Territorial Co- Worker?

alexandra wrote: I'm not sure how to deal with this correctly without coming across like a jerk.

When I was in the military there was a common saying, "Mission First".

It has since been softened up to say, "Mission First, People Always". In a western world that has become hyper sensitive to any criticism it is easier than ever to lose sight of the mission. Instead, we now waste inordinate amounts of time and energy on ensuring feelings are not hurt at expense of the mission.

What I recommend is you focus on your mission. When where she sits, how she uses her time, and what she says to others doesn't impact your mission, you leave it alone. Drive on. Note, I said your mission. I don't know what your mission is where you work.

For instance, you say she monopolizes the computer. How does that impact your mission? If it is a problem, tell her very directly that she will be giving up the computer when you need it. If this creates conflict, so be it. You don't go to work to make friends, you go to work to get a job done. If she thinks you are a jerk, but you get the job done, that is life. If she thinks you are a jerk and you still don't get the job done, you are failing your mission and failing the mission is unacceptable.

Bottom line, focus on you and your mission. Be a leader, not a friend. Don't address anything that is not impacting your mission. Don't fear conflict. This coworker will either respect you or they will dislike you, but either way you should be fine with the fact you are on mission.

Other advice you may hear is to use honey, to be extra friendly or invite her for a conversation. All that does is draw out the conflict and end in back and forth office politics and gossip. Stay away from these indirect strategies that just take you off mission. Be professional, be direct, be a leader.

Hey Richard,

Thanks for your reply! I agree with what you said. I tried that yesterday at work.. just focusing on my work and getting what I needed done- some small chit chatting, but for the most part just plowing through work. I work with people in the community who have brain injuries and there are times that we all need to use the computer for example, to send off or check emails from partner agencies about a client, work on internal projects for our program etc. We have this habit where we ask each other if it's ok for us to jump on the computer just because we are aware of the workload we all have and the limited time we can spend on the computer. As you've suggested though, I need to be more assertive when I need to use it (I don't go on there often or stay very long on there- I do my own research often on my phone or when I bring my personal laptop in to work on a project. It's the times when I do go on the office computer, I get hovered around. And it's annoying. in one situation I should have instead asked her if something was wrong, but I didn't because I was just angry that I need to get something done for a deadline and it was the first time I used the computer in awhile (after establishing the computer wasn't in use) and she was like a bee hovering and looking over my shoulder while I was there. When I completed my work, she jumped on the computer and put all her stuff there.. despite not using the computer for over an hour after that point. And that's what infuriated me, but being a coward about it, I didn't confront the behaviour. And that is what makes me annoyed more than anything else.

The ignoring how she talks to others is a hard one for me. I don't like sitting around while someone is effectively bullying another person and kicking down their self esteem. She does this often and it's painful to watch this person defend their corner and give an explanation to the reasoning behind her statement or actions. She gives us very valuable information that we didn't know before and it gives us a better insight or information to better serve our clients. For example, a lot of our clients use a public transportation program that is adapted specifically for people with disabilities. The company is discussing cutting off clients around the city from using the service for personal trips after 3pm due to it being rush hour and their short staffed. Our new co worker informed us of a program which is part of this service which allows these clients to use a taxi service in these instances and pay the same rate they would pay for the program. She also informed us about a carer pass which would allow us to travel on transit for free with our client for the purposes of training them how to use the public transit system or accompanying them to appointments (which we do often).

None of us knew this and for the rest of us, it was amazing news because we could explore other solutions to our clients and make life that much easier for them and even ourselves. This co worker spent the time saying how she's never heard of it and her clients have never mentioned any of these programs, surely the transit system would have informed the clients when they started the service about this- effectively saying the information shared was bogus. This new staff has 20 years of experience in this field and has worked as a top manager for a very long time.. she has a lot of information that has been music to our ears because it gives us so many avenues to help make our clients lives better and happier, but each time she brings up an idea or asks us if she can bring in a resource, she gets shut down by this co worker. This is the part that really annoys me. She's done that to each of us on many occasions or will boss us around and a lot of the time we are standing up for ourselves now, but it just feels like a drag.

We do a lot of events for our clients and that requires team work. It all becomes this competition for her instead of working like a team and when something is done, she one ups everything. Because we are close knit team, we chat to each other about various things, ask each other how they are, how was their weekend etc and there has been only one time in the last year that she's asked anyone how they are (especially when they've seen a co worker break down or come back from sick leave or a holiday). She wants to be the center of attention at all times. She just missed getting into a car accident with a co worker because in her aggression of wanting to establish top dog, she swung out of the car park- knowing her co worker already reversed from his- narrowly missing his car (and only as he said later because he knew she was going to do something like that) on the mission to beat him to the office.

