Recovering from a toxic workplace
September 26, 2015 6:51 PM Subscribe
I'm just finished up my last day at a toxic workplace. Help me come up with some great recovery activities in my time off. More details inside.
I need to recover from a few aspects of this job:
1. The workplace itself is a high stress industry: healthcare where I dealt with many patient deaths.
2. I was dealing with a truly toxic micromanager for a boss who is unable to treat people as human.
I have some time off now and am looking for ideas of ways I can decompress and recover. I have the partying/celebration aspect already covered but am looking for more spiritual, playful or meaningful activities that will help me recover my sense of self and positive nature. For context I enjoy cooking, yoga and being outdoors as hobbies. I don't belong to a organized religion or identify strongly with any, however, I'm not against learning about new religions or traditions. I also live in a major metropolitan US city.
I need to recover from a few aspects of this job:
1. The workplace itself is a high stress industry: healthcare where I dealt with many patient deaths.
2. I was dealing with a truly toxic micromanager for a boss who is unable to treat people as human.
I have some time off now and am looking for ideas of ways I can decompress and recover. I have the partying/celebration aspect already covered but am looking for more spiritual, playful or meaningful activities that will help me recover my sense of self and positive nature. For context I enjoy cooking, yoga and being outdoors as hobbies. I don't belong to a organized religion or identify strongly with any, however, I'm not against learning about new religions or traditions. I also live in a major metropolitan US city.
I've been there, some ideas based on what helped for me:
1. Get to the nearest National Park (or equivalent) and spend some time there
2. Do some work / a project that makes me feel like I'm accomplishing something (in a way the job didn't.) Remodel a room, plant a garden, or even better do something that helps someone out.
3. If money/time allow, take a class and learn something -- Guitar worked for me, but since you mentioned Yoga and cooking those sound great too.
posted by mmoncur at 9:43 PM on September 26, 2015
1. Get to the nearest National Park (or equivalent) and spend some time there
2. Do some work / a project that makes me feel like I'm accomplishing something (in a way the job didn't.) Remodel a room, plant a garden, or even better do something that helps someone out.
3. If money/time allow, take a class and learn something -- Guitar worked for me, but since you mentioned Yoga and cooking those sound great too.
posted by mmoncur at 9:43 PM on September 26, 2015
Are you a runner? Running is one of the best ways I have for coming down from difficult work situations. The hard cardio and peace which follow it help me a lot with the rage/anxiety mix work can leave. (I took it up after getting out of my own toxic situation years ago.)
posted by frumiousb at 9:53 PM on September 26, 2015
posted by frumiousb at 9:53 PM on September 26, 2015
A thing that helped me was participating in positive group situations, where people are working together to do something fun and supporting one another's efforts and successes. Singing in a choir or playing team sports are the things I immediately think of, but anything where the result is more than the sum of the individual effort.
posted by Jon_Evil at 5:50 AM on September 27, 2015
posted by Jon_Evil at 5:50 AM on September 27, 2015
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by desjardins at 8:11 PM on September 26, 2015 [1 favorite]