r/ManagedByNarcissists

I've heard before it's important to set boundaries with bosses and coworkers in general, however, every time I've tried to set boundaries with my manager she completely steam rolls over me. She will hyper fixate on X issue instead of backing off. A lot of the times all the tasks she gives me are already on my to-do list she just gets incredibly anxious if they aren't getting done at a speed to her liking. I tried the "what should I prioritize?" and then she downplays how much work I actually have to do. I've tried ignoring her requests/playing dumb and she keeps messaging or email me to get X task done. I have also tried telling her I don't agree with some of her takes on things or rules and she just enforces them anyway.

I hate feeling like I have no authority over her simply because she's my manager. I've tried to outsmart her but she tightens her grip when she feels she is losing control.

To make a long story short, I quit my terrible boss last year after a devastating performance review and the discovery of a hateful burn book she was keeping about all my alleged faults.

The stars aligned so that I accepted a new offer the literal day before she decided to go off on another petty campaign against me. I already had my two week notice in draft, and was able to quit right as she was gathering steam for yet another episode of unprofessional behavior—within an hour of the first outburst, in fact! One of my coworkers was convinced I had rage quit without anything lined up because of how quickly I quit after she exploded on me.

I've just hit the six month mark at my new job and things couldn't be better. I'm respected for my expertise in the field, nobody starts weird competitions with me or tries to one up everything I do, people act and speak like adults, and I just had a **terrific first performance review** with full "exceeds expectations" across the board. It's really boosted my self confidence after the way my ex nBoss spoke about my performance and abilities last year!

Has anyone experienced weird, random passive aggressive remarks from bosses and coworkers that seem directed at you? My boss randomly mentioned in a team meeting that we should be honest if we can’t make it into work on time because we’re hungover and all my coworkers on my team except me started cracking up laughing and then one said to me “right (insert my name)?” And everyone laughed again.

After that people started to slip the word “hungover” excessively into all of their conversations with me and look at me laughing to where I feel left out of some sort of big joke. They’ll say “imagine doing this hungover” or “I can’t use the bathroom when I’m so hungover” at random times when it didn’t make sense to say. But I’ve never come into work hungover before and don’t drink on the job (or rarely ever) so I’m not sure why they keep saying this? I don’t find it funny just extremely weird behavior…

I love my current job very much but I am casually keeping an eye out for new roles that might pay a bit better.

In my previous job with the narc boss, the outgoing person tried to warn me and it completely went over my head. She noted that the boss was a "self-admitted micromanager," perfectionist, intense, let all of her emotions out when upset but didn't hold grudges. At the time, I was still pretty naive so I assumed she was just sharing the boss' quirks. I wish I had heeded that warning for what it was.

If I go into a job interview or get an offer, are there any other red flag "quirks" or traits that are warnings in disguise? I think I tried to warn the person who took the job after me but honestly can't remember what I said since most of my memory at that point is just completely blacked out from stress.

Tbh I am really hesitant to leave my role even though I probably would have more opportunities if I did switch to the field more relevant to my master's degree. I'm just paranoid of ending up with a similarly bad boss again and it's holding me back

My manager has become extremely involved in my email communication and I’m trying to figure out if I’m overreacting or if this would bother other people too.

The first red flag for me was during my first year when she asked to be CC’d on basically all email communication because she wanted to “be more involved.” This year, it has escalated into constant feedback on almost every email I send — everything from typos to wording/tone adjustments.

To be fair, I know professional emails should ideally be error-free, and I also know I tend to write quickly which probably contributes to mistakes. I’m not pretending I’m perfect. But at the same time, the level of monitoring feels excessive to me. Sometimes it feels less like coaching and more like surveillance. I am going to start running emails through a checker of some kind and save error free email templates.

Part of what frustrates me is that some of the feedback feels very subjective. It’s not always that the email is wrong, it’s just not worded exactly how she would word it. I also can’t shake the feeling that because we work remotely, she uses this as a way to monitor productivity and justify being heavily involved.

I understand managers are supposed to oversee communication quality, but at what point does it cross into micromanagement? Has anyone else dealt with this?