Anyway sorry this is so long again, I hope this makes sense, I know it's all over the map here. I basically just find it very draining and when petty changes need to be made or even big ones, it feels like fighting a steel wall instead of collaborating on solutions. She is totally opposed to any change, and demoralizes others and while I do spend most of my time focusing on my work, there are often times I just end up walking out or ignoring her because I just want to confront her and it makes me very anxious to go down that road.

alexandra wrote:...I just want to confront her and it makes me very anxious to go down that road.

This is what it all boils down to...

Are you a leader or a follower? You don't have to have formal authority to be a leader. As I said in my last post, be professional, be direct, be a leader.

A leader must be willing to fight, a leader must be okay with conflict, a leader must be okay with taking charge. Obviously in an ideal team environment everyone gets along and it is better to be a leader that can bring people together, but always keep in mind mission first. A key is that a leader doesn't want to fight, doesn't want conflict, but a leader is willing to fight and engage. A leader is not going to swim the river when a bridge is available just to avoid conflict.

It sounds like you are going out of your way to avoid any conflict.

Hey Richard,

Yes, that is what it boils down to. I am avoiding conflict as much as possible because it scares me. Or rather, I'm scared of myself and my temper. I have ptsd and I find that I get angry much more quickly than I use to and with that I'm scared of not being able to contain it effectively or rather professionally. So I avoid conflict because I don't know what will happen.. the anxiety of it makes me very shaky and it freaks me out.

Another aspect is I often don't trust my own views on situations. I ask myself if I'm overreacting, maybe I'm taking it the wrong way. Maybe it's just my own ego that got hurt and all this other psycho analysis of myself that leaves me confused and not confident in myself to take action.

I don't have the authority to be a leader here, and because I've had that role in the past (last job), if I was in that position it would be a lot easier for me to manage this (at least I have so in the past). Then again, I haven't worked with such an aggressive person who isn't my boss and I know the answer is to be the leader in myself, be assertive, focus on the task at hand, and ignore the political nonsense. I need to overcome whatever is causing this fear within me that holds me back aka me, from being assertive and facing conflict with her to get to that place.

The last time I got into conflict with her, I handled it well, asked her about the research she threw away instead of giving it back to me or putting it in the resource binder for others to use. She straight away acknowledged and said she understood why I felt the way I did etc.. we resolved it.. but I was shaking throughout the conversation.. even after the conversation was over and I went out for a smoke hoping just getting away will help settle my nerves, but it took quite a while for it to die down. So that deters me from approaching this more..

I agree with Richard that it sounds like you are trying to avoid conflict. And in your situation, conflict seems unavoidable (as you've shown in your posts). Where I may differ from his advice is that often an indirect approach can be effective, and it seems in your situation it might help you.

Dominating behavior, as your co-worker is showing, is often a sign of anxiety - anxiety towards her ability to be valued by her other employees and her manager. In addition, with her dismissive remarks towards your experienced co-worker, she is trying to sabotage that co-workers' image. This is often a sign of envy. She is envious that this other co-worker will gain the spotlight over her.

I think to deal with this co-worker, you have to try to build a positive relationship with her. She seems very insecure and, to be effective, those insecurities need to be reduced in order to get a more functional, smoother relationship.

What I would do is pick out two or three positive qualities that you genuinely feel this co-worker has. It doesn't have to be big, just something that you've noticed about her. Let's say, for example, that her work is always very organized or detailed.

I would then find occasions to compliment her on these qualities. Next, I would occasionally ask for her help with something small. Something that you know she'd be good at and that might make her proud. Enough of these kinds of compliments and tasks may help her to soften up and not be so dominating.

betawarrior wrote: Where I may differ from his advice is that often an indirect approach can be effective, and it seems in your situation it might help you.

Alexandra, in my original post I ended by saying someone will offer up the approach to use honey. I even said specifically to avoid "indirect strategies". Obviously this is just my personal opinion based on my experiences in the various environments in which I have worked along with the tone of your post. Every dynamic is different.

I agree with betawarrior that trying to offer up compliments and win over the insecurities of this coworker is a viable route. It can work. But, in my opinion this route takes more finesse, more time, more effort, it can result in gossip and office politics as indirect approaches are not nearly as transparent and they can backfire.

