My attitude provoked his behavior

It took quite a while, with the help of a counselor, before I realized why I had so much trouble at work with my boss.

Whatever I did and however hard I worked, everytime he had some comment, it seemed never good enough and I was everytime scared to make mistakes.

It started to dawn on me that it looked like what had happened in my youth between me and my father, was repeating itself with my boss. I was always tiptoeing to prevent him to go mad and still it happened every now and then, which made me completely go down.

I realized that my attitude in a way provoked his behavior. I was an 'easy victim'. My therapist told me that I 'projected' my father on my boss.

That, and the fact that he once did the exact same funny trick with a colleague I really liked, made that I could take a distance and could see the projection. It sounds almost unbelievable but it is going much better now between us.