Someone said one day "our organization has a low-grade fever". It is normal that stress and anxiety are produced by organizations every day reducing effectiveness. These are toxins. Who deals with them and how? One should recognise that in all human systems toxins are a normal by-product of the growth and development process. But the normality includes the remedial actions of systems like the liver, the kidneys, and the immune system that deal with the toxins in such a way that the system stays healthy. In organizations the equivalent of the liver, kidneys and the immune system is a set of humans who are the processors of those toxins. They absorb them but when those people are no longer available or they themselves get overloaded and sick the system breakdowns. (abridged from Peter Frost cited in The next frontier: Edgar Schein on organizational therapy, Crosstalk with Schein and Kets De Vries)