How to Survive in a Toxic Work Environment

Work is also part of the recipe for happiness. And job happiness does not depend only on the economic conditions of that job. The work climate is the emotional environment that you breathe every day during your work day. Typically, when the weather is negative, this discomfort affects the worker even in his personal life.

As much as we want to differentiate between work and personal life, it is practically inevitable that if going to work becomes a daily concern, this tension will affect psychologically at some point. How to survive a toxic work environment? In psychology we give you the best ideas.

Alternatives to quitting a toxic job

We spend so many hours of our lives immersed in professional matters that we all deserve to grow and evolve in human places where we feel like people. What happens with toxic environments and people is precisely that employees stop feeling treated as people and become just a number. Surviving such an environment means losing sight of something very important: you deserve to live in capital letters. Therefore, what I propose in this type of situation is that you look for a plan B.

It is not about leaving your current job immediately, but about having a second option for a future job in mind and starting to work for it from this moment. Prepare an opposition, find a job from home, establish yourself as a freelance, start an online business, look for another job in another company, study a specialization course ...

That is, when you are part of a professional environment that affects you due to its negative energy and is full of toxic colleagues, it is important that you try not to let that space cut your wings and you can overcome that discomfort through the design of a plan B that help you look beyond your current state to connect with your ideal state.

Practice a volunteer activity related to your profession

Volunteering does not provide any financial salary, however, it does provide high doses of emotional salary. That does not mean that any volunteer activity makes you feel this high level of satisfaction. As at work, in volunteering it also happens that it is important that you find a project that you enjoy and with which you feel identified in its values and objectives .

When you find that place, the self-esteem, recognition, well-being, social intelligence and joy that you experience during that short time of volunteering is an antidote that allows you to balance the emotional balance against that negative charge.

In this way, from this perspective, if you decide to continue in your current job, this weekly volunteering space can serve as a motivational stimulus in life to relativize the difficulties of this negative work environment.

Disconnect from toxic work relationships

In an environment marked by companionship, the goal of making friends in the workplace is a good idea. However, if you meet toxic people in the work environment, avoid bringing into your personal life the bonds that were born at work. It is recommended that these ties begin and end in this professional space. Therefore, limit your contact with these people to strictly necessary tasks.

It may seem like a way to put on a shell, but in reality, when you live in a toxic work environment, which is not very constructive at work, it is positive to mark distances . Do not repeat the negative behavior patterns that often occur in this type of environment. For example, avoid criticizing peers in a destructive way. And most importantly, even if you think that nothing can change in the office, try to contribute your own ideas. If the company has a suggestion box, you can use this channel since there is the possibility of raising improvement ideas from anonymity.

Coaching to improve professional life

The feeling of mental chaos that a person experiences when immersed in a toxic work environment can be so high that what the worker needs at that moment is to find an adequate space to think calmly and put their ideas in order.

The value of coaching is that it is a process in which you are the protagonist of your own change and you learn that no matter how difficult a situation may seem, you can always do something to advance beyond the point where you are.

While toxic environments kill creativity, imagination and fantasy, on the contrary, coaching increases inspiration, optimism, freedom and learning. If you wonder how to survive in a toxic work environment, a coaching process is a good plan to move from theory to action.