When someone keeps chipping away at your confidence, the instinct is to hit back.

Another response quietly protects your sanity.

Most of us try to surround ourselves with people who recognize our value and help us grow. Reality often looks very different, especially at work, where ambition, insecurity, and politics collide.

When everyday comments turn into a pattern

A stray cutting remark can happen to anyone. People get stressed, clumsy with words, or distracted by their own problems. One bad sentence does not define a person. A pattern does.

Psychologists talk about “belittling behavior” when someone repeatedly undermines your reputation, your relationships, or your chances of success. It is less visible than open bullying, but the drip effect can be just as damaging.

Belittling is a strategy: over time it chips away at your capacity to build solid relationships, perform at work, and feel respected.

In a professional setting, this often stays under the radar. There are no raised voices, no direct insults. Instead, the attacks arrive wrapped in jokes, “advice,” or fake concern. Behind the scenes, though, your image slowly erodes.

How to spot someone who keeps putting you down

Before choosing how to react, you need to see clearly who you are dealing with. That means separating ordinary awkwardness from a consistent pattern of undermining.

Red flags in their behavior

• They regularly belittle other people, not just you.
• You feel tense or defensive whenever they are around.
• Their feedback comes as harsh judgments, rarely as concrete help.
• Their “compliments” contain a sting or a comparison that makes you feel smaller.
• They present themselves as your ally while quietly steering you away from your own goals.
• They downplay your successes or reframe them as luck or someone else’s work.

Over time, your body often reacts before your mind catches up: a knot in your stomach before a meeting, trouble sleeping after an interaction. That emotional charge is a clue that something in the relationship is off.

Why some people need to drag you down

Not everyone who puts others down is a cartoon villain. Some feel threatened by your competence, youth, or experience. Others grew up in competitive families where mocking and criticism passed for humor. Some have learned that making people feel smaller gives them temporary power.

This does not excuse their behavior, but it helps you avoid the trap of thinking, “What’s wrong with me?” and shift the question to, “What is driving them?” That change of perspective matters for your mental health.

What a new study reveals about the “best response”

A research team at Instituto Universitário de Lisboa recently focused on one key question: when someone keeps putting you down at work, which reaction protects you most?

They followed 229 employees (about 36 years old on average) and asked them several times over a month about three things: how often they felt belittled, whether they forgave the offender, and how they felt both emotionally and physically.

Measured factor	What it covered
Negative emotions	Fear, nervousness, irritability, hostility, frustration, distress
Physical symptoms	Sleep problems, headaches, back pain, fatigue, lack of energy
Response style	Readiness to forgive vs. desire for revenge

The pattern they found was striking. Workers who felt strongly belittled reported more negative emotions. Those emotions then matched a rise in physical complaints, from insomnia to unexplained pain and exhaustion.

Among all the reactions studied, only one clearly reduced the emotional and physical fallout of being put down: choosing to forgive.

Forgiveness, in this context, did not mean pretending nothing happened or staying silent. It meant letting go of the urge to hurt back and releasing the mental replay of the offense. According to the researchers, that shift helps stop the cycle of ruminating thoughts and corrosive emotions.

Why revenge fails to make you feel better

Many people dream of the perfect comeback, the public humiliation, the moment when the offender “gets what they deserve.” In pop culture, revenge often looks cleansing. The Lisbon study suggests something different.

Participants who leaned toward revenge did not see their distress go down. Their negative feelings either stayed the same or intensified. The body followed: more stress, more physical symptoms.

Revenge keeps you mentally tied to the person who hurt you. Forgiveness cuts the rope.

From a psychological point of view, revenge prolongs contact. You keep thinking about them, planning your move, and revisiting every detail. Your nervous system stays on high alert. Forgiveness does not erase the past, but it stops feeding that loop.

What forgiveness actually looks like at work

Forgiveness at work is not the same as blind acceptance. You can forgive internally and still set clear boundaries in the real world.

A practical three-step response

• Recognize the pattern. Name to yourself what is happening: “This person regularly undermines me.” It helps separate their behavior from your worth.
• Decide what you stop carrying. Drop the fantasy of revenge and the need for their approval. Choose not to let their words define your self-image.
• Adjust your behavior. Limit private contact, keep a written record when needed, and redirect your energy to allies and to your work.

Forgiveness becomes a strategy for mental hygiene. You clean your inner space so their behavior sits in the “data” category, not in the “identity” category.

Setting boundaries without escalating the conflict

Sometimes a calm sentence changes the dynamic. Short, neutral phrases work better than emotional speeches. For example:

• “That kind of comment is not helpful for the work we need to do.”
• “I prefer feedback that focuses on the task, not on me as a person.”
• “We seem to have different perspectives. Let’s stick to the facts.”

These responses signal that you see the game and will not play it. You do not match aggression with aggression, which often protects you in environments where power imbalances exist.

Protecting your mental and physical health

The study links belittling not only to low mood but also to physical symptoms. That connection matters for anyone who thinks, “It’s just words.” The body does not always agree.

Chronic exposure to contempt or subtle humiliation can exhaust your stress system. Muscles stay tense, sleep becomes shallow, digestion suffers. People sometimes start to doubt themselves simply because they feel drained.

When you forgive, you are not giving anything to the person who hurt you. You are reducing the rent they charge in your head and in your body.

Alongside forgiveness, simple habits help reset your system: short breaks after difficult meetings, breathing exercises, a quick walk outside, and conversations with colleagues who clearly see your value.

When forgiveness needs backup

Forgiveness works best when combined with structural action. If the belittling crosses into harassment, you may need support from HR, a union representative, or an external advisor. Document incidents: dates, words used, witnesses. Emotional clarity and written notes make your case stronger.

In some situations, the healthiest response may be to forgive internally and work toward leaving a toxic environment. Forgiveness then becomes a way to leave without carrying long-term bitterness, rather than a reason to stay and absorb more damage.

Turning the experience into something useful

Being repeatedly put down often reshapes how you support others. Many people who have been through this become more attentive managers, mentors, or colleagues. They notice the quiet sigh in a meeting, the colleague who stops speaking up, the joke that lands badly.

One concrete exercise helps shift you from victim of the pattern to active participant: write down three situations where you felt undermined and, next to each one, one thing you would do differently now. It can be a sentence you would say, a person you would loop in, or a limit you would set.

This kind of reflection does not erase the harm, but it transforms the experience into knowledge. You become someone who can name belittling when it appears, protect yourself faster, and sometimes quietly change the culture around you.