Also she doesn't do this with every staff member just me. When I asked my coworker if she was monitoring her emails she said "No they are just emails." I also work hybrid/remote so I feel like she wants to check emails as a way to A) justify her middle management position and B ) monitor my remote work. Like emails are the most visible thing to show she's managing so she latches on to them if that makes sense.

been at this for about two years and the list below is roughly what i actually read in order, plus a couple my therapist handed me and a couple i found on my own when one book pointed at another in a footnote. wanted to share what moved the work forward for me. honest commentary, not 5-stars-across-the-board, because the recs that helped most were always the ones where someone admitted what they bounced off too.

1. Running on Empty by Jonice Webb
   the first book my therapist gave me, which is also the first book most people get given. the questionnaire in the back is fine to take but the real value of the book is the reframe that absence of bad treatment is not the same as presence of good treatment. that distinction broke open about a decade of "but my parents weren't abusive" for me.

2. Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay Gibson
   recommended by my therapist after i kept getting stuck on the question of what kind of parent mine actually was. gibson's four types finally let me name it. the chapter on healing fantasies, the imagined version of the parent you keep waiting for, was the most uncomfortable chapter i've read in this whole genre. i had to put the book down for a week.

3. Will I Ever Be Good Enough by Karyl McBride
   the chapters on how the wound shows up in romance specifically were the most useful piece of this for me. take or leave the parental framing depending on yours. found it because mcbride is cited in webb's book.

4. Mother Hunger by Kelly McDaniel
   this came out more recently and the framing is different from webb's. mcdaniel calls it an attachment injury rather than neglect and i think she's right about that distinction. the three components she names (nurturance, protection, guidance) gave me language for what was missing that webb's general framing didn't.

5. Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving by Pete Walker
   not strictly a CEN book but the four trauma responses (fight, flight, freeze, fawn) are walker's framing and they map onto CEN patterns better than the original literature does. read this if you've ever wondered why your default mode is managing everyone else's emotional weather.

6. The Psychology Behind Your Love Patterns by Taro's Tarot
   i picked this up looking for something that connected the CEN material to my adult relationship patterns. the chapter on the core belief underneath each style and the inner-child grief work were the bridge i'd been looking for between knowing the pattern and changing it. mid-list rec, not the foundational text but a useful synthesis.

7. Homecoming: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child by John Bradshaw
   written in the 80s and the language is dated. push through it. the developmental-stages framework, how to grieve what didn't happen at each age, is the most concrete inner-child work i've come across. the audiobook with bradshaw narrating is the better format if you bounce off the dated prose.

8. Healing the Shame That Binds You by John Bradshaw
   companion to homecoming, more focused on toxic shame as the residue of being raised by parents who couldn't be present. the chapter on how shame becomes identity, not just feeling, is the one that explained why insight alone has never been enough for me.

9. It Didn't Start With You by Mark Wolynn
   dense, more theoretical than practical. include for the language it gives you for why some of this feels generational rather than personal. read homecoming first if you only have time for one.

what am i missing. specifically:
- something on the shutdown / deactivated response in CEN survivors. most books are written for the fawn-coded reader. the kid who went quiet needs their own canon.
- anything good on rebuilding preference and want as an adult, not just identifying the absence. webb names it but doesn't really teach it.
- and the one i keep meaning to read but haven't yet, the lindsay gibson follow-up. anyone read it?

what bounced you off, that's usually more useful than what worked.

When I finished university and got my first job, I thought the hard part was over. What I didn't know was that year would become my personal hell.

My boss would walk in every morning at 9:30 and immediately pull me into her office. To tell me how ungrateful I was. How incapable. How stupid. Every single day for nine months.

My gastritis got so bad no medication touched it. Every time she screamed at me my throat would close, my chest would tighten, and I would stand there swallowing my tears waiting for someone to help me. Nobody did. Not because they didn't want to but because they were protecting themselves from the same person.

When she retired I could finally breathe.

What I didn't realize was that I would question my abilities in every job that came after, even when I was praised, even when results were undeniable. What I didn't know then was that this pattern had been running my entire life through different people. A university professor. My parents. Every relationship I chose.

It took me ten more years to understand that the pattern was mine to break. Not because it was my fault. But because I was the only one who could.

