Challenge at work causing mild EF & I work today - help!

[keepfighting]

Poor C. - passive aggressiveness at work can make your job almost impossible to bear; even more so when you're dealing with CPTSD. 

C., please believe me when I say: It's not you, it's her!!!

The EFs start for a reason when you are dealing with her and the reason is that they are trying to protect you from further (psychological) harm.

Last year, my h got a new supervisor at work due to a reorganization. Passive aggressive a$$hole of a man - drove even my very laid back and pleasant h to the brink of insanity within less than a month (many people quit because of this guy, some got a burnout --- he'd left a wreak of havoc in his wake yet no one dared to fire him). So h went on the net looking for strategies how to deal with passive aggressiveness in the workplace and tried different strategies (warning: Though they worked, none were 100% protection against being the target from time to time).

So please, go on the web and look for strategies how to deal with passive agressive behaviour in the workplace! You need to learn how to protect yourself from her attacks - that's much more effective than having to deal with the EFs in the aftermath of each attack.

Here's a link I found but there are many more that might fit your situation better: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/communication-success/201401/how-spot-and-deal-passive-aggressive-people

Passive aggressiveness is a part of many PDs and it's furtile to try and analyze why someone behaves like that. Often, there is no logical reason - it's just part of who they are. But learning strategies how to avoid and/or deal with it effectively can be very beneficial not only in this case.

Best wishes! 

[C.]

Thank you keep fighting!  I will use this article

[C.]

Fortunately the person with this behavior is not my boss, she's a co-worker.  And she continued today.  Flat out ignores my "hi" and smile.  Turns her back and walks away.  And now it's affecting the clients b/c one asked me "why didn't she say hi to you?  is she mad at you?"

Today I decided to go ahead with a prescribed medication to help me avoid the panic and be able to cope.  That helped.  I haven't had to use it in about 1 1/2 years and don't want this to become a necessity to cope w/my job.

And I sent an email to my boss simply saying we need to talk, the "issue" has come up again, it's causing me stress, and I have a "log" related to the issue.  Then I simply wrote dates and times of all of her inappropriate behaviors.  I'm really not willing to work with someone who treats me like this, so I'll talk with my boss on Monday to see what we decide.  He's aware and I think a couple of other people have simply quit b/c of her, without being able to describe why so accurately.  He told me he doesn't want this to be a stressor for me and that he hoped I'd come to him regarding the issue.  I've decided that I'll ask to always for the following:

1.  Have another staff person present when I'm around her at shift changes.  She only misbehaves when other staff are not present.  I want witnesses when I'm around her, both so she won't lie about what I say or do and to simply protect myself from her psychological abuse.  It would only be for about 20-30 minutes per week, but I'm not sure how he'll schedule this given she of course misbehaves when management staff are not scheduled to work and staffing is at a minimum...
2.  I don't want to work with her (we work together for a few hours one day).  I'm ok not working on that day even if it limits my hours.  I'm very certain about this, it's not negotiable since I know she won't change.
3.  This is HER issue.  I've been appropriate.  She is bullying and being inappropriate.  She won't change.

Thanks for listening everyone!  It really helps 

[Beewitchme]

Hi C,
I hope that you got through yesterday alright without too much struggle, and I'm sorry that you're having to deal with someone else's bad behaviour -- wouldn't it be nice if work could just be about doing the job well.

I want to say how impressed I am by your awareness of what's going on with your co-worker and how you've been affected. My own experience is of not conciously noticing the bullying until I was very near my breaking point. So if awareness is Step 1 of protecting yourself, I think you're doing a really good job (and that you can give yourself a break and not force yourself to create perfect documentation, because you really are doing a good-enough job already at this difficult self-protection business).

I worry sometimes too about the trouble I have with the other person's behaviour maybe being my problem because I'm the only person being bothered by it -- you know, my fault for being over-sensitive. Congnitively, I know that's wrong, and that the idea come from early messages from my family of origin. I'm working my way through many repititions of thought-stopping and -substitution to get that idea out of my head.

Here's my substitute thought: I'm not over-sensitive, and it's not my fault that this bothers me; I'm a canary in the coal-mine (or CPTSD sufferer in the dysfunctional workplace). Birds have a lower tolerance for certain air pollutants than humans do, and coal mines can have unpredictable pockets of "bad air," so miners used to bring caged songbirds into the mine with them. So long as the bird was fairly lively, the miners knew they were well within human tolerances, but if the bird keeled over dead, they knew to get out fast before they felt too sick to run. A key point for me to remember, is that the bird isn't faking it, and doesn't need to toughen up -- what the bird needs is fresh air (!!!) and for the person(s) in charge of the cage to be attentive to little signs that will save both the bird and themselves.

I don't know that all of that story is completely true, but I used to work with toxicology data, and i do know that scientists have used birds' heightened sensitivity to poor air quality to point them toward human health risks that they weren't previously aware of. For example, have you ever read the warning on a non-stick pan about not pre-heating that pan without any food or oil in it? If you heat an empty non-stick pan, small amounts of chemicals from the teflon coating will be released into the air from the hottest parts of the pan. (Oil or food in the pan helps to even out the temperature, prevent hot-spots and reduce how much chemical is released to air.) Canaries are part of why we know that happens and why we have a strategy to reduce the human health risk. When non-stick pans were new, a bunch of pet birds died while someone very close by was pre-heating a teflon pan. investigating the birds' deaths led scientists to figure out the problem and prevent mitigate the human health risk.

To put it another way, I/we/the birds are all shifted a little bit to the left on a curve of exposure versus response (aka a dose-response curve), meaning that we have a noticeable reaction at a lower exposure level. The toxicant (or bullying behaviour) is real at all exposure levels, and lots of other people will start to notice adverse effects as exposure continues.

Wow. Obviously I've thought about this a lot, and now to persevere with the thought-stopping.

Good luck at work.
smg

[Beewitchme]

Hi

I am brand new to this forum, and was just taking a stroll through some of the posts.

Thank you.  I really identified with your post.

I am constantly arguing with myself, about whether or not I am 'allowed'  to feel and react the way I do in situations, when others seem oblivious to the 'clear and present danger'.  I am often made to feel paranoid or am told that I am oversensitive or am imagining things.

I find myself trying to justify my feelings and reactions, which are instinctive.  I start trying to explain hyper-vigilance, which invariably leads onto explanations about why I am this way.  Before long, my whole life story has poured out (albeit in a deliberately emotionless way).

This definitely made things worse with my former employers.  Friends and others in social situations will try to understand, but when I hear myself talking or replay conversations, in my head, I just hear my explanations as excuses.

I really loved your explanation.