Is this a recognized mental illness or syndrome or something?

[StarvingButStrong]

I recently made a new friend. She is a wonderful woman in many ways: friendly and outgoing and cheerful and funny and great to be around. But as our acquaintance lengthens, she is gradually filling me in on her past, and I'm starting to wonder.

You see, she has gone through what sounds like an unending series of awfully damaging events, both physically and emotionally damaging, I mean. And while in some of them she is clearly a 'random victim,' in most of the cases it seems to me that she is either setting herself up for bad results by voluntarily doing things reasonable adults would avoid OR the damage is flatout self-inflicted through incredible clumsiness and carelessness.

(BTW, this woman, let's call her Accident Prone, is about 28 now, and very attractive. Which maybe shouldn't matter, but in truth what constitutes 'reasonable behavior' is sometimes different between being, say, an ordinary looking 50 year old guy and a 20 year old beautiful girl.)

Examples, just one of each type though I could give you at least a half dozen more of each:

Of the blameless victim type: She moved into an apartment that was formerly occupied by a friend of a man who turned out to be a serial rapist, and subsequently drew his attention. (Of course, even there....Am I the only one who gets locks changed when she moves into a new place? And she didn't even do that after the first time she found this stranger-to-her guy had let himself into her apartment.)


Of the setting herself up: She and another friend decide on impulse to drive to Mexico for a night of drinking and 'having fun.' At some point during the journey it occurs to them it would be funny to handcuff themselves together and claim to be escaped fugitives. The situation ends up with assaults and a drunken brawl in a bar, and arrest. Naturally they had managed to lose their purses in the course of this, and so they spend several days in a not very pleasant jail while things got straightened out.


Of damaging herself: She dropped a glass while cooking dinner. From then on it was a comedy of slapstick, with cutting of fingers, falls onto broken glass and accidentally sitting on some collected pieces and finally somehow slicing her arm open to the bone on a piece that was somehow wedged into the side of a cabinet. She was sitting around in a pool of blood *laughing at her own silliness* when her date arrived, and he had to rush her to an emergency room.


Now, I started to disbelieve her. Maybe these things had not happened at all, or that maybe she was wildly exaggerating just to amuse other people with the stories. But I talked with a couple of other woman about it -- the one who had introduced me to Ashley, and another unrelated woman, and between them they can vouch for many of the incidents being true. Either they were there while these things unfolded, or helped clean up the mess, or knew the other people involved in these incidents, etc.

Assuming this all happened, then, is she just the unlucky flipside to the guy who wins the lottery and buys a rummage sale coat with a pocket full of jewelry and so on? Or....

Is it probable that she is (on some level) deliberately getting herself hurt? She relates these horrible stories cheerfully, introduces the subjects herself, and does in fact gather a lot of sympathy and admiration for her pluckiness and grit and courage in having survived so well. Well, who could fail to admire a woman who has risen above not just multiple injuries that required hospitalization, but three separate rapes and a kidnapping by an enraged ex-lover in such a bracing way? She gets lots of 'stroking' and is the center of attention and so forth -- could that possibly be enough to make her willing to suffer this abuse to get ot?

Would this be some some form of "Munchausen Disease"?

And, if so, what should I do as her friend? Discourage her from telling the stories and wallowing in it? (Without the 'reward', maybe she'd stop hurting herself.) Encourage her to seek counseling?

[jjimm]

I've got a friend like this - every injury going, she's had it. Every personal tragedy (and I mean serious, serious personal tragedy), she's experienced it. And I disbelieved her at first, until I started to see stuff happen to her that was so totally unlucky, and got her other stories corroborated.

My sister's had some rotten things happen to her too - relentlessly. Something really awful happens to her at the rate of one or two incidents a year. A few things were caused IMO by her bad judgement on her part, but the majority of it is just random nasty shit that always seems to land on her.

I have no idea why some people are luckier than others, and I'd love to find out.

[SentientMeat]

I'm not sure whether this is really GD material, but this sounds to me like everyday cluelessness, incompetence, irresponsibility and utter lack of foresight.

The first situation was somewhat unlucky. I have moved into shared flats where changing the locks upon arrival of every single new flatmate is prohibitively expensive and inconvenient - there is often a certain element of trust that the keys one is given are the only copy, although a careful person would simply insist on change.

However, the other situations were utterly avoidable with an atom of common sense. They do not sound like a deliberate attempt to get into difficulty, but I know many people who seem to prefer a less "safe" life, as though they feel they "deserve" a rollercoaster ride of ups and downs when the tiniest piece of forethought would save a whole heap of trouble.

Counselling can't hurt - if she has not had rape counselling then that is definitely to be recommended.

[msmith537]

IANAPhD but IDSIAHILN.

It sounds to me like your friend might have a mix of poor impulse control, a lack of common sense and a desparate need for attention. She probably doesn't think about the consequences of her actions. She may lack that little voice in her head that says "hey..that might not be such a good idea" or "that guy..a little sketchy". It sounds a lot like the type of girl you hear at a rape trial saying "look, just because I was drunk, in his bed, in my underwear at 3:00am does not mean I was interested in having sex with him".


Personally that would drive me nuts.

[StarvingButStrong]

Sh*t! I didn't mean to stick this thread here, I thought I was in GQ.

I've asked the mods to move it.

[MEBuckner]

Moderator's Note: Moving to GQ.

[greck]

Not likely it's munchausen's, although (iirc) the essential feature of it is injuring one's self for the purpose of attention from health care personnel.

I don't think this is the same thing. I'd guess (I'm a therapist, although not an expert on munchausen's) that these people would try to keep the genesis of their injuries secret; wouldn't admit to having hurt themselves.

My guess is that this person was traumatized as a young person (and indeed repeatedly throughout life); my first guess is sexual abuse. When that happens, there is a tendency for people to become detatched from their bodies, and develop "klutzy" tendencies. It's a defense mechanism thing. Think of it as similar to the numbing of one's emotions, only with the body.

Also, people have a tendency to take the experiences that they've had, develop hypotheses about the world from those, and to then go out and try to prove those hypotheses correct. If this woman has been abused, she is likely to be out to prove that the world is an abusive and chaotic place. She's looking for it, she's likely to find it.

And yeah, it seems to me sometimes that bad shit just happens to some people.

For all I know it could be Munchausen's, but it really doesn't matter.

Just be her friend; don't try to teach her anything, don't try to modify her behavior. She's probably already been in therapy. although if you're really concerned about her, have a talk with her and tell her your concerns as a friend.

[moriah]

So, one goes to Mexico to drink heavily... with handcuffs?

And then proceeds to pretend to be fugitives (mind you, prisoners are not handcuffed to each other except in movies) in a foreign country?

Hmmm, your friend is either:

1. diagnosable with a personality disorder.. of the hysterical type (no impulse control, needs to be center of attention).

2. diagnosable with a personality disorder.. of the compulsive lying type (she's making it all up).

3. a moron.

Don't discount any of them as being mutually exclusive.

Peace.

[AHunter3]

Aha, you've noticed a pattern!

See if you can find anyone else exhibiting it. If you can't, loosen the description until it envelopes enough people to look like a phenomenon.

Now invent a label for it. Voíla, roll-you-own psychosis!

Calling the set of symptoms a syndrome doesn't equal understanding what caused them

[metroshane]

Knock Knock. It's natural selection at the door.