How Can I Make Sense of This Communication Style?

If I was ending a business relationship with a client who told me that they'd had misgivings since nearly the beginning of the time we'd started together, I would wonder what was wrong with them that they didn't bother to speak up, come to me far, far earlier and be solution-oriented by asking me or telling me what they needed. I likely wouldn't want to continue the conversation, because at that point, it's going to be a 'blame me' festival, which I am not interested in participating in.

Fully formed adults are able to speak to each other as problems arise, not retroactively. That's like breaking up with a guy and saying "I knew a year ago that we shouldn't be together"... but still staying in the relationship.

You are still angry about a job which ended a long, long time ago. I know you have a lot of anger because you have sent other people some pretty nasty PMs and called then profane names because you didn't like their response to you. The exhortations for you to take some responsibility, move on with your life and 'grow up' are worth heeding. I find the mention of gaslighting rather ironic as you keep re-presenting information in the hopes of duping us into agreeing with you. (If anyone reading this is offended, I encourage you to read this poster's history of questions before going off and reporting comments.) No one is interested, professionally or otherwise, in rehashing old news. So if a client were to start this sort of interaction with me, I'd likely say "I'm sorry you felt that way, it would have been helpful if you had brought it up sooner" , they would lose my respect and then I would move on. A grievance with no effort behind it to find a solution becomes of little consequence after the fact.

Just to clarify, "gas lighting" requires the person to know you for a lengthy period of time, like a year.
It also occurs within a more intimate relationship.
Because gas lighting requires a person to get inside your interpersonal boundaries and have almost unlimited access to your personal space.
They also must have a personal "gain" to doing this.
I'm don't think that an exit interview would meet these criteria.

Gas lighting is a very complex concept for a person to understand with a trained therapist, let alone by themselves.

I think what is concerning is for someone to "jump" to such a complex psychological concept to explain a situation and then use it to avoid any insight into one's own behavior.

You are missing an important piece in your questions: how YOUR role effects the situation.

Please, please find a therapist to help you understand yourself and how you view others. It must be exhausting and painful to not believe you can trust yourself and others.

i'm a little weary of honest observations getting twisted into 'gaslighting' by people who have obvious issues but refuse to ever, ever face them and constantly, endlessly, blame everyone else for their laundry lists of grievances.
ETA, just realized it was exit interview instead of new-job interview.
but it doesn't change anything substantively. you still weren't looking for solutions, or for how to move forward in a positive fashion, or how to improve your next potential position by learning from your mistakes in this one, or even how to leave this job on a better note. it was just yet another opportunity to complain about everyone else and hope to get told that it was all the other guy's fault and you had zero responsibility to shake off the whimpering and just do your job.
big surprise.
and instead of focusing on how to move on (as pretty much every response to you on your particular laundry lists have suggested), here you are, still marinating in resentment and seeking validation for your ongoing desire to slide around anything resembling personal growth, and continuing to seethe.
i hope you decide at some point, for your child's sake, to end all the self-sabotage and take steps toward developing a healthy psyche.
khairete
S.

I have not been mentored in my jobs. I've read your previous posts and maybe some of this is from your inexperience. It's very much sink or swim in a lot of jobs today. People are often hired based on can they learn on the go, can they teach themselves .. so maybe that was the expectation. If you were having problems, you don't approach your boss as "you let me down". You approach them as "I'd love to get a better understanding of how to do this ... what can you suggest?". And then do the hard work yourself.

If you appear at all resentful in jobs, you get a bad reputation. A lot of people in my age range look down on 20 somethings who feel entitled coming into positions, expecting us to teach you everything we took 20 odd years learning the hard way.

I'm not trying to be mean - but that's reality. So that might help you going forward.

Sometimes, you may find yourself in a situation where people do not want to help you. There's no one to mentor you or nurture you. It doesn't have to be demoralizing or discouraging - it can make you find your own strengths, your own purpose, your own abilities, and use them, and enhance them.

Actually, the one doing the gaslighting was you. You took a statement of fact ("that was a long time ago") and now you are telling us that the person who said that was curt, caused you stress, and you had to endure a very cruel and unhelpful work situation.

Exit interviews are not intended to help re-structure the company. They're to ensure that your last pay was received, that you have turned in your badge or ID or password or whatever.

I suggest you re-evaluate your dependence upon everyone else, and your tendency to jump to "they won't help me", "they are demoralizing me", "they're abusing me". Of course, some situations are abusive, and bad all around. So you get out of them, and learn from them, and move on with a better understanding of the world and of yourself.

This post is yet again how you are the victim. It's all about you and how you perceive everyone as against you.

This job was a long time ago and you're still angered over how things took place. IF you had been a responsible employee and communicated with your management and HR things might not have ended up like it did.

You have to take personal responsibility for contributing to the issues you complain to us about in both your personal and business life.