Second, it is the indirect approach that will most likely appeal to you as the indirect approach allows you to remain safely in your comfort zone. In some sense, you have already been trying the indirect approach. I'm sure you have tried to be friendly and accommodating, I'm sure you have tried sending signals that you are not a threat.

I'm not disagreeing with betawarrior. If you want to try the indirect approach I think the steps outlined are solid. My only caution is that IMO the approach is not the one you personally need.

Hi Betawarrior and Richard,

Thank you both for your replies. I hope you both are having a good weekend so far!

Just a bit of an update and then I'll get into both of your replies. Wednesday she gave me a project which is due next Thursday. That was overwhelming because on top of my daily caseload I was working on a tenant safety meeting for Friday and slide show for our upcoming gala which is also due next Thursday. It made sense that she gave it to me because I work with these clients and know more about them than she does, but I just wish she gave it to me before instead of so late as it just piled on more pressure. But! I got a lot done in the last couple days that she hasn't been there and I'm determined to get the slideshow done this weekend and then the project she gave me (hopefully by Monday) so that when I had that particular project to her I can just be confident in my own abilities and tell her in future to give me these things in advance, because this last minute stuff is not fair, especially since it's been sitting with her for months.

So that happened, then she's been gone since Thursday on a ski trip with clients and it's been really different in the office- in a really good way! Come yesterday, the three of us remaining had a really good day and the team work on everything was pretty awesome and we all talked about that and left work feeling pretty good. I haven't felt that way in awhile. During that conversation, one of my coworkers brought up this worker to the new staff (he said later his intention was to boost her because ever since she has started working on our team, this coworker has gone out of her way to demoralize her).

The new worker thought all this behavior was new and was there because she was anxious of taking on a new project this month. And we said no, she has been like this since day 1. We gave her a brief explanation to how this all started, how we all just gave her the power and that now with this new worker being confident within herself to speak her mind etc that this has posed as a problem for the worker because her power is being challenged.

Betawarrior and Richard, I was going to reply to you guys separately, but after some writing I think it all fits together lol

I have done the things you have suggested, I've actually been doing this very thing for months. She is very insecure and I feel bad for that because I think her self esteem is pretty low, so I've been trying to boost her self esteem with compliments directly on her work, or encouraging her because I think if her confidence came up then her anxiety would go down. However, this has backfired in the sense that all we ended up doing was feeding her ego and giving her more power to behave the way she does. We had a conversation once where she was transferring one of her clients back to me because this client was not opening up to her about the boundary issues she is having with family and her partner. Before this transfer meeting, she said that she is going to tell this client that it is down to getting another staff and having to change our workload, And I said no, we have to explain to her the whole reason why we are transferring this client (which my manager agreed with). That made her anxious and after I talked to my boss in our supervision and me saying to her that this worker is very anxious when it comes to dealing with people's emotions and her own. She is very good at making lists, planning what to do next and that's where it stops. In terms of actually making a connection with our clients, finding out what their needs are, what holds them back etc.. this is her major weakness and it has been affecting her work from the beginning and no one has been challenging her on it (especially the boss).

I've been given two of her clients so far because of this. One client requested to change keyworker because he didn't feel he could trust her or talk to her about things and he felt really bad because she helped him a lot with the organizing part, but no connection. Manager told me about this, but didn't tell her because she didn't want to hurt her. Another client, really didn't like working with her because he said he felt she didn't know anything about brain injuries and often talked to him like he was stupid. Again this was not addressed with this worker.

Recently she took on a case with a guy who has severe ptsd because of how he got his injury. Manager and Director wanted either me or the new co worker to work with this guy as we both have a vast experience in mental health; however, manager was worried that this client is about 6 foot tall and has a lot of angry outburts (violent ones) and this new worker is pretty tiny, and she was concerned about putting this client in danger. With me, pretty much all of my clients have mental health issues/illnesses and she didn't want to add another case onto me because of that although later she changed her mind and wanted him to work with me. I guess the director wanted this too. So I went to this followup intake with this worker as manager wanted me to observe him and her interaction.

And I gave the worker my feedback. I thought he would be the perfect case for her to work on her weakness. And I told her that I have observed that emotions make her very anxious and she runs away from them. He would be the deep end but I really think she could make it work if she had the right support in place and is willing to learn a different way and an important way of working. I went all mentor style on her because my manager wants me to be her mentor.

