Hanging with Mich all of yesterday (I'm back at work today - been here for hours and haven't actually touched anything worky yet,
She taught me mainly through example of how I don't want things to be. Now, don't get me wrong, she's not supercrap, but she is generally unhappy with her life. She's more than capable of holding a serious conversation, she is able to be supportive and appreciative but I will say that the majority of random comments she makes are negative/complainy.
It's an unhappy place to be, where your gut reaction or instinct is bad. She's got a pretty awesome life; a good job and rad friends, no troubles and stress just should not exist but it totally does... I think she might be the unhappiest person I know.
She's 27 and does not have a boyfriend, and therefore no immediate prospect for marriage. This upsets her more than I can possibly comprehend. I think she wants to get married to
a) get her Mum off her back
b) have a dude provide her with more money and fix all her problems
c) have a massive big day all about herself.
She lives in a constant circle of dependency of attention from her friends, so much so that her friends are starting to get over it and withdraw, which is making things worse and worse, especially since her best friends are applying for visas in happyhappycoupleland.
The good thing for me, is that I get caught up in similar to her foibles but to a much lesser degree. Seeing the extremes really does highlight how completely unnecessary and destructive it all is. She knows that her brain isn't helping her, and so reads a lot of self help books and all that, but doesn't seem to take any of it in, the negative emotions always seem to take over, even when she logically knows she's being crap. Then she feels crap for being crap and so on and so forth.
She's hanging with us until the 3rd of Jan and Cara is flying up today. I'm thinking of basically beating Mich up everytime she's unnecessarily negative... do you think that'll help or will I become The Most Annoying Young Man of All Time?
Since I'm on the topic, and not that I'm here yet, but I'm probably the closest I've been in the 6 years I've known her:
Is it the wrongest to tell someone to go away and come back when they are a better person?
posted by Adam @ 12:06 PM
11 comments
11 Comments:
Mmmm.... christmas pumpkin.
Thanks Lulu.
Hmm, I'm not sure but I don't think she's depressed per se, just massively negative. She still gets very excited about shoes and pashing boys, she's just very negative about everything else.
I don't think I'll ever tell her to go away but if I did it would be to shake her up and give her a goal to work towards.
She does sound pretty down so I wouldn't recommen telling her she's crap... though I kinda know how you feel - I have a friend who's boyf broke it off three years ago to go o/s and she's never really recovered - she doesn't eat properly, sleep properly, takes lots of leave and lives very vicariously through everyone else (she's nagging me to eat eggs so that I can have healthy babies) - after a weekend with her and another friend in Sydney I did the no show for her drinks the next weekend because I felt I'd 'done my time'... it's terrible I know, but sometimes a person has to want to change before they will change, and I do think there's a part of her that's just fallen into playing the part of the sad singleton out of fear of failing at 'playing' another part.
You've just described my worst nightmare!!
I am so paranoid that if I complain or be unhappy people will be all 'OMG, all Jen does is whine, let's not be friends with her" and if I don't ever seem unhappy people will be all "OMG, Jen never lets us in, let's not be friends with her". So maybe she just doesn't quite realise that she's quite so self absorbed and it's not entirely intentional?
I understand the logic in saying "You aren't you best, and I'm going to give you a bit of room so we don't end up hating each other" but if she's really feeling that low, she might not appreciate the fact it's for her own good and see it as her friends turning on her.
Maybe have share number of bottles of wine (so she's a little bit more willing to listen, and a bit less...defensive) and gently explain how she needs to just suck it up and deal with it, and everything will fall into place from there. It sounds like it's a very vicious circle for her. If she can be happy with herself, just as she is, then I can almost bet she won't be single for that much longer, guys tend to flee from the "needy" types.
If all else fails, maybe try shaking some sense into her. If nothing else it will relieve your frustration?
DON'T SHAKE YOUR BABY!
D'Jen, I do understand your fears, but you are so worlds apart from Mich. You're allowed to complain, you're allowed to be unhappy, you really don't have to be happy all the time, but the thing with Mich is that everything she says is totally and unnecessarily negative. D'Jen, you're a delight to be around, and for this reason I do completely give you permission to be whiney every now and then.
I think we're all struggling with Mich because all of her closest friends have had this convo with her. We've all sat her down and explained the effect she's having on us and herself. She understands it, she knows it, she tells new people she meets, she knows she has to change to be happier, she definitely knows she's very self-absorbed - she just can't get on top of it.
