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Being Gaslit by Boss and She's Manipulating Situations and People Against me

__Ulysses__
Community Member

Last year my boss went on leave and I was promoted into her job and the whole time she undermind me. Since she came back she's tried to manipulate situation and people to complain about me. She's blocked me from doing any work so I have no job satisfaction and made me reserve from being at work, she's removed my access in secret, and now she's trying to performance manage me out. She lies all the time but she's good at it, she uses very careful words so she can always back peddle.

I've recorded every conversation we've had for the past 6 moths cause I can't trust anything she says. She rarely puts things in writing. When she says something, I'll put it back to her in writing and she always denies it.

.. so recently she said my friend, "Ana"who no longer works there complained about me. Apparently Ana said I was excluding her.

I call Ana and ask if there was ever anything.. Ana says no. But noticed I seemed to be excluded from things, which is how I felt that I did stop engaging. Ana says at one point my Boss insists to Ana that I'm being mean to Ana and that my boss will talk to Ulysses about the issue. Ana says no. There's nothing wrong.

I tell my Boss's boss about this manipulation. Who then clearly tells my boss.

Next thing there's an email from HR saying the Boss is aware that I've been in contact with Ana about this and Ana has expressed concern to boss about this, and all questions about Ana should go to boss.

So this makes me doubt if Ana really did have an issue but didn't want to tell me. But it doesn't make sense, not with the way Ana and I talk.

So at the risk of making things worse I call Ana who reconfirms there's no issue and boss is bull. Ana has said they will go on record to clear things up.

But I hate that I was lead to doubt Ana, I hate what my boss has been doing to my mental health.

and I don't know why I'm still there. I want to fight it but it's so emotionally draining.

I've seen my boss do similar things to others but never saw the whole picture and not being on the receiving end you don't really see how bad it is.

2 years ago someone, say, "Tom" told me they had CCC complaint put in about them. That's serious time, like people go to prison level crime. The person who submitted the claim had never even met the Tom face to face despite working in buildings only 10 KMs aawa. I knew (instinctively) when Tom told me about the CCC complaint my boss was behind it all but not sure if Tom did.

1 Reply 1

Katyonthehamsterwheel
Valued Contributor
Valued Contributor

Hi there

This sounds like a complex situation, with no simple solution. I have seen that there are books and articles written about how to handle a boss that engages in these type of behaviours, but I haven’t read them. So I guess that’s one avenue you could explore, if you want to remain in the role, or you could look at moving on. Mental health is important and you need to weigh up the cost/benefits of being somewhere for a chunk of your day, that’s detrimental.

What do you think? Katy