Gaslighting

It is impossible to function effectively at work with so much of our brain tied up by fear and dread. This is what I am struggling with too. 

The second way is what's happening with me. 

The damage to my car was done by her.  I know this because I understand her tactics now.  I understand them - but I cannot foresee them.  I just know it won't be long before something else happens.  Even if I'm not working with her, she can find a way to get at me. 

Thanks, Sunflower.  What you say about reawakening and magnifying trauma is right.  Even a very small passing passive-aggressive comment now is like a hammer-blow.

Hold on to hope Martian Tom

Being bullied quite literally destroys people. You have got the insight to realise what has been happening to you but it is really difficult to convey this is a way that everyone else will understand. Hold on to your truth. Do everything you can to protect yourself and allow yourself the time and space to heal. Tim Field died from cancer after being targeted and having his life made a misery by a bully. The foundation set up in his memory lives on to help other people: https://bullyonline.org/index.php/recovery

Perhaps the hardest thing of all is to be bullied repeatedly, reawakening and magnifying trauma. Sadly this is incredibly common for autistic people. Those of us who have been in this position know only too well the deep sense of existential despair when it happens again, and again. In work situations we are between a rock and a hard place. Being bullied by a manager or a coworker, or being bullied by the state benefit system. No wonder we struggle on.

You are deeply respected and appreciated by your friends here Martian Tom please stay safe. Reach out to anyone at all who can help you. Once you begin to recover physically and mentally the way forward will become apparent again. For now you need rest and to remember you are not weak or mad or foolish, but experiencing a very real trauma which is not your fault. 

I think you underestimate the human factor in this, Plastic.  I cannot help the way I am any more than you can help the way you are - or anybody can help the way they are. 

I risk my life around such people.  Even the support I get from other staff and colleagues at work doesn't outweigh the fear and dread I feel every morning.  The same fear and dread that has haunted me throughout my life in other such situations.  It's been a slow, but steady chipping away at me over the years.  Over fifty years, in fact.  Each time it happens, it isn't just a repeat run.  It's a worsening.  And this is the worst it's been.  The only way I can stop it - and the obsession - is to not go back to it.  I'm good at masking, as many of us are.  But I cannot put on a good enough show to convince people at a return-to-work interview that I am fit to return to work.  I have to be completely honest with myself.  I had two weeks off a couple of months ago.  I returned feeling fresher.  Now I'm at this stage.  This will only go on.  Next time could be the last.

I realise the precariousness of the benefits system.  I've been through it before.  I was once off work for two years, on ESA.  It's not ideal by any means.  But I live cheaply enough as it is.  I'll survive on it.  Until I can find something else.  And I will, I know - because I always have before.

That, to me, sounds like hope.  Something I haven't had for a while.

This is exactly what has happened. I am currently a nervous wreck. The effect of trauma cannot be underestimated. I can't describe what it's like - shaking just from seeing this woman.  This kind of thing happened to me once before and it nearly killed me then. It isn't going to succeed now. I cannot risk going back and then waiting for the next thing to happen - which it will. I've been unwell for too long. I've reached the limit of my tolerance. The first thought in my head this morning was 'How shall I kill myself?' 

Austerity?

The thing is, it surely is very easy to feel, to be, absolutely trapped. You can no longer get just leave a job because of a bad boss now, where would you go? And what happens if you fall foul of the welfare system?

The threat to survival now is not just existential, as it was 20-30 years ago, absolute destitution, being sanctioned, being denied everything, is real. People can and do go hungry and die. Pensioners without enough to live on choose between heating or food. It is all too easy to get trapped now. That I am sure is how work bullies thrive. 

And is this going to change any time soon?

I doubt it.

My two pence anyway.

This is separate from intelligence.

A bully will look for emotional weak points and repeatedly attack it, attack it attack it......................

Until the other person is a nervous wreck.

