feel really anxious and affected by having to end a junior's contract. How to feel less rattled?

[sweetbirdofjuice]

Hi All.

In short, my mental health has been bad these last 2-3 years due to some essential meds: anxiety, depression, panic, all sorts. But I've kept going career wise.

Recently, in a newish job I have had to let a team member go. I took no pleasure in it and thankfully she found another job straight away.

However, she was so unpleasant, defensive, dishonest and evasive whilst trying to work with her that I still feel rattled by the whole thing.

My managers wanted rid of her but left it all up to me when I have had no experience of terminating a contract and all I got was shit from her at every stage. I don't expect someone to be happy being sacked but I tried so hard to improve her work for months beforehand and was completely transparent about the issues and generous with praise for the bits she did get right. She simply refused to accept she was not fantastic at her job and responded with lies, blame shifting and aggression. She would whine about being offended if anyone dared to pull her up on constant mistakes. Please believe I did everything I could to support her and build a good relationship.

She has been taken on elsewhere in the organisation temporarily for political reasons I won't go into, although HR accepted the considerable issues with her work. We are public sector so there is substantial red tape around letting someone go, even

It has just been such a stressful time and is exacerbating my MH symptoms and making me feel constantly stressed even though she is gone. Just needed to write it out.How do I forget this?

you're right though. just a reminder to self when the anxiety starts up 'this is done with' is a good start.

Sounds to me like it's a bit too close for home for babydisney.

Some people are very difficult to work with no matter what you try to do. They often think the world owes them a living when we all know most of us have to work for it.

Sweetbirdofjuice, it seem like no matter what you did she would have been difficult. Some colleagues of mine have been like this in the past and I often thought life would be better for all if they would just fuck off!

Example, I was told a new starter was joining our team. The work we do is specialised and you tend to know most people in the field. Never heard of them, no one I knew had heard of them except for an agency contact I had got to know outside of work. She wouldn't say too much but warned me to watch my back. Within two weeks of starting, this person had gone direct to a director complaining of lack of company training when they had spent two weeks with another colleague, tried to stir things up by saying myself and another team member had been saying they were a useless, stupid fucking arsehole and then lying directly to our Technical Director about projects we were working on that he thought we were cocking up. He lasted three weeks. Purely because was a twat. No matter how softly softly he and been treated he would have remained a twat and a bad influence on the team.

it's now been three years since he was let go and through Linkedin I can see he is still looking for a job.