If this resonates with you, what follows may help you see something about yourself.
SeekerThere’s a guy on my team, Marcus. Every meeting he’s steering it back to what he did, what he flagged, what he’d have caught. It’s exhausting. And nobody else seems to notice how much of a performance it is.
GuideWhat does it do to you in the moment, when he starts?
SeekerHonestly? I want to leave the room. Or say something cutting. He said “I basically carried that launch” last week and I nearly lost it. You’d have wanted to strangle him too, right?
GuideI wasn’t really in the room with him and you, so I can’t say. But that “nearly lost it,” that’s a lot for a sentence in a meeting.
SeekerHe’s just so shameless. Who talks about themselves like that.
GuideI notice you keep landing on shameless. Like the crime isn’t that he took credit, it’s that he did it out loud.
SeekerYeah, maybe. I mean it’s probably some projection, right, I’ve read enough to know. I see myself in him, whatever. Can we not do the textbook version?
GuideWe can skip the textbook. I’m more interested in the specific thing. When he says “I carried that,” what’s the actual feeling before the disgust kicks in?
Seeker…I don’t know. There’s a flash of something. Fast. Then the irritation.
GuideStay on the flash for a second. Before it turns.
SeekerIt’s like. He got to say it. And I did carry half that launch too and I said nothing, because you don’t, you just do the work and it speaks for itself. Except it doesn’t. Nobody knew what I did.
GuideSo he says the thing you did too, and won’t let yourself say.
SeekerThat’s different. He inflates it. I actually did the work.
GuideMaybe. But you skipped right past that. You did carry half of it and you stayed quiet and it cost you and nobody noticed.
SeekerBecause bragging is gross. My dad had a coworker who never shut up about himself and my dad used to just, the eye roll. I learned early. You let the work speak.
GuideAnd how’s the work been speaking for you lately?
Seeker…Not great. My review was fine. Fine. Meanwhile Marcus is up for the lead role on the next one.
GuideThere’s a lot in that “fine.”
SeekerI’m not gonna become him. I’m not gonna sit in a meeting and narrate my own greatness like some.
GuideI didn’t say become him. I’m just noticing the heat isn’t really about how loud he is. It’s that he wants something you want and he lets himself reach.
SeekerI don’t, I don’t reach for that. Wanting to be seen like that, it feels. Cheap. Needy.
SeekerI don’t know. It just does. It always has.
GuideYou don’t have to answer this now. But somewhere you decided that wanting credit made you the coworker your dad rolled his eyes at. And you’ve been paying for that ever since, in reviews that come back fine.
SeekerThat’s. Yeah. I don’t like that.
GuideWhat don’t you like about it?
SeekerThat it might be true. That the thing I can’t stand watching him do is the thing I actually want to do and won’t let myself. God. That’s worse than him just being annoying.
What actually shiftedThe people who irritate the most sometimes act out a permission the observer never gave themselves. For someone who learned that wanting credit is cheap or needy, another person reaching openly for recognition can sting because it names a buried hunger. The heat may be less about their behavior and more about the wanting that was quietly put away.
If you read back the conversation: notice where the guide quietly became the one who knows — naming things, settling them. That feels normal because it happens so often. It's also where your own sense of direction can go quiet. SelfChatter adds a second voice that just makes those moments visible, so the direction stays yours.