Melissa, city of london, financial services

I raised a concern in a team meeting about the way a project had been handled — calmly, professionally, with specific examples. My manager's response, in front of everyone, was to smile and say I was "reading too much into things." Afterwards, a colleague told me he'd said I was "emotionally reactive" in a separate conversation with HR. I spent weeks wondering if he was right. I started softening everything I said, adding disclaimers, apologising before I'd even made a point. It took a long time (and a therapist) to understand that what I'd done in that meeting was entirely reasonable, and that the problem wasn't my emotions. The problem was that someone had decided my emotions were a useful thing to use against me.

#tonepolicing #selfdoubt #confidenceeroded #unverifiablecriticism

Corinne, EC3, Financial services

My manager promised me a pay rise in our one-to-one. He was so specific. He gave me a figure and said it would come through in the next review cycle. I was so pleased I told my partner that evening. When the review came, nothing had changed, and when I brought it up he looked genuinely puzzled and said he had no memory of that conversation. He didn't say he'd changed his mind, he said it had never happened. I sat there trying to hold onto what I knew was real, running the conversation back in my head, wondering if somehow I had imagined the whole thing. I hadn't. But the self-doubt that followed that moment took months to shake.

#deniesagreement #rewriteshistory #nopapertrail #selfdoubt #confidenceeroded

Jane, london

I spent three months developing a new process that significantly cut our team's turnaround time. When it was presented to senior leadership, my manager walked them through it as though it were his own work. My name wasn't mentioned once. When I spoke to him about it afterwards, he said he'd "built on my initial idea", as though what I'd handed him was a sketch rather than a finished product. I didn't push back hard enough, partly because I didn't trust my own account of what had happened. That's the thing nobody tells you, gaslighting doesn't just steal credit, it steals your confidence in your own version of events.

#stealscredit #downplaysachievements #selfdoubt #confidenceeroded #ideasteal

alia, canary wharf, banking

I was passed over for a promotion and given no explanation. When I asked my manager directly, he told me I'd "misunderstood the scope of the role" and implied I hadn't really been in the running. But six months earlier he had sat across from me and said I was my preferred candidate. I had written it in my notebook. I showed him. He glanced at it, shrugged, and said I'd probably noted it down wrong. The casual certainty with which he dismissed my written evidence, not even bothering to get angry, just mildly suggesting I'd made an error was more destabilising than any argument would have been. I left that meeting convinced, briefly, that I had somehow misremembered my own handwriting.

#rewriteshistory #deniesagreement #twistswords #shiftexpectations #selfdoubt #confidenceeroded

alex, london, media

When I finally got the role I'd been informally doing for almost a year, the salary offer was well below what I knew the previous person in the job had earned. I raised it, politely, with evidence. My manager told me I should be grateful — that not everyone gets opportunities like this, that I was "still building my profile." I nodded. I smiled. I signed the contract. On the way home I thought about all the months I had done that job unpaid, all the times I had been told to be patient, all the ways the word grateful had been used to make me feel that wanting fair pay was somehow presumptuous. It wasn't until I talked to a friend that night that I realised: gratitude is something you feel freely. It's not something someone demands from you in lieu of a fair salary.

#downplaysachievements #underminesqualifications #shiftexpectations #manipulation #confidenceeroded

ANNE, LONDON, INSURANCE

My manager arranged a leaving party for someone in our team, and invited everyone except me.  I’d been working with them as a temp for five months, and I was the only woman in a team of 8.  They all left for lunch together, all looking a bit uncomfortable apart from him, my manager. He also didn’t tell me that they weren’t coming back for the rest of the day.  I sat there by myself working away for the rest of the day. I was glad they were gone to be honest, because I was usually surrounded by their loud sexist jokes and misogynistic banter while trying to get my won work done.

I resigned soon after, because it was a very toxic and misogynistic place to be, and I was lucky enough to be offered a job elsewhere.

A month later, on my own last day, the same manager was suddenly acting like I was his favourite colleague. He suggested we have a leaving lunch with the team. Turns out it was for the sole reason of having an excuse to go to the pub for the afternoon and “legitimately” charge it back to the company through his expenses.

I said “not a chance”, left work at midday and treated myself to sushi and a glass of prosecco for one, and never went back to that office. #SquareMile #Insurance #violenceagainstwomenandgirlsstartswithwords