I do get what you're saying though which is why we've all been treading carefully to not make it worse through abandonment.
Enny, you're so right! I didn't see that before, but Mich's 'part' is the friend that needs all our help. She gets far more attention and understanding (and frustration and beatingsup) than everyone else put together. She constantly tells us that because she doesn't have a partner we all need to step up to help her out.... but then if it all gets fixed she won't get as much attention...
Interesting...
You kids are heaps smart. Blogger just might be the best invention. Damn, I still haven't done any work.
Well, I'm glad to know I'm not quite there. Especially since the only place I really whine is on my blog, so if you don't think I'm excessively pathetic then I must be travelling ok, thanks very much :)
Do you think she is really self absorbed because she is just incapable of understanding how not to be, or do you think she enjoys being "poor Mich"?
Maybe it's time for professional help. Either way she will probably benefit from some insight into why she's the way she is, and maybe having a completely removed person commenting on her situation might help her to work through some things.
I normally default to "treat other people how you would like to be treated". If you were in her position, what would you want your friends to do for you? If all else fails, do that.
Everyone is more or less responsible for their own happiness. If she says she's unhappy because she doesn't have a boyfriend, then she's just unhappy. She sounds to me like she'd be unhappy if she had one.
It may sound harsh, but her happiness is not your problem, Adam. Don't ruin your own time with Cara.
Perhaps the simple truth is, nobody has ever said to her -
do you realise how negative you are about things?
do you think it might be worthwhile trying to be a bit more positive about things?
I used to work in a call centre. I would hear all the people around me answer the phones, and because it is courtesy for people to say "How are you" I heard how everyone else responded to it. "Not bad" "Okay" "good" "fine".. blah blah *blah* - people are asking just because it is polite and nobody really cares, right?
One day I made up my mind to change my answer to "Excellent!" and I found it had two effects - it became a self-fulfilling prophecy type of thing, and people were often taken aback by the positivity of it.
I know people who are negative about everything in their life, and what happens is, everything turns to shyte. I've even fallen into the trap myself on occasion. Sometimes you just want to be snarky and say bitchy things, but if you do that all the time, you forget how to be positive.
So what I would suggest instead - tell her you've noticed she's being quite negative and maybe she does not realise it, so over the time that you have to spend with her, you're going to call her on it. Not by saying anything, but just by a gesture of your hand (maybe a wave, maybe a point in her direction, maybe a wink or a head shake, whatever you feel comfortable with) so that she can realise just how often she is doing it, and note that it not only affects her but the people around her.
How's that for an idea? ;)
It's hard to be around someone who is so negative nancy all of the time. I think it is even more difficult to BE negative nancy all of the time. Ask her that..."exactly how much energy does it take to be so depressing mich? Give me something that you aren't sad about". As a friend, as sappy as it sounds, it's your responsiblity to tell her that she's being negative nancy before someone else does (or maybe even you when you blow up from all of the negativeness of it all) in not so nice of a way.
Hmmm, you've all given me a whole heap of food for thought. I think I might need to refer back to this post for a bit.
Meva, I'm going to tell her that. It does seem to me that all her friendships and relationships are about helping her out. I am happy to help, but she has been squarely putting responsibility for her happiness on a few of us and that's not on anymore.
Snoskred, I do always appreciate your well thoughtout comments. I totally find myself perking the heck up when she's being a big nancy in a means for some sort of balance. So, instead of beating her up if she's being a bit whiny, I'll just ask her to be positive instead, even if she doesn't feel it. There was a laugh club fad going around for a while whose motto was 'fake it till you make it' which was basically that if you pretend to laugh you often actually start laughing.
I'll suggest your idea and she if she's up for the challenge.
Amanda, people have been doing this exact thing for her for a while, but I think this is the first time in a longtime that friends would have spent 7 days consecutive with her. I'm excited to get started...
D'Jen, I think she has found that if she's all complainy and upset and hopeless then her friends always step up, if they don't, she applies more pressure until they do. It's kinda like having a sick kid around, you want to treat them because their having a rough time but you also don't want to reward them for being sick. P.S) Really, you're travelling awesome, your character and personality don't need a single tweek. Not a single.
Thanks all for the comments, you're all superlovely!
Buy her "The Secret".
Its a book about how you can create the life you want by using your thoughts to attract positive things.
Post a Comment
<< Home