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BreakForTheLight
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Default May 04, 2018 at 05:48 AM
  #1
I have a coworker that I got along with very well. Although she has said that she doesn't want to form close friendships/get too attached to people in this city, we hung out a couple of times outside of work.

Until three weeks ago, when I made a comment she apparantly didn't like. For some reason that made her snap - she yelled at me then and has given me the silent treatment ever since. The first couple of days she mostly ignored the other people from our team as well, but she's now talking to everyone except me.

I feel rejected and it hurts. Right after it happened, I considered sending her an apology (even though she was the one who snapped at me) but I was both too angry with her for her childish behaviour, and too scared of rejection to try to make things right. And she just kept on pretending I don't even exist.

At first I tried to act normal, but I've noticed I'm also completely ignoring her now. Obviously that's not making things any better and I feel like a ***** for doing it. But it's not only my responsibilty to try to fix things.
And by now I've gotten to the point where I really dislike her. I realize that might just be my very black/white thinking. I know she might be acting this way because she's hurt by what I said. I still think it is unacceptable behaviour. When I look at her, I see a very ugly person. I've seen another side of her that I had never expected, and I think she's a hypocrite. This is not someone I want to be friends with. But it makes me sad, because I am lonely. And although I try to remind myself that she's the one with the problem, sometimes it's difficult to not blame myself.

I have no interest in making things better anymore. At the same time, we still have to work together. I hate sitting directly opposite the ice queen 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.
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Default May 04, 2018 at 08:05 AM
  #2
Yeah, you don't need that in your life!
Unstable people are not good for your health, Break.

I think you may need to implement some kind of distraction to change the focus of your thoughts.

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Diagnosed: AvPD.

It’s never alright. It comes and it goes.
It’s always around, even when it don’t show.
They say it gets better. well I guess that it might.
But even when it’s better, it’s never alright.
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Default May 06, 2018 at 02:48 AM
  #3
You don’t need a “friend” like that in your life.

Let me know if you would like any assistance from me

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Default May 06, 2018 at 04:44 AM
  #4
Thanks, both of you! You're right, I don't need people like this.... But sadly people like this are the only people I seem to meet :/

Luckily I've got the next two weeks off work maybe things will have stabilized a bit when I get back.
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Default May 22, 2018 at 03:44 AM
  #5
Today is my first day back at work after my holiday.

I got less than four hours of sleep last night, I was so nervous I spent most of the night tossing and turning.
When I got to the office, I read our group chat from the past two weeks and things looked fairly normal again. But when my coworker arrived this morning, she was still the ice queen. Haven't been able to talk to any other coworkers yet to check if I'm right but it really seems like I am the one causing her attitude. And I know this person is toxic but it still hurts. I literally feel sick right now. Maybe I should make the first move to at least get back to normal, even if we won't get back to how it used to be, but I don't feel capable of breaking this ice wall :/

I wanted to, this morning. I was determined to just act normal and greet her in a friendly way. But then she came in and I immediately got a bad vibe from her and I couldn't do it. (And no, I wasn't imagining it. She barely greeted my other coworkers as well.)

Last edited by BreakForTheLight; May 22, 2018 at 06:36 AM..
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Default Jul 04, 2018 at 07:11 PM
  #6
What was it you said that made her snap?

Sorry to hear that you lost someone as a potential friend or a case of you being better off without her? From what it sounds, she doesn't seem much like a friendly person.
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Default Jul 04, 2018 at 07:50 PM
  #7
Now that there has been some time, I wonder why you think this had anything at all to do with you. Clearly this person had something going on in her life because she was on edge with everyone. If it was something you caused, she would only act that way toward you.
I get told way too often that I feel like I'm the cause of other people's behavior when it has nothing to do with me, I just have bad timing to interact with them when they have their own thing going on.
Yes, I understand how callous I sound, how I don't understand how deep it goes. Wrong. I get how insidious the thoughts are, and how impossible it is to fight them.
The test is simple - what did you do to cause the rift?
Did you actively go after her? Guess what - read old posts on this forum - that's not even enough to push people away. Did you say something that offended her politics? Well that's about her. Everyone has the right to express their own opinions, and we all can agree to disagree.
Look at the test again - what did you do that was so bad to deserve her treatment?
I know you want to take the blame for everything. When it doesn't make sense, when you can't stop thinking about it, that's because you're not to blame. Which means the universe is broken because that's impossible, I know.
I can't just snap my fingers and think "they've got something going on in their life that I don't know about" and let it go. I ruminate and find a way to blame myself and when I can't find a way to blame myself decide it's proof that I'm such an awful person I drive people away without even doing anything. My superpower, I should join the X-Men.
But when my experience is 100%, and what I've been told is 100%, that I truly didn't do anything, and when I finally hear what was going on after the fact was, yeah, there was something happening that bad nothing to do with me, and when I do it to other people (and I do) 100% of the time it had nothing to do with them, I can use that to argue against the gut feeling that I somehow drove the other person away. It's not a perfect system, but it takes the edge off.
I also highly recommend the book The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. He describes what I'm talking about in a much better and clearer way. Also it's another example to use to counteract the feeling of "I don't know what I did, but I must have done something, and it must have been awful, unforgivable."
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BreakForTheLight
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Default Jul 07, 2018 at 04:59 AM
  #8
@Glitterwolf: I said she wasn't/couldn't be responsible for everything (at work). And yes, I do think it's a case of being better of without her.

@hgpd: Her response was very obviously aimed at me. It may have been HER issues causing her to behave this way, but she was intentionally hurting ME. Yes, she was on edge with other people as well, but none of them got the hate directed towards them that I did. I guess I was more of an easy target?
I don't blame myself anymore. The only thing I could have done differently was asking her sooner what was wrong - the longer I didn't, the more tense the situation became. But I know it was not my responsibilty. If I had said something that upset her, she should have talked to me.

But I think my reasoning for blaming myself was: I am the one that doesn't have any friends, people always abondon me, so it must be something wrong with me.
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