Ep. 133 4 Coping Skills to Handle a Critical Boss & Transform Midlife Self-Doubt into Self-Assurance

Is your boss constantly demanding more while offering little support or recognition?
If their negativity is draining your confidence, it’s time to shift the way you respond.
In this episode, you’ll discover:
1. How to stop taking your boss’s behavior personally—because it’s not about you.
2. A mindset shift that frees up your mental energy and puts you back in control.
3. Practical tools to build self-validation and confidence, no matter who’s in charge.
Press play now to learn how to reclaim your confidence and career growth—even if your boss never changes!

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About the Host:
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with more than 48,000 hours of therapy sessions and 31 years of experience teaching her Mental Wellness curriculum, Inner Challenge. Four years ago she overcame her fear of technology to create a podcast that integrated her vast clinical experience and practical wisdom of cultivating mental wellness using the latest information from neuroscience. MJ was Social Worker of the Year in 2011 for Region 2/IN.

Creating Midlife Calm is a podcast designed to guide you through the challenges of midlife, tackling issues like anxiety, low self-esteem, feeling unworthy, procrastination, and isolation, while offering strategies for improving relationships, family support, emotional wellbeing, mental wellness, and parenting, with a focus on mindfulness, stress management, coping skills, and personal growth to stop rumination, overthinking, and increase confidence through self-care, emotional healing, and mental health support.

