I knew something was up. I’d felt it all day. From the minute I’d walked in the office that morning, I could tell something just wasn’t right. It wasn’t that my boss had been notably standoffish or cold, he just wasn’t acting normal.

The previous day I’d gone to his office to discuss a transaction. He’d foregone any of the common pleasantries. He hadn’t asked what else was going on. He didn’t ask about my weekend. He just cut to the chase and discussed only the topic at hand. He wasn’t a particularly outgoing person, but this was weird even for him.

I speculated the entire day. I was having a good year. My numbers were on plan and there’d been no significant client issues. I couldn’t imagine what the problem might be, but that didn’t stop me from thinking about it. It loomed over me, and with each subsequent interaction that day, the awkwardness between us grew.

Dismissive anger is similar to the proverbial definition of pornography, I can’t tell you what it is, but I know it when I see it. And that day, I saw it in spades. Over my seven years with the company, I’d developed a Spidey sense for when our corporate heartbeat was elevated and my alarm bells were screaming that trouble was in the air.

I went home that night still perplexed. After telling my wife about it, she ran down the same list of possibilities I’d examined all day. There were a number of things that could impact our line of business. There had been whispers of upper management changes for months. There’d also been rumored changes to the Board. Either of these events could have a vast impact on our overall strategy and could undoubtedly create a ripple effect across my group.

My boss’s light was off when I arrived the following morning. His assistant was out as well. I did a cursory walk around the floor and observed that several other executive offices were dark. I sat at my desk and waited for the impending shock wave. I wavered on who to confide in as I longed for an outlet, but was also wary of sounding any alarms.

Around 11:00 AM, my boss’s assistant arrived and she explained what was going on. The previous morning, my boss’s daughter had wrecked her car. She was fine, but the car was banged up. She’d been planning to leave for Birmingham the next day where she would live for the summer while working an internship. Due to the accident, her move had been delayed while she sorted out the situation with her car. This had all fallen into my boss’s lap yesterday. He’d been trying to cope with his personal issues while still managing things at the office.

That was it. That’s why he hadn’t been himself. It had nothing to do with me. It had all been in my head.

Sadly, this wasn’t the first time I’d done this. I’ve made this mistake countless times. In high school, college, and the working world, I’d mistaken what I perceived as someone’s negative, or quiet, or hostile behavior as an offense towards me, when in reality it had nothing to do with me whatsoever. I’d created elaborate narratives for why someone was angry with me or about what I had done to them. I’d plotted a response. I’d anticipate their counter to my response. I’d get buried down a wormhole of hypotheticals without ever realizing these people’s behavior had nothing to do with me. Not a thing.

These were all normal people, just like me. They were living separate lives, just like me. They had their own problems and issues. They had their good days and bad days. I was just a bit player in their world. But here I was, thinking I was the root cause of their emotional states.

These people thought about me about as much as I thought about them, which was on a cordial basis that didn’t penetrate too far below the surface. They didn’t move the needle on my general disposition anymore than I moved the needle on theirs. Yet, I was often too self-absorbed to realize that.

I felt bad for my boss. He had a headache to deal with. Whatever he had planned that week had just been rearranged. Those times are frustrating. I tried to empathize, knowing how stressful his next few days would be.

I also tried to bookmark this moment in my mind. I needed to stop doing this. I needed to save myself the worry and I needed to be more understanding of the people in my life. I needed to remember that it’s not about me, and it rarely ever is.