01/07/2026
The Executive Dilemma : Moving from the Boardroom to the Therapy Room (and Back) Part 1
I didn't expect what would happen when I first began writing about stress, burnout, toxic workplaces, resilience and emotional intelligence. I thought I was contributing to a professional conversation; adding my voice as a psychotherapist to a dialogue that needed more clinical perspective.
What actually happened changed the course of my professional life.
The Messages That Wouldn't Stop Coming
It started slowly. A few comments. Then a few direct messages. Then more.
One woman wrote to me, and I still remember her words. She said:
"I don't know who else to tell this to. My manager told me I was 'too sensitive' when I raised concerns about my team being bullied. I've been on stress leave for two months. My body doesn't feel like it belongs to me anymore. I wake up at 4am every day with my heart racing. I thought it was just me. I thought I was broken. Dr said I’m suffering from anxiety disorder."
Then came more messages.
A man who had been made redundant after whistle-blowing wrote:
"They told me the company was restructuring. I know what restructuring means. It means getting rid of the people who speak up. The thing is, I have evidence. I documented everything. But what do I do with it now? I'm too exhausted to fight. I'm too tired to even be angry anymore."
A young woman in her twenties said:
"I keep going back. I don't know why. Part of me still believes it will get better. Part of me believes I'm the problem. My partner told me last night that I don't laugh anymore. I didn't even notice."
What I Heard in My Therapy Room
These messages echoed what I was hearing every day in my practice.
I remember Shirley - not her real name who came to me after three years in a workplace where she was systematically excluded. She described it clinically at first: her manager taking credit for her work, colleagues whispering in meetings, being left off important emails. Then she stopped describing and started crying.
"I don't trust myself anymore," she said. "I used to know what I was good at. I used to know my value. Now I second-guess everything I do. I read and re-read every email before I send it. I check with three people before making a decision. I'm terrified of being wrong. I used to be decisive. I used to be confident. I’m not the person I know anymore?"
I told her she hadn't lost herself. She was protecting herself. Her nervous system had learned, through months of accumulated experience, that the workplace was not safe. The hypervigilance was not a flaw. It was a survival response.
But I couldn't tell her that the workplace would change. I couldn't tell her that the organisation would be held accountable. I couldn't tell her that the system would protect her.
All I could do was help her breathe again. To calm her mind down.
Then she went back. To the same office. The same manager. The same exclusion.
The Pattern I Couldn't Ignore
I remember James, a senior executive who came to me with burnout. He described working 14-hour days, answering emails at midnight, waking up with a sense of dread.
"I thought it would get better," he said. "I thought if I just worked harder, if I just proved myself, they'd see my value. They'd give me the resources I've been asking for. They'd hire the people I need. Instead, they gave me more work. And then they asked me to lead a wellbeing initiative. Can you believe that? The person who's drowning is being asked to teach others how to swim."
I asked him why he stayed.
"Because I don't know who I am without this job," he said. "Because my entire identity is tied to this title. Because leaving would feel like admitting failure."
He spoke about his commute, which he said was the worst part. He had started tracking his stress levels on a wearable device, a sort of personal experiment.
"It spikes on the way to work," he told me. "Every single morning. Before anything has even happened. Before I've walked through the door. My body already knows. It's already preparing. I'm not even there yet and my body is already in fight-or-flight mode."
I remember sitting with him, feeling the weight of what he was saying. His body was doing exactly what bodies are designed to do - learning from repeated experience what signals danger and preparing accordingly. The problem was that the danger was chronic and ambient rather than acute and visible. The preparation never fully switched off. The threat response had become a resting state. He is in the war zone all the time.
The Conversation That Changed Everything
One day, a client, let's call her Aisha said something to me that I have never forgotten.
"I know you're helping me," she said. "I know I'm getting better. But every time I leave this room and go back to that office, I feel like I'm walking into the same building that broke me. I dread waking up in the morning. And I'm supposed to just... be okay? I'm supposed to just breathe through it? I feel like I'm being asked to heal in the place that made me sick."
I didn't have an answer.
I had been working with individuals for thirteen years. I had helped over 3,500 clients find their way back to themselves. And here was one of them, looking at me with exhausted eyes, asking a question I couldn't answer.
