I hope you enjoy this light song to lift you up while reading this post, a serious reflection about a toxic workplace, what the WHO says about it, and what happens when outer circumstances become an inner war.
Practicality on one side, duality on the other
Picture a line.
On one side, practicality. On the other, duality. And in the middle, us. Ordinary humans, walking the space between. I believe deeply that we all try to do our best. But do we share the same idea of what “best” means?
I also believe we are walking a tightrope of balance. Yet does balance mean the same thing to each of us?
In an idealistic world, maybe it would. In the complex world we live in now, I so often see us lose sight of the shore. Especially inside the systems we build ourselves. Most of us think about the here and now. Today’s deadline. This year’s plan. But our choices reach further than our own lives.
They touch the people close to us. Our colleagues. Our relationships. And if we take it one step further and look into the future, they touch the generations still to come.
What the Haudenosaunee mean by the Seventh Generation
Some peoples have lived by this thought for a very long time. The Haudenosaunee, also known as the Iroquois Confederacy, live by a value called the Seventh Generation. In their decision making, chiefs consider how today’s choices will touch their descendants. They are taught that we borrow this world from those still to come.
This value is rooted in the Great Law of Peace, the oral constitution of the Haudenosaunee.
Now compare that with how most of us live today. Somewhere along the way, we as humans, in the middle of all our evolving, have drifted from what really matters. At least, that is how it looks from where I stand. Values shape how we meet life, and that includes our working life too.
I am a visionary. I believe change is possible. But change does not start out there. It starts with getting to know ourselves. And here is the gift in it. The more we know ourselves, the more we find what we share. Then meeting each other gets easier. Diversity stops feeling like distance and becomes a gift.
But we are not there yet, are we? Let’s look at how it shows up in our work environments.
The modern workplace as an ancient ship
Now think of the modern workplace as an ancient ship. A Greek warship, or a Viking longship. Everyone on board had to master the oar. Everyone had to keep the same rhythm. If one person fell out of time, the whole ship felt it. Back then, it was about life and death.
Modern working life is more complex and harder to read. Maybe the biggest complexity is the crew itself. So many different kinds of people, probably more than on any ancient ship. And the challenge hides deeper now. It is no longer about strong muscles and one shared beat. It is about competition culture. About different personalities, some of them on a mission of self-realisation, some of them on ego trips, some of them just trying to survive in a crazy world that hinders everyone from thriving.
We live in a world of apparent freedom. But do we have real freedom? And if you say yes, where does that freedom show up in your life?
And in this exact world, we still have to move the ship in the same direction.
Cooperation is one of the keys. But does everyone understand their role? Does everyone carry the same inner moral compass? Or is it just about me, myself and I?
The tyrant in the Mercedes: my story of a toxic workplace
I have seen many scenes in my working life. Let me take you into one of them. In my last permanent job, a nicely dressed tyrant ruled the company. In our modern phrases, he would probably be called a narcissist. He drove a Mercedes. And he was “killing” everyone who spoke up against him. I hope you get what I mean by killing. He fired those who criticised him out loud, or who asked how he was running the big man show, which was the company he led.
When I started, there were up to 70 people working there. By the time I decided to leave, that number had been cut in half. The cuts came again and again in a short time, moving under the umbrella of downsizing.
A ship cannot move when the captain throws the rowers overboard, the ones who ask where we are sailing. He excused it as a reorganisation that came from above, from the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration (NAV). But could the whole process have been done differently?
The strangest part was this. The ones hit by his reorganisation cuts were the ones who dared to speak up.
Behind the scenes, many people complained quietly about where things were heading. But nobody dared to say it out loud, because they knew they would most probably be the next ones out. So the quiet complaints, the whispers and the gossip behind closed doors were understandable when seen in the practical light of life. People had families, kids, mortgages, a whole life to look after. A revolution against the tyrant, our modern narcissist, was never going to happen.
Many years later, I heard the man in the nice clothes and the big Mercedes had to go. Why, I don’t know. But my first thought was, what goes around comes around.
I am not proud of that thought. It told me something about me too.
What the WHO says about toxic workplaces and mental health
And it is not only my story. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 12 billion working days are lost every year to depression and anxiety. The cost is one trillion US dollars a year in lost productivity.
Their list of risks to mental health at work includes job insecurity, authoritarian supervision, and a culture that lets negative behaviour grow. When I read that list, I thought of that company.
Remember the line? Practicality on one side, duality on the other. This is what duality looks like at work.
There is so much beauty around us. And so much craziness in the systems we build ourselves. Those who climb to the top are often driven by ego. Others simply have the skills to climb the ladder.
And believe it or not, we all have an ego. The question is how aware we are of it. Does it run the show, or do we?
What is toxic behaviour? Ego, projection and the wound nobody dares to look at
Ego is only the surface. Underneath, something else is often at work.
