Anita,

I was listening to her songs today and almost every day for the past two.. or maybe three weeks. It means a lot that you wrote this to me. “Arms Around a Memory” is also such a beautiful song. Not that many people know or listen to this artist. Makes me happy you are enjoying her songs, especially that we have never met, yet you gave me so much of your time and effort. (I am not good with words or expressing my feelings but I wanted to say just makes me happy you wrote again.)

Thinking about all that has been written in this post.

“I used to always be cautious around people, always ready to let them know… that I know that I am inferior, so that.. they’ll go easy on me, so that they won’t hurt me too much.”

– I never realized what was the reason that I always want to make people feel better about themselves. It is a constant in my life.

I gave myself time because I did not know how to respond. I was looking for solutions. But I still do not know what to say. I think I am trying to process that or shut those thoughts, because it’s too difficult for me.

“My coworkers, a guy (M) and a girl.. they know (G) used to say we were friends… I texted (M) later that day that there is no friendship anymore between me and G…. But I still worry (M) may think (G) and I will make up”- it is as if what The Superior one (G) says is.. superior to what the alleged Inferior one says, and therefore what he says is believable and powerful, and what you say.. is not believable and weak…?” – I think I made peace with that. I no longer feel guilty or dishonest. I know I told them the truth and I have no power over what he is saying in the office, IF he does say anything. (maybe he does not – I don’t know). I stay true to myself.

Thank you for explaining the dominance hierarchy in animal world. “If the threatened one does not submit, the aggressor will most often withdraw and rarely fight.” – Seems to me like a very coward thing to do (the aggressor’s behavior). I believe this is exactly what is going on between me and my ex-friend coworker. I never thought about it this way. I was afraid of him, I am realizing that every day now. Since I got out of this friendship I feel less and less influenced by him, which also means feeling less afraid.

On Saturday we had this meeting will all coworkers in pizzeria. We met at 1 PM. He texted our manager he would be 40 minutes late because… he will cycling around in the park at that time, the one he used to live nearby couple of years ago. We were all waiting for him almost an hour. He came 1:50 PM, two of coworkers got up to say hello, and then he said “no no, first I prefer to wash my hands” and left. He did not come back until 8-10 minutes later.  His behavior was so.. rude does not even describe it. I am still trying to process this. In case he wanted to talk to me or nag me I prepared a response that if he still does not understand or want me to explain further.. I will say I do not have anything more to say or offer to him. I got out of this and now I do not have to put up with this anymore. That is the point. But he did not want to talk, he did act “nice” to me sometimes though.

I am trying to be more mindful of what I do, what I see, what is going on around me. I think I have freeze reaction for the most of the time during the day, even without the possible threat. I am not sure if this is even possible but I think it might. I noticed things happen and I do not .. recognize them happening. So I started to try to be mindful, see, hear, be aware. Sometimes things happen, people say things and I do not react, do not respond. Only after couple of hours later I recall what had happened and form my opinion on that.

I want to work on not having the freeze response and not practicing the submissive- people-pleasing behaviors. To act like I am no less than others. I read some articles but mainly I am trying to be cautious of how I act in front of people, read more, listen to music more, go for long walks and be around nature. I believe I can change it. On Sunday I talked less, but I think I was more confident. I was thinking before responding, not talking fast like a child. It was weird because they do not know me that well and I could “pretend” I am some other person, not inferior to them. It is difficult. I do not want to pretend I am someone else but I cannot act like I always do. It so difficult and confusing, but I am trying everyday now.

Anita, I am letting you know that I have read both your posts and I am giving myself time to think this through, as usual. I think it works for me better when I give myself time. I want to fully comprehend it and refer to what you wrote. I hope it’s Ok with you. Take care and have a great day/night.

Anita,

Yes I can see the parallels: I was walking on eggshells around my coworker just like I did with my family who rejected me. I never thought of that this way, that this is behavior that started years ago, the pattern I did not invent last year with him, It is something I used to practice most of my life at family gatherings, but also with my mom on daily basis as well as I saw her behavior towards her partner later after my parent’s divorce. Lately when I told my mom about this coworker she told me it reminds her of her ex-partner.. I think I saw too much of fawn response in my life.  Thank you for making me see that this is not a success that he is “polite” to me now, even today when he was extremely polite I know he does not do it for me. He is a performer, a narcissist, he does this to feel superior, to make me feel that is he now acting superior by showing me how merciful and wonderful he is, being polite to me. I know he is a rude person and nothing will change that. I am okay with this and I am happy I walked away from him (His work behavior does not impact me – I work from home, when we do a project together we just send e-mails, I do not worry about this, but still thinking of changing job in the future)

” I think that being passive and people-pleasing is how you tried to survive and to change your extended family’s rejecting behavior: if you are passive, if you do nothing- there’s less to reject;  if you please them- maybe they’ll think better of you and treat you better (or at least, they won’t treat you even worse).” i re-read this time and time again and trying to fully comprehend this. This describes my life so well.