I really hope you find some therapy so you can get past your anger, learn to be responsible and learn to stop playing victim.

I'm sorry this upset you but it was an exit interview.
What did you think it was going to be like?
It's a time time to say 'So long, farewell, Auf Wiedersehen' and good bye.
They DON'T really care and are not interested in anything you have to say.
Her job was to get papers signed and get you out the door asap.
She didn't want to hear any venting or advice.
Exit interviews are tough.
The companys loyalties lie with their employees and at that point you're an ex employee, and someone has already claimed your chair before it cooled off from you last sitting in it.

Tell you what, write out everything you were going to say, print it out, and then burn it (in a safe manner) so you can get everything off your chest and put it behind you.
You move forward.
And the only thing you ask of them from this point on is maybe a recommendation letter for your next job.

Oh my word. You need help. The world does NOT revolve around you. What valuable information were you going to impart on her?

You need to figure out what "gas lighting" REALLY means. This is an exit interview. YOU CHOSE to leave, yes? Or did they fire you? Either way, you chose to stay at this company even though you felt you were not mentored nor getting in the way of your learning.

Move on. Learn from this. Hopefully, you will have learned that the world does not revolve around you by the time you get your next job. Learn first, ask questions and then make suggestions if you see a better way to make it more efficient or better. If they don't take your suggestions? Don't whine. LEARN why they do it the way they do it.

ETA Reading below: I haven't looked at your other posts, as other people did, but your takeaway from this should be that you need to learn to let things go. Life is short. It doesn't matter. Learn whatever there is to learn from this, and then let it go. (It sounds from reading below that the main lesson you should learn is how to listen to criticism and make appropriate changes to yourself. Willingness to change and grow is an important trait.)

Orig: Probably because she's either opinionated or she doesn't like you, or maybe because it really was a long time ago and this was not the time to bring it up.

It doesn't matter. You tried to give them some information, and they didn't want it. Most people don't like change, and they don't like flaws being pointed out. You have exited this organization, it's not worth one more moment of your thought.

The only one who will be harmed by your ruminating on this is you. Let it go and move on.

It was your Exit Interview so she didn't care. It sounds like you had a lot of negative things to say and since you were leaving, she probably already knew what your "issues" were and didn't feel they needed to be re-hashed.

It also sounds like you weren't the right person for the job to begin with. Generally, you need to be a go-getter and self-starter now days. No one, especially "senior staff", has time to hand hold new employees. You need to hit the floor running. It seems that you couldn't do that because you were not hand-held like you expected to be.

Maybe learn from this for the next position and knowing that you need a lot of attention, make sure they know that too BEFORE they hire you so they know what they are getting as an employee as well. Good luck.

I think that you misunderstood the purpose of the exit interview. They were checking a box that they did this. You were leaving...they simply didn't want to hear about every complaint you had while working there. This was a completely inappropriate time to unload on them and probably made you look bad. You should have kept your answers short and vague and walked out with as much dignity as possible. You probably left them with a sense of relief that you were gone.

As others have said, it's done and you need to move on. If anything, reflect back and consider how you might alter your behavior to get different results. This wasn't a good fit for you...seriously consider if you had any responsibility for the bad situation. I suspect that you did...it is never 100% anyone's fault. Just don't make the same mistakes again...

"That was a long time ago." is not an example of gaslighting. It was a simple statement of fact. Gaslighting would have been to say that it never happened and you must be misremembering.

It isn't appropriate to gripe about co-workers or blame other people for things in your exit interview, even if what you have to say is true. Cutting you off before you could expand your complaint about other staff members is really the only thing the interviewer could do.

It's a little difficult to respond without knowing what happened next. What happened after she said, "That was a long time ago?" Did she immediately change the subject? Did you try to speak further but she insisted on the new subject? Did you try to speak further buy she just ignored you or talked over you?

This is a case where you very politely say, "Excuse me, I wasn't finished. While that was a long time ago, the problem persisted ... "

When you feel misunderstood you can either let it go (stay misunderstood) and just forget about it, or you can say, "Excuse me ... " and explain yourself. Most of the time when you do speak up, the other person is surprised there was more and says, "Oh, sorry, didn't mean to cut you off."

I've read all of your posts, and it seems like you tend to assume the worst in people. When people say or do things that you don't like, you say they are mean or crude or taking pleasure in learning this or that about you. Quite frankly, you are causing your own pain.

So many times people say and do things without really thinking too much about you or how it might make you feel. Not because they are insensitive. Just because they had other things on their mind.

I would also recommend that you try to let things go. I'm pretty sure the job you are referring to is the one that you left at least 3 months ago (in December you said you had a new job?). Let it go. Move on. Why are you still letting them hurt you?

Try not to take things so personally, and try to let things go. You will be a much happier person if you learn to do those things.

