fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2296 ]

[ SECRET POST #2296 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2296 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 056 secrets from Secret Submission Post #328.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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I can see where OP might come off as being cold, but I didn't notice it until you said something because I know someone like the person the secret is about and I unconsciously filled in details about that person that don't necessarily apply here. In my case, it's a matter of giving up on the person. I can't keep trying to help someone who doesn't want to be helped. I'm powerless to do anything about their constant negativity and I can't bail them out of every mess they get themselves into, no matter how much part of me wants to because I genuinely care for the person. They have long since reached the point where they have to face the consequences of their actions. I can offer advice to hep them make better decisions and have done so, as have many others. But they always choose to do the thing that the know is the worst course of action and then whine when everything goes to shit. And I just can't be bothered to listen to the whining anymore. I even think sometimes that if less people listened to the whining, the person might start acting like an adult.

THIS!!!

This, SOOOO much.

Their friend might be depressed but as an adult you need to take responsibility for things. Blaming shit you've done wrong on "outside" reasons isn't okay when you put yourself in the mess you're in. I've had depression for a long time and I understand how it feels to just not want to try, to just want to give up, et cetera, but at the end of the day I can't blame failures in my life on anybody but myself.

I don't mean that in a oooh-pity-me kind of way, I hope (general) you know. It's just how it is.

That said, the OP isn't saying that pulling yourself together and stuff is easy. But listening to the whining and shit? Man that gets OLD. And it's worse when it's from someone who is fucking up their own life and all they fucking do is WHINE and want SYMPATHY and it's like: I've only got so much sympathy to offer other people, and IMO it's better spent on people who actually try and don't wallow.

It's hard to make close friends, it's hard to get through college (especially when you struggle with depression, learning disabilities, difficulties applying yourself, et cetera), and it's hard to just LIVE sometimes. But you can't just sit online whining at your internet pals about it.

SO MUCH THIS

And I also suffer from depression.

As someone who also suffers from depression, I totally agree.

'Their friend might be depressed but as an adult you need to take responsibility for things'

this doesn't make sense to me at all
is it so hard to understand that when you're depressed /you just can't/ manage to do what you'd like to do, what you know is right
you're a total fucking wreck

tl;dr quote for those who care --

At the worst stage of major depression, I had moods that I knew were not my moods: they belonged to the depression, as surely as the leaves on that tree's high branches belonged to the vine. When I tried to think clearly about this, I felt that my mind was immured, that it couldn't expand in any direction. I knew that the sun was rising and setting, but little of its light reached me. I felt myself sagging under what was much stronger than I; first I could not use my ankles, and then I could not control my knees, and then my waist began to break under the strain, and then my shoulders turned in, and in the end I was compacted and fetal, depleted by this thing that was crushing me without holding me. Its tendrils threatened to pulverize my mind and my courage and my stomach, and crack my bones and desiccate my body. It went on glutting itself on me when there seemed nothing left to feed it.

I was not strong enough to stop breathing. I knew then that I could never kill this vine of depression, and so all I wanted was for it to let me die. But it had taken from me the energy I would have needed to kill myself, and it would not kill me. If my trunk was rotting, this thing that fed on it was now too strong to let it fall; it had become an alternative support to what it had destroyed. In the tightest corner of my bed, split and racked by this thing no one else seemed to be able to see, I prayed to a God I had never entirely believed in, and I asked for deliverance. I would have been happy to die the most painful death, though I was too dumbly lethargic even to conceptualize suicide. Every second of being alive hurt me. Because this thing had drained all fluid from me, I could not even cry. My mouth was parched as well. I had thought that when you feel your worst your tears flood, but the very worst pain is the arid pain of total violation that comes after the tears are all used up, the pain that stops up every space through which you once metered the world, or the world, you. This is the presence of major depression.

[from Solomon, The Noonday Demon]

The that person needs to get intensive professional help. Which is their personal responsibility. No one can get that help for them. And if people have tried to help and the person has refused it as someone upthread mentioned, then what do you expect those people to do for them?

i don't expect their friends to do anything beyond understanding the basic fact that their friends are suffering from a debilitating disease & are not just acting irresposible and flaky

and it perfectly undestandable if those friends bail, never meant to imply anything else

Re: Not OP

(Anonymous) - 2013-04-17 05:03 (UTC) - Expand

You sound like a real peach. It's nice and wonderful that you managed to cope with your illness to this degree. Don't fucking assume other people would be able to, too.

Your "I made it so you should too!" attitude is part of the reason people don't seek the help they need, so fuck you.

(PS: I made it, but I recognise that not every depression is the same.)

As a person with depression (and I'm stuck in a pretty major episode right now), I feel like the opposite attitude is more prevalent in fandom, and is a lot more hurtful than "I made it so you should too."

(I am also aware that not everyone's depression is the same)

(PS: I made it, but I recognise that not every depression is the same.)

and that's key.

just because someone is 'depressed' doesn't mean they're suffering from clinical depression.

a lot of depression can totally suck but it's not the same crushing depression.

some people really do need to just pull their head out of their ass and it's because of assholes like you that want to keep enabling them by excusing them and saying 'OMG THEIR DEPRESSION IS SOOOOO SEVERE'.

you don't know that any better than the op might know but the op is THERE with this person and they can actually SEE some of the behaviors.

honestly, some people really do love the notoriety that 'being depressed' gives them and will wield it like a finely crafted cudgel to beat anyone down around them that finally gets enough of their self-created drama to say 'suck it up and soldier on, jerk'.

