Understanding Workplace Conflict as a Form of Harm

At Soul & Law we study what harms people, what isolates them, and what helps them recover. One of the first places where harm quietly takes root is the workplace.

Despite the common belief that workplace conflict is “just a communication issue,” research shows a very different picture. Conflict at work often becomes a sustained psychological stressor — one capable of reshaping a person’s emotional life, sense of dignity, and even their long-term mental health. For some, its impact can approach trauma-level intensity.

Large-scale studies indicate that a significant portion of employees worldwide encounter serious conflict in their professional environment. Depending on the country and industry, surveys consistently place this number between one-third and two-thirds of the workforce. Even more telling is that only about one in three cases are resolved in a constructive way. Prolonged conflict, especially when paired with power imbalance or bullying, increases the likelihood of anxiety, depressive symptoms, and stress-related conditions — in some analyses, almost twofold.

But numbers alone do not explain the human cost. Conflict at work affects something fundamental: a person’s sense of safety in the place where they spend most of their waking hours. The erosion is often slow and quiet. A comment dismissed. A concern ignored. A boundary crossed. Over time, people begin to doubt their perception, suppress their reactions, and minimize their own needs in order to “keep the peace.” The result is not efficiency — it is isolation.

One of the most thoughtful voices speaking publicly about this is Stefanie Costi, an Australian lawyer who has dedicated her work to addressing workplace bullying. Her perspective is valuable not only because she is a legal professional, but because her own experience transformed her understanding of what conflict can do to a person. After a prolonged and damaging professional situation, she found herself in a psychiatrist’s office with a PTSD diagnosis. For a long time, she believed silence was the expected — even the responsible — response.

Years later, she speaks openly about what that silence became: a kind of internal freezing, a survival pattern she describes as victim mentality. In her TED Talk (“Do you have a victim mentality at work?”), she explains that this is not a label and not a judgment. It is what happens when someone has been stripped of their sense of agency for too long. People stop believing they can respond — because every attempt to respond was previously punished or dismissed.

Costi also draws attention to the structural side of the issue. Organizations often frame harmful behavior as “performance management,” and internal processes tend to protect the institution before the individual. Without psychological safety, even the most well-written policies fail, because the person they were meant to protect no longer feels entitled to speak. For those who would like to explore this perspective further, her interview for Future Women offers a clear and honest look at these dynamics:
https://www.futurewomen.com/career/spotting-workplace-bullying/

For us, workplace conflict is more than an HR problem. It is an intersection of law, psychology, ethics, and human dignity.

Work is one of the primary places where individuals first encounter systemic power — and often, where they first lose their sense of control. When conflict escalates or becomes chronic, people experience not only professional instability but emotional disorientation: fear of retaliation, shame, self-doubt, and the feeling of becoming invisible within their own workplace.

This is precisely where a restorative, therapeutic perspective on justice becomes essential. Instead of treating conflict as a disruption to productivity, we look at it as a form of harm that requires understanding, recognition, and repair. Healing does not mean avoiding accountability; it means creating environments in which accountability is possible without fear.

To build a more humane legal and organizational culture, we must begin in the places where harm often starts quietly — in everyday professional interactions.
When people lose their sense of safety at work, the consequences follow them far beyond the office walls. And when organizations learn to address conflict with transparency, empathy, and responsibility, the impact extends far beyond a single workplace.

Workplace conflict is not just about work. It is about what it means to be human in environments that hold power over our daily lives. And understanding this is at the heart of what we do at Soul & Law.