Anxiety and Depression are Reasonable Responses to Bad Bosses
When I worked in retail, my boss was a psychopath and as a ‘junior sales associate,’ I was a target for much of her wrath. Highlights included her screaming (literally) at me at for being on time, rather than early, and being berated in front of a customer for slouching.
But she wasn’t my worst boss; in fact, we’ve probably all had a boss like her.
Another one of my bosses was a middle manager in a technology company. My job was to cold call local businesses and pitch a new educational product that the manager was almost insanely optimistic about.
I remember one evening after work when he came over to my desk and leaned on my partition.
“Rhys,” he said. “You’re lucky to be in on the ground floor; we’re going to change the world here.”
Three months later sales figures were not what the manager expected, so he called all of us into a ‘sales meeting,’ and made us watch Glengarry Glen Ross. Afterwards, he explained that from now on he wouldn’t be such a “nice guy” and that we could expect a series of Alec Baldwin style abuse sessions over the next few weeks. To his credit, he followed through.
But even he wasn’t my worst boss.
Top of the tree was a stone cold sociopath who delighted in torturing his underlings. His favourite trick was inviting unwary team members out for coffee, and then loudly berating them in front of complete strangers over a latte. His moods would swing from high-fives and chatting about football, to physical intimidation and verbal abuse. He was really good at standing over people at their desks, and speaking just loud enough for everyone else in the office to hear.
One such incident involved a colleague of mine. The manager sat down on her desk so that she was forced to look up at him, and started explaining to her how useless she was. When she asked if they could move the conversation to somewhere more private he responded,
“I don’t waste my time with losers.”
What an asshole.
I was reminded of all these wonderful employers because a few weeks ago a friend of mine, someone I’ve known for almost 20 years, was telling me about his current boss. The stories echoed my own experiences, and when I came home and spoke to my wife about it, she started with her own stories of terrible bosses.
In retrospect, all my stories helped shape who I am, but the reality is that during those periods in my life, I was emotionally crippled. I felt powerless, afraid — both of keeping and losing my job — and as a result, I experienced anxiety and symptoms of situational depression. It was my final boss who finally pushed me over the edge and my breakdown was the excuse I needed to get away from horrible people.
As I was talking to my friend about his terrible manager, I couldn’t help but think that his response to the situation — increased fear, anxiety and insomnia — is a reasonable reaction to a completely fucked up situation. In fact, to not experience those symptoms, he would have to be lacking in emotional responses.
If we evaluate his responses based on cause-and-effect we can see a predictable pattern:
Made to feel inadequate = Anxiety
Anxiety = Sleepnesses
Job being threatened with no timeframe or means of rectifying the situation = Uncertainty
Uncertainty = Fear
I mean, how could my friend possibly not respond in such a predictable fashion? It’s like being told you’re going to be stabbed at some point soon, but not to worry about it. If he didn’t, it would be a sign of disturbing emotional detachment, which many psychoanalysts would treat with concern.
As I look back over my own career, much of what I’ve experienced emotionally has been my brain doing exactly what it is supposed to do. The responsibility is usually placed on the sufferer, and the sufferer’s mind, with the terrible boss, job, husband, wife, friend or situation being treated as an input. However, if the analysis were to begin with the situation itself, perhaps we would discover that mental illness is sometimes the healthiest reaction our body can produce in an entirely unhealthy scenario.
