Complaint against me. How to deal with the stress?

[Planetaryexplorer]

Someone has put in a complaint against me and a colleague. The complaint is pretty defamatory and quite personal. It involves a safe-guarding issue and is being investigated by an independent body. I know the complaint has no substance. The person who has made the complaint has done so out of maliciousness. They don't like the "power" that we hold and perceive that we are not doing our jobs properly. The reality is they don't see the job we are doing and assume things aren't being done or if they are they are certainly not to their liking. They have spread rumours around our locality and have been vocal on social media. They make no effort to engage in a positive or meaningful way.

I'm not really sure what they want to achieve by the complaint as surely they must know there is no evidence to support it. I can't discuss it with others as I don't want to jeopardise the investigation.

Despite rationally knowing this will come to nothing, it is causing me a great deal of stress. It seems to be constantly on my mind and wakes me up in the night. When I have to deal with it I have quite an extreme physical reaction with uncontrollable shaking. It will be over in two weeks but I know that it won't stop there and this individual will take every opportunity to bad-mouth me and the organisation.

How can I move on from this?

No words of advice but just offering my sympathy. I am the kind of person who reacts very badly to this kind of thing and I have had some bad experiences at work that have seriously impacted on my mental health. Even if you can't talk about the specifics, make sure friends and family know you are struggling and need their support. Don't suffer in silence.

You have to try to not think about it and actively think about something else except when you are actually dealing with it. When the thoughts creep in consciously tell yourself to think about something else. Work stuff is only for working hours.

Then make yourself as busy as possible, eat well and exercise. Pre- covid I liked swimming because I could never think and count lengths. Sing or dance to music anything that provides distraction and doing two things at once listening and singing helps block out negative stuff.

Be disciplined about not thinking about it and look after yourself. Think of it as resilience training and you will come out of this stronger than ever and ever more able to cope with what life throws at you.

Also if this affects two of you support your colleague as it will give you a focus and the sort out thing you say to them to support them will also apply to you.

Be kind to yourself you will come out the other side.

Thank you for your kind words and advice. I am generally quite a resilient person and normally deal with stress well. However when faced with something I have no ability to do anything about or to even defend myself to publicly then I seem to have crumbled.

Has your work got an employee assistance helpline? I would find out and make use of it for the emotional support and also the process if they offer that expertise. Log all of the social media posts you mention in screenshots. Prepare a chronology of events or other evidence that is factual about the issue so that you’re ready for any investigation.

I work in HR, my decisions and actions are questioned and criticised a lot through appeals from hearings and a Union rep that wants to look good for his members although is useless. I view it as healthy that my work is examined appropriately and is seen to be professional and thorough when looked at. I know that it’s hard not to get defensive but by looking as objective as you can in how you respond to this will help you.

I get this, OP. In the past decade, I've been falsely accused of racial/religious discrimination and dragged to tribunal on more than one occasion. In each case, the person had been sacked for a very substantial reason and as a manager my hands were effectively tied e.g. repeated drunkenness at work, violence, theft. All of the cases were thrown out and I was fully vindicated - but when you are in the middle of it, it is the most awful thing. I too struggled with sleep and feeling like I would lose my job, home, reputation.... everything. Horrible times.

Some people are just cunts who can't take responsibility for their own lives, and think nothing of shitting over other people. You keep doing you, and keep your good friends and family close to you. Carl Beech is serving prison time for his false accusations now, I personally would like to see harsher penalties applied to those who defame service providers / managers in malicious retaliation attempts.

OP, I'm the same. It's not easy to switch off or think of other things.

I've had to deal with some work related stuff as well, and was very open with my employer at the end that it had caused me undue work related stress and that I'd spoken to my doctor about it (if only just to document it somewhere), because work related stress can fall back on your employer if they get occupational health involved.

My doctor offered me a short course of SSRIs but they take at least 2 weeks to start working, though worth it just to make sure it's documented you're doing what you can to medically manage the stress even though in reality it isn't always the case, though helpful if the stress lasts longer than 2 weeks.