Subtle sabotage

If you’ve ever felt belittled by someone’s offhand comment, you know what it feels like to be undermined. Here, a therapist explores why people undermine others, how to recognise it and what to do about if it happens to you

Maria* was upset when she saw me for her usual bi-weekly therapy session. She tearfully told me about an incident at work. She worked in sales and marketing and had been in a meeting with a potential client and some of her colleagues, and had just finished a presentation about a campaign. The client asked her a follow-up question, but before she could respond a colleague cut in: ‘Oh, that’s way outside her role, she won’t know that. Let’s talk about that later.’

Maria said she immediately flushed and felt stupid, especially as two of her colleagues gave her a sympathetic smile from across the table, looks that Maria interpreted as pitying. This was repeated in a meeting the next day, when the same colleague cut Maria off mid-sentence and said curtly, ‘Let’s move on.’

Maria was hurt, embarrassed and angered, and said that she fell silent and then dashed out of the meeting and spent the day in tears. She took the following day off and shared that when she went back to work, she started avoiding her colleague and felt like she would burst into tears each time she had to go into a meeting.