When Too Much Sympathy Is Never Enough.

[StormInateacup]

So I have this friend. Well no she's not actually a friend, though she is someone I have known a good while now and we do share a lot of mutual friends, so I interact with her quite regularly. In fact she's kind of impossible to avoid sometimes.

So she's more in the way of an associate or an acquaintance. And increasingly, a massive pain in the arse.

You get the picture....she's around a lot - too fucking much really but what can you do? Can't live with her - can't smack her in the gob to shut her whiny little cakehole....

Anyhoooo - This woman is one of life's perennial victims. Seriously I mean her life really has been quite shit. Bad family dynamics from the cradle. She married fairly young. The wrong bloke. I suspect because he was the first to ask and she was pretty sure she wasn't going to be beating more offers back with a stick. She hasn't got much money. She doesn't seem to have many actual friends apart from the people we know in common. She's virtually housebound. She has a lot of health problems. I am pretty sure she suffers from depression (I fucking well know I would if I were her.)


So when I first got to know her all my nanny instincts went off. I like to help people (I'm a Virgo - what are you gonna do right?) She was so down about life and herself and her marriage. A lot of people were really quite nasty to her to - impatient, dismissive. I thought it was cruel and uncalled for. I knew she wasn't the brightest light on the Christmas tree, but we'd all be a bit different if we made ourselves, right?

So I willingly decided to be the one who lent a sympathetic ear. Listened to her ( interminable) woes. Tried to help her see where solutions to her myriad problems might lie.

I'd offer encouragement when she went on a health kick. I'd suggest strategies she might try to make her husband less dull, less demanding, less dictatorial. Looked up courses she could do, little holidays she could afford to take. Places she could go with her kids to have fun on the cheap.

The thing is though that her biggest problem is she loves to have problems. She is I have discovered (I'm a bit thick - it took a while) a problem junkie.

The bitch mainlines woe. She's lying in an emotional back alley snorting self pity. And she's a mobile sympathy pump. She feeds off it. She suffers withdrawal symptoms if she feels she's at risk of not getting it. I swear, the cow enters delierium tremens when she even sniffs that you've offered her a viable solution.Or become impatient with listening to more sad tales. Then she gets all pathetic and hurt and sad sacky.

So my conundrum is, apart from screaming at her "YOU MAKE MOST OF YOUR OWN PROBLEMS BY BEING SO FUCKING USELESS - GET OFF YER ARSE AND HELP YERSELF - OR DON"T - BUT FERFUXAKE PISS OFF AND LET ME DRINK!" - which I am afraid may be construed as rude -

what steps can I take to avoid sawing my own head off with a blunt butter knife rather than listen to her any more?

[Deleted]

Oh I know people like this and they drive me absolutely batshit.

My thinking is this. I'm as sympathetic as all get out the first few times, but....

When you continue to have the same problems over and over and over and there are things within your control that can be done to fix this repeating problem, than after a while I have zero sympathy and even less tolerance.

At some point you have to step up to the plate, fae your demons and claim your problems and their solutions as your own. Don't place the blame elsewhere unless it belongs there.

If you can't fit into your clothes because you are overweight, instead of new clothes, lose the fucking weight.

If you can't make your rent because you spent the money on video games and take out. Start cooking your food and pawn the fucking game.

If you can't put gas in your car because you just had to have those new shoes, you better hope they are comfy because I ain't lending you shit.

This kind of shit drives me batshit. Not only do they live off the drama but 98% of it is THEIR OWN FAULT! Because they are either about as responsible financially as goldfish, stuck in a rut of their own making or just plain damn dumb. I don't know. Makes me fucking nuts.

[rscott]

The type that drive me nuts are life's hypochondriacs.
Being somewhat of an expert and connoisseur of pain, if someone starts whining about their aches and pains, I lift my shirt or drop trou and show them my scars or I show them x-rays of all the hardware, broken bones and grafts in my head and body.
Either usually shuts them up.

[Deleted]

Jun 29, 2012 15:03:47 GMT -5 @rscott said:

The type that drive me nuts are life's hypochondriacs.
Being somewhat of an expert and connoisseur of pain, if someone starts whining about their aches and pains, I lift my shirt or drop trou and show them my scars or I show them x-rays of all the hardware, broken bones and grafts in my head and body.
Either usually shuts them up.

OH YES THIS!!! 100000000000%

You get the "Oh my back hurts so bad I don't think I can do >insert something simple<." or some such and you are in so much pain it is everything you can do not to slam their head against the wall just for a seconds diversion. Because for you just getting out of bed is something to fucking celebrate!!!

[rscott]

I said "usually" shuts them up.
There are always a few who look at the zipper scar running from the base of my skull to my butt and are still convinced their hangnail or paper cut is a competing injury.

[The Mad Hatter]

I know people like all that. Generally my eyes glaze over after a bit and I wander off.