Your Reflection

On the surface, your colleague got promoted, you played the socially expected role of being supportive, and then found yourself simmering with irritation that followed you home and spilled out on your partner. The promotion itself wasn't the only trigger — it was the way she actively showcases herself, especially in front of the boss, that felt manipulative and wrong to you. Underneath that sharp irritation, there's something tender about how you relate to visibility, recognition, and what you believe you have to do (or refuse to do) to be valued. This entry is inviting you to look more closely at your relationship with self-promotion, fairness, and anger — especially the anger that doesn't feel safe to show directly.

Patterns & Triggers

Projected Judgment of Self-Promotion

You describe your colleague's behavior as self-promoting and manipulative, and you contrast it with what you would never do. That kind of strong reaction often hints at projection: a quality we've disowned in ourselves shows up in someone else and suddenly feels unbearable. There may be a part of you that secretly wants to be more visible and advocated for, but has learned to judge those very traits as shameful, inauthentic, or morally wrong.

Inadequacy and Recognition Wound

Watching someone else receive praise and advancement while you stand on the sidelines smiling can quietly stab at a wound around recognition and adequacy. Even if you know you're competent, seeing someone rewarded for behavior you don't allow yourself can create a painful sense of, "So what I do isn't enough" or "People like that get ahead, not people like me." That ache can be less about this one promotion and more about a long history of feeling overlooked when you played by the 'right' rules.

Disowned Power and Anger

You felt a sharp irritation but kept it hidden, then it resurfaced later as snapping at your partner over something trivial. This is a classic pattern of disowned anger and power: the part of you that wants to say, "I deserve to be seen too" doesn't feel safe coming out in the room where the trigger happens, so it leaks sideways somewhere safer. Beneath the irritation might be a powerful, assertive part of you that wants permission to take up more space without feeling like you're doing something wrong.

Inner Judge and Moral High Ground

Your line, "I would never do that. It felt manipulative," carries a strong moral tone — like there's a right way and a wrong way to pursue recognition. That's the voice of an inner Judge who keeps you 'good' by condemning behaviors that might actually serve you if you embraced a more balanced version of them. When this inner Judge is loud, it can block you from experimenting with new ways of being, because anything resembling your colleague's boldness gets instantly labeled as bad or fake.

The Trace

• One gentle experiment this week could be to track where your mind goes when you think about self-promotion. Sit down with a journal and write two columns: in one, list all the words and phrases that come to mind when you think of people who talk about their accomplishments (for example: manipulative, cringe, fake, confident, etc.). In the second column, write what you imagine would happen if you behaved that way (for example: people would hate me, I'd feel like a fraud, I'd finally be noticed). This will help you see the beliefs and fears that are silently shaping how you show up at work and why your colleague's style hit such a nerve.
• Because your irritation ended up landing on your partner, it might be helpful to practice catching that displacement earlier. Next time you notice yourself replaying something like this on the drive home, pause and name out loud what you're actually feeling — something like, "I'm jealous and irritated about that promotion," even if part of you thinks you 'shouldn't' feel that way. Then ask yourself: 'Who am I really angry at, and what am I actually needing?' This simple check-in can keep you from unconsciously passing the emotional bill to the person waiting at home.
• There's also an invitation here to gently explore your relationship with being seen. You might try a tiny, low-stakes act of self-advocacy at work — sharing one concrete contribution you made in a meeting, or sending a short email to your boss summarizing something you did well on a project. Notice what comes up in your body when you do this: tension, shame, fear of being judged, or perhaps a bit of relief. The goal isn't to become like your colleague, but to slowly widen the range of what's allowed for you so that visibility doesn't feel automatically "manipulative."
• Brief Practice: Bring to mind the moment everyone was congratulating your colleague and place a hand on your chest. Silently say, "There's a part of me that wanted something here too, and I won't shame it." Take three slow breaths, just noticing what happens in your body as you let that be true.

Integration Prompts

When you think, "I would never do that," about your colleague's self-promotion, what kind of person does that make you in your own mind — what are the 'good' traits you're clinging to? And what are the hidden costs of holding that identity so tightly, especially in environments where visibility is often rewarded? Sitting with this can show you where your values are serving you and where they might be quietly limiting your options.

If you imagine a younger version of you watching this promotion scene, how do you sense they would feel — left out, unseen, angry, proud, something else? Where in your history can you remember moments of doing the 'right thing' but seeing someone bolder or louder get chosen instead? Following that thread might reveal an older story that this current situation is reactivating.

Consider the moment in the car when you couldn't stop thinking about her behavior. What would you have wanted to say or do if you felt completely free, with no fear of judgment — both in that office and later with your partner? Sometimes the fantasy response (even if it feels extreme or 'unreasonable') contains important clues about your buried needs and the boundaries you wish you could set.