“* As to his motivation, what did he get out of treating you this way? My guess is that it tickles him, he enjoys it.” – Now I understand it. He has been working at home for few months but came back to the office? Why? No one knows. Almost everyone work from home, except for those who do not have space for computer at home or have children, or live very nearby and appreciate morning walk. Except for those people no one wants to commute everyday. He does because he needs people, needs audience. He is friends with cleaning lady, 50ish lady who listens to him, is polite, does not argue with him and looks up to him because impresses her. Even when he has days off he calls her to talk. I now know he needs her, I know how this sounds but I am pretty sure this is one of the reasons.

“* In regard to your work colleague:  if he acted politely toward you all the time, he wouldn’t enjoy himself, it wouldn’t be fun or interesting for him. As I see it, there is no emotional motivation on his part to be consistently nice and polite to you.” That’s all I needed really and now I know there is no way we can even be anything more than people who work together.

“Resolve to only have nice people in the personal settings of your life” Thank you Anita, I will try my best to do that.

As for my family I am aware it is not healthy. I see how my mom visits her mother and still plays this game and I don’t like that. I even told her recently that what happened to me is the result of the family dynamic. But she has her reasons, does not want to argue etc. But I think it still affects me, the fact that she is still doing this.

“I still don’t quite understand your worry about being thought of as dishonest and a fraud.” Anita, thank you for trying to understand and I am sorry if I did not explain it properly. With two of my coworkers, a guy and a girl we sometimes talk, we like each other. They do not seem to like him. But they know he used to say we were friends etc, skipped the part that we did not see each other for couple years. (Sorry if I am repeating myself) One of the colleagues, M. asked me last week “could you make sure you don’t mention any of the jokes we make sometimes to G. (G. being my ex friend, the bully)”. We do not gossip about him but once or twice sometimes would make a joke. I felt like I was accused of being dishonest.  I was yet about to tell M. that we are no longer friends. But still I was concerned that he would doubt my honesty. So I texted him later that day that there is no friendship anymore between me and G. and I do not wish to be connected with him in any way besides work. there is no drama here, just end of friendship and I want it to stay that way. He replied Ok, good to know, thanks for clarifying. But I still worry he may think him and I will make up. Today I was obsessing about how little they spoke to me and I was afraid they do not like me or trust me anymore because I was his friend.

Tee,

Thank you for pointing out “the fawn response” I relate to this so much. Giving up your personal boundaries and limits in childhood may have helped minimize abuse, but this response tends to linger into adulthood, where it often drives codependency or people-pleasing tendencies. Unfortunately this is my life. I do not have boundaries and people walk over me. I show them I do not respect myself. Even when talking in a group I noticed everyone talks confidently, calmly and slowly and I speak fast, afraid someone will cut me off, I always try to say something fast like a kid who is not allowed to speak so it just says something, anything and immediately shuts up. I always try to remember to be more confident and speak like a normal person, but I can’t. I think people notice that and start to not respect me when they see I have no confidence. I don’t know how to change that. I know boundaries are important and to not freeze, to not fawn, but what is the point when I can’t even have the simple conversation. Sometimes I feel like I’m crawling. degrading. I try to watch videos about how to speak, how to behave but when I talk to someone I suddenly forget how to do it.

I’m afraid those who like me now will soon stop respecting me and it will be over.

“Grieving also tends to unlock healthy anger about a life lived with such a diminished sense of self. This anger can then be worked into recovering a healthy fight-response that is the basis of the instinct of self-protection, of balanced assertiveness, and of the courage that will be needed in the journey of creating relationships based on equality and fairness.”

“Yes, in your recovery from the fawn response you will need to set up boundaries so that other people cannot abuse you and disrespect you.”-

I will really, really try hard  to accomplish that, thank you for this, Tee.

And you, Anita.

Anita,

I never noticed that earlier. I started noticing it later, that our whole friendship was based on the fact that I listened to him and I used to help him a lot. If it wasn’t for that, I don’t think we would ever be “friends” – not sure how to call it, now I don’t think it was friendship at all, it was his benefiting from my passiveness and people pleasing.

Thank you for pointing that out.

