Title pretty much says it all. Has anyone here faced this dilemma, and if so what do you do?
Can you elaborate a little? Are you talking about someone diagnosed with inoperable cancer? Or a mental illness?
For that matter, what do you do with a self-pitying whiner who won’t fix the problems (although this person could, easily) but loves to go on about them at length?
That’s easy. It’s much harder when they really can’t, when they are trapped in a situation that is not of their own making (terminal illness, or intractable family problems, or something). If it’s of their own making you can at least give advice until they either take it or get so annoyed that they stop talking to you. It’s also harder if the problem is the result of a mistake they made in the past (smoking, having a child they couldn’t support/afford) that can’t really be undone, so there’s no point in saying “I told you so”, but it’s hard to know what else to say, if you aren’t willing to get sucked into full-time helping them out.
Let them whine.
It’s similar to when someone is yelling at you. The quickest way to make them stop is not to yell back.
This seems more like a poll than a debate.
Off to IMHO.
To a certain extent, everybody needs to vent. When that drags on and on, I screen my calls, delay replying to emails, etc.
I remember times when I was a whiner and I know I wore a few people out. Once I felt like I was becoming a PITA, I stopped calling them and started looking for solutions instead of ranting.
It’s a lot of stuff but it’s definitely all of her own making and it’s nothing that couldn’t be dealt with/fixed/worked on if only she weren’t living in denial or afraid of change–and of spending money, of which she has a great deal.
It’s gotten so frustrating for me and another mutual friend that we are worn out from hearing about the self-imposed travails all the time. And if I were to say that to our whining pal, she would call us unsupportive and unsympathetic and then tell the rest of her friends and colleagues how horrible we are…not that it matters all that much to me, since I’m sure a number of them are worn out as well, but are not willing to say it to her out loud.
I just don’t see an end to it.
I have a good friend at work that’s like that. She just lurvs to whine about anything and everything. To top it off, she the kind of talker that repeats what she said, with maybe changing a few words, at least three times in the same conversation. (And it has gotten worse).
I learned to tune her out when she repeats, or finish the sentence (repeating her word per word) overriding her. I know it’s rude to do that, i’ve run out of patience.
If you know (and her too) what needs to be done to solve her situation, keep asking her:
“Why don’t you…” to which she’ll object (too hard, tired, no time, whatever) and you say: “I know it is, but i know/trust in your ability to resolve it."
Keep repeating that to her every time she whines too much. It’s more on the positive side for a reply so she can’t really hate you for it.
OK, which are we addressing: the OP’s question or vivalostwages’ question? Because no offense to viva, but it seems his/her question is already starting to overshadow the OP’s.
IMO and IME what you describe is a “sooner or later” proposition. I.e. you can listen to it and maybe when you hear it for the 100th or 500th time you’ll crack. The problem, when you crack, is that you can say some pretty hurtful (though true) things because you’re SICK SICK SICK of it.
I think it’s better to nip it early, while you’re still calm enough to be diplomatic and tactful. She won’t like it, but sitting by till you explode is even less enjoyable on both sides.
Some possible solutions:
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The little white lie: “I was just on my way out the door, sorry, can’t talk.”
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Finish her sentences for her on stories you’ve heard a dozen times. Don’t wait till the end—when she starts you say, “Oh I remember, when you…” and give the moral to the story. If she says, “Right, so I was upset because when I was little…” you interject, “Right, you never felt your father loved you enough” or whatever.
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Point out the obvious: “I don’t know what I’d do if that happened to me. I don’t have the money to…” and “Well, it could be worse. At least you can pay for…”
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Take the offensive. Complain to her about your problems. Don’t let her get a word in edgewise.
I think in general, you have to stop “rewarding” the behavior. If you patiently listen, giving her what she wants, she’ll keep coming back for more. Either absent yourself from listening or turn the situation into one where she hasn’t received a payoff for telling you the same things over and over again. Or rather than getting zero from her attempts, you can make it “cost” her.
- The secret weapon: agree with her. My mom used to play this control game. She would make me repeat everything. When I blew up at her she said, “Well my hearing isn’t as good as it used to be,” yadda, in this real ‘how dare you’ mode. I knew her hearing was fine.
So one day I said to her, “You know, it concerns me that your hearing is going bad. You should see a doctor about that. They do great things with hearing aids these days…maybe it would be covered by your insurance! But wow, what if you were driving and didn’t hear a train coming or something?”
Her hearing “improved” dramatically, instantly. Sometimes carrying a complaint to the logical conclusion (acting like you believe it to be true) can work.
Some writer once observed (words to the effect): Why is it that we can remember, to the tiniest details, the injuries inflicted on us but not the number of times we’ve told them to the same person?
Good luck!
Oh, you know my mother?
Since 4th grade, without going into 35 years of boring details, I’ve felt sorry for her, offered to help manage the details of the situation, been an ungrateful little wretch who just doesn’t understaaaaaaannnnnnnd, and refused to acknowledge her favorite topic, lately all in the course of a few hours. It’s a no win situation for everyone involved, and always has been. 
(The situation is more than one actual chronic physical issue, and maybe a couple of unofficially diagnosed actual mental health issues, or it could be a couple of chronic physical issues in a bitchy drama queen. I’d prefer to believe my mother isn’t just a nasty old attention whore.)
I’m truly sorry I don’t have any *helpful * advice for you.
