Dealing With Unfair Treatment at Work Without Letting It Define You
She had grounds for a lawsuit.
She just didn't have the energy to file it.
Sarah had been through two of the hardest years of her life.
Ongoing uncertainty at work. The death of a close friend.
The kind of period you get through rather than live through; giving what you can, which for Sarah was about 80%.
And even that, at times, felt like a stretch.
She'd always taken quiet pride in the fact that her 80% outperformed most people's 100%.
Over her career, she'd been told that several times, so often she'd stopped counting.
Then came the demotion. It wasn't official.
There was no letter, no formal process, no conversation she could point to.
Just a shift — responsibilities quietly redistributed, her name quietly moved down the list.
The kind of thing that's harder to name precisely because nobody will name it for you.
She knew she had grounds for a legal case.
Several of my clients have been in that position. The injustice is real. The evidence is there.
And yet — she didn't have the energy to fight it.
Not after everything else.
That's not weakness.
That's a woman who had already carried more than her share.
What Came up in our Discussion
Sarah came in angry. Rightfully so. Decades of loyalty.
A strong external reputation. A record that spoke for itself.
And this is what they'd given her in return.
We didn't rush past the anger. It belonged there.
But as we talked, something else started to surface — a question underneath the fury.
What did she actually want now?
Not what she deserved. Not what would be fair.
What did she want, for herself, at this point in her life?
That's a different question. And it opened something up.
The Word that Changed the Session
At some point, she stopped using the word 'demotion'.
She started using the word 'reset.'
It wasn't denial.
She knew exactly what had happened and who was responsible.
But reset gave her something demotion couldn't — room to think.
Room to look around.
Room to ask what she actually wanted the next chapter to look like, rather than spending it fighting for the chapter she'd just been pushed out of.
And that's when she laughed with a memory.
Her close friend — who had died the year before — had believed in Sarah with a particular kind of certainty.
She always saw the best version of Sarah, even when Sarah couldn't see it herself.
Anna had told her, more than once: "You are far too hard on yourself."
Sarah laughed saying it. And cried at the same time.
Anna had been right. She had been hard on herself, for decades even.
Through grief, through uncertainty, through a demotion that wasn't even given the dignity of being called one.
The reset wasn't just about work.
It was permission, finally, to stop.
What Sarah Started to See
Once the word reset was in the room, the upsides began to appear.
Her parents were aging. She'd been meaning to spend more time with them for years. Her husband had just retired.
Plans they'd been deferring. Conversations they'd been putting off.
A life that had been quietly waiting in the wings while she gave everything to work.
None of that required a fight. None of it required winning anything back.
It just required her to stop treating this moment as purely a loss.
What I Notice in Sessions Like This
The anger is never the problem.
Anger is just information.
It tells you something was genuinely wrong, that your loyalty was real, that you deserved better.
The question is what you do with it.
Whether you let it become the whole story.
Whether you spend the next two years in a fight that costs you everything it was meant to win back.
Sarah's friend, Anna, had seen her clearly.
Saw the version of her that existed before decades of overwork and self-criticism.
That version had a life waiting for her.
The reset gave her back the question her friend had always been asking: what do you actually want?
If This Sounds Familiar
Unfair treatment at work is disorienting in a particular way.
The anger is legitimate. The exhaustion is real.
And often, you are too depleted to battle through a legitimate fight.
Remember, that moment when you know you could escalate and simply don't have the appetite is not failure.
It is often the beginning of a more honest reckoning with what you actually want next.
Sarah left our session lighter and more optimistic than she arrived.
Not with quick answers.
But with headspace and different questions to sit with, which we're now making progress on.
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Dr. Suzanne Doyle-Morris is an ICF Master Certified Coach with a PhD from Cambridge.
She has spent over 20 years coaching senior women in STEM at Director, VP, and C-suite level.
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I'm Dr Suzanne Doyle‑Morris and I support professional women working in STEM.
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The Women in Tech Promotion Playbook
Your roadmap to advancement with balance
The Women in Tech Promotion Playbook is a practical, evidence-based guide designed for ambitious women in STEM who want to advance their careers without burning out. Drawing on over 25 years of coaching and research, I outline five strategic steps that help women move from being overworked and under recognised to confident, visible leaders.
