Most people expect work to be stressful at times. Deadlines pile up, feedback stings, and personalities clash. But there is a significant difference between a demanding job and an abusive one. Workplace abuse is more common than many realize, and it can be difficult to identify when you are in the middle of it. If you have been feeling dread on Sunday nights, questioning your own competence, or wondering whether the way you are treated is normal, here are the signs worth paying attention to.

Your accomplishments are constantly minimized or ignored. In a healthy workplace, good work gets recognized — not necessarily with fanfare, but with basic acknowledgment. In an abusive one, your contributions disappear. Credit migrates to supervisors or colleagues. When things go wrong, your name surfaces immediately. When things go right, you become invisible. Over time, this pattern quietly erodes your confidence and keeps you from advocating for raises, promotions, or better opportunities.

You are subjected to public humiliation. Constructive criticism delivered privately is a normal part of professional life. Being berated, mocked, or belittled in front of colleagues, clients, or in group meetings is not. If a manager regularly calls out your mistakes in front of others, speaks to you with contempt, or uses sarcasm and ridicule as management tools, that behavior crosses a line. Many targets of this treatment begin to internalize the shame, assuming they must have done something to deserve it.

The rules seem to apply differently to you. Policies around schedules, deadlines, and workload exist on paper, but you notice they bend easily for certain people and snap tight around you. You are held to expectations that shift without warning. What was acceptable last week is suddenly a problem this week. This inconsistency is not accidental — it is a form of control that keeps you off-balance and makes it difficult to ever feel secure in your position.

You walk on eggshells around certain people. Pay attention to how you feel before entering a meeting with a particular person, or when you see their name appear in your inbox. If your first instinct is anxiety — rehearsing conversations, bracing for explosions, or carefully calibrating your tone — that reaction is telling you something. Chronic unpredictability, explosive anger, and emotional volatility from someone in a position of power are hallmarks of an abusive dynamic, not just a difficult personality.

Your boundaries are routinely dismissed. Requests for time off are denied or penalized. You are contacted outside of work hours and expected to respond immediately. Personal needs, health concerns, and family obligations are treated as inconveniences that get in the way of the company. A workplace that consistently treats employees as resources to be extracted from rather than people to be supported is one that has normalized a harmful imbalance of power.

If this is happening, you might want to consult with a workers comp lawyer. 

Gaslighting happens regularly. You remember a conversation clearly, but your supervisor insists it never happened. You raise a concern and are told you are too sensitive. An incident that upset you is reframed as a joke, or worse, as your fault. Gaslighting in the workplace can be subtle, but its effect is significant — it makes you doubt your own memory, perception, and judgment, which makes you easier to manipulate and less likely to speak up.

Retaliation follows complaints. Healthy organizations have mechanisms for raising concerns without fear. In abusive workplaces, HR exists to protect the company — not you. If you have witnessed or experienced someone being punished, sidelined, or pushed out after raising an issue, you already know the implicit message: stay quiet or pay the price. That threat, even when unspoken, is a form of abuse.

You have changed as a person. Perhaps the most telling sign is not something that happens at your desk but something that happens in the rest of your life. You are more withdrawn. You talk about work constantly or avoid it entirely. You have lost confidence in spaces that have nothing to do with your job. Former passions feel dull. You are tired in ways that sleep does not fix. Abusive workplaces do not stay at work — they follow you home, into your relationships, and into the quietest parts of your day.

If several of these signs feel familiar, trust that recognition. You are not too sensitive, too ambitious, or too difficult. What you may be is undervalued, mistreated, and long overdue for a change. Documenting incidents, confiding in trusted colleagues, consulting an employment attorney, or beginning a quiet job search are all reasonable starting points. The most important thing is to stop wondering whether it is bad enough to take seriously. It is.