We’ll be working through the Unmanaged methodology all week, discussing where the systems fail, the importance of regulating yourself and how you can protect yourself, whether you are a manager or an individual contributor.

By the time I hired an attorney, I was waking up agitated every morning. My stress was spiking before I even opened the office door. I was on the verge of tears for seemingly no reason.

There was a reason, though. For all of it.

I was in a toxic workplace, and my nervous system was fried. Every reaction felt like both an overreaction and an underreaction at the same time. The patterns I could see — the ones I’d recognized in abusive workplaces, in churches, in families — I couldn’t unsee them, and I couldn’t stop reacting to them. Meanwhile, the manipulation, the deceit, the protection of people drunk on power while pushing out the people raising concerns — it all continued.

I remember my first conversation with my attorney. She said something clearly that I’d heard many employment attorneys say: “Do not quit. If you quit, I can’t help you.”

I understood it. And then my nervous system flooded anyway.

The overwhelming urge to flee overrode every other impulse. I gave my notice. And in doing so, I gave up my leverage. My attorney still worked with me — and still got a settlement — but it was significantly less than it should have been, because I had given in to my flight response before we ever got there.

After more than a year in a toxic environment, with no real support around me, I couldn’t see anything clearly. Had I been able to see the risks and the situation for what they actually were, I would have waited. But I was so blinded by the chaos that I couldn’t find the strategy inside it.

Here’s something else worth knowing, because it’s not random: when an employee makes a complaint about someone in a position of power, there will almost always be sudden, new “concerns” about that employee’s behavior or performance. This isn’t coincidence. It’s by design. And it’s not entirely fabricated, either — under that kind of sustained stress, a person does become a little snappier, a little less focused, a little less productive. That’s what stress does. But that’s exactly when the focus shifts from the manager’s conduct to the employee’s, and the narrative becomes: they weren’t performing, and they were trying to cover for it by making a complaint.

I’ve watched this happen more times than I can count. My situation was no exception.

This is one of the reasons I do what I do, and why I do it the way I do it. The Unmanaged methodology is built on nervous system regulation, emotional intelligence, and critical thinking — because all three failed me, both as an employee and as a manager - when I needed them most, not because I was weak, but because no one had ever taught me to use them under pressure. I use visualization and mindfulness to reframe situations, critical thinking to separate noise from facts, and emotional intelligence to understand why the people around me are doing what they’re doing.

This week, we're going into the Unmanaged methodology directly — what it is, why it's structured the way it is, and how it applies wherever you currently are. If you're an employee trying to name what's happening to you, this is for you. If you're a manager trying to understand what's happening on your team — or in yourself — this is for you too. Whether you're in the thick of it, just starting to see it, or on the other side trying to make sense of what you survived, the methodology meets you where you are.

For more resources, please visit unmanagedpeople.com.

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