! However, she misses the point in that there's nothing human in today's corporations, and they don't care about individual growth ; at best they'll say they have no time for that, but in fact they also would rather keep their employees as subdued as possible. They don't care for coworkers having each other's back either, so an atmosphere of competition and narcissistic control suit them much better. Individually, most superiors see a threat in elevating the most talented individuals that might outshine them, so there is very little incentive in allowing people to self-develop within the company. You have to be able to fake that level of self-confidence in your "skill set*" that you're supposed to have if you don't already have it (* even the corporate lingo dehumanizes the employee as if it were a mere box of tools!). That's why it's such a toxic environment for everyone, but particularly for the more sensitive, genuinely empathetic among us and the most unable to "play the game" regardless of what's at stake. In the end, the workplace is all too often an inflated egos' circus where hierarchy, seniority and status allow almost anything and there is no space for being authentic, because it's too dangerous these days. This is however totally unacceptable in our supposedly "advanced" era... The Silent Generation, the Boomers and Gen X in their youth didn't have to deal with such toxicity at work, these are very new workplace dysfunctions that have been becoming the norm since the turn of the millennium. Talk about progress...

[@thetruther954]

You sound like a prima Donna, so you wind up here.