AIBU? Male work colleague

Jeeeez OP youre still on here spiralling about your spiral.
Its a job.
Get yourself on medication and stop this nonsense. I actually dont think this guy is your mate at all, I think hes a work colleague who you chat to and now youre unloading on him and its extremely excessive.

OP, none of that relates to @JeffLebowski ’s points. You’re responding to a conversation that’s going on only in your head, just as you are with your colleague. This is why someone who keeps spiralling anxiously can be so tiresome to be around — they simply aren’t paying any attention to the other person. You’re self-absorbed. Your friend has clearly asked you to stop talking at him about your fear of redundancy. You’re now using that as new material to spiral about.

OP, It's great that you acknowledge your anxiety and mental health challenges upfront on this thread, but it isn't anyone's job to put up with it or support you.

Even reading your responses on this thread, I can see how draining it would be for that friend. You need some combination of professional help, medication, and or a LOT of IRL support from other friends and family who won't mind listening to your fixations. Or perhaps you can take turns dumping on a series of people, but be sensitive to moving on to the next victim/person each time they indicated that you've worn them out.

You don't have ptsd from this. Please don't self diagnose that. Its a serious issue for people who have it and it's very disrespectful.

You obviously have anxiety which means that you are only able to see your own worries and not other people's. We all have shit going on. And often people don't have the capacity to deal with a constant stream of negativity from someone else. You need to realise this and try to sort it before you lose friends over it.

I know it's really hard being at risk of redundancy as it happened to me this year. But it doesn't give you the right to be this self absorbed, sorry.

PS there is no HR issue here, so stop worrying about that 😊

Absolutely this.

Stop worrying about it. It will be a shame to lose his friendship but you've got to find something else to talk about other than redundancy!
X

Totally agree and suggesting you have self diagnosed PTSD for having to interview for your own job isn’t normal Unkess there is a lot more to this story.

You are overthinking.
Thwre is no HR issue.
If he went to HR they would speak to him about wasting time.
Your anxiety is causing you to catastrophise.

@mumlearningtorun I had a friend like you once, about 30 years ago. Putting up with her going on and on and on about stuff - should I do this? Should I do that? What if... and so on.

Couldn't cope with it so I became completely unavailable.

Haven't seen her for about 30 years.

Pity, apart from when she was driving me round the bend, I really liked her!

You're going through a tough time. Again. He's probably wondering why, despite the fact that you've got a husband, you're leaning on him so much for emotional support and reassurance. Again. And you're so focussed on your own concerns that you really don't seem to care that much about him other than the support you can provide to him and/or the imagined threat that he might report you to HR. It's all about you.

While you may be sure that his job is safe, it's possible that he's not so certain. Have you really sat down with him, asked him, and actually listened to him? Maybe you have but nothing you've written so far suggests that you have. Again, it's all about you, your job, how he views you, how his opinion of you might impact on you, and so on.

He's not your emotional support puppy. He's a human in his own right with his own fears, wants and dreams. It's not all about you.

I hope so.

I used to work with someone who didn’t stop going on about their anxiety, and brought it up at every opportunity.

It was so draining for the rest of us.

OP, respectfully, like your friend, I’m going to decline to keep offering reassurance for your anxieties. This is something you need to seek professional help with.

I mean this kindly, OP, but you really need to seek medical support for your anxiety. It’s absolutely not normal to analyse and overthink every interaction like this.
Thinking you are going to be ‘reported to HR’ for such a banal conversation is bonkers!

Are you being medicated for your anxiety?

It sounds like he's confused and feeling used.

He's flirting with you. Likely because he likes you and would like a relationship with you.

You're flirting back, but not interested, which feels a bit tacky. Then you use him as your emotional support and continue even after he asks you to stop.

I think you need to cool off a bit and just be colleagues inside of work.

He’s not going to report you to HR for boring on when he asked you to stop.

Seriously though, having anxiety doesn’t give you the right to do this.

OK, but this is why he’s tired of it — you leant on him last time, it’s happening again, and he’s signalled very clearly that he’s tired of it.

Op you’re massively over thinking this.

OP, you can’t do anything more – you’ve text him, it’s the weekend. There is nothing more you can say or do.

You can’t bear sitting in your feelings so instead of unloading it on him, you’re now unloading it on us. Yes, friends and chat forums are there for people during difficult times, but it’s not actually helping your anxiety. What will help your anxiety is practice at sitting in your feelings and allowing them to pass. The world won’t end.

Yes I agree that he got irritated by you constantly wanting reassurance and he's backed off a bit but I seriously doubt that he's planning on reporting you.

Yes, he’s just annoyed with you. It’s an entirely ordinary situation. Message and say sorry for being a bore, and you’ll keep schtum about potentially being made redundant in future. Unless he’s the CEO, he has no reassurance to offer.

he's not going to report you. just calm down a bit