#643 ｢いつでも辞められる｣と思える人ほど長く働ける…苦手な同僚がいても心を壊さない人の｢うまい距離の取り方｣

What Kind of Person Can Keep Working in a Toxic Workplace?

Kenji Takeue (竹上健二), an industrial physician with more than 15 years of experience and representative director of the Japan Stress Check Association, has spent his career consulting on employee health, primarily at foreign-affiliated companies. He opens by noting that not every workplace is a comfortable one — and then describes the common trait of people who manage to work steadily even in environments rife with interpersonal friction.

These people are not exceptionally skilled at improving relationships. In most cases they once made considerable effort to do exactly that, but have now arrived at a place of acceptance. What they excel at is something different: **the ability to adjust their distance from bad relationships**. They also share another characteristic — they have a world outside the company and do not entrust their happiness to their employer.

Ms. A's Case: The Three Pillars of Notebook, Rules, and Taiko

Takeue introduces the case of Ms. A, a single woman in her mid-thirties. About two years after changing jobs, a reorganization six months earlier had moved her to a new team, and that change triggered ongoing stress about her workplace relationships. She was getting more than six hours of sleep and handling her work, but on weekends, when she was alone, thoughts of the coming week would leave her feeling low.

Takeue recommended counseling, and Ms. A began using a service offered through her company's employee benefits. The counselor suggested a nightly practice: writing in a notebook, in three separate columns, "the unpleasant event that happened at work that day (the facts)," "how I felt about it (my emotions)," and "how someone else might see the same situation (a third-party perspective)." Over time Ms. A came to realize that her own reading of events was not the only possible one.

Even so, the stress from her difficult colleague Ms. B did not fade easily. Takeue then asked Ms. A a more concrete question: "What specific rules would you need in order for the work to function even without becoming close friends with Ms. B?" — adding that the more concrete her answer, the easier it would be for her manager to act on it. Ms. A worked seriously on this and brought it to her manager. The result was a set of work-process rules established between herself and Ms. B, with roles and responsibilities clearly divided. The two are still not close friends, but the work flows without disruption and Ms. A's stress has dropped significantly.

Ms. A also restarted taiko drumming lessons she had dropped when her new job got busy. The practice sessions themselves became a mental release, and conversations with fellow students — including venting over meals after rehearsal — gave her an outlet she had been missing. Once she could tell herself "whatever happens at the company, I have these people," she gradually found she could sleep again.

Three Abilities for Adjusting Distance

**① Mental switching**: Takeue calls this not "positive thinking" but "the technique of cognitive economy." When we automatically chain "fact → interpretation → self-evaluation," another person's innocent remark can be transformed into a threat to our very sense of worth. People who stay healthy at work can "stop on the middle step of that staircase." The decisive shift for Ms. A was not trying to change the person she could not get along with, but switching to a one-step-earlier goal: creating a state where the work runs even without becoming friends.

**② Location switching (psychological detachment)**: Continuing to think about next week after returning home is, for the brain, equivalent to extending the time it is exposed to stress. Takeue defines switching off not as "the power to forget" but as "the power not to extend thinking time any further." Even if an unpleasant interaction at work lasted one minute, spending five hours replaying it at home means the brain absorbs five hours of stress.

**③ Multiple selves (recovery spaces)**: Exercise and hobbies go beyond their physical benefits. The significance lies in not staking everything on a single identity — "the self who plays taiko," "the self who bakes," "the self who plays guitar," "the self who is with family." When you are hurt at work, that hurt does not negate your entire life. Takeue says this feeling serves as "a larger breakwater than you might expect."

The Paradox of "I Can Always Quit"

Many people who stay healthy in difficult workplaces have already mapped out a mental sequence: "This is within the range I can handle → let me talk to my manager → if nothing changes, let me ask about a transfer → if it comes to that, I'll consider changing jobs." When there is no visible exit, helplessness sets in easily. That is precisely why, Takeue says, the people who feel they "could quit if they had to" are often the ones who work most steadily in their current role.

Takeue also emphasizes that personal self-care and organizational improvements are "two wheels" — neither works without the other. WHO guidelines explicitly list excessive workload, low autonomy, lack of support, and harassment and violence as psychosocial risks that organizations are responsible for removing. In Ms. A's case, the manager's willingness to adjust work-process rules was the key to the resolution.

Editor-in-Chief Hoshino's Comments: Movies, Nature, and Multiple Spaces

Editor-in-chief Takahiko Hoshino reflects on the psychological pressure he felt during his time as an NHK reporter when a competitor scooped a story. The inescapable sense that "my failure is causing trouble for everyone" was, he says, so distressing that it still makes him feel sick to recall. His own method for switching off was going to a movie theater: "once you're watching you can't stop, so you change location and can immerse yourself completely."

Psychology calls the habit of mentally replaying negative events "rumination," and it keeps the brain exposed to stress continuously. Being in natural settings — mountains, rivers, the sea — is thought to interrupt this cycle, and Hoshino reflected: "Modern urban life is not natural. Perhaps nature accelerates recovery precisely because it is so far removed from the environment humans have always lived in." He also noted that having sources of support outside the company — family, pets, hobbies — is one factor that speeds recovery.