When Work Becomes a Nervous System Stressor.
Toxic workplaces do more than drain energy. They rewire the nervous system. Organisational psychology shows that environments lacking psychological safety activate the same stress responses as unstable personal relationships. The body does not distinguish between professional threat and emotional threat, it simply adapts.
For women and particularly Black women, this adaptation is often misread as competence. Overworking, absorbing dysfunction and staying silent are rewarded until the cost becomes visible through burnout, anxiety or illness. Scholars such as Patricia Hill Collins have long highlighted how emotional labour is extracted while authority is withheld.
When an organisation normalises urgency without care, accountability without protection and performance without rest, it teaches people to survive rather than thrive. Over time, self-worth becomes conditional on output, not humanity.
This is not a personal failing. It is a structural one.
Read the full blog, ‘The Survival Illusion’ to understand how toxic organisations shape health, boundaries and leadership identity at https://www.nbwn.org/post/the-survival-illusion
If this stirred something, share it with a sister. Awareness is often the first step out of survival and into choice.