She wasn't wrong. She was being asked to heal in a system that was actively hurting her. The therapy room was a sanctuary, but sanctuaries don't change the world outside this walls. Yes, as therapists we are trained to offer a safe place, non judgmental unconditional positive regard to our clients. Yet, the world out there does not.
What I Learned About the System
I started paying closer attention to the patterns. Every client who came to me with workplace trauma was describing a variation of the same thing:
· They had no control. Decisions were made above them. They were expected to execute without input. Their autonomy had been stripped away.
· The demands were unreasonable. Unrealistic deadlines. Excessive workloads. Impossible expectations.
· The support was inadequate. Managers who didn't listen. Colleagues who were too burned out to care. A culture that discouraged vulnerability. You are supposed to stay positive no matter what happens.
I later learned that these weren't just personal observations. They were the three components of the Karasek Job-Demand-Control-Support model—a framework developed decades ago to explain how job characteristics affect employees' psychological wellbeing.
High job demands + low job control + low job support = burnout, stress, depression.
The problem was structural. It was systemic. It was baked into the way work was designed, organised, and managed.
I wasn't just treating individual symptoms. I was treating the casualties of a broken system.
Why I Couldn't Look Away
"My health watch tracks my stress response on my commute to work. It's off the charts. I haven't even arrived yet. I'm still in my car, and my body is already preparing for a threat response. My body has just learned, through months of experience, what that commute means. What's waiting for me at the end of it."
"I'm still recovering," she said. "I don't know if I'll ever fully recover. I don't know if I'll ever trust a workplace again."
Another person wrote:
"I still have dreams. Not nightmares, exactly. Just... work dreams. I'm in a meeting. I can't get a word in. No one is listening. I try to speak, but my voice won't come out. I wake up exhausted."
And another:
"I left my job six months ago. I told myself I'd recover quickly. I'd take a break, reset, and move on. But I still get anxious when I see my former organisation's logo. I still feel sick when I hear a certain tone of voice from a manager. I still relive the conversations where I was denied, told that I was imagining things, that I was being too emotional, that I was the problem."
The Isolation That Breaks People
I saw the same pattern over and over again. The most corrosive thing about toxic environments was not the behaviour itself. It was the isolation.
"I feel like I'm the only one who sees it," one client told me. "Everyone else seems to have made peace with what's happening. Or maybe they just don't see it. Maybe I'm the crazy one."
I heard variations of this more times than I can count. The gaslighting - the slow erosion of your own perception, the sense that maybe you are the one who is at fault/trouble creating.
"I've started documenting things," another person wrote. "Dates. Conversations. The exact words people used. Not because I plan to use it. Just so I can look back and tell myself: this happened. I didn't imagine it. It was real."
What I Wanted to Say But Couldn't
I wanted to tell every single person who confessed to me:
"You are not alone. You are not broken. Your body is not betraying you. It is protecting you. It is doing exactly what it was designed to do. The problem is not you. The problem is the system that has failed to protect you."
But I knew that wasn't enough.
I knew that validation, while necessary, was not sufficient. I knew that behind every message was a person who needed more than just empathy. They needed change. They needed the system to stop creating harm in the first place. There comes to a point where no amount of cognitive reframing, positive thinking or relaxation techniques help.
The Question I Couldn't Answer
Aisha's question haunted me.
"I'm supposed to heal in the place that made me sick?"
I didn't have an answer then. But I kept searching for one.
And that search led me to PRisMA. To the DOSH Guidelines on Psychosocial Risk Assessment and Management at the Workplace. To the understanding that psychosocial risk arises from "the way work is designed, organised and managed, as well as from the social context in which work occurs."
To the realisation that the problem was not just individual. It was structural. And that meant it could be fixed; if we had the right tools.
I knew then that I couldn't just help people heal from the harm. That’s only half the battle won. I had to help prevent the harm from happening in the first place.
To be continued……
Ko Teik Yen (TY)
DOSH-Certified Psychosocial Trained Person (PTP)
Clinical Hypnotherapist, Psychotherapist, and Accredited Mindfulness Teacher
20 Years Fortune 500 Leadership | 13 Years Clinical Therapy (3,500+ Clients)