For the past days I’ve been thinking a lot about your posts, your insights, about how he behaved and how I suffered and was afraid. I did not even describe his other issues like bursting out on me or other people, how I was afraid to ask what was his floor number (he moved to a new place and I used to forget all the time) and just wandered around the building in hope I would recognize it somehow (I knew I could not ask him if he already had told me this once, because he will scold me)…. how I was afraid to say hi to my neighbor passing by, because my not-friend was talking to me at the time and implicated he would not stop so that so I could say hi, so I didn’t 🙁 I ignored my neighbor and his dog because I was afraid and knew I had to maintain eye contact so that he sees I am listening to him, although he clearly saw I was looking and smiling and wanted to say hi… or how he once told me someone sent him wishes and I asked what was the occasion and he scolded me that I did not know what it was (Easter coming in few days). Today, after a week since my message to him, and two weeks after his “escalation” I feel weird. Free and happy but also sad that I was abused and did not realize that, I was just trying to survive, walking on eggshells, avoiding asking stupid questions, or doing anything that would piss him off, but it was still not possible entirely to avoid it. Cleaning my place before he came, feeding my cat before so that she would not jump on the table because then he would see that my cat eats on the kitchen table and would be disgusted by it. I once borrowed his t-shirt because I needed something to wrap the computer while going to work from home and I washed it 3 times because there was cat hair on it. He once sneezed (at his place, not mine) and accused me of bringing cat hair to his place, and that I was the reason he sneezed. When I was at his place he used to order me to wash my hands after I touched something.

And still after what he did two weeks ago I posted asking “Is my FRIEND abusing me?”

I feel really sad and cheerless.

Thank you Anita again for your time, for being here.  I hope you have a wonderful weekend 🙂

Anita,

I thought I was wiser first day when you replied, but now I know I was not seeing clearly yet.

Thank you for helping me understand and for being so gracious.

Anita, you mentioned your mother had this pressure speech. Would you like to write more about this? How was it, did you meet people who took advantage of the behavior you were taught to growing up?  I noticed you did not develop this thought so maybe you do not want to talk about it, in this case – I’m Sorry and I will not be asking anymore.

Anita,

you asked “what something worse can it be?” regarding his behavior after I stated my boundaries to him. I think something more less what I wrote as an example but he can say it in front of other people. In work meeting etc.  I think I will respond logically saying this is work and he needs to tell me or explain something to me. Not sure what else can it be but I noticed he has been pretty aggressive and rude to people at work. I guess I need to learn to not freeze and to just respond right away. It will be difficult but I have to.

We also have a meeting to know each other better, I think it will be a restaurant or something. I do not have a good feeling about this, but who knows. Maybe he will be respectful.

“what did you say or do that is dishonest? What is it that you don’t like about yourself lately?” – I do not think it is something I did, It is the feeling that they think we are friends. I also explained today to one of the girls that we used to be friends and we grew apart, as she was saying things like “you should not let work ruin your friendship with him, you should just give yourself time and you’ll make up etc”. I think she understood. I do not want to explain myself anymore to them, further explaining would be too much, I think. But I feel like I will always be “his friend” in their eyes, as this was the case since the beginning (as I was saying he was exaggerating, omitting the fact we have not seen each other 5 years, almost bragging even).

Not sure if I explain correctly. I do not want to appear connected to him that much, I feel like I was not my own person since I started this job, often some people asking me about him and our friendship. And now that I made some friends and people like me (some of them in my team but also in other teams – girls who left to other departments- do not like him. There is a manager who likes him and new girl who had a baby in 2020 and just got back to work- she is great friends with him). It sometimes feels like a marriage – you make friends and people like you for who you are but they always remember you are married to this one guy, not very pleasant one, so they never mention him around you. I think they do not talk bad about him because they still cannot get rid of the thinking of me as his friend after all those months.

Maybe this is not true, It may be that I tell myself it looks like this while in reality it may not look that bad, since I explained. But that is the main reason I get this weird feeling lately. Feeling guilty, dishonest.

Anita,

I just told him all this, maybe I forgot some details but I think it went well.

It felt scary but also relieving and empowering. I feel like it set me free a little bit. Thank you again for helping me. I was planning to talk to him next week but after reading your message today I decided to do it right away, to not be scared. Although I was scared, but after I read that you wrote it was not that bad, it gave me courage and I thank you for that.

I think he understood, he was very quiet about it, though, so not sure what the outcome will be in the future and how he will act at work, etc. May be difficult. So it’s “to be continued” for sure. But it had to be done and I am really glad I did it.

Today at the bakery some lady stepped up before me in a queue, although I was there first. I was standing in silence (like I would always do) but then I told her Sorry I was here first. And I started saying my order. I know it may seem silly but it is really difficult for me, to stand up for myself. I almost never do. Or should I say I really really never do. 🙁 When something like this happens I do not have normal pulse or no stress, as they say, to be able to scan the environment and plan better. No, I start to have panic attack and start being angry but I just stand there, do nothing and walk away.. Not sure if this is the typical freeze response.

Do you have any helpful websites or youtube videos about freeze response? I really would like to read more how to overcome it.