We’re Not All One Big Happy Family
Why understanding your ‘boundary blueprint’ at work is so important
As a therapist who works from an anti-oppressive, anti-capitalist standpoint, few things are as clear of a red flag to me as when a client tells me that they work in a place that says “we’re a family.” Before I was a therapist — in the years during and after college, when I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life and was working in jobs that mostly made me bored and deeply unhappy — I worked in places that touted the same line, and it never sat quite right with me. The longer I practice as a therapist, and the more I have the privilege of seeing folks supporting folks in untangling their family histories, the more I am able to understand and articulate why.
When you’re told at a job, “We’re all family here,” what you’re really being told is, “We expect you to blur the boundaries between your work life and your personal life.” Over a year into working from home, and the boundaries between when we’re working and when we’re just living our lives are even more hazy — though in historically exploitative industries (many of which, we learned this year, are simultaneously characterized as “essential” labor), enforcing boundaries at work that are respectful of our humanity and dignity has always been a struggle.
