You might be a fairly 'protected' person. This is one of the ways unscrupulous managers try to get you to do things that are detrimental to you yet beneficial to themselves/the company - to get you into a state of self-doubt and misery so that you'll make the decision yourself.

One way to get around this is recording everything you do and feel on a daily basis. Otherwise it's one claim against the other.

Historically, it's similar to the way women try to control men since they're not as physically competitive - if you've seen chinese dramas featuring an emperor and his wives it always boils down the cliche of 'oh but it's for you, the emperor's sake' or something like that.