Is it her personality?

-Ask the Expert-

Question:

Good day doctors, I would like an explanation on the behavior of the woman that helps me with my domestic chores. Ever since she’s step foot in my house, she is constantly venting and bad-mouthing her in-laws in an obsessive and repetitive way. When her in-laws are dead, she finds another person to hate: the sister-in-law! Ignoring the fact that this sister-in-law (after various arguments I assume) is the same sister that helps her buy groceries! After complaining about every single relative possible, now she is arguing against another woman that, like me, uses her for her domestic service.

I know this woman quite well and we hang out quite often; it irritates me to have to listen to negative things about her. I realized after a while that the domestic worker needs to always hate someone. She is extremely touchy and sensitive to a point that if you are making eye contact or observing her for any reason, she can be so irritated that she cries. She has very childish attitudes (even if she is past 50 years old) in a way that if she breaks only a glass (which can happen to everyone) she tends to hide it.

I would like to know if she has some sort of disorder or if it is just part of her personality. I am baffled and I don’t know how to deal with her anymore, even if until now I’ve adopted a friendly behavior.

Thank You.

Answer:

Dear Anna, Unfortunately instructions on how to interact or deal with people do not exist, and in particular people like the one that you’ve described. From your mail it is clear that some of the characteristics of your worker definitely makes the relationship between you two difficult, but what is not clear is the reason you keep letting her work at your house. Being extremely touchy and sensitive (and therefore unable to deal with being observed by others), trying to hide his/her own errors, and individualizing a “scapegoat” that she can direct all of her rage and use it to “explain to herself” all that is wrong with her life, are signs of a deep psychological disorder.

If you’d like to form a hypothesis (surely a very risky one seeing how little elements there are to base it on), you can say that she is a person that is excessively insecure, that is strongly afraid of being criticized and judged and therefore became extremely critical and aggressive towards others. If we look back on your relationship with this person, my advice is to take her how she is, keeping in mind that at the roots of her behavior there is surely a psychological ailment.

And if you are unable to tolerate her talking bad about your friend anymore you have all the rights to tell her; in any ways, keep in mind that anyone of your statements can become a form of aggression for this woman. If it is not already like this, you can become one of the people that she talks bad about with someone else. Hope that this was able to help, best wishes.

Answer:
Manuela Biagi, Psychologist
Question:
Anna, 54 years old
Publication Date:
10/31/2006 

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