As my wife and I walked around the block, I noticed a message on the manhole cover of the storm sewers in the side of the road. “No dumping,” it reads. And there’s a picture of a fish.
The storm sewer carries water directly to the stream, where fish and other wildlife depend on clean water for survival. But many household liquids have toxins that threaten the balance of natural ecosystems like the stream behind our property.
Your workplace may be a mildly toxic (or perhaps severely toxic) environment for you. And while you’re seeking other employment options, you may rightly conclude that a toxic workplace is, at least for now, better than no workplace at all.
But when you’re unable to avoid receiving toxic treatment at work, please don’t carry it home and dump it there, poisoning your family.
Here are some ideas to help you detox.
✅ Listen to non-work-related podcasts or music on the commute home.
✅ Deliberately think about what you’re grateful for. Consider keeping a journal.
✅ If you work from home, create a buffer of time and space between the end of your work day and your contact with family. Set and maintain boundaries to keep work and family time/space separate.
✅ Find a safe space to combine venting and seeking creative solutions, without over-dwelling on the negative.
✅ Try the five-minute focus exercise I introduced yesterday. Use it to create a paper archive of the swirling thoughts from your workplace.
On March 20, 1954, The Saturday Evening Post featured an art piece entitled “Anger Transference” by Richard Sargent. In four frames, it depicts a manager yelling at an employee, that employee yelling at his wife, the wife yelling at their child, and the child yelling at a kitten.
When you take steps to deliberately detox and avoid dumping, you can prevent living out that cartoon in your own family.