Looking back over my years in the corporate world, from the clarity of distance, I can now see the toll the toxic job took on my mental health. But at the time — when I was in the trenches — I didn’t understand the full impact it was having on me.
It started about a year into the job, when mandatory overtime was implemented. There were just four of us manually entering thousands of records into an outdated system that couldn’t be automated. I spent hour after hour, day after day, staring at a screen and typing in records one after another. I ended my days exhausted. Too exhausted to make dinner. Too exhausted to do anything but order in and crash on the couch in front of the TV.
We were praised and promised great things for all of our hard work. I remember thinking it was only temporary and believing we’d be rewarded for going above and beyond. I was wrong. Instead of the promised reward, we got another round of records to manually enter. We’d officially proven to management that we were workhorses. They took that as a signal they could keep piling more on us.
So it shouldn’t have surprised me that after another year in the job, my energy levels hadn’t returned. By 2 p.m. on most days, I was mentally done. It was a struggle to get through those last two hours every day. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. The DoorDash orders that I thought would be temporary had become a regular occurrence. Then I started gaining weight, as the fast food and couch crashes caught up with me.
It got to the point where I no longer recognized myself in the mirror. Who was this overweight person? Where did the light in her eyes go?
Looking back, I can see it clearly now. There was nothing physically wrong with me. The afternoon crashes, the weight gain, the unconfident stranger in the mirror — they were the cumulative cost of staying in a job that was slowly robbing me of my mental health.
If you’re reading this and something in my story resonates, keep reading. Because what I’m about to share took me far too long to understand — and it might be exactly what you need to hear right now.
Shrinking Confidence
Toxic jobs don’t just wear you down. They erode your sense of self and begin to affect your identity. When you spend your days in an environment that makes you feel unprepared, undervalued, or inadequate, you start to believe those messages. The longer you stay in that kind of environment, the easier it becomes to absorb them as truth.
The result is a gradual decline in self-confidence. It becomes easier to second-guess decisions, stay quiet in meetings, and stop offering ideas. The self-doubt you feel at work begins to follow you home — into your relationships, how you carry yourself, even how you see yourself in the mirror.
For me, the weight gain and the loss of confidence became a painful loop. As the pounds accumulated, I felt worse about myself. As I felt worse about myself, I had less energy and motivation for self-care. It was a cycle I couldn’t seem to break no matter how hard I tried — because I was focusing on the symptoms while remaining inside their cause.
Rising Anxiety
Anxiety is one of the most obvious impacts of a toxic workplace. The stress compounds over time and can take many different forms.
Sometimes anxiety shows up as Sunday dread. I remember so well the crushing feeling I’d get every Sunday afternoon as I realized the weekend freedom was coming to an end. It was the same feeling that drove me to tears on a flight home from Paris.
You can read more about that flight here:
Sometimes anxiety shows up in unexpected ways. I developed an aversion to grocery stores, finding all of the choices completely overwhelming. Much like the 2 p.m. crashes, I didn’t understand what was wrong with me. Why couldn’t I handle a simple trip to the store? It wasn’t until later that I understood that chronic stress can manifest in mysterious ways.
This is what toxic workplaces do. They don’t just drain your energy. They make you question your worth, your abilities, even who you are. Your confidence shrinks. Your creativity shuts down. Your anxiety skyrockets.
It’s a heavy toll to pay.
But this is not the way we’re meant to live. We’re built for connection, clarity, and manageable challenges — not for chaos, shifting demands, or unreasonable expectations. We’re meant to move through our days without constant tension. To feel engaged in our work, not drained by it.
If you find yourself in an environment that is slowly eroding your identity — one that has convinced you that you are the problem, that if you just tried harder, slept better, or worried less, you’d be okay — know this:
The environment you’re in matters. Your mental health matters. You matter.
After I left the corporate world, I lost most of the weight and found all of myself. I even found a bit more of myself that I hadn’t known existed yet — the resilient fighter I didn’t know I was, and the writer who puts her experience on the page in hopes of helping others who find themselves slowly sinking in the same boat.
It’s not too late to find the shore.
If you’d like to go deeper into the effects of a toxic workplace, I cover more in my book You Don’t Have to Stay — designed to help you move from feeling stuck to building a path forward, one step at a time. Read more about it here.