Bummer, Nora. And I know this is entirely beside the point but that "I encourage us to chat about it" makes me want to smack him.

To Nora's boss I say, "Go encourage yourself."

OMG, so my boss was like, I actually wanted to meet about something else, BUT... "All of that said, it might now be a disservice to both of us to ignore the underlying tone and message of your response. I encourage us to chat about it as well with a positive attitude and goal in mind."

Ha! Honestly, I think it's good that he picked up on your feelings and wants to clear the air. But it's funny that he wanted to meet about something else.

The thing is, I get called out for dumb ass shit often enough that I'm pretty paranoid. So maybe if he stopped calling me out on all these tiny non-perfect things (that are seriously ridiculous), I wouldn't have jumped to conclusions. Which I will likely say in some form or another.

The penalty I paid for not showing stress was to get pushed into high stress situations. I wasn't sure how to explain I was feeling stress, I just didn't think it appropriate to show it like my co-workers did

Yep, this is me too.

Maybe its an efficiency thing. If you're not frantic clearly you could be doing more.

I've had bosses who clearly thought that way. But I took a rather malicious joy during a meeting with a boss like that when she said "You ... are handling all of this really well", and I was able to reply with "That's because I'm on anti-anxiety medication now!" (With the very obvious subtext of look what you drove me to, oh psycho manager.)

Nora, I'm sorry your boss is being a clueless twit.

I encourage us to chat about it as well with a positive attitude and goal in mind.

"My goal is to make this chat as short as is humanly possible."

Oh, Nora, I am so sorry!

I've had both good and bad bosses -- the louder ones got the worst from me. But,the ones that decided they could control everything ... Like the head of reference that decided we shouldn't sit for more than two minuets... Oddly you can't control your employee every working minute.

Which we ending up saying as a group. The attempt to control adults with bachelors and master that were in public service by choice -- made paranoid and resentful employees in stead of good public service.

The thing is, I get called out for dumb ass shit often enough that I'm pretty paranoid. So maybe if he stopped calling me out on all these tiny non-perfect things (that are seriously ridiculous), I wouldn't have jumped to conclusions. Which I will likely say in some form or another.

And which you should say, so maybe he will stop.

Last week, a co-worker and I were working on a really frustrating case, and I was going through and fixing things in the narrative that were wrong, like using "due to" instead of "because of." She asked me why I was doing that, and I said, shortly, "'Due to' is an adjectival phrase, it's just English, it's wrong," not wanting to get into the full explanation. The next day, she pulled me into her office and said that she thought she knew it had been a hectic day, but she thought I'd been a bit mean to her, and I'd hurt her feelings. She was upset after work for a long time before she realized that what I'd said had hurt her. Now I'm a little more aware of my behavior and will try to be better about it.

I'm learning to value honest feedback like that, even if it's a little hard and uncomfortable to deal with. So I hope you and your boss can have a productive conversation.