Reply to Colleague had meltdown, said something cruel about me, I can't stop thinking about it

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[quote=Anonymous]Sorry about the long post! Thanks to anyone who makes it to the end.

A guy I have worked with for about two and a half years had a mental health crisis in November in which he sent multiple long, expletive-filled, highly insulting emails to our entire division over the course of a couple hours (it happened at night, so it took longer than normal for someone to intervene). It was very clear from these emails that he was experiencing some kind of break down. They are filled with accusations of people plotting against him, detailed fantasies about what he imagines people say about him behind his back, and a host of lies and inaccuracies. The collective response to the emails was "whoa, this guy needs help." He was placed on administrative leave and no one has heard from him since. I've been told privately by people who would know that he will not be coming back.

In one of the emails, he wrote a multi-paragraph screed about me. It has a bunch of totally false allegations (that I got him kicked off a project team that I wasn't even on, that I "yelled" at him on multiple occasions when we've never even had a remotely heated conversation, among other things). It also includes many negative comments about my appearance (that I look old and haggard, that I dress poorly), and my intelligence and work ethic (that I'm stupid and incompetent). He also states repeatedly that no one likes me and that I'm a "non-entity" in the company.

I know I should disregard everything he wrote. After it happened, many colleagues reached out to me directly to check on me and tell me they thought the email was crazy. My director and the COO met with me several times to tell me that they don't agree with anything he said and that I'm a valued member of the team. While he wrote a lot of terrible, hurtful things in these emails, I was singled out in a specific way and he wrote much more personal things about me than others for some reason.

I keep thinking about his comments. Specifically the comments about my appearance, calling me stupid, and the comments that I am disliked or that people don't know who I am or don't care about me. Maybe they hit me in a vulnerable moment (I am getting older, I haven't felt good about my looks in a while, I've been struggling a bit socially since Covid) but even though I have told myself many times that he's obviously wrong, I'm just haunted by them. I find myself randomly hearing them in my head in moments of self-doubt. This morning I woke up at 2am and couldn't get back to sleep because I was thinking about this. I find myself thinking about negative things from my past that I hadn't thought about in years, and wondering "did that person think I was stupid, too?" or "have I always been a nobody that people barely tolerate?"

I hate that I'm giving him this power. I've just never read anything like that about myself before. I wish I hadn't read it. How do I forget about it and not let it bring me down?[/quote]

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