If you’ve ever found yourself lying awake at 3 a.m., mentally composing emails you haven’t even received yet, congratulations—you are not “bad at stress.” Your nervous system is simply responding, quite intelligently, to an environment that feels unsafe.
This is important, so let’s say it clearly:
Toxic workplaces don’t just make you unhappy. They train your nervous system to live in survival mode.
And once you understand how that works, everything you’ve been blaming yourself for starts to make a lot more sense.
Your Nervous System Is a Very Earnest Intern
Your nervous system has one job: keep you alive. It is not subtle. It does not read organizational charts or LinkedIn titles. It simply asks, over and over: Am I safe right now? When the answer is yes, your body settles into a state of rest, creativity, and connection. When the answer is no, your body releases stress hormones, tightens muscles, sharpens attention, and prepares for danger. Here’s the catch: your nervous system cannot tell the difference between a tiger and a toxic manager. To your body, unpredictability, criticism, gaslighting, and constant pressure all register as threat.
Chronic Stress Traps You in Fight, Flight, or Freeze
In healthy work environments, stress is temporary. You rise to a challenge, then you recover. The nervous system flexes and relaxes like a well-trained muscle. In toxic environments, the stress never resolves. Deadlines pile up without relief. Expectations shift without warning. Mistakes are punished, not repaired. The nervous system never gets the signal that it’s safe to stand down.
Over time, this creates:
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Constant anxiety or irritability
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Exhaustion that doesn’t improve with rest
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Difficulty concentrating or making decisions
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Physical symptoms with no clear medical cause
This isn’t weakness. It’s biology. Your body is doing exactly what it evolved to do—staying alert in the presence of danger.
Gaslighting Is a Direct Attack on Nervous System Trust
Gaslighting is particularly corrosive because it disconnects you from your own internal signals. When someone repeatedly tells you that your perceptions are wrong—You’re overreacting. That didn’t happen. You’re too sensitive—your nervous system loses its most important resource: self-trust. Instead of responding to reality, your body begins scanning for clues about which version of reality will be punished least. This creates hypervigilance, second-guessing, and chronic self-doubt. Many people leave toxic jobs only to realize they’re still bracing for attack in perfectly safe situations. The body learned a lesson: The world is unpredictable. Stay alert.
High Performers Are Especially Vulnerable
One of the great ironies of toxic workplaces is that they often reward nervous system dysregulation. People who over-function, overthink, and over-accommodate are praised as “dedicated” and “resilient.” Meanwhile, their bodies are quietly screaming for relief. If you’ve been successful in a toxic environment, it may be because your nervous system learned to ignore its own distress signals. That’s not strength. That’s adaptation. And adaptation can be unlearned.
You Are Not Broken—You Are Brilliantly Adapted
Here’s the reframe that changes everything:
Nothing has gone wrong. Your nervous system did exactly what it was designed to do in an unsafe environment.
Healing doesn’t begin by forcing yourself to “handle stress better.” It begins by telling the truth—first to yourself. The truth might sound like:
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This environment wasn’t healthy for me.
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My body responded appropriately.
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I don’t need fixing; I need safety.
From there, healing happens gently and gradually:
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Through routines that restore predictability
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Through rest that doesn’t need justification
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Through relationships where feedback isn’t a threat
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Through work that aligns with who you actually are
Integrity Is the Antidote
In my work, I’ve seen this over and over again: nervous systems begin to heal when people move back into integrity—when their outer lives start matching their inner truth. That doesn’t always mean quitting immediately. Sometimes it means setting one small boundary. Sometimes it means naming what you’ve been denying. Sometimes it means letting yourself imagine a different life without immediately explaining why it’s impractical. Your nervous system relaxes when it senses honesty.
A Final Thought
If your body has been resisting your work, it isn’t sabotaging you. It’s guiding you. The question your nervous system has been asking all along is not How much can I endure? It’s Is this where I belong? When you begin listening to that question—kindly, curiously, without judgment—your body will start to remember something very important.
Safety is not a luxury.
It’s the foundation of a life that works.
Have an Amazing Monday (and everyday!),
Leanna Fredrich, Leadership, Career and Stress-Management Coach
PS: Interested in Coaching? Please email me at [email protected]