I think my Senior Director is trying to humiliate me for standing up to him
For context:
I’m a woman in her early 30s and have managed teams in the past, where I was known as the nice, bubbly and helpful manager. I have never really had relationship issues in office settings, and this is my first remote role.
I work a fully remote role that I took (taking a few career steps downward) so I could move back to my hometown. I burned out a year ago at a high-stress job after 8 years in the industry, so I have been slowly learning to do great work during the day and completely disconnect at night.
For the first 8 months at this job everything was good. I received constant praise from my leads for my communication and executive presence. Exactly two days before the incident below, my manager told me they were working on promoting me at the end of the year during our 1 on 1 and kept giving me more and more projects.
The one interaction I’d had with this Director was after I gave an annual business review presentation 5 months ago, and he said I was “really great” and told my manager in front of me (we were in person just that once) how impressive I was.
The Incident
A month ago, our Director saw an email about a warehouse fulfillment issue. He panicked, didn't ask for context, and threw an emergency meeting on our calendars for the next morning.
I came prepared with data, a summary of process improvements I’d already made, and a paper trail of emails showing I had escalated these exact warehouse issues months ago (and was ignored by leadership).
During the call, the Director (who is just a straight up jerk of a guy, tho I hadn’t worked with him before so wasn’t aware) said, "I shouldn't have to do your job for you, I have people for this but you haven't intervened." I calmly started to explain the steps we had already taken. He cut me off repeatedly. When I answered his questions, he told me I was being "sassy." I assure you, I was not, though I was blushing and probably visibly frustrated, I was never rude or unprofessional. There was no shouting, swearing or harsh language, accusations, anything.
He then stopped the entire call in front of my peers and corporate leads to tell me I was being "overly emotional" and asking why I was "taking this so personally." I didn't swear, yell, or accuse anyone. I was just stressed and put on the defensive after 4 months of being ignored by leadership who seems to be running around like chickens with their heads cut off every day.
The Fallout
Immediately after, I was removed from major projects. I panicked and sent a Slack apology to each lead for "losing my cool" just to keep the peace.
Four days later, the Director put a 10-minute 1:1 on my calendar. He told me my behavior was "shocking," that I made everyone uncomfortable, and said: "You can't act like an asshole and expect to keep working in this small industry." When I politely tried to say I was just trying to defend our process, he snapped, "That's the problem, you were aggressive," and told me he had to go and ended the call.
I just got my mid-year review back. My managers wrote one tiny paragraph acknowledging I met my goals, followed by a five-paragraph essay berating me for that single meeting. They claimed I showed up "frustrated, unprepared, and derailed the conversation into complaining." I said maybe four sentences total on that call.
I had hoped they were moving on post me saying sorry multiple times but then this second “incident” showed up in the review as well. About 2 weeks after that meeting, I replied to a lengthy email chain of an external sales rep (who my managers were ignoring) repeatedly asking me to check if we’d be interested in a new package. I asked my managers via slack when we got the first email if they’d like me to reply, they never responded. I brought it up in my 1 on 1 and was told “eh probably not but we can ask leadership” and then asked about it on slack again and was ignored. I told this guy "leadership has not been responsive so I don’t think we’re interested at the moment, but can reassess after go live” and now its being used as ammo against me (they added it to the perf review saying I’m passive aggressive towards leadership?) despite the context being appropriate and I clarified it on a call afterward. I’ve been so deferential and bubbly and polite to everyone since then but it’s still lingering clearly (the review was published today).
My family thinks I pushed back on a corporate narcissist and he is actively trying to humiliate and push me out. The rest of the company culture is good, but I did notice everyone just seems constantly stressed and irked with the director but putting on a brave face. I never noticed how everyone just seems to say yes to this guy- to be fair I am remote and have been in large team calls with him where he’s all jokey and nice.
The job market is absolutely horrific right now and the thought of job hunting gives me intense career anxiety.
Do I try to lay low, survive this guy, and rebuild my reputation?
Or is this a toxic situation that I need to run screaming from immediately?
Advice is appreciated!