When the Workplace Breaks Us: A Reflection on Straw and a Manager’s Mental Collapse
Not long ago, I watched a movie that left me with an ache I couldn’t shake—Straw.
It’s a story about a woman, invisible to the world and her own company, who slowly loses her grip on reality. She’s competent. Dedicated. Reliable. But slowly, she unravels. Nobody notices—until it’s too late.
As I watched, I couldn’t help but think of someone I once worked with: a manager who, on the outside, had it all together. But beneath the surface, she was coming apart at the seams.
💔 The Story That Still Haunts Me
She was a brilliant team lead—sharp, consistent, emotionally intelligent. The kind of person who made others feel calm even in chaos. But something shifted.
At first, it was subtle: missed meetings, shorter emails, a growing tension behind her eyes. Then came a string of reactive decisions, and finally, an outburst in a team meeting that left everyone stunned.
Two weeks later, she went on medical leave. The official explanation was stress-related burnout. But privately, I learned it had escalated further—she had experienced a full mental health breakdown.
The workplace didn’t break her in one day. It was death by a thousand cuts. A lack of support, constant pressure to perform, and an unspoken belief that vulnerability was weakness.
🎥 What Straw Teaches Us About the Silent Suffering at Work
In Straw, the protagonist doesn’t scream for help. She tries to hold it together until she can't. And when she collapses, there’s no one left who knows how to respond.
That’s the part that hit hardest—how many people are crumbling behind polished Zoom calls and “I’m fine” responses?
Workplaces often value performance over presence, productivity over peace. But humans don’t function like machines. When emotions go ignored long enough, they find other ways to surface.
The Mental Health Crisis We’re Still Ignoring
The World Health Organization estimates 12 billion workdays are lost each year to anxiety and depression, costing the global economy $1 trillion annually.
In a 2024 Gallup study, 41% of employees said their job negatively impacts their mental health, with women and managers reporting even higher levels of distress.
Mental health-related absences in leadership roles rose by 38% from 2022 to 2024, yet only 31% of organizations provide psychological support for their managers.
Let’s be real—many managers are expected to absorb everyone else’s stress without anywhere to put their own.
What Happens When Leadership Suffers in Silence
The emotional labor of leadership is real. Managers carry their teams' stress, their own insecurities, and the pressure to perform—all while hiding any cracks.
When we don’t train leaders to recognize their limits, when we don’t give them permission to pause, we set them up to snap.
In the case of my former colleague, she didn’t need another training module or performance review. She needed someone to ask: “Are you okay?” and mean it. She needed a system that allowed her to rest without fear of being seen as weak.
What Leaders Can Do—Before It’s Too Late
Normalize struggle at the top: Talk openly about stress, therapy, and mental health—not after a breakdown, but before.
Rethink support systems: Offer executive coaching that centers emotional well-being, not just performance metrics.
Redesign the pace: If your leaders are constantly sprinting, your culture is unsustainable.
Prioritize reflection: Build in decompression time—real time—for managers to reflect, reset, and reconnect.
Build cultures of care: Create safe spaces where being human is not punished, but protected.
A Note of Hope
The story of my colleague shook me. But it also changed how I lead. I started making emotional check-ins a normal part of my 1:1s. I stopped seeing vulnerability as a threat and started modeling it myself.
And I saw something beautiful happen: people started telling the truth. And with that truth came trust.
📚 Join Us at the Future of Work Library Tour
This fall, the ZenWorkspace Foundation is hitting the road to share stories like these—real, raw, and full of possibility.
Through The Future of Work Library Tour, we’re bringing communities together in local libraries to talk about mental health at work, trauma-informed leadership, and how to design cultures that care.
🔗 Learn more at zenworkspace.org
Final Words: Don’t Wait for the Breakdown
If you're a leader reading this, let me be direct: don't wait for the breakdown to take mental health seriously.
Your team is watching how you care for yourself. They’re learning what's acceptable, what’s safe to speak, and what’s silently punished.
We can't afford to keep losing people to silent suffering. We need leadership rooted in awareness, empathy, and courage. Only then can we build workplaces that don’t just demand results—but protect the people delivering them.
With gratitude by Steven Osiris Onana.
