How To Deal With Overly Sensitive Person?

[michael917]

Originally Posted by Xelfer

Well here's some criticism.

I wasn't there, so I can't give you my personal observation about the dynamic of your meeting or what your goal for that meeting happened to be. Your colleague however, WAS there, and she has a viewpoint about what happened. Her viewpoint came from somewhere, and it's her reality. That is not to say that her perception of things is correct, or is aligned with what you intended. It's therefore your job to try to see how and why she might develop such a viewpoint, rather than make the assertion that she "ranted" and is "hyper-sensitive." Maybe you aren't sensitive enough.

You are absolutely correct in that she is entitled to the way she feels about a personal matter. I didn't mean to imply otherwise, and did my best in the emails to convey that I was sympathetic. Her reality was that she felt she had nowhere else to discuss the issue and felt a sort of betrayal by the indifferent responses. My reality is that the other group members may have found it a far more serious issue than we're used to discussing and didn't quite know what to say. Or, for that matter, didn't quite realize how seriously this woman felt about it.

None of that was ever the problem. The problem was that she used her frustration over this incident to attack me about unrelated issues with the group, most of which I found irrational.

As noted upthread, this matter seems to be smoothed over for now. It's pretty rare that I have difficulty with group members, and I do state often that I'm available for comments or feedback, as it's hard to otherwise know what people really want/need.