I really hope you'd never experience this in person and your belief in the "goodness" of humanity won't be irreversibly shaken when you'll be scrambling for any reasonable explanations of what just happened. Good luck!

I’ve spent the past 5 years processing such an experience.

But that doesn’t change my main point: non-clinical diagnoses of psychiatric illnesses - and extrapolations based on them - are both unethical and most likely inaccurate.

I agree; I am sure I was off with those two but I had to research those conditions in order to see my experience at least a bit rationally. I surely can't extrapolate it over a whole organization, but can use it as an indicator that inner "defense systems" were already "hacked" in my view.

Sorry to hear you had to go through something similar! :( On the other hand I see that experience likely helped you to move towards entrepreneurship - it had a similar effect on me as well.

It happened after I was well into my entrepreneurship journey (though it had happened years earlier when I was an employee too), and though it was desperately unpleasant at times, I have no regrets about the experience :)

The major lessons were to get better at dealing with assertive and confrontational people (picking battles, avoiding taking things personally, de-escalating heated situations), and to realise that much of the unhealthiness I saw in other people was a reflection of my own fears/weaknesses and of similar unhealthiness in myself.

So the "processing" has involved working through all that and developing the weaker parts of myself; not to become the kind of monster I'd perceived others to be, but just to develop a healthy balance and calm inner strength.

This concept is well known among psychologists/emotional healers influenced by Carl Jung, described as "shadow work" or "shadow integration".

Strongly recommended if you're still struggling with this kind of stuff.