You Don't Get Stress From Having Had a Hard Childhood

Author: Majken Lorelei Matzau

“You don't get stressed from having a difficult childhood. But then what causes it?” This was the question a senior leader asked me, after I had worked with her team on stress prevention. The question cuts to the heart of a misunderstanding that costs organizations – and people – enormous amounts of time, money, and wellbeing.

Stress Is Organizational, Not Psychological

The dominant narrative around workplace stress casts it as an individual problem with individual roots. People are told they burn out because they are perfectionists, because they have low self-esteem, because they had difficult early experiences that made them poorly equipped for pressure. The solution, accordingly, is individual therapy, mindfulness courses, or resilience training.

This narrative is wrong – not entirely, but predominantly. In organizations, the primary drivers of stress are structural: unclear roles and expectations, frequent reorganization, high workload combined with low control, and leadership that fails to provide coherence, direction, and appropriate support.

The Oticon Example

I worked with Oticon during a period of significant stress across their workforce. What was striking about their leadership team was their willingness to ask the right question. Rather than asking “what is wrong with our people,” they asked “what is wrong with our organization?”

The answer was structural: reorganization had created role ambiguity, processes had become unclear, and the pace of change had outrun people's ability to adapt. Stress levels were a direct readout of organizational malfunction – not employee fragility.

The response was also structural: leadership training in stress awareness, HR development, organization-wide dialogue about roles and expectations, and a commitment from the top to create coherence. The results were significant and sustainable.

The Cost of the Wrong Assumption

When organizations assume that stress is a personality problem, they spend money in the wrong places. Individual coaching helps individuals – but it cannot fix a dysfunctional system. The person who is coached goes back into the same environment and faces the same pressures.

A single long-term stress-related sick leave for a specialist typically costs an organization several million Danish kroner when all factors are included. That cost is almost entirely preventable when leadership takes structural responsibility.

Top management is the most powerful lever for stress prevention available. When they choose to use it, the organization changes. When they do not, the costs – human and financial – continue to accumulate.

Sign up for my

mailing list

And receive the following:

• The e-book "3 Stories from Majken Lorelei's work with Top Executives"
• VIP invitations to my events
• Exclusive insights, articles & new releases