When you are passed over: how to live through a sense of injustice without growing bitter

The news arrived on Monday at nine, in an all-staff email: “We are pleased to announce that the project will be led by…” The name was not yours. At the ten o’clock meeting you clapped along with everyone else. You congratulated her, because that is what one does, and you even smiled. Then you went to your car, shut the door and sat there for ten minutes without starting the engine.

When you are passed over (for a promotion, for a project, for a pay rise, for who gets to go to the conference), it is not only the outcome that hurts. What hurts is the sense that something unfair has happened. That you worked more, stayed later, sorted out what nobody else wanted to touch, and that nobody saw it. And then comes the second part: anger you are not allowed to show, because you would be a “bad sport”, and thoughts that keep circling at night.

In this post I will write about why unfairness at work is so painful, why a workplace is so much like a family in this respect, what you can do with the anger, and how to keep a single injustice from slowly growing into a bitterness that takes more from you than the decision itself ever did.

Why unfairness hurts differently from disappointment

Disappointment and a sense of injustice are alike, but they are not the same. You are disappointed when you do not get what you wanted. You feel injustice when you do not get what you believe was your due, and when you sense that the decision was not made fairly.

Psychologists who study fairness in organisations have shown that people judge not only the outcome but also the path that led to it. One of the best-known studies in the field is Jerald Greenberg’s from 1990. In two factories, employees’ pay was cut by 15 per cent for several weeks. In one, managers explained the cut thoroughly and respectfully; in the other, it was announced briefly and without explanation. In the plant where no explanation was given, there was noticeably more theft during that period. The outcome was the same; the way people responded was very different.

This is an important insight for you too. When you are passed over, it often seems that what hurts is simply not getting the post. In fact much of the pain often lies in how it happened: that you did not know a decision was being made, that nobody explained it to you, that you found out from an all-staff email. In a 1996 review of research, Joel Brockner and Batia Wiesenfeld showed that people accept a bad outcome far more easily when the process was fair, and that it is the combination of a bad outcome and an unfair process that angers people most.

The four faces of fairness

In 2001 Jason Colquitt published a study showing that people judge fairness at work in at least four different ways. The distinction is useful because it helps you work out more precisely what it is that actually hurts.

You will come back to these four in the exercise below. But it is worth knowing now: it often turns out that what wounded a person was less the outcome than the silence around it.

The triangle you find yourself in

In relational family therapy, which I am training in, we see the family as a system of relationships, and a workplace is similar in many ways. There, too, you find roles, alliances and triangles. When you are passed over, you almost always end up in one of them: you, the manager who made the decision, and the colleague who got the post.

A triangle is dangerous because it pulls feelings in the wrong direction. Anger that belongs to the decision and to the person who made it is often redirected at the colleague who did nothing more than be chosen. Because it is easier to be cool with her than to tell your boss you are hurt. In the field this is called triangulation: tension between two people moves onto a third, who has little to do with it.

A triangle also tends to bring up a feeling people are reluctant to talk about: envy. Envy is not a sign of bad character; it is the painful awareness that someone else has what you want. There is more about it in Envy at work: the emotion nobody admits to out loud. I would add just this: envy and a sense of injustice often intertwine, but it helps to tell them apart. A decision can be fair and you can still be envious. And a decision can be unfair while your colleague has done nothing wrong.

Anger is a message, not a mistake

Most people who have been passed over first struggle with anger: not with what it is about, but with the fact that they feel it at all. “I shouldn’t be this angry.” “It’s childish.” “It’s not the end of the world.”

Yet at a moment like this, anger has a job to do. It is the feeling that is triggered when a boundary is crossed or fairness is threatened. It tells you that something matters to you: recognition, honesty, the sense that your work counts. You will find a short explanation in the knowledge base under anger, and more in Anger is not the problem: how it turns from helplessness into energy for change.

The problem is not the anger itself but where it goes. At work, anger is rarely allowed to show directly; why that is so is the subject of Anger at work: the one emotion you’re not allowed to show. So it stays inside and looks for other routes: into cynicism in meetings, into reduced effort, into quietly proving that “he’ll see what he lost”. Or it turns inwards, into self-doubt: “Maybe I really am not good enough.”

When anger turns into bitterness

Most people work through an injustice after a few weeks or months. They do not forget it, but it no longer steers them. With some, though, something else happens: the injustice stays at the centre of their inner world. Every meeting reminds them of it. Every bit of praise their colleague receives is a fresh wound. At home they talk about it every evening.

The German psychiatrist Michael Linden described this state as embitterment: a lasting mixture of anger, humiliation, helplessness and the sense that you have suffered an injustice nobody will put right. Linden noticed that it is often triggered by events at work: dismissal, being passed over, an unfair appraisal. In 2003 he proposed that its most severe form be treated as a distinct disorder. That proposal is still debated in the field, and no such diagnosis exists in the official diagnostic manuals. The description itself is useful, though, because it helps you recognise when understandable anger has turned into something that is eating away at you.

A few signs worth watching for:

• your thoughts keep returning to the same event, even when you would like to think about something else; this is called rumination;
• when you remember the event, you feel the humiliation as strongly as on the first day;
• work you used to love has lost its meaning; all that is left is the sense that “it isn’t worth it anyway”;
• you think about revenge, or about them finally realising what they did;
• you have recognised yourself in this for several months and it is not easing.

The last point often overlaps with cynicism, which is one of the signs of burnout. If you are interested in that connection, read Cynicism as a sign: when you no longer care and it isn’t your character.

