My 2020: Recovering from a Toxic Workplace

Buzzfeed has been outed as a toxic workplace. I don’t know the details beyond what has been covered by creators who have shared “why I left Buzzfeed” content on their personal platforms after leaving. However, I do feel deeply sympathetic to their experience. I, too, was affected by a toxic workplace, and it altered my life significantly.

While I’m not here to trash the organization that I was affected by, I do feel that my story is important. I’ve been keeping it to myself for far too long, and the withholding does nothing to help my healing.

It’s important to state at the outset that when I began my first corporate job after my undergrad, I was already in a vulnerable place. I had just moved to a new city and hadn’t built up my social supports very strongly yet. I was financially incompetent (still am) and deeply in debt (yep, still am). I was only one year post-concussion, which I would have sworn at the time wasn’t still affecting me. Looking back now, I see that, though I was able to function and produce work I was proud of, my emotional and personal management left something to be desired. I was in the process of finishing and submitting my undergrad thesis at the time I was hired, and I really struggled to identify and implement boundaries for my own well-being. So while I need to tell my story, I want to note that the way I was affected had a lot to do with lacking support and self-advocacy at a time when I I thought I had independent adulthood all figured out.

My time at this company was not all bad. The local team was fabulous, and really helped me roll with the punches and curveballs that were regularly delivered from the higher-ups. But as time went on and my local team began to dwindle, my coworkers and I were left to handle a chaotic and unorganized workload, and I was not at all equipped with the tools I needed to handle this stress. I took on too much, and believed that my ability to perform in this environment was a sign of my worthiness in the working world.

Once again, I need to explicitly state that I was hiding the truth of my fragility from anyone I could. I don’t know what my colleagues thought, but I was convinced that if I put on a strong face and pretended everything was fine, my pain would go unnoticed. But my wellness began to suffer more and more, and I began experiencing major mental health symptoms that I excused as par for the course in moving forward and having a stable life.

At this time, I couldn’t plan ahead. I remember a lovely co-worker asking me at lunch one day what I was looking forward to for the summer time. I stared back blankly at him, and I don’t remember what I said, but I remember thinking, “Why would I be looking forward to anything outside of work? Work is my whole life.”

This scenario could have looked different, maybe if I had been in the relationship I’m in now, or if I’d lived with roommates who could help me see the day-to-day pitfalls I repeatedly fell into at home. Though, honestly, I don’t know that I would have listened to them. I was so addicted to being important in this company that I would make every excuse for why it was okay to feel the way I did.

Eventually, with the help of an HR rep who really had my back, I was able to arrange health leave from my job. I told myself that a few months away would allow me to search for other jobs and find a landing pad that would nurture my growth and professional development.

Unfortunately, my mental health had other plans. I retreated further and further into myself, driven by shame and disappointment into a place where I truly did not believe I had what it took to support myself as an independent adult. Say what you will about the law of attraction, but it’s no surprise to me that I didn’t receive a single call back for the 40+ applications I sent out in January and February of 2020. At the time, the rejection felt like more and more proof of my unworthiness.

I felt too ashamed and fragile to rely on my networks or to ask for help. My mental health continued to suffer, and I was repeatedly left unattended by health care professionals whose systems weren’t strong enough to keep me from slipping through the cracks. I still don’t have a diagnosis for what I deal with every day (though I have confidently told many people MANY different theories, to give myself some semblance of an answer), and I still struggle with getting up and showing up in the relationships and roles I’m slowly re-incorporating into my life.

Something odd that I don’t have answers for yet: I was working in social media management right? As the stress got worse and worse, I couldn’t bring myself to be seen without feeling shame and judgement for a long time. After leaving, I left my personal socials unattended (I haven’t event been able to LOOK at my Linkedin, let alone use it). I still struggle with posting on any platforms, or interacting with others’ posts. I felt — and still feel — the need to disappear, and I struggle every day with how to let myself be seen again.

I’m working again now, for a lovely small business with really good values throughout the company. Getting here was a a bit of a serendipitous fluke, and the unemployment stage was so painful and stressful and financially draining. Not to mention it was during a f***ing GLOBAL PANDEMIC. A lot of my recovery and wellness has come from letting other people help me and look after me: My wonderful supportive partner and his amazing family, my rockstar therapist, and some friends and family I was able to be raw and honest with play huge parts in the story of my 2020. I had to let myself be helped, and be not okay, and to learn to love everyday without escaping it in order to get where I am now — which is not “better”, by the way. My mental health symptoms have now become more physical than ever before, and I’m going through another round of referrals and doctors and tests and phone calls trying to figure it out. It’s pretty damn exhausting. Having enough spoons to go through this process, though — THAT is what I’ve gained from this year.

I have learned that I have to be my own grownup, my own self-advocate. I need to spend quality time with myself, and have high standards for how I am treated and what I expect from other people. I need to find joy in the things that used to make me gleeful — I am proud to say that for the first time since 2018, I’m REGULARLY writing music again, a passion of mine. I’m hoping to get my chops up enough to feel good about sharing it, but that takes time and I need to be patient with myself. Also, it’s not a requirement! I have finally learned that I need to love myself first, before I look for other people to celebrate me.

I don’t know who needs to hear this. But if you struggle with validation and feeling like “enough”, it’s so important that your post-education years are, first and foremost, filled with love and support. If you have the job and the apartment and the independence but no trust in others, you’re looking at a recipe for disaster. You’re looking at me two years ago.

So yeah, 2020 has been rough. It’s also been life changing. The place I once worked is not who I am or who I was anymore. It’s just a piece of my story, and I’m a lot more than my story. I’m looking forward to finding out what else there is for me, and I appreciate each and every one of the people in my life who has understood that what I’m going through is big and painful and too confusing to share openly. As the big and the painful slowly becomes the medium and manageable, I am what is left in the in-between. And for once, that feels like enough. .