Toxic co-workers may actually be harmful to your health

BY THE time Cari left her last job for a new gig in the city, the stress of her toxic co-worker was so bad her hair was falling out.

Conflict at work can spill into your personal life.

WHEN Cari, a 27-year-old account manager for a New York PR firm, left her last job for a new gig in the city, it wasn’t just a step up for her career — it may have saved her health.

“My direct supervisor [at my old job] not only treated me like a personal assistant but actually asked me to do his 10-year-old son’s homework,” says Cari, who asked not to use her last name for professional reasons. “I arrived early and left no later than 8pm if I was lucky. I was so far beyond the point of being taken advantage of.”

The stress that her colleague’s demands created led to many sleepless nights, as well as feeling constantly ill, and even caused her hair to start to fall out.

“It felt like a constant sickness,” says Cari. “I wouldn’t sleep because I would wake up for hours from a nightmare about work, which led me to feel exhausted and sick the next day — everything from chills to an overall feeling of exhaustion. I had handfuls of hair [fall out] every once in a while.”

A recent study tracked the impact caused by unreasonable demands within the workplace, and found that not only can unkind co-workers and bosses make your job more difficult, but they can also have a negative impact on your health.

The study, “Targeted workplace incivility: The roles of belongingness, embarrassment, and power” from the University of Calgary’s Haskayne School of Business and London School of Economics and Political Science, found that workers have experienced physical symptoms such as headaches, stomach problems and sleeplessness as a result of a colleague’s bad behaviour.

“When you have a conflict with someone at work, and it’s unresolved and it turns inside you and affects your day, your life outside of work, affects your sleep — all of these things can add up and absolutely make a person sick,” says Jody Foster, clinical associate professor of psychiatry in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and co-author of The Schmuck in My Office: How To Deal Effectively With Difficult People at Work.

The usual culprit for bad colleagues, Foster says, is that the people they have offended don’t often address their bad behaviour in the moment. To remedy this, Foster suggests first taking a step back and trying to put yourself in that person’s shoes. “If someone butts in every conversation, this person likely has unstable self-esteem.”

Second, if there are still unresolved issues, she suggests speaking to the person with whom you have the conflict as soon as the next issue arises. Even if they don’t agree with your assessment, “just the fact that you got it off your chest is therapeutic and will often help with your stress.”

As a last step, you can bring a disruptive co-worker or supervisor to the attention of human resources, which can launch a formal investigation.

Cari eventually escaped her old boss, and now works for a PR firm that is much better suited to help employees cope with stress.

“The VP of my company is very in tune with all of us within the company and can sense when we get into our ‘stressed-out modes,’” she says. “It’s great to finally be in a place that cannot only recognise this but actually takes the time to get to know us individually to then learn how to best help us when this happens.”

This article originally appeared on New York Post and was reproduced with permission.

Originally published as Toxic co-workers may actually be harmful to your health