Why being the bigger person won’t save you from dysfunction

I saw a post on Threads about how it’s not your job to detox your toxic manager.

It’s not your job.

I wish someone had told me this a few years ago — so I’m telling you now.

I had a toxic manager. Who hasn’t? But this one in particular had some deep-rooted issues, and I gave her so much grace, even though she never asked for grace.

In fact, she once told me, “You’re so kind and politically correct, but I want you to tell me if someone on the team isn’t doing what they’re supposed to be doing.”

She basically wanted me to throw people under the bus. I didn’t. Because I wasn’t going to act out of character. My integrity stayed intact.

Mind you, a year prior, she did say she liked that I challenged her, but now she seemed fine with mediocrity and complacency. Ultimately, she showed me who she was early on, and I thought my kindness was enough to make things less toxic.

I was wrong.

That ended up being the most toxic environment I’ve ever worked in. And I’ve worked in a lot of environments, across multiple industries.

So what made her toxic?

She was manipulative — she took small parts of the truth, barely 5%, to create her own narrative without telling the other 95% of the story. She put her own feelings and needs ahead of the rest of the team. She was deeply, deeply insecure and thought everything was an attack against her personally.

She didn’t know how to set and communicate clear expectations, and instead of saying “I don’t know” when she truly didn’t, she projected her insecurities onto you.

She played the game well, though — I’ll give her that. Because she had senior leadership protecting her, despite the fact that it was clear she lacked basic leadership skills. She presented herself one way in group settings, Dr. Jekyll, but 1:1? It was like she became Mr. Hyde.

She said some of the most asinine things to people behind closed doors, and if called out on it, she would deny it.

And yet... I felt bad for her.

I didn’t take anything she did personally — until towards the end of my time at this company, when it became personal (more on that later).

She liked drama. She liked chaos. And I didn’t. I still don’t.

So I chose to be myself: kind. I guess I was killing her with kindness.

It’s what I needed to do for my own mental health. I thought that maybe my kindness would make her chill out and realize that nothing was that deep.

A former version of me would have responded differently. I would’ve built a wall and become cold.

But that’s actually a lot of effort, and I’ve spent too many hours (and money) in therapy unlearning that response. So I wanted to try something different.

I chose peace. Or at least, I thought I did.

Because even though my choice made the environment palatable enough to work in at the time, I didn’t realize the impact of staying in that environment until years later.

The stress I carried home, the overthinking, the second-guessing, the way I started questioning my own value — all of it didn’t hit me until I was out of that space. And by then, I had to do the work to unlearn that damage, too.

Here’s the hardest truth I had to sit with:

After a few months, I realized I was the only one making an effort to be better. The only one trying to understand the other’s communication style, work style, everything.

I was the only one doing the work. I kept giving her the benefit of the doubt.

But that’s the thing: she was benefiting from my doubts.

And once I saw that clearly, I couldn’t unsee it. I kept saying to myself that she needed to go to therapy — and do the work in between sessions — but the bigger lesson was this:

It’s not your job to fix, heal, or detox a toxic manager.

It’s not your job to give endless grace to someone who refuses to grow.

If you’re in a situation where you’re dealing with a toxic person who is making no effort to better themselves, here’s the truth:

No amount of kindness can change someone who’s committed to their own dysfunction.

But you can choose peace. And sometimes, that starts by choosing boundaries.

You get to decide what you will and won’t allow. And you don’t have to feel guilty for walking away from a space that doesn’t feel safe — no matter how much grace you’ve already given.

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