Transcript

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW: 0:00

In this episode, you'll discover four coping skills to transform your self doubt to self assurance when working for a critical boss. Welcome to Creating Midlife Calm, a podcast dedicated to empowering midlife minds to overcome anxiety, stop feeling like crap and become more present with your family, all while achieving greater success at work. I'm MJ Murray Vachon, a licensed clinical social worker with over 48, 000 hours of therapy sessions and 31 years of experience teaching mental wellness. Welcome to the podcast. It's Thursday, which means we're following up on Monday's episode where I encourage you to permanently toss out the term imposter syndrome and instead embrace the mindset. of a learner if you haven't listened to episode 131, I highly recommend it. Why burden yourself with the inaccurate label of imposter syndrome When it's completely normal and actually healthy to feel anxious while learning something new. The only way to reduce self doubt is to dive in and learn. That brings us to this week's inner challenge. I asked you to create a growth map by identifying three skills you need to develop in this current situation that's causing you to feel like an imposter. Then I challenged you to pick one and take a simple doable first step towards learning it. Along the way, I encouraged you to regulate and re regulate your emotions of distress that you commonly will feel when taking on new projects. In a session a few weeks ago, a client came in and was completely overwhelmed. She had been asked to create a program manual, something she had never done before. Like many of us, she initially wanted to spend her session talking about her anxiety. gently stopped her and I said, Instead of talking about your anxiety, Could we feel your way through your anxiety? I guided her to notice, name, and tame it. She grounded her feet, placed her hands on her heart, and practiced breathing, yes, breathing, for 90 seconds. I then gave her a piece of paper and I asked her to write down three things she would need to do in order to get started on creating this manual. Instantly, she wrote, talk to a colleague who had just completed a similar manual, block out a dedicated time to work on it, and just start doing it. She looked up at me and laughed and said, Oh. That was easy. See, you're not alone. When facing something new, if your mindset is, I don't know how to do this, I'm an imposter, you'll hesitate to ask for guidance. But if you see yourself as a learner, your first thought will be how do I learn this which propels you forward and naturally get your juices rolling. In today's episode, we're tackling another major confidence zapper, a boss whose management style is built on negativity and criticism, constantly demanding more while offering little support or recognition. While these bosses may not exhibit the extreme behaviors of narcissistic leaders who bully, gaslight, or lie, they can still chip away at your confidence life exhausting. This can be especially draining in midlife when work, family, and personal responsibilities are already pulling you in multiple directions. A lack of validation from your boss can feel like an added weight. draining your energy and self worth. So let's take this on. By the end of this episode, you'll have four powerful, very doable coping strategies to shift from self doubt to self assurance, giving you tools to reclaim your confidence no matter who's in charge. I've worked with hundreds of people in this situation. And it seems to me, the first step is always to answer the question, do I stay? Or do I leave? Interestingly, both choices lead to the same inner work, shifting into a learner mindset. What are you learning? If you choose to leave, you're learning how to find a new job and how to navigate working for a confidence zapping boss without letting it diminish your self worth. If you decide to stay, you're still learning the same lesson. How do I work for someone who makes me feel unworthy, incompetent, or afraid to speak up? Ouch. No wonder this situation feels so difficult. But here's the good news. Once you develop this set of skills, not only will you feel more confident, but you'll also be better at your job. The first thing I want you to do is I want you to think of your boss like a dog. Stay with me here. Some dogs are sweet and cuddly. Others are standoffish and some outright aggressive. Many dogs are a mix. They might be loving towards some people, but unpredictable, withdrawn, and hostile towards others. So what kind of dog is your boss? Seriously, in your mind, give them a label. Do not say this out loud at work. Early in my career as a therapist, I had a boss who was warm and affectionate with higher ups, but passive and aggressive with her direct reports, She drove me nuts. One day I asked a colleague, how do you handle her? And she replied, like a wounded puppy. That response blew my mind. Suddenly, I saw my boss in a completely different light. Instead of wondering, how can I get this woman to stop criticizing me? I realized, oh, she connects with people through criticism. She's a growler. This isn't about me. This is about her. A few years ago, I noticed how many people in my life were rescuing dogs, these adorable but wounded animals that required patience, training, and care. And you know what? Not one person blamed themselves for their dog's behavior. They simply accepted that their dog had its own history. That's exactly how you need to see your boss. Their relationship style has nothing to do with you and everything to do with them. Many people weren't raised with proper encouragement, and most were never taught how to mentor others in a supportive way. After that one minute conversation with my colleague, I began to see my supervisor as a snow white poodle, pristine in appearance, playful with the higher ups, but bearing her teeth at those of us trying to learn and grow under her direction. So here's coping skill number one, whether you're job hunting or staying put, remind yourself, my boss's behavior has nothing to do with me. They were this way before you got there and there'll be this way after you leave. It is not personal. This insight springboards us beautifully to coping skill number two. Stop thinking about your boss. Let me say it again. Stop thinking about your boss. Unsupportive bosses have a way of taking up mental real estate far beyond working hours. They creep into your thoughts at the gym, when you get home, and even as you try to fall asleep. Hey, you're in midlife. You have enough on your plate without bringing your boss home with you. Their micromanaging, lack of validation or poor communication naturally set you up to focus on what they are doing wrong instead of what you can do right. And here is the real kicker. You've essentially made yourself their boss, in your mind. Critiquing their every move, running conversations in your head about what they should be doing or how they should be leading on and on and on. The problem, they're taking up your valuable time and you're not even getting paid for it. Here's the challenge. Stop thinking about them. Stop talking about them and something miraculous will happen. You'll have more time and energy for your actual job. Let me take you back to my early days as a therapist. Before computers, all our extensive client paperwork had to be handwritten. At the time, our supervisors had an ongoing contest, encouraging their teams to submit everything on time. My team was incredibly efficient, and for three months in a row, our supervisor won the competition. Her acknowledgement to us? A quick nod. Then in month four, she suddenly handed all our paperwork back and said, From now on, I want everything written in black ink. We pushed back, she held firm, then she handed us new forms and said, I'll be back to get this month's paperwork in three hours. Oh my God, we were livid. And if you know anything about therapists, we're never at a loss for words. Frustrated, I grabbed a coffee and ran into my dog whisperer colleague. Yes, the same one from before. I vented about this ridiculous time consuming request and she simply rolled her eyes and said, Oh, the higher ups must have bit her and now she's biting you. Voila, another