Ask HN: Reliving an old memory of traumatic meeting. How to overcome?
I am a software developer with 10 yrs of experience who has been on a break for the last 1 year.

I was a part of a retrospective meeting almost a year ago after which I had quit my job. I was anyways looking to take a break as I felt burnt out and was looking to plan for family and this meeting gave me that push.

Whenever now I think about looking back for interviews to resume work, I find myself constantly anxious thinking about that meeting.

Background of that meeting : There was a complex project which was 80% completed by another developer and later given to me before she left the team. There was no proper design done for the project which the manager knew and the project was transitioned 1 day before the developer left which was also very unprofessional (Also the manager joined 4 month ago in team but acted like he "know it all" instead of asking). Anyways , I found many issues with the work but did not complain and finished it off in time as there were critical deadlines. Later we found 2 bugs in the work and then this retrospective meeting was called. I was shocked to experience that the whole meeting was more of taunting and blaming on how I didn't perform well and missed 'basic' issues. While most comments were indirect without taking my name, at the end of the meeting, the manager took my name and told me to be conscious from now on. I was personally also burnt out due to many situations at home and silently took the blame. This made me feel deep shame and embarrassment in front of the team and also broke my trust as my manager did not take accountability of the misses that happened while designing of project(which did not happen at all) initially and how the transition was done a day before abruptly and blamed it all on me.

Later after speaking to a friend in another team, I got to know that the issues that got missed were due to recent changes in automation systems and most team members were not aware of it. This brought rage to me as I felt really mistreated by my own team members as some members also sided the manager in that meeting while others were silent. Also, being in a burnout state mentally , I feel that I could not defend myself properly and silently accepted it all.

Problem: My fear now is that what if these situations arrive again as life throws hard situations at me.. What if I miss something or worse, people put blame on me for things I am not responsible for ? This is blocking me from looking for jobs again now. Everytime someone do not take accountability of their behaviour and blames the other, I feel deep distrust and pain. Also if I accept the blame I feel deep shame. How to overcome this experience?

Edit : I agree with that I need to work on the skill of speaking up, however I feel I didn't do it here as I was burntout with some stressful situations at home like death of a family member and something like that life can throw again where I might not be very good at defending myself at work situations and succumb to people's insensitive behaviour around me. I believe I felt shame due the to insensitive comments in meeting like 'this is so basic' , 'if I was in this place I would have felt really bad about my work quality ' etc. I kind of internalised the shame thrown towards me.