Boss, Are You Mad at Me?
Why people pleasers confuse conflict with danger—and how we start healing
Hi, I’m Gabrielle and I do this really gross thing where I parentify authority figures.
Welcome to People Pleasers Anonymous.
This started early. I’ve been working since I was 14, and the second money entered the picture, something in me shifted. Every boss I’ve ever had became someone I needed to impress, appease, and emotionally regulate. Like my job wasn’t just doing the work, but also making sure they felt okay about me at all times.
And honestly that made sense to me. Because I was raised in a high-control environment where my thoughts and feelings weren’t exactly welcomed; unless they were convenient. If my emotions didn’t match the emotional weather of the household, they were shut down, dismissed, or punished. Feeling sad? Not now. Wait until you’re in bed, alone. Feeling excited? Better keep that to yourself before it gets crushed by someone else’s projections.
I learned early that safety wasn’t about being authentic, but it was more about being strategic. Keep everyone calm. Don’t rock the boat. Don’t be “too much.” And definitely don’t need anything.
For a long time, I thought that was just what love (or adulthood) looked like. It was familiar. So of course I brought those same dynamics into work. But familiarity isn’t the same thing as health.
It took me years to even realize something was off. Years of therapy. AA Zoom calls during lockdown, where I listened to old people talk about “letting go.” Years of becoming a yoga teacher. Leaving Catholicism. Becoming an atheist. Becoming a spiritual woo girl. Accidentally joining a cult. Getting scammed by charismatic business coaches. Coming full circle back to traditional religions, picking out the good, rejecting the rest. Unlearning. Relearning. Collapsing. Rebuilding.
Eventually, I stopped asking, “Why am I like this?” and started asking, “What would it look like to stop?” Because it’s not always just about having the insight, it’s all about changing what you do with it.
So I started working on my relationship with conflict. Because that’s where this pattern shows up the loudest.
What if conflict doesn’t mean I’m unsafe? What if it doesn’t mean I’m about to be punished, rejected, or exiled? What if I’m not a child anymore, and my boss isn’t my dad?
When conflict comes up now (especially with authority figures) I try to slow down. Remind myself that not everything is life or death. That people are allowed to be human. That discomfort doesn’t always mean danger.
Still, the old programming runs very deep. With women in power, I tend to go quiet. With emotionally unavailable men, I shapeshift into an overachiever that’s hungry for approval, and desperate to prove I’m worth loving.
But now I catch myself and I pause. I say the thing I’m scared to say. I don’t always get it right, but I don’t go completely silent anymore.
And for someone who learned that silence equals safety, that’s a small miracle.
Here’s what I’ve realized: when I see my boss as a parent, I assume they’re mad at me. All the time. Because that’s what I had to constantly anticipate growing up. If I could avoid them getting mad, I’d be okay. That mindset made me hyper-vigilant. It made me easy to manipulate. It made me a doormat in the workplace.
Here’s how it usually plays out:
Conflict arises
I interpret the conflict as anger
I try to avoid the perceived anger—by people pleasing, shape-shifting, or staying quiet
My boss then thinks I’m mad at them
No one says anything
Nothing gets resolved
Rinse and repeat
It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, curated by my childhood and reenacted in my early career. My dysfunction isn’t just conflict aversion, but it’s misreading conflict as punishment. And in trying to avoid anger, I end up mirroring the exact behavior I was trained to fear. I show up closed off, cold, or withdrawn; because I’m bracing for a blow that never comes.
Then I met my doppelgänger (seriously, we’re the same person, it’s eerie),
, LCSW. She writes about this exact spiral. Moreover, about what it means to walk around with the constant, anxious belief that people are mad at us. She doesn’t just name the pattern, she dissects it. And then she shows you how to unlearn it.Her upcoming book, Are You Mad at Me? (which you can preorder!), cracked something open for me. It gave language to the inner panic I’ve spent years trying to soothe. This is not just personal, it’s clinical, rooted in her experience as a psychotherapist and five-plus years of doing the work herself.
Here’s one of the frameworks from the book that hit me hardest:
Conflict is not always unsafe. Sometimes it’s the doorway to connection.
Name the uncomfortable emotion that’s rising.
Self-soothe before the conversation—because if you don’t feel safe in your own body, nothing productive will happen.
Write down what emotion you’re avoiding by procrastinating the conversation.
Remind yourself: when we avoid conflict, we avoid connection.
Then… just do it.
(Yeah, easier said than done. But still.)
Meg’s work is like trickle-down therapy. If you like my content, I promise you’ll like hers. She’s a licensed psychotherapist, an author, and she speaks from the heart in a way that’s calm, clear, and devastatingly accurate.
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, and seriously, preorder Are You Mad at Me?—because if you're anything like me, you probably need to hear what she has to say. The book comes out in just 2 weeks on August 5th, so this will be in your hands very soon!!And maybe, just maybe, we can all stop assuming everyone’s mad at us. And instead, start talking to people like we’re safe.
So no, you don’t need to fix your entire conflict style overnight. And yes, sometimes you do have to fawn at work because rent is due and healthcare is tied to employment. But the power is in the pause. In catching the pattern before it runs the show. In asking yourself, “Is this reaction about this moment or is it about the past?”
Awareness is the first step. Compassion is the second.
You’re not broken for doing what you had to do to stay safe. But you are allowed to outgrow it.