insight. I asked her, what should I do? And she said, put it out of your mind, get it done and stop giving her so much mental space. Sit in the conference room, order donuts and do it together. Turn crazy into fun. And that's exactly what we did. We sat together, recopied our forms, laughed, talked about the Cubs, and finished in 75 minutes. Then one of my colleagues sealed the deal by saying, I am going home and I'm not thinking about her for one more minute this weekend. That hit me. I had planned to go home and vent to my husband, but then I thought, why? So what if she made an inconvenient request? It wasn't illegal. It wasn't unethical It was just annoying. So I put the poodle in its cage, drove home, and listened to a book on tape. Now, let me add a caveat. In that situation, I wasn't alone. I had colleagues who validated my perspective, but I know that many people, especially those working remotely, don't have that same support system. That's why it's so important to gain perspective. It helps you realize that just like a rescue dog, your boss came to you with their own baggage. If they pee on the floor, it's not your fault. It just said somewhere along the way. They missed out on proper house training techniques. So when your boss's negativity starts getting to you, use your emotional regulation skills instead of your inappropriate attention skills. What's the difference? Emotional regulation is about turning inward and comforting the hurt your boss on you. Inappropriate attention is about obsessing over them, replaying their words, and letting them dominate your mental space. me walk you through an example. Recently, a client asked his boss for what he believed was a well deserved raise. His boss immediately denied it. My client was crushed. In the past, he would have sent his wife a text disrupting her workday and then vented all night about the unfairness of it all. But this time he stopped and noticed that he was emotionally dysregulated. He grounded his feet, he turned inward and paid attention to all that was swirling inside of him. His insides were lit up and he put his hands on his head and he named, I am so pissed. And he just felt the anger. And pretty soon the anger turned into embarrassment. It turned into shame. And he let himself breathe and acknowledge and feel the embarrassment and the shame of asking for a raise that was denied. And then after about 60 seconds, the shame decreased and what surfaced was he felt proud. He realized my boss can say no, but at least I advocated for myself. That was a win. So when your boss makes you feel unappreciated, take care of yourself first. Tend to your emotions. Don't judge them, just be with them. Once your emotions have been tended to, you'll be able to think more clearly and actually see the picture in a fuller light and that will help you move your attention off of your boss and get back to work. Which leads to coping skill number three, track your wins. When you have a boss who offers little validation and primarily connects to criticism, you must track your wins. Why? Because if you don't give yourself the validation you crave, your learner mindset will definitely run out of fuel. This is easier than it sounds. Imagine it's Friday morning. You've completed your part of a big project that you've been working on these past few days and you send your boss an email update, sharing the good news. Her response, lowercase K. Let's move on to the next phase. Give me an outline by Monday morning. Seriously? That's it? After all that work, all I get is a K? It's not even a capital K. Maybe that's all you get from your boss, but that cannot be all you get from you. Take a few minutes and run a mental movie of what you did to get that project pulled together. Maybe that was a four hour project. Maybe it was a four day project. Maybe it was a four month project. Time doesn't matter. What matters is that you stop and you allow yourself to review what you did In order to be successful at that job, free to check your calendar, look at your notes, but just give yourself a couple minutes to recap what you had to do for that project to get done, and let yourself look back over it. And allow your memory to prompt you so you can let the accomplishment sink in. If you've completed something at work that deserves acknowledgement, then go ahead. And give yourself acknowledgement. I know what you're thinking. MJ, self validation doesn't count. And let me tell you, if you believe that, it's probably why this boss drives you crazy. If you think the only validation that matters is external, then of course you're frustrated. You're completely dependent on getting recognition from someone else. And right now, your boss isn't giving it. Think about it. Since childhood, you've been conditioned to turn outward for validation. You get report cards, gold stars, trophies when you play soccer, grades, all external measures of success. So naturally, you expect the same at work. Sometimes you'll have a boss that provides that, but right now you don't. So take back your power. Learn to give yourself credit. At first, acknowledging your own wins might feel awkward and weird, but with a little practice, you'll get the hang of it The more you practice this, not just thinking it, but just sitting for 30, 40, 70 seconds and feeling the sense of accomplishment, the sense of learning, it will boost your confidence and it will make you less dependent on a boss doing it for you. Coping skill number four, Keep your boss in the loop. This one might surprise you. It may even seem contradictory to everything I've said so far. But if you've accepted that your boss is a white poodle, meaning you stopped expecting them to provide validation and started acknowledging your own wins, then the next logical step is to send them a weekly update of what you've accomplished. Stay with me here. Yes, in an ideal world, your boss would deeply understand your job and end their week by sending you emails that say, thank you for all your hard work. Have a great weekend, but let's be real. That is not going to happen. Still, that doesn't mean you should stay invisible. Just because your workplace has a dashboard or a tracking system doesn't mean your boss actually checks it. Some do, some don't. So take control. At the end of each week, write a brief summary of what you've accomplished. Then email it to yourself and CC your boss. Frame it as a productivity tool, not a plea for recognition. You might write something like, in order to stay organized and track my workflow, I'm sending myself a weekly email summarizing what I've completed. I thought I'd CC you in as well. What you are doing is being realistic about the modern workplace. Many employees and managers are stretched beyond reason. Sometimes even good bosses don't see everything their team does. after you take time to see your wins, let your boss in on them too. Whether they're acknowledged or not, you're keeping a record of your hard work, and that alone is powerful. Hey, having a boss who doesn't get validation is difficult and it really can zap your self confidence. The situation can make you feel like an imposter. Or you have the power to shift your mindset where it's giving you the opportunity to step into your own agency and increase your ability to give and receive self validation. This makes you less vulnerable to those puppies that you're working for. If you're like me and you work for yourself, being able to up your skills of self validation is not only essential, But energizing. In this episode, I shared four powerful coping skills to help you navigate working for a boss who chips away at your confidence with constant criticism, unrealistic expectations, and not enough positive feedback. Coping skill number one, your boss's behavior is not about you. Coping skill number two, stop thinking about your boss. You are not getting paid for it. Coping skill number three, track your wins and coping skill number four, keep your boss in the loop. At the end of the day, you can't change how your boss leads, but you can change how you respond by shifting your mindset from self doubt to self assurance. You take back control of your confidence and career growth. Thanks for listening. And I'll be back on Monday with another episode of Creating Midlife Calm.