After my clients leave certain companies, they often describe feeling like they’re waking up from a cult. “I can’t believe I thought all of that was normal,” they say. “I can’t believe I thought it was all my fault.”
Capable, intelligent professionals spend months or years convinced they were the problem. If they just worked harder, managed their time better, or developed thicker skin, everything would be fine. Then they leave, join a healthier organization, and suddenly realize it wasn’t them.
It was never them.
Just like a fish doesn’t know it’s been swimming in water until you lift it out, you may not recognize the true nature of the system you’ve been surviving in until you leave.
What Corporate-Embedded Advisors Can’t See
Most corporate consultants and HR professionals have a vested interest in making your current job work. Their entire business model depends on helping you adapt, grow, and succeed within corporate structures. So when you’re struggling, they default to “What can we help you change about yourself so you can succeed here?”
Career coaches have the opposite problem. Many are incentivized to help you conclude that you need a new job, a career change, or a complete professional reinvention. That’s what they sell. If you can make your current situation work with some boundary adjustments or skill development, they don’t have a service to offer you.
I don’t have either constraint. Career transition support is one of my services, but it’s not my only service. I’m not trying to keep you in a harmful environment, and I’m not trying to push you toward an unnecessary change either.
I came to workplace psychology through clinical training, not through corporate experience. That outside perspective is what allows me to see patterns that both insiders and career-change specialists often miss. I can look at the water you’re swimming in and assess whether it’s safe, whether you need different swimming techniques, or both.
When Personal Growth Language Becomes a Weapon
Corporate culture has gotten sophisticated about co-opting therapeutic and personal development language. In some cases, this can be helpful. However, in many cases, the result morphs into a particularly insidious form of organizational dysfunction that disguises abuse as enlightened leadership.
“If you’re not excelling, it’s because you need to work on yourself.”
“If you’re struggling with the workload, it’s because you need better boundaries.”
“If you can’t handle the pressure, it’s because you’re too sensitive to feedback.”
And what makes this SO deeply damaging is that sometimes these statements contain some truth. Sometimes you do need to work on your patterns. Sometimes your boundaries are too loose. Sometimes your nervous system responses are making things harder than they need to be.
But when organizations use this language to avoid introspection and to deflect from systemic dysfunction, it becomes gaslighting. The water is poisonous, but you’re being told the problem is that you’re a bad swimmer.
Distinguishing between legitimate personal growth opportunities and organizational manipulation takes clinical expertise that most career professionals simply don’t have. I was trained to spot gaslighting in relationships, and I can spot it in organizations too.
What Organizational Gaslighting Looks Like
Let me give you a concrete example I see repeatedly.
A manager assigns an important project to someone who’s never done that type of work before. The employee asks for guidance, resources, or examples multiple times. The requests are ignored, minimized, or met with “Figure it out. That’s what leaders do.”
And there’s a kernel of truth here, right? Leaders and capable professionals DO need to take initiative sometimes and figure things out. But there’s a basic structure of support that makes those things possible. Without it, you’re being set up to fail.
The project doesn’t meet expectations. In the post-mortem, the employee is told they “lack initiative,” “need to be more proactive,” or “clearly aren’t ready for this level of responsibility.”
The employee walks away thinking, “I should have tried harder. I should have been able to figure it out. Maybe there’s something wrong with me.”
But the reality is the organization set the employee up to fail, provided no support, and then blamed them for the predictable outcome.
This isn’t a personal development opportunity. This is organizational dysfunction.
And the part that really gets my blood boiling is that by framing it as the employee’s deficit, the organization ensures the person will work even harder next time, ask for even less support (because asking is now “evidence” of inadequacy), and accept even more unreasonable conditions.
The Question I Start With
When corporate-embedded advisors work with struggling professionals, they tend to ask, “How can we help you succeed here?”
That’s not the question I start with.
I start with “Should you even be trying to succeed here?”
Because sometimes the answer is NO. Sometimes the environment is psychologically harmful. Sometimes the culture is designed to extract maximum output while providing minimum support. Sometimes “not excelling” in a dysfunctional system is a sign of psychological health. Your nervous system is correctly identifying danger and trying to protect you.
Sometimes “not excelling” in a dysfunctional system is a sign of psychological health.
What Clinical Training Lets Me Assess
My therapy background gives me a framework that corporate consultants don’t have. When I assess workplace struggles, I’m looking at multiple factors simultaneously.
- Individual Patterns – Are there trauma responses, attachment wounds, or family-of-origin dynamics making things harder? Do you struggle with authority across contexts? Are there skills you genuinely need to develop?
- Organizational Pathology – Is this workplace psychologically safe? Are the expectations reasonable? Is there systemic dysfunction being blamed on individuals? Would anyone thrive here?
- The Interaction Between Them – How are your patterns and this environment affecting each other? Are your responses appropriate to real danger, or are old wounds being triggered? Is the organization exploiting your specific vulnerabilities?
