“This Place is Toxic”
On Environments, Experience, and Endurance
“I think I’m the common denominator.” Lukia, a highly capable UX Designer, told me how they felt about a series of unsuccessful job changes. They weren’t being self-deprecating; they were being curious.
In just under three years, Lukia had moved through three organisations, each time arriving hopeful and leaving, describing the companies with the phrase “that place is toxic.” We were in a retrospective as part of a UX CoachingTM session so that Lukia could safely explore the conditions, events and variables that had led her to quit her jobs in succession. I wanted to challenge her belief that each of these organisations, and the people in them, had bred a toxic culture. The purpose of this challenge was not to belittle or disregard Lukia’s thoughts and feelings, but to provide an opportunity to add other lenses for reviewing the situation and outcome, which Lukia could incorporate into her growing knowledge and skill set for navigating the working world.
Toxicity is not a fixed state
Toxic is a word we hear often in coaching conversations. It’s a shortcut for something that feels unsustainable, unpleasant, or unsafe. It can refer to a team, a culture, a boss, or even an industry. But what’s curious is how subjective that label can be. One person’s unbearable atmosphere is another’s thriving ecosystem. What’s happening when we call a workplace toxic?
Let’s start with the basics. Toxicity is not a fixed state; it’s a relationship between an organism and its environment. In the natural world, we see this everywhere. Sulfolobus is a type of microbe that thrives in volcanic hot springs deep in the ocean. These tiny organisms love acid and heat, living happily in waters as hot as 80°C (176°F) with a ph as low as 2. They get energy by eating sulfur, which is plentiful in volcanic areas. Tardigrades are infamous animals regularly referred to in science fiction. Known as water bears, they have been proven to survive almost anywhere, including the vacuum of space. Not only can they withstand extreme temperatures, such as those inside volcanoes, but they are also impervious to radiation by entering a state called cryptobiosis, which essentially shuts down their metabolism. Some creatures flourish in scalding heat on the edge of volcanic vents, and some survive in pitch-black waters under immense pressure at the bottom of the ocean. These environments would be lethal to most life forms. But to those adapted to them, they’re home, and they thrive.
Toxicity is a mismatch
The problem with toxicity isn’t always the environment. It’s the mismatch between what the environment demands and what the organism needs. Humans cannot breathe underwater, but that doesn’t make the sea inherently toxic. It makes it unlivable for us without support. We can spend long periods at sea on ships, dive to extreme depths in submarines, or use equipment we've invented to breathe underwater, such as snorkels, respirators, and scuba tanks.
We can borrow this analogy when we think about workplaces. A high-pressure agency might be exhilarating for someone who thrives on making fast decisions and being in constant motion. Those conditions could feel hostile for someone who processes slowly and needs psychological safety to contribute. There’s no universal scale for what makes a workplace “toxic.” But our experience of it can feel just as real and damaging.
We need a toxicology measure for businesses
In toxicology, scientists measure harm using something called the LD50: the lethal dose required to kill 50% of a test population. It’s a grim but helpful benchmark, an attempt to quantify danger across different substances. We don’t yet have a workplace equivalent, but imagining what it would look like is tempting. Could we measure the emotional cost of a leadership style, the mental strain of unrelenting pace, the cumulative effect of not being heard?
Of course, not all harm is lethal. But it is cumulative. In coaching, signs of toxicity often appear as fatigue, cynicism, or a creeping sense of self-doubt. A perfect example of this manifestation is when I work with someone who continually refers to “them” and “they” when discussing things happening at their workplace. When we start to describe the actors responsible for effects that are negative to us, we begin to use us vs. them language, allowing us to create an adversary without explicitly assigning blame to an individual. They don’t get it. I don’t think they have a real strategy. My leaving wouldn’t matter to them. When this happens to someone, they start to question their value, competence, and basic worth. They shrink. Or they armour up and assign blame to a group (them), which is a personal safety tactic to help them cope. The person feels they can start performing versions of themselves that keep them safe, not necessarily successful.
When someone says “this place is toxic,” they’re often expressing that they’re no longer functioning well in their environment. That doesn’t make them weak. It makes them human. And it might mean something in the environment is objectively harmful, such as bullying, exclusion, overwork, or moral injury. However, it might also mean a misfit between what that person needs to do their best work and what the system can provide. We need to understand whether we are feeling something that lets us think things are happening, or whether they are genuinely happening, because the course of action from that point is very different. Still, both paths are severe for the individual experiencing them.
Supporting someone or yourself when experiencing toxicity
It’s essential not to gaslight ourselves in these situations. We can’t always change the system. But we can get curious about the signals we’re receiving.
Is this something I’ve felt before?
Is this organisation truly hostile, or is it not built for someone like me?
What do I need to thrive, and how far is that from what I’m offered?
Some people are incredibly resilient in places that others flee from. That doesn’t mean those people are “better” or more robust. It might mean they’re more adapted. Or it might mean they’ve learned to suppress their needs long enough that the damage hasn’t shown up yet. I’ve worked with plenty of incredible people who couldn’t see that a working relationship was damaging their psyche, and I’ve done it plenty of times myself. With a greater understanding of how to check in with our feelings and thoughts, we can reduce the time to realise our feelings or entirely avoid toxic environments.
Find your thriving ecosystem
There’s a risk in telling ourselves we need to be tougher. Sometimes that’s true; we can build our tolerance, develop new skills, or expand our capacity. But sometimes what we need is a different kind of ecosystem. Our design, way of thinking, working, and relating is not a liability but a strength.
The question isn’t “Is this place toxic?” but “Is this place toxic for me?”
Reframing the situation in this way opens up a more powerful question.
What would it take to find, or shape, an environment where I can breathe again?
If the sea is too deep for us to swim in, it’s not a failure to get out. It’s wisdom. Not everything that looks deadly is deadly, and not everything we survive is good for us.
I am currently working on concepts for measuring toxicity in the workplace to create an instrument that we can use as part of self-assessments to evaluate the toxicity of a specific environment. If you're aware of any existing tools or similar ones, share them here in the comments or message me at email@theuxcoach.com.