Coworker with HPD? Advice needed

I've been working with a woman [***mod edit - name removed***] for 4 years and I believe she has HPD. I will list all the reasons I believe she has this.

- She lives for attention. She's frequently said things like "I disappear. If I'm in a room people don't notice me" and would accompany that statement with a scowl. She also said to me after I announced to everyone at work I was pregnant, "great, now you're going to get all the attention."

- Her father recently passed away and was really bummed out no one got her a sympathy card or made a big deal about it when she never told anyone except me and one other coworker. Since she didn't even tell her own boss I didn't think it was my place to tell everyone in the office. Since she didn't tell her direct boss, I figured she wanted to keep quiet about it. But she's more upset she didn't get a card than her father passing.

- If given the chance she would talk at me for hours at a time about her personal issues and especially her sex life. In no way have I ever shown interest in her sex life. I don't know what gave her the idea that I want to hear about that when we're at best workplace acquaintances. Maybe because I didn't have the balls to tell her to shut up and leave me alone like everyone else? She would seek me out at my desk so I'd be cornered and helpless as she pulled up a chair and began with "so last night Travis and I had sex for six hours on the couch...."

- she also makes everything sexual. Even something innocent she'll have to twist it into some sort of sexual joke. For example we recently worked with a group who came in to use our facility; they invited us to come to their facility next year. When talking about it she said "I'll show you mine if you show me yours."

- She CANNOT take criticism. She once made a terrible looking brochure with clip art and spelling mistakes for a project we were working on and our head boss took one look at it and gently said he'd prefer our marketing/graphic design person to make the brochure. She then swept it off the table, nastily said "fine if you don't want my input then I don't want to be a part of this" and acted like she was holding back tears.

- She seems unaware of anyone but herself. There is constant conflict surrounding one of her work tasks that depends greatly on her being timely with it. She never is, and therefore messes up everyone else's schedule for the day which causes a lot of resentment. If she does notice how her poor time management affects others, she doesn't care because she's still late with the task every single day.

- She takes things way too personally. Sometimes a bunch of us will all order food from some place and one of us will go pick it up. If she's left out it wasn't intentional, it was because she wasn't part of the conversation at that time. It's just whoever happens to be in the break room at any given moment. If she's left out she'll stare with some sort of icy, calculating gaze at someone eating their food at their desk and then turn and flounce out of the room.

- THE STARING. I noticed her doing this right after I first met her when she was first hired and it weirded me out. It still weirds me out. She'll say something intentionally off color and then stare at you, waiting for your reaction. She seems almost to enjoy watching you squirm as you figure out how to react to what she just said. Then when you finally do something, either make an awkward joke back or nervously fake laugh, she'll continue that weird calculating, icy gaze. It's so uncomfortable every time it happens.

So this behavior has been going on for 4 years and I've had to bear the brunt of it. Every day, multiple times a day (at least once an hour) she would come into my office, loom up behind me, and either comment about what was on my computer screen or say "what are you doinggggggg", or even start right in with her sexual adventures from the night before in detail (example, something she has literally said to me before: "we did it doggy style while he watched porn on his phone." WTF do you even say to that?!)

I've tried grey rocking for a while and had mixed success. If she was especially needing attention she'd just ignore me ignoring her and pull up a chair and start talking no matter what I was doing. Sometimes she got the hint and would leave me alone. But she'd always pop in multiple times a day to bother me. She reminded me of a gnat, always circling no matter how many times I swatted her away.

A few weeks ago we had an event that she was in charge of planning. Of course she did a piss poor job of planning it but it was event so I was glad for once to sit back and not have to be the lead on everything.

[***mod edit - name removed***], another coworker and I all frequently message each other in a group chat all day, either venting about work or sending stupid stuff to each other. 15 minutes before the event started, [***mod edit - name removed***] wrote several long paragraphs to the group chat about how no one needs her anymore and she doesn't feel like she's a part of the group anymore and all this other whiny passive aggressive stuff. She said since she wasn't "needed" she wouldn't be participating in this event when it was an all hands on deck type of situation where her absence would have really screwed us over.

That was the straw that broke the camels back and I copy and pasted a couple of the lines into an email to my boss being like "[***mod edit - name removed***] feels this way, we should probably all get together and talk about this sometime soon." My boss is also annoyed with her and forwarded the email to his boss, who then went up and talked to [***mod edit - name removed***] about how unacceptable that behavior was.

[***mod edit - name removed***] found out and unleashed a volcano of fury at me. She couldn't believe I "went behind her bacK" and she was only "joking". I was like "look, it wasn't meant to be malicious but you can't say stuff like that, especially not 15 minutes before an event we've been preparing for, and expect nothing to happen."

She's now ignoring me completely at work which honestly, is great. I don't have to worry about her coming up to me at any moment to talk about her sex life or some other personal matter that I don't want to hear about. But it does make things awkward because I still have to work with her.

Should I apologize? I feel like I didn't do anything wrong.

Hey Hpdcoworker911,

We aren't qualified to diagnose anyone here, but I think it's fine that you are aware her behavior matches many of the criteria for HPD. It's enough to know, it's what you observe, and if it provides some grounding for you in terms of how to deal with her, then that works.

Put another way, regardless of the diagnosis, it's the behavior that affects you and others at work, and it is problematic. The type of behavior you are describing is very disruptive in a work setting, and because it is a job, there are expectations.

And honestly, if this was a male, in many cultures he'd have been fired or written up by HR for interjecting his sex life like you described into work related relationships. I think it's entirely reasonable that you, and others, don't want to hear about it, and to expect her to act in a professional manner.

So my personal opinion? I don't think you owe her an apology. You are just setting boundaries, trying to keep it about work, as are others.