This is why I start with a comprehensive assessment. Because the most effective solution varies depending on all the contributing factors.
If you’re in a healthy environment but your patterns are creating problems, we will design a plan to work on your patterns. If you’re in a toxic environment but your responses are appropriate, we will work on designing an exit strategy. If it’s both (which it usually is), we will work on a plan to address both
The critical piece is understanding the factors that are driving your struggles before you invest time, money, and energy trying to solve the wrong problem.
Why the “Cult” Comparison Isn’t Hyperbole
When clients describe leaving certain organizations as “escaping a cult,” they’re identifying real psychological patterns.
- Reality distortion – “If you’re struggling, it’s because you’re not committed enough, resilient enough, strategic enough.”
- Isolation from outside perspectives – “People who haven’t worked here don’t understand our culture, our standards, our intensity.”
- Weaponized vulnerability – “You need to check your ego” (which really means don’t question how we’re treating you)
- Moving goalposts – No matter how much you achieve, it’s never quite enough to prove yourself.
- Thought control – Your negative feelings about the organization are reframed as your personal issues to work on.
These aren’t just “challenging workplace dynamics.” These are manipulation tactics. And when you’re swimming in that water, these tactics feel normal because everyone around you treats them as normal. So it’s natural to assume your discomfort means something is wrong with you.
What Happens When Clients “Get Out of the Water”
When clients move from a psychologically harmful environment to a healthier one, I hear things like:
“I had no idea how bad it really was.”
“I feel like I’m coming up for air for the first time in years.”
“My new manager actually seems to care how I’m doing. Is it weird that I’m not sure whether I can trust that?”
“I thought all workplaces were like that.”
“I should have left sooner.”
The relief isn’t just about having less work or more flexibility. It’s about discovering that their perception was accurate all along. They weren’t too sensitive. They weren’t failing at something everyone else had figured out. They were having an appropriate response to an inappropriate situation.
Why I Can Tell You What Others Can’t
I don’t have a stake in corporate culture being right or in you making a major career change. I don’t need you to stay and make it work, and I don’t need you to leave to get paid. I’m not trying to help organizations extract more from their people or help people tolerate more extraction. And I’m not here to force you to overhaul your life, if that’s not needed.
I’m here to help you figure out what’s happening. Whether that means developing new skills, healing old patterns, setting better boundaries, or recognizing that some environments are genuinely harmful and leaving is the healthiest choice.
Sometimes an assessment reveals that you need to work on your responses. Sometimes it reveals that your responses are appropriate and the environment is the problem. Usually, it reveals some combination, because very few situations are purely one or the other.
But I can only help you see that clearly because I’m not in the water with you. I’m standing outside it, watching what’s happening, trained to distinguish between your swimming technique and the quality of the water itself.
Questions Worth Asking Yourself
If you’re struggling at work and everyone keeps telling you to work on yourself (your boundaries, your resilience, your sensitivity, your time management), pause and ask:
- Would anyone thrive here? Or is this organization designed to make people feel like they’re always falling short?
- Are your colleagues genuinely succeeding and fulfilled? Or are they struggling but working hard to hide it?
- When you imagine describing this workplace to someone outside your industry, do you find yourself defending or minimizing things that sound unreasonable?
- Do you feel more like yourself since you started this job, or less?
These questions matter because the solution to “I need to develop better stress management skills” is completely different from the solution to “I’m in a psychologically harmful environment.” Trying to adapt to dysfunction doesn’t make you healthier. It just makes you better at tolerating harm.
What A Comprehensive Assessment Can Reveal
When I assess workplace struggles, I’m looking at the complete picture.
- Role fit and career direction clarity
- Workplace dynamics and organizational culture
- Individual psychological patterns and trauma responses
- Life circumstances and competing demands
The issue could be any one of these factors, or any combination. A job change might solve everything, or it might just transplant your patterns to a new environment. Therapy might transform your experience, or it might help you tolerate something that shouldn’t be tolerated. Better boundaries might create sustainable success, or they might get you labeled “difficult” in a culture that punishes self-advocacy.
When you understand what’s driving your struggles, you can choose interventions that work and avoid wasting time and money on solutions that don’t fit your situation.
The Advantage of the Outside View
Not being embedded in corporate culture is the foundation of my practice.
I can see what you’ve been taught to accept as normal. I can name patterns you’ve learned not to question. I can distinguish between an appropriate challenge and psychological harm. And I can tell you the truth that people inside the system can’t afford to say.
If You’re Not Sure What You’re Swimming In
If you’re reading this and recognizing patterns you couldn’t name before, that’s worth paying attention to.
I offer a free consultation where we can talk about what you’re experiencing. Not a sales call. Just a conversation about whether what you’re dealing with is a normal workplace challenge or something else entirely.
Sometimes, a few minutes of outside perspective is enough to shift how you see your situation. And if a comprehensive assessment would be helpful, we can talk about what that looks like too.
You can schedule directly HERE or reach out with questions at christine@christinewalkercoaching.com.
