How to tell a depressed friend not to (metaphorically) bleed on me?

In My Humble Opinion
1

So my friend Kate is badly depressed, and has been for at least 4 years now. She is on meds, she is in therapy, and nothing is helping.

She talks a lot about feeling useless, unloved, that nobody likes her, everyone hates her, she’s hideous (she is actually one of the prettiest girls I know), her crushing student debt, etc.

She also makes comments to that effect on Facebook, and will start conversations in text especially late at night when she’s feeling bored and lonely and depressed that inevitably return to how bad her life is and how everyone allegedly hates her.

The thing is - to some extent she’s right. A lot of her friends don’t want to talk to her anymore, because she’s such a downer and every conversation ends up consisting of her friends reassuring her that we really do like her, that she really is attractive, that she shouldn’t kill herself, etc, etc, etc.

It is fucking exhausting. It’s been going on for years. It shows no sign of abating.

Lately she has been turning for support to myself and especially my husband, mostly via text because we’re also night owls. The thing is, we’re going through our own crap right now, and do not have the energy to go through “the Katie dance” every single freaking night. Dealing with her is retriggering my depression, and making my husband (who is much more patient than I am) lose sleep due to being up all night acting as her therapist/suicide hotline.

How do I get her to stop? It’s gotten to the point where I’ve lost my temper and my compassion for her, and have come thisclose to saying some nasty and cruel and hurtful things to her just to get her to GO AWAY. But I really don’t want to do that. I want her to be happy and healthy, and I want to be friends with her, but I don’t want her to keep treating us as her unpaid, unqualified therapists. I need to set a boundary, but I need her to not take that boundary-setting as “I hate you, you’re a horrible person”, which she will default to doing.

Please. Help. I feel like I’m drowning, and I’m really really afraid that I’ll snap at her and tell her to just fucking kill herself already or something similarly horrible that I really don’t mean.

2

It’s a tough position to be in. Someone else should be telling her not to visit her troubles on others, so maybe you can use one of the other friends who won’t talk to her anymore as an example. (BTW: A lesson I need to learn better myself, I have to stop being a grouchy asshole when things go bad for me).

I did once try something with a friend who was doing this, said I’d go out and do something with him if he didn’t talk about how bad his life was after his wife left him. It worked fairly well for that one evening, but he was soon in the dumps again.

3

My technique is to apply a little layman’s behavioral therapy on them. Part of professional therapy is to understand that absolute statements like never, no one, can’t and “I am” statements are generally incorrect. They exclude option and phrase temporary problems as unchanging states of being. You might feel unloved, but you are not unlovable. You might not have a boyfriend now, but it’s not true that you will never have a boyfriend. You might not have money right now, but it’s not true that you can’t be successful. It might be raining now, but it doesn’t always rain. Those kinds of things.

If you correct someone like that long enough and consistently enough, it seems to me that they either correct their thinking or they go away. It’s a win-win. If they stick around, your conversations will be a lot more constructive. Even if they choose to go away, your responses still showed that you care about them.

4

Any chance you can tell the therapist? If the girl has enough friends (or “friends” in her mind) that it wouldn’t make it seem like it’s just you, then you can have the therapist basically say “I contacted some of your friends and they said…” and have the therapist try and tackle it?

You could also try and have the therapist say “Your friends contacted and said…” or whatever

5

There is nothing you can do to make her better. There is also nothing you can say that can’t feed her depression. It isn’t automatically true that she will take it the wrong way, but you can’t control that.

“Sorry, can’t talk right now” is enough. No explanations, no excuses, and especially no attempt to talk her into agreeing with you. You don’t have to shut her out completely, but staying up at night listening to her troubles is bad for you and it doesn’t help her.

If there is nothing you can do, then there is nothing you can do.

Regards,
Shodan

6

First off - good on you for worrying about how best to do what in this situation. Sounds like you have been a good friend, and are willing to continue being one. And I urge you to attempt steps other than simply cutting this person off. But you have to realize that you are not able to direct what this person does or thinks, and your primary responsibility is for your and your husband’s health and well-being.

Is there a way to start setting up “borders” that might be able to nudge her into better directions? Just because she texts you late at night, doesn’t mean you have to respond. Or perhaps respond “I’m not really able to get into this tonight. Let’s talk (whenever convenient for YOU.)” Or - if you wanted to go way above and beyond, “Why don’t we meet (name some constructive activity/place) and discuss this while exercising/running errands/shopping/baking cookies…?” I don’t know about the ethics of contacting the counselor. I could imagine writing a leter to the counselor, saying how your friend is affecting others. Or perhaps write the letter to your friend a letter, suggesting that she show the letter to the counselor.

It is exceedingly difficult to know when to cut off ties with friends or family for your own health and sanity, but sometimes there is no other solution. Sit down with your husband and decide on an end game. Unless you have a plan and a schedule, your friend will suck up as much of your time and energy as you allow her to.

7

I agree with Shodan. There’s a lot of flowery talk about unconditional love, but a real relationship is about mutual support, and I don’t see how this person is much of a support to you at all. I do talk openly about my depression with some friends, but usually friends with similar issues they can also talk about. We’re also good at drawing boundaries when we have to. There’s no shame in ‘‘I can’t deal with this right now, I’ve got too much going on personally.’’ For someone to continually latch onto you with no awareness of your needs is not good for either of you.

And it’s not like I can’t see where she’s coming from. Depression, unfortunately, can cause the victim to become really self-absorbed. I have no doubt she is in constant pain and desperate to end her suffering. It’s not her fault necessarily but you aren’t responsible for fixing her either. If she is in such dire shape your husband has to talk her down off the ledge every night, she isn’t getting what she needs from her therapists and/or doctors. You can’t give that to her, all you can do is gently encourage her to get the help she really needs.