Re: Not OP

(Anonymous) - 2013-04-17 16:28 (UTC) - Expand

And that's the reason why I - though in a similar situation - don't whine online. Because I know a lot of it is my own damn fault, not just the depression's, and even though I try to change, it's such a slow process and I am quite frankly embarrassed about it. Because I know that a lot of the people I know who would read my whining would think exactly like OP does - (they probably do already without any whining from me) and that's a terribly uncomfortable thought.

I've been having conversations with a friend about a mutual friend of ours for months trying to basically come to this point. I honestly couldn't have said it better myself.

I gave up on someone but didn't cut ties because I couldn't bear the guilt of making things worse for her no matter how little. And it's impossible to gauge how severely she'd take something like that because she's so unpredictable. I wish I had because now I don't like or care about or respect her anymore.

This. I don't have the time or the energy to live my friends' lives and still have anything left over for my own. I'm happy to help but the people I know who are like this don't want help; they want attention. I stopped giving it to them because I felt like I was getting sucked into their misery.

SO MUCH THIS!

While I sympathize with you, I can't help but wonder if a lot of people in situations like yours don't even bother trying to set boundaries. It's probably cruel of me to think that way, but I had a lot of problems like this with one of my dearest friends for years, and eventually just came out and talked to her about it.

She knows that sometimes I just need time and space to myself, and also knows that there are times where I just don't have the energy to listen to her problems. Ever since we talked a lot of that out, she still suffers from her problems and bad decisions, but we also have a much more 'normal' relationship that isn't defined by her emotional needs and me thinking I need to be her 110% single-person support network.

I even think sometimes that if less people listened to the whining, the person might start acting like an adult.

Especially since this isn't really true, from what I've seen. It might be for some people, but for people who literally cannot function "normally", or who can't get their shit together on their own, it seems like it mostly cultivates or exacerbates isolation.

I really hope everyone reads this because it's really good advice. IT'S OKAY FOR FRIENDSHIPS TO HAVE BOUNDARIES. If your only response to a friend complaining is to complain about them, then eventually you're going to become at fault for the friendship deteriorating as well.

When you're so afraid to communicate of course you're going to get mad, your friend isn't psychic and won't know these things are annoying you.

Especially since this isn't really true, from what I've seen. It might be for some people, but for people who literally cannot function "normally", or who can't get their shit together on their own, it seems like it mostly cultivates or exacerbates isolation.

Also this. While I don't think it's other people's jobs to be there 24-7, having everyone in your life ditch you doesn't necessarily serve as a motivation for change for a depressed person.

If your only response to a friend complaining is to complain about them, then eventually you're going to become at fault for the friendship deteriorating as well.

That isn't the only response. That wasn't the response at any point in time. The response was to give up on someone after repeatedly trying to help them when they didn't want to be helped. I have my own life to live. I'm sorry for their problems but they continue to make them for themselves despite many people trying to keep them from doing it.

And the comment itself wasn't complaining about a complainer; it was giving an ANONYMOUS alternate perspective to someone another person's comment. Yes, I implied that I think at least some of it is attention seeking. And if I'd gone into detail or given examples, I'm sure many here would agree with me. But I did not and will not do that because I'm not hear to bash someone or say anything that might give away their identity. This isn't and never was meant to be a hate thread.

Re: Not OP

(Anonymous) - 2013-04-17 02:20 (UTC) - Expand

AYRT

We aren't close friends and the one time I brought up their constant negativity, they ignored me and then tweeted some passive aggressive things that may or may not have been directed at me. That was when I just started ignoring the whining and I planned to quietly exit their life after some time had passed but shortly thereafter, a lot of people did exactly as I had planned and the person couldn't cope with it. I'm very empathetic in general and genuinely came to care for them before that even though we weren't close. After seeing how difficult it was for them to cope when all those people cut them off, I just can't bring myself to do it, especially because they have a good heart. So now I just talk to them about mutual interests that they haven't associated anything negative with. Unfortunately, that list keeps shrinking and I don't know what to do when it shrinks to zero.

I wish I had something I could even say to that anon, except that I do feel for you, and I hope that person at least seeks some form of help. Although it does sound like a situation that's just going to naturally meet its end at some point, and I hope it doesn't create more problems for either of you as it moves along.

I don't know if this applies, but I didn't mean to say that you were responsible for their emotional state. You definitely are not, and sometimes distance and drifting apart can definitely be good things.

Best of luck.

And this is how you friendship. Boundaries are mutually beneficial.

This!

I have a friend, who while he doesn't whine, he just doesn't take care of himself, and is barely motivated. My friends have tried to help him with various things, including one friend paying his deposit on their apartment (thankfully he pays rent on time). However, it never works and, if anything, pushes back.

He's an adult, OP's person is an adult. Even if mental illness is involved, it's honestly not a friend's responsibility to do everything for them, especially if they've tried in the past to no avail. You can't run your life around trying to help someone if they don't want to be helped. You should give it an effort, but really, if they're an adult they are their own responsibility.

^this

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