Time to get proactive, girl! No more trying to make sense of anyone's communication style. Don't waste your time on it. Time to focus on you. What can you do to project confidence, be more positive and win people over? What can you do differently going forward to be great at your job?

A huge part of getting used to a new job is learning how to work with everyone. Some people's expectations are going to be very different than yours, but you have to figure out how to work with them anyway. It's not always easy, but that's what needs to happen.

So, take some time (not a lot) to think about what you can learn from this other job. What did you learn about working with people and what did you learn about yourself? That information will be invaluable to you going forward.

Your question isn't totally off base but maybe think about it a little differently. Not so much how can you make sense of it, but what does it say about you. What can you learn from it.

I've looked back at your previous posts, Z., and there does seem to be a pattern of expectations of others that aren't met. Manager problems, husband/friend problems, HR problems... The common denominator seems to be that you are not fully prepared for these situations.

What were your expectations of an exit interview, for example? Did you think that it was your opportunity to vent your disappointments for the entire time of your employment? To rehash old grievances and let the company know that no one mentored you from the beginning? Do you think that was the HR person's goal? What would the purpose of that be? Perhaps a better goal for you would have been to learn something to help you go forward, and to obtain a good job reference for the future?

I don't agree that this is gas lighting. The purpose of that is to drive someone crazy. How would that benefit the employer? They have no need to do that - you are leaving, and they are going to continue with their corporate culture and management style, as flawed as that may be. The fact is, your grievances were not handled well from the beginning - and some of that is on you. You have to have some insight into this situation if you hope to go forward in a new job.

Did you wind up with a reference? Or will they only agree to verify your dates of employment to a prospective new employer? If you didn't get a reference, you failed al the basic strategy of employment and exit interviews. Instead, you will go forward with bitterness and resentment.

I do think you could benefit from some counseling in terms of relationships, but also with work situations and the way in which you view yourself. There are life coaches, and career coaches, and then there are counselors. If you feel that your primary issue is finding a good job in which you can flourish and in which you can adapt to the corporate style, then find yourself a good life coach. One way to do this is through a women's networking group or even a BNI in your area. Helping you to learn HOW to interview, how to present yourself in a positive light, how to show yourself to be adaptable to any company. You can get help with a resume, learn to write a great cover letter, practice interview questions, discover your strengths and how to present them, and learn the communication styles that you so desperately want to master.

Or, you can continue to stick to your positions and say that everyone else is out to get you. It's not working for you, is it? So maybe it's time to rethink this whole world view.

Usually when people cut you off, it's because they don't want to hear complaints. HR people or managers hear a lot of negative remarks. I guess they just don't want to hear it even if it's helpful. Obviously I don't know your situation, but did they consider you to be a complainer? Maybe they thought they'd already been through it with you.

Gaslight? Really? Didn't happen.

It was an exit interview, they didn't really care, they were probably a bit relieved.

In all honesty, I haven't been very truthful in my exit interviews because I want to be able to use people as references in the future. I also don't want to burn bridges. For example, my first job...the girl I was training to take over for me while I was on maternity leave was a hot mess. She was at the club every night, talked about her multiple evening dates, etc. I wanted to tell the boss so bad that the lack of professionalism in the office was one of the reasons I was leaving. I didn't. I told her a new opportunity presented itself and I was taking it to further my career path.

Had I been truthful about one of the main reasons I was leaving, I would have screwed myself from my 3rd job. The girl who annoyed me was actually the one who recommended me for that spot.

Be careful what bridges you burn...sometimes brutal honesty isn't needed at work. Professionalism within you has to take over. Also - you are in charge of you. If things aren't working out, do more to change them.

Apparently they are not interested in what you have to say. I would learn from this and either skip any further exit interviews with future employers or go and just not say anything - pretty much just say what they want to hear and be done. After all, it's an exit interview - what do you care.

There is a technique for giving constructive criticism. It's the sandwich technique. Start with something positive, put the negative in the middle. End with something positive. It's a good strategy even for exit interviews. You never want to burn bridges with a former employer. But, if they ask what could have been improved in your opinion, you want to tell them. So, sandwich technique.

It's also a good parenting strategy.

I guess what I am saying is that in this situation, perhaps it's your communication style that got the conversation off on the wrong foot. Exit interviews are for constructive criticism, not complaining. There is a difference.

They were not interested. I guess they'd decided if you wanted to do a good job you'd ask someone else at some point in that 6 months.

I can say that if I had an employee that didn't learn their job in the first few weeks that maybe they weren't a fit for that job. But I'd have called them in for a conference before 6 months at least a couple of times to find out why you weren't doing your job. If the supervisors were supposed to train you to do a specific job and you couldn't do it...I don't know. I guess I'd be an upset employer at both parties.

I hope you find a job that's a better fit for you. It's hard to go to work every day when you're unhappy.