Anyway, the point is that I do see a lot of great qualities in this worker, and I feel for her on the anxiety because I get how that feels and I would like nothing more than for all of us as a team to come together and support each other in all of our different weaknesses. While the rest of us have that mindset and empathy, she doesn't. Everything is a competition for her and in talking with the new worker yesterday, both my coworker and I felt really bad for her. And still, she would like us to come together and work together on dealing with this challenge which I'm really looking forward to.

I've been repeating leader in my head all week Richard, by the way lol. Asking myself what would a leader do. And it's helped me a lot in just working the way I would and that has in turn brought my confidence back up this week and that has been fantastic. I feel good and I want to keep it like this even when she is there.

I've spent a lot of time analyzing this situation, her, me, the team. And trying indirect ways of making things better, but that is not what this situation needs anymore. We all need to be direct, and I've really just got to be blunt and say how I feel when something happens, instead of holding it to myself and being upset about it and feel my confidence and self esteem fall apart. I realized yesterday after having two days of not having this influence that I am more than capable, and I'm really good at what I do, I bring a lot of important/valuable things to the team, and they want me there. I've recently been feeling that I don't have a place in the team, or they don't want me there.. because I couldn't do what I normally would do at work. Collaborate with my team, help find solutions to problems, bring us together and build us up together.. because she would just step in front and take over- literally. I hope that I can carry this confidence further next week and keep it there this time.

If you guys have any tips of how I can try to manage my anxiety in these situations and remain the leader that I know that I am inside, please let me know. I'm willing to try just about anything to see if it helps solve this problem. Thanks guys!

alexandra wrote:I've been repeating leader in my head all week Richard, by the way lol. Asking myself what would a leader do. And it's helped me a lot in just working the way I would and that has in turn brought my confidence back up this week and that has been fantastic. I feel good and I want to keep it like this even when she is there.

If you guys have any tips of how I can try to manage my anxiety in these situations and remain the leader that I know that I am inside, please let me know.

It sounds to me like you are on a good path.

Remember, leadership is a skill. It is an art, a craft, a science. This means you and I can always learn more, we can always become better, more capable leaders.

I recommend you learn and model yourself after leaders you admire. Do you like the leadership style of Richard Branson? Then read his books and learn to use a similar style. Do you like Elon Musk, Charles Koch, George Patton, Alexander the Great? Can you learn from Hitler, Stalin, Ghenghis Khan, Ghandi, Nelson Mandela, MLK? How about Benjamin Franklin, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates?

If you even read a single book on leadership a month, in just 1 year how much do you believe your leadership skills will improve? 100%, 300%?

And go to people at your work that you believe are capable leaders. Ask them to recommend a book they have read. Model your behaviors after the leaders you respect.

You will find some will use indirect approaches while others are more direct. Because you seem to want to avoid conflict, I think you would be better served learning and modeling your leadership style using a more direct approach. It will be out of your comfort zone, but it will balance out nicely with your tendency to favor soft skills.

Regardless, keep learning, keep growing, keep evolving.

you need to be easier with oneself and expectations that you have from oneself

if someone tells you to do something simply say " I will look what I can do about that... "

there is nothing to FEAR because its part of the job sometimes to make things done sometimes it happens that we cannot make things done and we should understand each other, if someone doesn't understand that, that is his own problem

you are not responsible to make everything perfect out there , you should get rid of some of those expectations, responsibilities so you can feel better, so you make oneself at home, if someone doesn't respect things you need to do, time you need to relax, that is their own problem , just ignore them , reject them

I cannot say a Co-worker is never a problem,
I have got to work with people
I think it is important if you respond do you you simplify things or make them even more complicated

now if relationships would be so easy to fix there would be no divorce sometimes you may want to try to make things work, but if something just doesn't work, you should look for options that you have to not work with the same person again, you don't really need to try to make everything so perfectly let your co-worker deal with her own problems you don't have to face that

alexandra wrote:If you guys have any tips of how I can try to manage my anxiety in these situations and remain the leader that I know that I am inside, please let me know. I'm willing to try just about anything to see if it helps solve this problem. Thanks guys!

One of the things that is very important with leadership is focusing on leading behavior, not personality. Your problem is not with your co-worker; it's with how your co-worker acts.

Making this separation in your mind is key. The more you focus on your co-worker's personality (e.g. "She's this, she's that," etc.), the more you will find your situation is hopeless and you'll feel extremely frustrated. A person's personality is formed from a multitude of factors, from genetics to upbringing to big experiences. All of which you have very little power to change.

