That was a great article and it is unfortunate that you had to deal with that tone-policing behavior. There is an interesting article on tone-policing in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_policing Also see: https://www.robot-hugs.com/comic/tone-policing/

> Apparently, I was selling myself short; they knew I could do better and should just try harder, and asked if I had tried to google for resources on learning better social skills.

Ugh ‹takes deep calming breathes›, I literally have nightmares about this.