Elderly with multiple health problems that add up to a significant level of debilitation.
My SIL’s husband is in his fifties, is morbidly obese, has numerous chronic heart and other health problems, diabetes, etc., you name it, is flat-broke, on welfare, completely housebound because of his health. Has been like this for years.
And he whines constantly. “I’m sick, I’m poor, life has treated me unfairly”, is the gist of it.
And he’s mean about it, too. Not just a petty whiner, he’s vicious, too. And self-pitying to the nth degree.
I just go, “Uh huh” and ignore it. There’s absolutely nothing useful I can say, there’s no way I can fix any of it, I’m fer damn sure not going to give him any (more) money, so…“Uh huh.”
My mother was diagnosed with breast and uterine cancer about four years ago, and in one way, it was the best thing to ever happen to her. She has always been significantly manipulative, passive-aggressive, and a perpetual victim, and now she had a legitimate reason to guilt people into doing what she wanted. And with that, the drama increased exponentially and she was really difficult to be around because she used that cancer as her free pass to get whatever she wanted. Every little thing she wanted you to do, things having nothing to do with her condition or health or (hell) even her – she wanted me to take a particular job for some reason, and when I told her I was happy where I was, she told me she had cancer, and come on, couldn’t I humor her? She’s been cancer-free for two years and she still uses, “[Name], I had cancer,” whenever someone resists doing her bidding. I suspect she’ll be hanging onto that card for the rest of her life.
I stayed with her for two months when she was first diagnosed and lived with her when she was going through radiation therapy, and I dealt with her drama by telling her point-blank that she was being manipulative and I wasn’t going to give in. This caused some arguments, but I thought it was important that someone stand up to her and not let her get away with shameless and unchecked guilt-tripping.
The funny thing is that when she was genuinely ailing from her treatment, she was very easy to take care of and very pleasant to be around, probably because she was too tired to work on her machinations.
I must sound like an ice-cold bitch. However, let it be said that cancer sucks something rotten, no doubt about that, but it does not turn you into a saint.
Not to me. What’s the old saying, “The child is the father of the man,” i.e. they raise you but then when you’re grown they’ve regressed?
By the time you get to be an adult, feelings are usually organic. If a stranger thinks you come off as ice-cold, it’s like they’re walking in at the end of a movie. Had she not manipulated you all along, you wouldn’t have such low tolerance for it.
If you’re a good person, you try to help them. Eventually, experience teaches you that you cannot save people who do not want to be saved. The harder lesson to learn is the need to stop feeding sympathy to those addicted to sympathy.
Learned this one a while back. Had a friend who loved to ask for advice, but as other friends constantly noted, he wasn’t really interested in the advice and never took it. He was actually fishing for reinforcement of his web of neuroses (which is a really odd thing to do).
Ultimately, I had to cut him loose. I couldn’t keep listening to whining about really small things that would take almost no effort to resolve, followed by a constant flow of excuses for why that very small effort wouldn’t work.
And on his part, a rather unfortunate habit of not listening to what is actually said, but assuming you’re saying something he expects you to say, then constantly arguing with me over shit he made up in his head, even in the face of me repeatedly attempting to point out that I’d said something completely different.
Now that guy was a mother load of Neurotic Bad Habits.
A friend’s fiancée happens to be suffering severe kidney disease. She’s also a truly horrible person who is extremely controlling of him.
Once, she ruined a party by abruptly beginning to go from person to person – among people she really didn’t know that well – and asking each of them if they’d donate a kidney to her.
Now I may be wrong, but I don’t think asking others for their vital organs is classic party behaviour, no matter how badly you may need them.
In over fifty years I have not had a phone conversation with my sister in which she did not dwell on her physical problems. She does have osteoarthritis and some other problems which I know must cause her pain. But I never know what is real and what is not real. She sets herself up to be an expert on her health and everyone else’s health problems and she is just wrong. She tried to convince me one day that I was allergic to the sun!
She will tell me that “the doctor” is sure she has a brain tumor, for example, and they are running some tests. But she never calls back with the good news that she doesn’t have one.
She never just goes to the doctor. She is “rushed to the hospital.”
Each phone conversation is worse – no matter who calls. And she KNOWS that I am getting tired of it and it makes her angry. So she tries to sabotage my already strained relationship with my mother who is easily confused at 95.
She cannot tolerate contradiction about anything.
The one doctor she needs to see most, she avoids like crazy – a shrink.
In this specific case I say she needs the following.
You need to say:
I’d like to be friends, but you have got to stop telling me about how you feel all the time. You can either have me around to do stuff with you in which case you have to stop complaining, or you can complain and I won’t be seeing you. When I ask how things are you need to remember I know all your problems we discussed in the past are still there. I will assume they are still happening unless you tell me things have improve. When I ask how things are going, I want to know about stuff I don’t know about.
I think you’ll see she tries to curb the complaining. You need to speak up if she starts complaining on any of her normal subjects. If she’s just been in an auto accident or the house burns down give her a set period to talk and then excuse yourself and leave. If she complains about the recent tragedy, it will lead to the same old stuff and you have to remind her that complaining about those subjects is not allowed.
Never ask the direct question “How do you feel?”. She hasn’t learned that she should just lie to be nice and just say OK. Tell her to just say OK when the retail clerk asks her how she is. She needs to work on lying to reintegrate into social situations.