If you're reading this and recognizing something familiar, you're not broken. You're carrying something that was put there by someone else.

Five months ago, my managers hidden smear campaign against me successfully had me lose my job. I was completely blindsided, it was one of the most horrible things that have ever happened to me.

I documented his behavior in a ten page document, which I gave to the anti-discrimination department of that workplace. They can’t really do anything right now (or don’t care enough) because my boss and I started working at the company at the same time two years ago and I’m the first complaint about him they got. he told me that was let go from two jobs prior to that one because apparently his female higher ups clocked his character and incompetence, he would generally refer to any women in powerful positions as stupid bitches and I was the only woman on the project.
From what I’ve heard, he said my position was not needed and it was cut completely from the project / until one month ago.
A former coworker from a different department told me that he now has hired a new girl for my position who is even moving countries to work for him.

Long story short: I still struggle with PTSD and hearing stuff like that puts me right back in fight or flight. For whatever reason, I feel responsible for warning her about him. I also want to forget what happened, but since the anti-dis department told me that one complaint wasn’t enough, I can’t help but think that it would be helpful to tell her that she should go straight to them, when shit starts hitting the fan. I don’t know her though and would rather move on, but my brain …. I also think this might be the case because I don’t have a new job yet, but will this feeling go away the moment I do?

Has anyone been in a similar spot or has experienced feeling like that? Do you have any words of wisdom for me on how to deal with the situation? Thanks in advance !

TLDR: should I warn the new hire about my narc ex-manager?

My performance in my current job was rewarded by my narc boss hiring an incompetent technically unfit person above me into a role I should have been promoted into. I’ve been on this job for 2 years now. The new hire was brought in 9 months ago and was protected during their probation but is now slowly being reeled into work. Access to top projects involving senior management are now being routed to him, when I was carrying out that work all this time. I’ve quite quit for sometime now, slowly switching off. I have landed another role but feel anxious about switching jobs right now because of how the market is. If you’ve been a high performer in a similar situation, how long did you quite quit and stick around for until you really quit?

My narc boss ... I'm leaving as soon as I can. But until then I have to put up with him. He is the CEO of our small startup. He does all kinds of things, he yells, berates, has humiliated me in front of my direct reports for stupid reasons like because I didn't use his preferred software. He speaks with contempt about our collaborators who are experts in their field. His impulsive unilateral decision to spend about $1.5m developing a product that nobody ended up buying (like literally almost no one, it was a disaster) has arguably caused the company to unravel and we are likely sunsetting in a few months.

So this story is such a small thing in comparison to all that. But it just IRKS me.

He does this thing where he withholds information that I need to do my job. He does this to everyone and all the director level long-timers like me have been on his case for it. I don't know why he does this but it's infuriating.

So he sends me this email making a show of asking for my input about something that absolutely falls under my jurisdiction. (with a tone of "SEE, I DO ask for other people's input!") He forwarded me an email from a collaborator who wanted to know if we could move the timeline back for one of their deliverables.

Except that of course I didn't even know the project or the collaborator existed, because he didn't tell me. So I replied back that I didn't know this was the first I was hearing about it and could he please share any relevant documents.

And at that point, if he had just said "oh my bad, here you go" I would have been fine. Annoyed but happy to chalk it up to everyone makes mistakes.

But he couldn't do it. This man. He could not admit he didn't tell me. I went through my emails. I went through my notes. I even asked other team members if they had any idea about this and they said they had just found out about it too. He took over a week to respond to my email, at which point he accused ME of not documenting things correctly, because of course he told me. Then he scheduled a meeting to go over my documentation system because clearly working this out in an email thread is not efficient (duh). Just rude and condescending. And unable to admit even the tiniest fault.

This man is in his 40s. He has a PhD. But he is such a fucking CHILD. I just cannot with this man. It's such a little thing in the grand scheme of things but I'm just so fucking offended. All he had to say was "oops, sorry, here let me get you what you need." Even if he thinks he did tell me, he could say "huh I thought we talked about this but maybe I made a mistake." But he couldn't even do that. Even that small amount of accountability was too much for him.

