As any former employee of Twitter can attest, company culture comes from the top down and when a manger (or in the case of Twitter, new CEO Elon Musk) deploys an autocratic style that leaves little room for professional growth, it can chip away at your confidence and belief in your own ability.

Many of us have been subjected to a bad boss at some point in our career journey, and for some people leaving a toxic workplace environment isn’t enough. In order to truly rid yourself of bad boss hangups, you have to rebuild your confidence from the ground up.

Replenish your reserves

Whatever the reasons, walking away from a job that you loved or thought you would be good at is difficult and can leave you feeling emotionally depleted. Avoid burnout by taking some time to focus on tasks or activities that you enjoy and leave you feeling calm, nurtured and de-stressed. This could be as simple as doing daily yoga, meditating or writing in an affirmation journal, to allowing yourself to binge on your favourite Netflix show for an entire weekend.

Make peace

While your friends, family and former colleagues might afford you a grace period for processing your experience, their patience will start to wear thin if you keep going on and on (and on) about how bad your boss was. But more importantly the longer you dwell on what went wrong the less chance you have of moving on and moving forward. Instead of focussing on the negative, make peace with the fact that bad bosses exist and nothing you could have done would have changed the outcome––so it’s time to move on to bigger and better things.

Set new goals

Establish personal goals that will help you rebuild your confidence. From learning how to respond to constructive criticism to developing your public speaking proficiency, brushing up on soft skills will bolster your ability to adapt to a new working environment and help you future-proof your career in your next role and beyond.