Letters to the Editor
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There is a chance...
... that you are reading something into what your new boss is saying that isn't there. Your boss might actually want you to be good enough to take her job when she gets promoted, and keep you with her all the way to the top, in which case your modesty isn't making things go smoother it's pissing her off.
What you might be reading as being feeling threatened might be your boss feeling exasperated - because you are good enough to move up in the job and that, to your supervisor, means that she has done a good job in training you.
If you are an excellent worker you have the right to be confident. Confidence is only a bad thing when it is unearned, and if you are earning praise for your work you have earned a degree of confidence.
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yep, i know people like this
In my program we are required to do a lot of group work and some of my fellow students are like this.
They have loads of "ambition" and are always taking charge of things, butting in and doing other people's parts, because they don't trust them to do it right (their way). At one point they appealed unsuccessfully to the school to allow them to form their own supergroup (instead of the school choosing the groups), so that they wouldn't actually have to cooperate with people whom they saw as underachievers, or just plainly too slow. In the end, thanks to all their meddling and their refusal to let go of the reins, there are several people who never learned vital parts of project management needed to write their theses.
When overachievers take up the slack for everyone they think they're being helpful, and that everyone will be grateful. What they're really doing is denying other people the opportunity to grow and learn, and find the satisfaction in doing things for themselves. It's really insulting. Even with all the praise and "credit giving" (which is different, as another poster mentioned, than allowing someone to take credit), the presumption of being less intelligent and/or more lazy than the overachiever is stinking obvious. That's why people don't like it.
Cary's right. Just stop it.
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I almost could have written this
I'm smarter than most, especially in my own field. I also have parents whose approach to dealing with this is to cut me down at every opportunity. Why is a very long story, but the women in my family are put in their places in ways they will ever, ever forget. It's so bad that I was 30 years old before I understood that I was capable of learning something by gradually improving over time. What happens to the men is no better, but since I'm female, it's what happens to the women that I have to deal with.
I developed two problematic tendencies as a result. One was to undershoot, looking for jobs I could do so well right off the bat that my work was nearly flawless. The other was false modesty.
The combination pisses people off to an incredible degree. Not without reason.
What I had to learn to do was push hard enough so that I started screwing up, do things that actually challenged me. It's not easy to do consistently and it gives me literal nightmares. I have also had to scale back ties to my parents, especially my father, but with that influence weakened, it's easier. I had to find friends who understand both where I came from and where I'm trying to go, and who were willing to back me no matter what.
Obviously, if I had ambitions of being a serial killer, this would be a problem, but I'm harmless. I just want to be able to go full throttle without someone kicking my knees out from under me for amusement, and I'm sick of saying, "Aw, shucks, t'warn't nothin'!" every time I succeed at something.
It helps. I get along with my new colleagues much better, and I have better friends, too. I still have nightmares from time to time, but I like pushing harder. I don't like it when I think I have to be perfect in order to be merely adequate.
You work in a corporation. Being promoted when someone else is failing isn't winning at their expense. The job needs to get done, and everyone benefits when the best person for the position is actually in that position. It would be nicer if there was more of a social safety net in place when something bad happens, but there isn't, and the job isn't a safety net. It's a cog in a complex wheel.
When you took over for your old boss in that manner, you did him no favors. You wrecked his pride by highlighting how incompetent he had become. Had you stepped back and let him fail, that would have been better. Had you stepped forward and taken over properly, that would have been better, too, but what you did was a terrible kind of charity that's never met with gratitude. Sometimes being nice isn't really nice, and this is one of those times.
Also, don't be afraid to be ambitious. It's not actually a negative trait.
I make a lot more mistakes than I used to and I'm not the absolute best at what I do, but I'm also a lot happier and most people, at least, are a lot happier with me. Some people think I'm an arrogant bitch, but they're no longer in a position to make my work life miserable, so it doesn't matter.
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One of many choices
I honestly can't quite tell if what happened to the LW with his or her mother is relevant or not. Maybe. Perhaps it is that the LW is trying to replace Mom with someone else--a boss, for example.
If that's true, everything that boss does will be magnified a thousand fold, often into something it is not. Making the boss a "mom substitute" will make everything you do too sensitive, too important in any interaction with that boss. It would be great to find a mentor, of course, someone who could take you under his or her wing, etc. But even then, LW, your boss can't be your mother. You had a mother, and she said, for whatever reason, something really awful and stupid and insensitive before she died. Just because someone is dying doesn't erase his or her imperfections or stupidities or cruelties. I'm sure you've talked about this in therapy. To that end, I'd continue that. Talk about this issue in therapy. Find out what the connections are. It seems to me that one has only moved on from devastating pain in one's life when one can stop applying that incident to all parts of one's life, whether it applies or not.
Do you see what I mean? Whether there is a true and complete connection or not, you feel like there is one, and that makes it relevant and real for you. So, to the therapist with this one you must go.
As for working in corporate America, I feel in some ways that this issue is separate one to a certain extent, in that corporate America is just like this. It's full of backstabbers and manipulations, etc. You aren't the only one living out your difficult family life in the office; that's all I'm saying.
When I worked in a corporation, I liked being in my job and had no desire to move up. I was very, very good at my job, too. After I left, it took three people to replace me in my one job. Seriously. But, no one believed in my desire to stay in the same place and not become a boss myself. Or, if they did, they concluded something was wrong with me and my performance instead, even though it wasn't. Weirdness.
I was 'supposed' to want to move upward. My desire to simply do a good job and be left alone was held in constant suspicion and derision. And I never tried to do anyone else's job, I promise. For a reward of hard work, I constantly had to deal with people underneath me trying to undermine me with my boss (lying about my work behind my back), a new hire rearranging my desk one afternoon while I was at lunch because she felt that, as she told my boss, I was disorganized (I spent the entire afternoon rearranging things BACK into the proper order-lost an entire day of work because of it--as now I had to re-find all my important files and so on), and my boss became very perturbed that I didn't seem to want to move into her position, which she had been molding me to do, when she left for her own promotion.
It was an odd situation for me. I had ambition, but as it turns out, not for anything I was doing in the office. Instead, I really wanted to use the job to make money while I actually pursued my real interests outside of the job. In other words, I wasn't actually doing what I wanted to do. I was working to make money only. Not that there's a thing wrong with that, but is it possible that you aren't inspired at work, aren't being ambitious because it isn't really what you want to do?
Perhaps you should be going after something that you love, something that would inspire you to great heights and to loftier positions, just because you love the work so much (in my opinion what real ambition should be about).
Maybe part of the difficulty with your mother is an ongoing fear of taking a risk and finding work that makes you happy and fulfilled. After all, often, finding that work, the work that is a career, that gives you a stronger sense of yourself, is far riskier to do and full of potential, painful failure, while working in a job just to make some money and feel safe (and there's nothing wrong with that) is calmer and less frightening.
It's just a thought, but maybe it comes down to you not being in the right line of work. And maybe you are afraid to move forward to find that right line of work. Because it's a risk. Because once someone important to you questioned your value as a person (which was wrong of her by the way). Anyway, just a thought. Maybe you aren't doing what you are supposed to be doing.
Think about it. In the meantime, go to therapy as usual, and consider what you'd do if you were out of corporate America. Perhaps it's time to find a career that inspires you more. And don't worry about failing. Everyone who is 'successful' in this world fails unbelievably and often. It's just part of life and not a reflection upon your worth as a person. Whoever came up with that phrase "amounting to something" truly deserves a good swift kick in the butt. It means so little in the scheme of an entire life.