However, a person's behavior changes from moment to moment. People are adaptive, so according to the situation, they will change their behavior to fit how they see a situation. And you DO have some power here.

What I would do is, on a piece of paper, list the behaviors that she does that really impedes on accomplishing your "mission," as Richard describes it. Then list the behaviors you wish your co-worker would follow. Now, when a situation pops up where your co-worker is impeding the work mission, you have a new behavior you can reference.

When you communicate with your co-worker about this behavior, you always want to show understanding for why she does the behavior, but you also want to communicate clearly how that behavior is impeding the work. Then suggest the new behavior that you feel would solve the problem.

As for your anxiety, preparation is key. The more prepared you are, the more material you have to work with. You have already thought over the situation and what you're going to do, so you have something to fall back on.

when it comes to controlling anxiety
the first thing to consider is how much are you sleeping because if you sleep good enough I am sure it will reduce the negative emotions that come from nowhere like anxiety, anger, fear

the second to consider is to have some good times , to create a positive feelings, positive meaning of one place, of one environment or whatsoever . because it happens that we can change how we feel about something

and expectations, the responsibilities that we may have from ourselves could lead us to anxiety, to panic , like what if I cannot do this, what if I cannot do that so we live with too much tension, instead of to have reasonable expectations from ourselves and relax , and care no about things we cannot do, just surrender on some of them, you don't need to worry

anxiety when you ARGUMENT or something like that is normal because you could be on fighting kind of state of mind, you should not be fighting , you should simply search to simplify to make things easier, to become more effectiveness in your job, if you have something to say to someone else you simply say like please leave me alone I have job to do, its so simple, you don't need to complicate these

confident of my leadership,
these kind of terms could be leading you to wrong ways
you should simply make oneself comfortable, make yourself at home,
like I remember when my little brother would increase the volume of tv I would not think of genius ideas to be a leader, confident and such I would simply shout , TURN OFF THAT VOLUME BECAUSE I AM STUDING, so that is a pure correction without any other complicated ideas involved

you need not involve complicated ideas , you should simply behave as a child when someone disturbs you tell them YOU ARE DISTURBING ME , LEAVE ME ALONE , and do not fear the consequences because if you fear consequences you may create hesitation , f the consequences

if I would fear of getting banned from the forum because of using the word F I would hesitate to use it, but I fear no consequences , so I don't hesitate to use that

if you fear that if you shout at someone something may happen you will hesitate to do it, if you fear no consequences you will tell people like " LEAVE ME ALONE " F OFF and you fear, you regret nothing let the other people complicate things that is not something you may want to do

Hi Richard, Betawarrior and Laureat,

Thank you all for your replies. I'm sorry it's taken awhile to reply. It's been really crazy on my end.

Richard,

I really liked your post. It gave me something to think about. The top two leaders that I admire are Baghat Singh and Jose Mujica. Baghat because he was a fighter. He was on the opposite spectrum to Ghandi and he was of the belief that you don't ask or plead for what's yours. Rather you take what's yours and stand your ground. I admire Jose for his humbleness, his desire to listen to all sides and find solutions that move society forward.

I think in terms of learning, I'd have to adopt more of Baghat Singh's stance as Jose has his limits (well in me learning). The thing that boggles me is that I've had conflict with our coordinator and I have addressed things with her and it didn't scare me like this situation is. In general I don't have problem with addressing conflict. It's just with this person in particular and in the last couple of days I've been asking myself why, but I haven't yet come up with a conclusion.

Betawarrior,

I agree with all of your points and this got me thinking of specific problems. Her behaviour is definitely what I have an issue with and less of her as a person because she is a nice person. The whole thing comes down to dominance and power which the root is fear and insecurity.

For example, the whole sitting at the bosses desk when the boss isn't coming to that office. From the beginning our place of "power" or "control" is the staff computer. That person is dealing with emails to and from internal and external professionals. It's the portal which upper management delegates or requests info from us. She likes control and to manage (actually she has admitted that in all aspects of her life everything is in her control and planned because she can't deal with things spontaneously happening). From this position she took over my role in the team. Despite me saying that this is a project that's been delegated to me and I'll be sending this or that, she's brushed it off and taken it over. That's happened with all of us in different ways and we let it happen because when we tried to address the issue with her, it was a straight shut down or raising her voice. So we just backed down which was a very bad move.

Now in the last few weeks since being told boss nominated her for a leadership program she has become more "manager" like. She will ask us if we have done xyz when it doesn't in any way shape or form affect her work and is new behaviour.