The conversation most people never have

One of the most powerful steps after being passed over is also one of the rarest: a conversation with your manager. Not to change the decision, but to understand what happened. People avoid it because they are afraid of looking resentful, or afraid of the answer. It might go like this (a composite, not a real person):

“I’d like to understand how the decision on the project was made. I’m not asking in order to change it.”
“Hm. We were looking for someone with more experience with the client.”
“I understand that. What bothers me most is that I didn’t know a decision was being made. I would have liked to apply.”
“You’re right. I should have told you.”
“What would I need to be a serious candidate next time?”

The conversation did not change the outcome. But it changed two things: he learned that the criterion was not his worth but a specific kind of experience, and he received an acknowledgement that the process had not been right. For many people this is exactly what softens the anger: not satisfaction, but the fact that the injustice was heard.

Of course, not every manager is like that. Sometimes a question like this is met with evasion, mockery or cold silence. That too is information: about the kind of system you work in and how much room there is in it for you.

Exercise: from injustice to a decision

This exercise is meant for the first weeks after being passed over, while your thoughts are still circling. You need paper and half an hour.

1. Write down what happened, as facts. No adjectives and no interpretations. “Maja got the post. I found out from an email on Monday.”
2. For each of the four kinds of fairness, write whether it was violated. Outcome, process, respect, explanation. Mark the one that hurts most.
3. Write down what your anger tells you matters to you. Not “I’m angry with him”, but “it matters to me to be seen” or “it matters to me that the rules are the same for everyone”.
4. Separate what is in your hands from what is not. You cannot change the decision. But you can ask for an explanation, say that you would have liked to apply, look for another post, or decide to stay and invest less.
5. Choose one step for this week. Not a big decision, one action. Perhaps a conversation with your manager, perhaps a conversation with a friend, perhaps simply no longer apologising to yourself for being angry.

It may also help to read Self-compassion instead of self-criticism: what Kristin Neff’s research shows. After an injustice, people tend to punish themselves too, as if being punished by others were not enough.

Where to turn when it is not just a feeling

Most instances of being passed over are not unlawful, only painful. Sometimes, though, there is something behind the decision that goes beyond poor management: you were passed over because you were pregnant, because you are older, because of your sex, ethnicity or other personal circumstances. Then it is no longer only a psychological question.

I do not give legal advice, but I can tell you where people in Slovenia often turn: to their trade union if they are a member, to a lawyer who works in employment law, and, where discrimination is suspected, to the Advocate of the Principle of Equality (Zagovornik načela enakosti). Breaches of employment regulations are dealt with by the Labour Inspectorate of the Republic of Slovenia. They will tell you what makes sense in your case; my task is to help you carry what remains once the legal questions have been answered.

And if, after an injustice, you are left with thoughts that nothing makes sense any more, or with a dark helplessness that does not lift, talk to your GP. In acute distress, the Klic v duševni stiski helpline in Slovenia is available at night on 01 520 99 00 (7 pm to 7 am), and the Samaritans helpline in Slovenia (Zaupni telefon Samarijan) around the clock on 116 123.

When it is not an injustice

This post would be unfair if I did not tell the other side too. The sense of injustice is real, but it is not always accurate.

We do not see our own work the way others do. Each of us knows our own effort better than other people’s. The hours you put in are visible to you; the hours your colleague put in often are not. That is why most people feel they have put in more than they got back, and that cannot be true for everyone.

The criterion may have been different from what you thought. You may have been measuring by reliability and hours worked, while management was measuring by experience with clients, by how someone presents, or by what the new post will demand. That is not necessarily unfair, but it is unfair if nobody told you.

Sometimes the answer lies with you. If being passed over keeps happening, it is worth asking not only “who is doing this to me” but also “what do others not see in me, because I don’t show it”. This is not a question of blame. It is a question that gives you back some power.

In 1980 the psychologist Melvin Lerner described how most people believe, deep down, in a just world: that good people get good things. When that belief cracks, it is not only the outcome that hurts but the loss of a picture of how the world works. Working through an injustice also means accepting that the world is not always fair, and still not giving up on working honestly.

What your own story says about this

Unfairness at work rarely lands on an empty spot. If at home you were always the one who came second (behind a brother who did better at school, behind a sister who was more popular), being passed over at work hits exactly that place. It is not only today’s you that responds, but also the child who waited to be noticed. Christian Gostečnik, the founder of relational family therapy, describes how the emotional atmospheres we knew at home are unconsciously repeated in new relationships, and a workplace is one of those relationships. There is more about this in “Why can’t you be like your sister?” Sibling comparison and how you see yourself.

This does not mean today’s injustice is not real. It means the pain can be greater than the event itself justifies, and that part of it is old. Once you see this, you can separate the two: respond to today’s injustice as an adult, and look at the old wound separately, perhaps in therapy, where there is enough room for it. What I describe in the knowledge base under resentment can help here too, because resentment is often not aimed only at the person who hurt us today. I also work with English-speaking clients in Ljubljana.

What to remember

• When you are passed over, what often hurts more than the outcome is the process: the silence, the missing explanation, the way you found out.
• Fairness has at least four faces: outcome, process, respect and explanation. Knowing which was violated helps.
• Anger is a message that something matters to you. The trouble starts only when it is left without words or direction.
• If, months later, the injustice still steers your thoughts, it may be embitterment, and it makes sense to seek help for it.
• A sense of injustice is real but not always accurate; an old wound is often woven into it too.