I have a coworker who constantly needs re-assurance on everything she does and I just can’t handle it anymore because I feel like I am her therapist and I just do not have the time nor mental capacity to constantly help her on it. I wouldn’t mind if it was periodic but yesterday alone she catastrophize things 3 times and I spent 30 minutes every single time re-assuring her that is was okay.
I am new to the role, 3 months in after being promoted and having to constantly talk to her is taking so much time of my own work and I just don’t know what to do anymore.
I honestly do not understand where her concerns are coming from, she has been at the job longer than I have been and she knows more than I do but she is always asking me questions that she definitely knows the answer to. She was the one who trained me when I first started, ahhhhh!
I want to be compassionate, but I am honestly not a therapist to handle her constant need for re-assurance on her work.
Last week, EVERY SINGLE DAY, she was telling me that she feels not capable for the job. I understand imposter syndrome, I have it all the time, but I try to work on it myself instead of taking time of friends and family for them to provide me re-assurance every single day.
This is also taking so much time during my working hours and I want to perform well because I just got promoted, so I have been working overtime so much until like 10:00pm and weekends to try and finish up work that I should have done during working hours if I didn’t have to constantly tell her that she is doing great at her job and she needs to push her through her imposter syndrome.
It has not only been me, she also spent almost an hour with a senior colleague on a call yesterday expressing her thoughts and concerns, the same things she has been asking me about for further re-assurance after I myself have re-assured her already.
Anyways, I would appreciate any advise on how to handle this situation and create boundaries. This wasn’t the case when I first started and she was training me for the first 2 weeks.
This constant need for re-assurance started after I was 1-month in into my role and I was fully settled and then she started asking me so many questions every single day that she know the answer to.
Comments
Stop spending so much time responding to her. “Angela, you’re good. Sorry, but I really need go get back to work now.” And then just walk away or hang up the phone or whatever.
So stop. Tell her you’re busy, can’t talk, need to end the meeting to go do something else, refer her to someone else (ex. “you should talk to boss about that”), or refer her to resources. I would not explain how to do anything she already knows how to do. Anytime she says she is not capable or doesn’t know how to do something I’d tell her to talk to the boss for guidance or training and not engage further. I would not let her continue to waste your time. If you don’t have time to talk or don’t want to then you need to end the conversation instead of letting it go on for 30 minutes. You need to stop engaging.
If this is happening every single day then you need to talk to your boss about what’s going on so s/he can address it.
Dont repsond to her. Simply say “I’m sure what you choose to do is good” and leave it at that. She’ll get the picture.