Ultimately my issue with her is her constant demoralizing, center stage hogging, aggressive behaviour which brings everyone down. For me personally, I've come to realise how much I doubt my abilities at work and when I'm abke to overcome a big hurdle with professionalism, assertiveness etc I take a step back and rationalize with myself that I'm competent.

The last conflict I had with her, I spent almost two weeks planning in my head how to address the issue with her. The day I just
decided to do it, my heart sank and speeded up and I was shaking. Even on Monday this week when she was back from the client trip and I was preparing myself to behave and act as I had when she was away I was shaking and anxious as soon as I walked in the office and it only subsided once I had myself completely emerged in doing different tasks.

I do on a regular basis try and make the environment pleasant and fun. I'm a joker so that comes easy to me. A lot of the time I ignore her moods towards us and try and bring us together to lighten the atmosphere. In reality I just need to grow a pair and just stand up instead of cowering away from the situation.

Laureat,

I appreciate your views on this and after thinking about it I saw how right you are. I'm festering on what can happen if I confront her. A) I lose my temper and become unprofessional or B) She makes it known I'm an overreacting idiot. I hope the next time something happens that I just say it and just go with what happens.

To All,

Yesterday one of my work friends told me that more than one person can be nominated for the leadership program. This coworker has been nominated. My boss wanted to nominate me but I thought I was leaving to move to UK in July so she gave it to her. My friend is encouraging me to do the program. It'll be a great learning curve for me, but apart from the complicated stuff of committing, I think this worker will see it as competition.

Also, I'm struggling with my relationship with my partner. We're in a long distance relationship.. got engaged in January and with my dad's health recently gone bad I'm unable to move right now. She hasn't made any moves to find about coming here and it feels like it's an expectation that I move there. That on top of intimacy issues and lack of chemistry between us and also recent dreams of me breaking up with her and finding that i actually do have a libido (which i don't have with her) is weighing on my mind. Should i do the program (a year long) or just wait to do it next year if I'm still living here?

Thanks!

alexandra wrote:Also, I'm struggling with my relationship with my partner. We're in a long distance relationship.. got engaged in January and with my dad's health recently gone bad I'm unable to move right now. She hasn't made any moves to find about coming here and it feels like it's an expectation that I move there. That on top of intimacy issues and lack of chemistry between us and also recent dreams of me breaking up with her and finding that i actually do have a libido (which i don't have with her) is weighing on my mind. Should i do the program (a year long) or just wait to do it next year if I'm still living here?

So you want to ask about the decision to commit to a year long training program? You sure that is your priority in life? That is your big issue currently? A 1-year decision?

You do not want to ask about one of the absolute biggest decisons a person can make in life, a life long commitment to another person where there is no chemistry and libido? A potentially 50+ year decision?

It seems to me all this time you have spent focused on this coworker is more to distract yourself from the more important priorities on which you should be focused.

How would Baghat Singh handle your situation?

-1- He would first address the relationship issue. He would tell her that long distance doesn't work, his father is unhealthy and given a lack of chemistry, including no libido the engagement is off.

-2- He would enroll in the leadership program.

-3- He would stop focusing on this coworker and instead focus on what he was trying to accomplish in life.

Richard it's not that easy.

1) I have ptsd and that has got in the way of intimacy for a long time. It has progressively got worse and I'm on the waiting list over here for an assessment and therapy because of it.

We had chemistry before. .but I turn away from intimacy because I'm triggered each time. So the whole sex area just scares me.

So as usual I psycho analyze myself and in part I think maybe I'm just not physically attracted to her and because of that when sex comes up and I don't want to do it but in a position where rejecting her all the time isn't right so I engage in it and that leads to triggers. That's one theory. Or it's just ptsd altogether because even just thinking about sex doesn't do anything for me as it did in the past.

She'll be here in a couple of weeks and in part it's a time where I need to see if we actually have chemistry. We've taken sex off the table and that has reduced my anxiety a lot and I'm hoping that with that pressure gone things will spontaneously happen in me and I'll be able to deal with this to see this with clarity.

2. Yea he would. I've spent the last 3 years with one foot in and one foot out about living here because of a lot of issues with family. And because if the wobble I haven't committed to anything. He would make a decision. There are a lot of factors that complicate this for me.

3. It's hard not to focus on this coworker when you spend a lot of time in a bachelor pad office with this dynamic. Instead of bitching about it though I need to just face my fear and say something.