Dear Caroline:

“I sometimes need to have more time to understand what happened, I do not have immediate reaction to abuse and maltreatment. I know why is that and probably most victims of abuse have it, but how to overcome this, how to know right now: I do not feel comfortable, this is not right, someone is hurting me. I have to say I have those feelings but I do not trust them I guess, not enough to act“- I don’t remember ever reading a person express this. It fits perfectly with my experience: I wasn’t able to evaluate situations and figure out if there was abuse in the situation, or not. Sometimes days later, it would occur to me that something wrong happened days earlier, and in my mind, I would prepare a retroactive response that I should have expressed at the time the response was relevant. It was very frustrating!

As to why it happened: I think that it’s the Freeze Response to perceived danger. You know of the 3 Fs: Flight, Fight and Freeze, 3 natural responses to danger? While my mother was abusing me, as a child and onward, my brain perceived DANGER. I couldn’t run (Flight was not a possibility), couldn’t- wouldn’t fight her (Fight was not a possibility), so the only reaction left was FREEZE. My body froze (no movement) and my brain froze (no thinking). I just stood there until it was over.

Fast forward, in situation with other people, my brain was frozen: no thinking, no evaluating, and therefore no appropriate, sensible reacting. Do you relate to this? If you do, we can talk about how to overcome this (your question in the quote above).

“He asked if I want to be friends with him… Now we work together in a team of 5 people. That’s what worries me. Seems to me some people in the office do not like him because of his anger and talking. But still I need to make it work, so to speak… So the question if I want to be friends with him is tricky… For the past year he wanted to meet every Saturday… called sometimes every day… I do not think it is healthy and normal to be that needy and clingy. He has a girlfriend and he lives with her, I should mention“-

-I didn’t know that you are working together (if you shared it before, it didn’t register…perhaps my brain was frozen, lol). Given what you shared in the quote above, I think that it is very important that the only friendliness that you express to him would be strictly in the context of work, and that you should have no contact with him outside the work context, which includes not being alone with him: not privately and not publicly. Reasons: (1) the other 3 team members/ work colleagues understandably dislike him. If they think that you like him, being that you are his personal friend, they may think that you approve of his abusive behaviors,  (2) If the other 3 team members think that you disapprove of his abusive behaviors, and yet you choose to be his personal friend, they may think that you are emotionally dishonest and therefore, not trustworthy, (3) His live-in girlfriend (and others) may think that you are having an affair with him because, like you suggested yourself, it is not normal for a man (particularly one living with his girlfriend) to be this needy and clingy of another woman!

“What I see best it would be us staying as colleagues that see each other once in a few weeks, months, with a group of other people, not talking day to day basis about each other’s everyday problems (what has been the issue here) “- if I was you, I would not talk to him outside the work context, not day to day, not on any day; not about each other’s personal problems, not about anything other than work, within the work context (never being alone with him whenever it is possible).

“Not sure how to maintain this. I guess I could just say this to him“- how about telling him that from now on, you and him will be interacting only in the work context and not in any other context; that from now on, you are friendly work colleagues, not personal friends?

anita