Lying.
Manipulation.
Indifference.
Toxic behaviour.
What do I mean by toxic behaviour?
I mean behaviour that comes from an identity built on a wound, or an old hurt, that one does not dare to look at, and it leaves a person feeling miserable. There can be other roots too. But this is the one I want to explore today.
It is when someone acts out their inner mess instead of facing it. Call it what you like. I call it projection. What they carry inside, poured over everyone near them, through manipulation, through lies, through a mood that never lifts.
How toxic behaviour lands in the body
And slowly, that misery or discontentment lands in us too. When something is poured onto us like that, it is not easy to stand in a human body and stay completely unaffected. If we could, we would already be enlightened. But few of us are there, no?
So instead, this is what happens. We notice it in the loop of the mind that won’t stop. We feel it in the body, the jaw, in the chest, and in how we react to everyone and everything.
Once we feel it, it is not theirs anymore. It is ours as well. Now imagine being around this kind of projection for years. A leader. A colleague. A relationship. What does it do to us in the long run?
We can walk around it, as long as we don’t feel it. But the moment we do, pretending stops working.
But back to that workplace. Near the end of my time there, I was one of the ones who went through his knife myself. I had the right on my side, and he could not get me out. But the process itself did something to me. All my old traumas came up to the surface.
Today, I look at what happened as a gift. Without it, I would not be where I am now. But in that period, my body could not settle. I could not breathe. I lived in constant unease and restlessness. My mind was occupied. All it saw was the pain and suffering in life. And at night, I woke up in a panic, feeling like I was dying. That is called a panic attack. In spiritual language, I went through the “dark night of the soul.” Curious about what happened next? Read my post Change of Scenario.
That period broke something open in me. It is also when the real work started.
I chose to quit, to keep my integrity. And through that choice, and the process that followed, I learned something. I could not control outer circumstances. But step by step, I learned to handle what came towards me. And I have taken that with me ever since.
Practical spirituality: what walking the talk asks of us
That is what practical spirituality means to me. Not controlling what happens, but learning to see what is there, and why we react.
Most people in that office did not dare to speak up. And I believe he did not dare to look inside. Different fears, same human root. Maybe that is part of what we share. Under the suits and the titles, we all carry something we are afraid to look at.
Maybe an honest start is to admit it. We are all a little nuts. A little messed up. Every one of us. And still we walk around in our best clothes, pretending to be normal, with a crazy circus playing on inside, and many times an inner war too, which we point straight at everyone else. Because it is so much easier to blame other people than to look at our own mess.
Imagine the relief. What if we could laugh at the craziness? We are all in the same ship. Blaming each other for it solves nothing. But turning our focus inward instead, that is where the work actually starts. Not fixing what’s out there, but noticing what’s in us, and what it is doing to us.
How do we react to what lands on us? What does it stir? Looking closer, is what we carry even ours?
Here is the layer underneath. We would not have reacted at all if nothing was already there to stir. That reaction itself is worth noticing. Being honest about that is the first step. Because once we are carrying it, once it has become part of us, how do we actually move it through, so it doesn’t stay stuck in our whole being, emotions, mind, physically, no?
Because none of this happens in a vacuum. It happens inside a life that holds everything at once.
Life is full of everything. Happiness and suffering. Joy and pain. People full of hurt who pull us into their turmoil. Leaders more in ego than in building a good culture. But fortunately, life is more colourful than that, and not all leaders are like this.
That is the duality I mentioned at the start. Practicality on one side, duality on the other. And we walk the tightrope in between, carrying all of it at once, the ego, the projection, the pain we avoid, the people who hurt us, the ones we hurt, all of it.
When we dare to feel it and stay with it, we get to know ourselves a little better each time. And from that knowing, we take action.
Everyone has their own way. Mine is movement and being honest. What is yours?
Being spiritual doesn’t mean floating around in peace and glory. It is dealing with reality as it shows up, each time it comes, and in a world where lying and manipulation feel normal, that can happen a lot.
Maybe this is what balance asks of us. Feeling what arrives, finding our footing again, taking the next step on the rope.
Inner work is everyday work. And it decides what we hand down. 🌾
I am Parisa Radpey, the writer of these pages and founder of Dhyana Donya Movement & Health. You can read more about me here my background.
📖 Some patterns can’t be thought through. Only walked through. Curious what I mean? Read The Silver Route — now on Amazon.
How do I work with people? Read Free guide
I would love to understand the people I am creating this work for a little better. If you have a few minutes, 👉 take my short survey here — it truly helps me understand the needs of real people and what they face on their journey, so I can shape my work around what I hear, rather than simply assuming what might be needed.
You can also find me across social platforms, or let my Spotify playlist move what words can’t. And if you want more, I also write for Wise and Shine Zine, and my latest blog post is called Listening to the Heart: The Story Behind Lau Suna.