Anyone have experience with spouse/significant other/family/friends not believing you when you tell them and give examples of being gaslighted? How did/do you over come this? How were you being gaslighted? I've shared articles that show this is a corporate trend, quiet firing, due to its plausible denyability. They just tell me my examples dont prove/show anything, your boss likes you, you haven't been fired, you got a raise last year, etc. Need some help solving; badly.

Long story short. Toxic manager, feeds information to everyone from higher up, every person she tells she changes the narrative, moves the goal posts. To make everyone work differently so the only one looking good is her. She uses this to manipulate others to the point she doesn’t actually have to do any work. Everyone in our work force knows and is too scared to speak up. She guards her bosses office like a guard dog so no one can complain. Even her boss and higher up officials have alluded to being aware yet nothing is done. Should destroying for everyone who works there.

My performance in my current job was rewarded by my narc boss hiring an incompetent technically unfit person above me into a role I should have been promoted into. I’ve been on this job for 2 years now. The new hire was brought in 9 months ago and was protected during their probation but is now slowly being reeled into work. Access to top projects involving senior management are now being routed to him, when I was carrying out that work all this time. I’ve quite quit for sometime now, slowly switching off. I have landed another role but feel anxious about switching jobs right now because of how the market is. If you’ve been a high performer in a similar situation, how long did you quite quit and stick around for until you really quit?

as a high performer, my performance in my current job was rewarded by my narc boss hiring an incompetent technically unfit person above me into a role I should have been promoted into. I’ve been on this job for 2 years now. the new hire was brought in 7 months ago and was protected during their probation but is now slowly being reeled into work. access to top projects involving senior management are now being routed to him, when I was carrying out that work all this time. I’ve quite quit for sometime now, slowly switching off. I have landed another role but feel anxious about switching jobs right now because of how the market is. if you’ve been a high performer in a similar situation, how long did you quite quit and stick around for until you really quit?

To make a long story short. My boss has been bullying me for the past year. I haven’t given her any reason to dislike me. I know I’m hard working and pick up peoples slack. I’m always trying my best at work. I don’t really engage with my colleagues since there’s a lot of office drama, so most of the time I’m on my own. But I somehow got a “developing performer.” Which I have no idea what that means. I’ve been at this company for 2 years and she stated I was “too new to rate.” I know I should have a 1 on 1 conversation with her but honestly I know if I do she’ll lie to make me look bad. (She’s done it before & I don’t want to go through that again)

Hello all. So, I have a solid decade working in the finance environment but spanning across different industries, both lcoal and international. I have been in toxic workplaces many times. The first time, no idea what is happening or why or what to do. With time, i learnt how to react or protect myself or report properly.

My latest job should have been my dream job - combined my passion and my work specialisation. I kind of guessed it was shitty work environment with incompetent persons governing because that's the direction my interview headed into. I spent one and a half years voicing out with facts, figures, internal audit and external audit.

I ended discovering a whole network of bullies protecting each other at various levels all the way to the top. I went to the police, to the local authorities and reported to our shareholders with proof. Nothing has happened. Instead, I have been oppressed, diminished, bullied and you name it for just doing my job.

It was my delusion maybe that this time, I could finally make a change. In the global context of what has been happening worldwide, I can understand a tiny fraction of how the silence of the majority promotes greed, abuse of power and corruption. Everyone now knows what lies underneath and everyone is choosing to look the other way instead.

Finally, I am now labelled as the problem.

It took my health declining for me to let it all go. If people want to eat shit, sometimes there is just nothing one can do but let them.

I now choose me. I choose my health. I choose my family.

My boss is one of the most arrogant and domineering people I’ve ever known. She’s learned to mask it a bit, but it always comes out. She absolutely cannot stand when anyone else is speaking, has an opinion, is telling a story, etc. she gets visibly angry and irritated when the focus isn’t on her for even a moment.

She does this one on one, and even on team calls. We had a “team building” event where everyone was supposed to be able to share their preferences about something, but she had a personal story for EVERY item, so it was literally her just telling her own stories for the entire thing and not letting anyone else speak.

It’s like she doesn’t see others as valid people with valid lives, opinions, and contributions. They’re all just there to witness her greatness and “know their place”.

It is exhausting dealing with her and so difficult to stay polite when she is so horribly obnoxious. How do you deal with someone like this?