Mentally Ill Manager Causing Me Serious Stress

LegacyUser

My manager is mentally ill and causing me unbearable stress. Over the first 6 months working he started to gradually become obsessed with me. We're both straight men, so the obsession is as a friend. He's a nice man with no badness in him. But bit by bit all his mental conditions revealed themselves and the last 6 months have been absolute torture for me. I've developed high blood pressure, have serious stress, headaches, etc. and they're all caused from dealing with him.

He is extreme OCD, he meticulously does everything correct and over and over again. This mightn't sound too bad but if there's one mistake in a project it's deleted and has to be started again from scratch. Even if it's a spelling mistake. This adds huge pressure and makes it so intense working there. And we never ever finish a project so have to stay back or do the work on our own time.

He repeats everything he says. And answers his own questions. And then gets paranoid about it. A good example I have of this is once he came to me worried because someone had said to him that he repeats himself so he called me into his office and said to me "Do you think I repeat myself? No, I don't repeat myself" ... and proceeded to repeat that over and over again for about 20 mins without letting me get a word in. It shows how oblivious he is to his issues.

He is an extreme hypochondriac, but in such a peculiar way. He is obsessed about cancer and nothing else. He asks me literally 100 times a day if I think he has cancer. If he hears the word cancer he comes rushing over to me in a panic. If he has a sore thumb he asks me 100 times if it's cancer. If he hears someone has cancer (a co-worker's mother, a celebrity, whatever) it means he has cancer and asks me to bring him to the hospital. He gives me a speech about cancer every single day outlining every percentage chance of every cancer he can get and then asks me if I think he has it. If he can't talk about cancer he will engineer a way to say it like by asking another co-worker about someone famous and asking how they died and it always turns out it was by cancer (he clearly sets it up) just so he can call me over in a panic to ask me about cancer. He gets blood tests once a month and a few months ago started bringing them in asking me to go through them with him to make sure he doesn't have cancer. Things have gotten so bad that he has sent me a picture of his stool and asked if I think it looks like normal or if it's cancer.

He also possibly has tourettes or is just completely socially inept because he has to say everything on his mind from telling me he noticed I'm putting on weight, that I spent X amount of time in the toilet on lunch, that my shirt isn't a nice colour, etc.

Everything he has has to be the best ever and perfect. So he'll ask me if I think his teeth are perfectly straight, if his shoes are the nicest in the world, if car is the cleanest, if he's the smartest man he's ever met... just everything. And I have to say yes to everything because if I don't he's just going to keep asking me again and again and again until he gets the answer he wants. And despite all this everything is negative with him. Everything is bad news. Everything thing is the end of the world, even the smallest thing - if he asks for a diet coke in his order and gets a regular one he needs to sit down and take deep breaths to deal with the news.

He has become obsessed with me to the point that I have to have everything he has, hard to describe but it's like I'm in line with his world or part of his repetitive nature and I can't veer away from that. So if he has a pain in his wrist, I have to have one. If he thinks a movie is good or bad I have to feel the exact same way. If his rent goes up, he'll ask me if my rent went up and unless I say yes he'll ask me again and again until I say yes. And if I don't say yes he'll end up saying it for me.

I think he could be schizophrenic because he can lie to himself in ways I've never seen. His version of reality is whatever he wants to believe and he can't deal with it if it isn't that way. He'll either just tell himself that it is that way or bullies me into telling him it is. He did say something over the phone to someone else that I picked up on, he said something along the lines of "Don't believe what doctors tell you, a doctor told me I've Asperger's but I definitely don't so don't believe them" ... Asperger's would make sense but it definitely is coupled with something else here.

There's more too but think that's all I've rambled long enough. If anyone knows the condition or has dealt with someone like that I'd love the advice. I've approached him in every possible way, I've explained what he's doing, I've been nice about it, I've been stern about it, but every day I say something it's like a reset button is hit that night and he comes in the next day and starts again. I genuinely can't sleep properly over the constant pressure, how repetitive everything is and the obsessed he is with me. I will have 30 missed calls a day from him, 50 unanswered texts. I'm even on medication now dealing with him. It just so stressful, it's a career job and I'm genuinely thinking of leaving it just to get this guy out of my life.

wiggle16

OP

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