Fear and Other F Words in the Workplace

by Tatiana O'Toole

I started this illustration with the intention of writing about abuse towards creatives in professional environments. Personally, I have experienced verbally abusive bosses, unreasonable timelines, poor preparation work, and just general terrible project management. And often, creatives are expected to take it on the chin and pick up the slack in such situations. I asked friends and followers for their stories, and what I heard was horrifying. Stories of assault, verbal abuse, and stalking dwarfed the objectively awful stories that were similar to what I had experienced. So started my journey into exploring why people shout, shut down, run away, and why take on work that isn't their responsibility. And it's not just in the creative industry by a long shot. Essentially, the part of brain that handles fear and stress isn't the same part that thinks critically. When we are scared or stressed, we rely on a high emotional and irrational amygdala and not our highly developed frontal lobe. What we've been writing off as stupidity, assholery, and just plain laziness is actually our ancient fight or flight response kicking in. If you'd like to read more, you can find the article here: https://medium.com/@tmbischak/fear-and-other-f-words-in-the-workplace-part1-b7310fbb2f13