"Have I been under some weird form of Stockholm Syndrom where I actually enjoyed something that was pure torture to most"
Possibly?
I can't speak for others but I can say:
I find working for money incredibly alienating when I compare it to the many other places in my life where I work because I want a thing in itself.
When I compare the job I have taken to pay my rent to child rearing or the bands I play in, or the pro-bono things done to support organizations, or simple maintenance of my life, the job is profoundly alienating. I'm spending a big chunk of my life and trading it for the most-fungible-of-all-things.
When I was younger, I tried to compensate for that feeling by taking up jobs with which I could identify. I spent years teaching in universities and running recording studios and taking commercial video production gigs. All fun things, none paid well, but the pay was not the problem.
What I found was that no matter how much I tried to make that work, I never really fully could fully get that identification with the work going: I was never a good enough professor or engineer or technician, because there is always that other element of money as motivation.
What is worse, that identification with the work led me to have really bad boundaries with work: isn't a "good" professor researching literally -all the time-? Shouldn't a "good" programmer be constantly honing their skills and playing with code pens and new languages? Shouldn't a "good" small business owner be constantly on the grind and networking?
That is not a very sustainable view of work for me; while there are plenty of people who can do that for long periods of time, I suspect that constantly trying to make our personalities about things that we are essentially only doing for money is not a healthy mode of life.
As I have gotten older, I have found that while I want to have money for all the things that I do care about, that strategy of over-identifying with my job was more of a problem then a solution.
It's okay to say to myself: "I am just doing this for the money, they are getting XYZ and I am getting PQR and that is the end of it". I am not a bad programmer: I make the stuff and fix the stuff and do the tasks. But at the end of my work, I leave it and go play clarinet or trumpet or boulder or hike. Those are all good things, and I am not a good or bad person if I suck... they are simply things that are good to do in themselves.
Once I stopped trying to invest my self-peception into my job, it became much easier to setting appropriate boundaries on the work. I don't really care if I am a good software developer or not, I just care that I can do the tasks people ask me to do.
That leave a lot more time and room and energy to try and be a good parent or musician or caring member of a community.
So, no I think there are more fundamental issues at play than simply specifically bad managers or rude co-workers. I think there is a fundamental structural problem with over-identifying with our work, and in my experience creating greater boundaries (in the form of remote work or in the form of "leaving work at work") is the only long-term tenable solution I've found.
Possibly?
I can't speak for others but I can say:
I find working for money incredibly alienating when I compare it to the many other places in my life where I work because I want a thing in itself.
When I compare the job I have taken to pay my rent to child rearing or the bands I play in, or the pro-bono things done to support organizations, or simple maintenance of my life, the job is profoundly alienating. I'm spending a big chunk of my life and trading it for the most-fungible-of-all-things.
When I was younger, I tried to compensate for that feeling by taking up jobs with which I could identify. I spent years teaching in universities and running recording studios and taking commercial video production gigs. All fun things, none paid well, but the pay was not the problem.
What I found was that no matter how much I tried to make that work, I never really fully could fully get that identification with the work going: I was never a good enough professor or engineer or technician, because there is always that other element of money as motivation.
What is worse, that identification with the work led me to have really bad boundaries with work: isn't a "good" professor researching literally -all the time-? Shouldn't a "good" programmer be constantly honing their skills and playing with code pens and new languages? Shouldn't a "good" small business owner be constantly on the grind and networking?
That is not a very sustainable view of work for me; while there are plenty of people who can do that for long periods of time, I suspect that constantly trying to make our personalities about things that we are essentially only doing for money is not a healthy mode of life.
As I have gotten older, I have found that while I want to have money for all the things that I do care about, that strategy of over-identifying with my job was more of a problem then a solution.
It's okay to say to myself: "I am just doing this for the money, they are getting XYZ and I am getting PQR and that is the end of it". I am not a bad programmer: I make the stuff and fix the stuff and do the tasks. But at the end of my work, I leave it and go play clarinet or trumpet or boulder or hike. Those are all good things, and I am not a good or bad person if I suck... they are simply things that are good to do in themselves.
Once I stopped trying to invest my self-peception into my job, it became much easier to setting appropriate boundaries on the work. I don't really care if I am a good software developer or not, I just care that I can do the tasks people ask me to do.
That leave a lot more time and room and energy to try and be a good parent or musician or caring member of a community.
So, no I think there are more fundamental issues at play than simply specifically bad managers or rude co-workers. I think there is a fundamental structural problem with over-identifying with our work, and in my experience creating greater boundaries (in the form of remote work or in the form of "leaving work at work") is the only long-term tenable solution I've found.