8

Oh Christ I’m in this same situation, but it’s with a sister so I can’t cut her off. You (and I) are victims of an emotional vampire & I agree with Shodan and others who said there is nothing you can do. I’m subscribing however just in case someone pops in and offers a genius solution.

9

Maggie, you need to take care of your own self first. I recommend not responding to her for a while. As someone said upthread, it doesn’t really matter what you say to her as she is turned in on herself and won’t hear what you really say. You can’t fix her but you can hurt yourself if you get too invested in her issues, so don’t.

10

Through the Dope, I recently discovered the wonderful advice column over at Captain Awkward. She answers a question just like yours, OP.

11

I am curious if she’s quite good looking why doesn’t she have some SO on the hook she can emote to? If she’s all about needing attention you would think she would be making use of her physical attractiveness as many men are drawn to rescue attractive women in distress like moths to the flame.

Is her needy, morbid personality* that* repellent to even desperate men?

12

She is amazingly beautiful, but has only been in two relationships in her life. That’s part of her neuroses. She was a child prodigy (graduated HS at 15, graduated UCLA at 18), so the time that most people spend having “practice” relationships, she was surrounded by people far older than her and not appropriate to be dating. So when she finally looked up out of her books at the people around her, and said “Okay, I’m ready to date now,” she had no idea how to pick a mate, no idea how a relationship was supposed to go, no idea how to not give her whole heart to someone, and so the first relationships were not what you’d call successes. Plus, it was about then that the depression kicked in, which didn’t help any.

13

Leaving aside your weird-ass views on women, there’s a flaw in your reasoning. Assuming this lady did have a hapless SO ‘‘on the hook,’’ it wouldn’t do a damned thing for her severe clinical depression, because life doesn’t work that way. This person is just as sick as Maggie, just in a different way, and having a boyfriend to talk to isn’t going to make her illness go away.

Maggie can’t fix her and neither can some white knight man. The only thing that might help her is some hard-ass work, a good therapist and an even better psychiatrist.

14

That’s an amazingly wise advice column, and I’m thinking of printing her scripts out and sticking them above the phone at my house.

I was going to offer up a scripted response something like “That sounds really awful. I’m going to have to go soon because I’m kind of low on spoons myself. You know how that can get!”

But her scripts are better.

15

I had a friend like that,with the emphasis on had.

I had to cut her loose because I couldn’t take it anymore. I finally told her she needed help, of a kind I couldn’t give. Somehow she turned that into me telling her that she was a horrible, bad person - which is NOT what I said. Then she pulled Jesus into it saying that maybe she wasn’t perfect but even Jesus had to ask for forgiveness.

That was a huge WTF?! for me.

I made the mistake of telling her Happy Birthday on FB. I got a text 5:30 the next morning all about her problems at work. No hi, no how ya been?, no what’s up - she just dove right into her problems.

Which was another issue, she would text/call at all hours and if I didn’t answer she’d call me from a different number or call from a blocked number.

I feel sorry for her, but I can’t help her. She’s the kind of person that if you tell her she looks nice today she takes it to mean you are saying she looks ugly every other day. I’m not a professional, and I’m not qualified to treat her.

I found out from another friend that I was the last to cut her loose.
Then I read an article saying people like her are really narcissistic. I can believe it, it was always about her, and her depression, and her problems.

16

sigh Thanks, all.

Part of the reason I’m at a loss so much with her is because of my lovely lovely BPD ex who used threats of suicide as a manipulation tactic, so when she talks about her ideations it hits my fight-or-flight reflex pretty hard.

There’s also a part of me that is all “When I was seriously depressed and suicidal, I didn’t go around talking about it, or even let anyone know! I kept it to myself and tried to handle it myself and never even acknowleged to anyone that anything was wrong, and when I wound up in the hospital from it, I was suitably ashamed and never told anyone! Why must she be so overt about this? It’s just VULGAR!!”

Which is pretty fucked-up on my part. So I need to figure out where my need-to-draw-boundaries-to-protect-myself is and where the your-displays-of-strong-negative-emotion-are-in-poor-taste is, and work out how exactly to feel about all this. BLAAAAARGH.

17

No ethical therapist will talk to anyone about a patient. Ever.

I once had an acquaintance who was seriously slipping off the deep end. She would leave messages and “gifts” of weird miscellaneous stuff at people’s homes when they were out. We were supposed to know what these items signified, but they were all WTF to everyone. In one case she left a bag containing, among other things, some sort of medication. The recipient had small children in the house and was quite concerned since one of them could have eaten the meds. Someone found out her therapist’s name and called. The therapist immediately said “I can’t talk with you about ‘Jane’.” The caller said, “I know, but perhaps you can listen and maybe this will help.” The therapist listened.

18

Maggie, didn’'t you say some of her other friends are avoiding her because she needs so much reassurance? So it’s not you, it’s her!

19

I quoted the whole post, because every word is very wise, and I rarely agree with Shodan, so that probably goes to show something.

Yeah. Unconditional love is for parents and spouses. That’s about it. Maybe some “In loco parentis” people, like my aunt and uncle. Not friends who need their sleep.

And probably a prescription for something.

If it helps, OP, print this out, and have it in front of you when you tell this person “Can’t talk now.”

Maybe you need to decide just how much time you can give to her, and try to structure your interactions, like lunch meetings, or something, not open-ended events, where it’s easy to get back to your own private time.

20

I am sorry. Please help her.

If you want to break up the relation with Kate you should ask my old friends how they broke away from me. I am also depressed, but I was never suicidal.