Ok - I may be off the mark here too - but, from his writings, i believe Tom to be a very intelligent person - so this behaviour and being unable/unwilling to compartmentalise these thoughts don't seem to stack up for me.

It makes me wonder what the real problem is.

Basically I think you're right.

What you underestimate is the effects of obsessive thoughts and behaviour.

I understand what Martian Tom is going through because I have gone through similar experiences.

Obsessions can be very damaging mentally.  

They can be one way, where someone is obsessed with another person.  But the other party is almost unaware of the obsession.

Or, two way, where the obsession is mutual, where one person is obsessed with avoiding the other.  And the other person realises this and makes it an obsession to make the first person's life hell.

I've tried to follow this thread and its background spread across the other threads.

Please forgive me if I'm getting this all wrong.

Am I right that you are going to basically implode your life, your job, risk losing your home, the cat and everything else all over the possibility that you might see some woman in a place that you only spend a few hours in when you're there doing stuff with other people that are ok or you have fewer problems with?

I apologise if I'm summing this up all wrong, but it seems that there's something else going on and you are making this obsession over this woman the excuse for this self destruction.

Please feel free to shoot me down if I'm way off the mark.

Okay... I've decided on my way forwards.

I'm signed off for two weeks.  I'm on half-pay for that period.  If I get signed off for longer, my half-pay will only last a month.  After that, I will get nothing.

I cannot return to work now until I've had a formal interview to satisfy them that I'm fit to return.  Unless I lie at that interview - with the risks I then run of further problems very quickly - I cannot see myself being able to return in the short-term.  And I cannot lie, anyway.  I know my health is on the edge.

Last night I was panicking.  I went to bed not wanting to wake up.

This morning, I woke feeling desperate.

And then the truth came to me.  I simply cannot return to that place. There are too many risks.

Once I had accepted that, I felt better.  Like I had a way forwards.

On Monday, I'll go to the CAB and get a claim for Universal Credit in motion.

Then I'll just continue getting signed off until they let me go.  Either that or, if they really want to keep me on, wait until they can relocate me.

What a choice to have to make.  But I'm torn between two bad options.

And as it stands, work is killing me.  If I go back to that place, sooner or later my health will fail entirely.

I have fallen foul of the benefits cap.

My rent is £575 pcm.  

The housing benefit portion of UC will only pay £433 pcm.

I don't get.  If you go on long term sick leave, don't they pay your rent?

Whenever I've been on sick leave before, my rent has been covered by Housing Benefit.  Isn't it now covered by UC?

UC has replaced ESA and Housing Benefit.  Surely, then, both of those benefits should be covered by the UC you receive?

Several people have suggested that I should get a fit note from my GP and go on long term sick leave, including my job centre work coach.   But I need the money to pay the rent and avoid eviction.

So, Robert... when they pushed you out, could you not have gone sick?  Did you have to go straight back into job searching?  I know that they reduced your 35-hour a week search requirement - but could you not have been signed off and not had that requirement at all if you were still sick?

The woman who I had most difficulty with in my last job was the manager in overall charge of the centre.

After going on sick leave and returning, HR accommodated me by changing the reporting structure so I reported to a different manager.

At my dismissal hearing this 'new' manager called my previous manager as the main witness to prove my incompetence to do the job.

And the fact that I went by the rule book and had meetings with HR was also used against me.

It's a mad world.

I remember, Robert. 

I just don't know what to do.  I dread going back.  I can't afford to leave.  I'm losing a lot of money... and then, when they do the back-to-work interview, I'm basically going to have to lie in order to get back to earning. 

They let me down yesterday.  They had me working on the same floor, with this woman, all afternoon.  I couldn't face that.  I should have just demanded that they swap us over.  Then none of this would have happened.  Now, it's just made a bad situation even worse.

Feeling the lowest I've felt for a long time.  The whole thing feels f**ked up now - thanks to this woman, who always gets what she demands.

I feel for you.  I went through something similar, sick notes, bullying, HR disputes, Universal Credit madness.