CTSD (Corporate Traumatic Stress Disorder) is the Scourge of the 21st Century Workplace The central tenet of my new book “Corporate Emotional Intelligence – Being Human in a Corporate World”, is the existence of CTSD – Corporate Traumatic Stress Disorder; an anxiety disorder caused through constant and persistent exposure to the low-level psychological stress and anxiety created by corporate cultures. In recent years PTSD has become recognised as a separate psychological disorder which is caused by a traumatic violent event. Sufferers frequently re-live the event, with extreme physical and emotional reactions triggered by the seemingly most ‘normal’ of everyday situations. This re-living is often accompanied by an ‘if only’ soundtrack, yielding further emotions of anger (why me?) or shame (why didn’t I?). As we have learned more about trauma we’ve come to accept another category – complex trauma, which arise from a series of what would be relatively minor traumas if experienced as single events, but which are connected by sheer repetition of traumatic features. These small ‘t’ traumas, as they are also known, are an accumulation of small but nevertheless unsettling and distressing events that culminate in our capacity to cope being exceeded, resulting in a disruption of emotional functioning. While these traumas have no accompanying threat of physical harm, crucially they are ego threatening, due to the individual feeling a notable helplessness, with the layering of guilt and shame that ensues. In the corporate environment, people are frequently contending with a cocktail of such ego threatening events – a challenging relationship with their boss, dysfunctional relationships with colleagues, the prospect of failing, conflicts at home due to work pressures and anxiety over finances. Since any anxiety tends to be dismissed by the individual sufferer, who will rationalise the experience or situation as being both common and completely normal, a cognitive shame reaction is triggered for allowing themselves to be affected. This avoidance only serves to make matter worse, adding to the accumulated effect of multiple compounded small ‘t’ traumas and culminating in a case of CTSD. Exposure to traumatic situations does not of course lead to PTSD in all cases. In a classic ‘fight or flight’ situation, the surge of energy created is vented through the extreme physical exertion of the fight or the running away. Even in lower level threat situations where a physical response would be inappropriate, if we find some physical outlet within a reasonable elapsed time - running, punching a bag, screaming while playing or watching a football match - these responses allow the temporarily trapped energy to be dissipated. But if we are unable to get rid of the energy; if the body holds the trauma as trapped energy because the person ‘freezes’, then the trapped energy becomes stored in the cells which then inflame. Of course even then, over time the body can gradually release this trapped emotional energy. If the person is returned to normal life relatively quickly and with relative ongoing stability (love, companionship, respect from finding meaning and purpose) then this will be so in the vast majority of cases. If the person receives professional therapy, then the chances are greatly increased, but even the ‘therapy’ of loving relationships can do the trick. But if the trauma is extreme then just returning to a ‘normal’ life of loving relationships and respect won’t be sufficient, since the level of shame may be too great, or the brain simply won’t allow the person to forget. So they continually re-live the trauma, effectively re- traumatising themselves continuously and progressively, until something breaks. Even minor traumas are hard to recover from if the person goes straight back into a stressful ongoing ‘corporate’ situation – a controlling relationship, precarious financial circumstances, insecure employment etc etc. In situations of extreme threat and danger, our most primal hard wiring is triggered – our brains are flooded with stress hormones; our hippocampus shuts down, we get a surge of cortisol for focus, and of adrenaline for strength and speed, and our most basic ‘flight or fight’ response ensures we survive. When we experience ‘normal’ trauma and trauma responses (fight or flight) the amygdala flicks the circuit breaker to the neo cortex, instantly shutting down the hippocampus, which is fired up again seconds later when the amygdala throws the switch after the immediate threat has passed. But when the trauma is low level and constant, the amygdala can’t quite decide what to do, and it sort of short circuits, fluctuating wildly between on and off. War veterans with PTSD have abnormally low levels of activity in their pre frontal cortex, and unusually high levels of activity in their amygdala. They are in effect being constantly re-traumatised by fairly innocuous daily events, and will re-experience their past traumas very much in the present moment. This is because the normal processing of events as memories in the past has not taken place. If the hippocampus shuts off then memories can never move to being in the past. When we’re triggered then we re-experience the fear of the trauma as being right here in the present. We are continually re-traumatised. PTSD is a memory-filing error. Research into PTSD has shown that when we suffer trauma and take positive action, then we minimise our risk of suffering afterwards. Our risk comes from when we do not act; we do not fight; we do not run away – we in fact freeze, and when we freeze we hold the trauma in our cells – we go into victimisation and will actually feel responsible for what has happened to us. Crazy of course, but inevitable. The Corporation is the perfect crucible for creating trauma - the perfect petri dish for growing cultures of fear, anxiety, competition, isolation, threat – trauma. In ‘real’ life, humans go into either fight or flight mode in the face of threat, and rarely ‘freeze’, but in the corporate world the pre-dominant response to threat is freeze, because neither fight nor flight are acceptable, viable or possible. The bi-product of ‘freeze’ is that the body is left holding the massive undischarged energy surge and has no other place to store it than in healthy cells that then become inflamed. Trauma gets stuck in the body. Freeze, and in the truest sense of the word ‘petrification’ is a key cause of PTSD, and since this is the more usual response in the corporate world, my contention is that most human beings working in corporate environments are suffering from at least a mild form of CTSD, and some are suffering in the extreme. Since this condition is unrecognised, it is undiagnosed. But as normal, decent (yet hard-pressed) leaders and managers, what can we do? We can’t change the system, and even if we wanted to, we’re not going to change cultures of corporatism overnight. Well we may not be able to change the system, but we can transform our small part of it if we develop our CEQ – our Corporate Emotional Intelligence. With CTSD, ‘mere’ emotional intelligence (EQ) is not sufficient, since EQ depends upon a calm and rational exercising of self control. With CTSD, the neo-cortex is shut off, so we are unable to calmly think ourselves through the pressure (threat) situation we are experiencing. We need a deeper intelligence that we can train ourselves to be able to access under pressure. We need CEQ. CEQ is built upon an awareness that our default reaction to pressure has become one of impatience. The merest thing can now trigger us into a threat response; our poor old amygdala ascribes the same threat level to a colleague being mildly miffed with us as to a spear about to skewer us. And so, weirdly, managers all across the world have developed controlling habits that they are now completely unaware of – directional, micro-managing, checking, manipulative, intimidating, dismissive. And yet ‘all’ we need to do to break these habits is to change our default reaction to pressure to one of curiosity instead of impatience. So the next time you feel your impatience and irritation levels rising, smile. Be curious; ask an open question rather than making a statement or asking a closed question. Be compassionate; hold the person, not the problem. Sounds simple I know, but try it for a few minutes in a normal work situation and you’ll realise how much conscious practice you’ll need! But the prize is transforming the moment; leaving people having learned that they are the solution rather than having learned that they are the problem. If we can create working environments and working relationships that are free of CTSD, then we might just tackle the immense global challenges of our time. As a post script, in 2018 the BBC Newsnight programme, in a piece covering claims of Commented [Gareth Ch1]: bullying against the Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, reported that one of his aides had been diagnosed with PTSD after working for him for a year. In the future, diagnoses of PTSD arising from working environments will no doubt lead to some interesting single employment law cases. But what if CTSD became a recognised anxiety disorder? What if Corporate Board Rooms faced the prospect of class actions for CTSD? Now that might just get the corporate world to make fundamental change………
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