To feel hurt my best friend ditched me while I was sectioned?

Because of the anxiety and distress I would sit and just rock for hours on end in bed or on the sofa, cry, phone GP’s, endless trips to A&E - you get the idea. I had another friend who would come with me to A&E (but try to tell the staff I needed MH health no matter what I tried to tell them) and was there through it all. This other friend just disappeared

With respect OP- what exactly did you expect your friend to do? EG I have a full time job and two kids myself so I simply wouldnt be able to stay with a friend at A&E for hours and hours at a time, or multiple times a week because I have my own responsibilities to deal with. This is all about what she is meant to have done for you but what did YOU do for her? So far, your view of friendship appears to be very one sided.

After reading your update, I really think you should try seeing it from her perspective.

You sound very detached from the reality of your behaviour.

This, I don’t think the “she is awful, how let down you were!!” posts are helpful.

Yep. I am not excusing your friend but we really dont know her side of the story here.

Mental health issues can take a huge toll on family and friends and if you were in the midst of a crisis you simply may not have been aware of the negative effects on her.

Or, she could be a complete bitch but really, until we hear her side its impossible to tell.

Health anxiety is extremely difficult to deal with, for the person going through it and for those around them, as you know all too well. There's a thread on here today where a wife is trying to get her DH to step back from his own mother because her health anxiety is going too far, and it's nowhere near as bad as yours sounds, yet most people still agree with that OP and think the mother is too much. It's so complicated, frustrating and upsetting to deal with and not everyone has the levels of love and patience to go the distance with the person who has health anxiety, especially at the levels you describe. Your friend couldn't cope with it and when she did communicate, you found her condescending and inadequate anyway, so the friendship was dying on both sides. Try to see it as a casualty of the condition rather than her fault or yours. I'm glad the meds have worked and that your family stood by you and all is looking much better now.

I work in mental health units and the amount of family and friends that cut contact with loved ones when they are in hospital is really sad. Sometimes you can completely understand and I’m sure lots of people have really been through it trying to support loved ones but it’s sad regardless.

I really hope that you have the support that you need.

I mean, it's not good. You say your kids were not neglected that "Never were they neglected or left alone, always with my husband or my parents." But that was because they stepped up. You never proactively arranged for them to be looked after as you were completely able to do anything on your own. You couldn't even dress yourself, never mind your kids. You were clearly having a severe breakdown, and that can be really difficult for others to deal with. You do seem to be playing down/just not realising how much your crisis affected others.

I'm not blaming you for anything that happened. Your mental health was outside of your control. But I do think that you now need to be a bit more forgiving of others and think about the impact it might have had.

Someone close to me was sectioned, their behaviour before and immediately after was appalling - they were very unwell and had limited control over what they were doing but by any measure the impact on family and close friends was very hard going. The person concerned had no insight into how they were affecting other people and I know they feel some folk deserted them in their time of need.

i wonder if maybe things have impacted her more than you realise and she’s pulled back.

It's good that you're better, but you may be underestimating how difficult it was for your former friend to be around you when you were so ill. I mean, you know her, and none of us do, so you're the only one in a position to decide whether she was never a good friend to you, or couldn't cope with the extremes of your illness, and/or was appalled by what your children went through during that period when you thought you were dying etc.

I will only say that while I am still close friends with my (mostly recovered and now coping) anorexic friend, coming right up against her mental illness where it was a matter of continuing to starve herself to death, with two children crazed with worry looking on, was incredibly difficult. She's a devoted mother when well, but her children's need for her just didn't penetrate at all for a while.

I know another friend couldn't deal with it at all and withdrew. She said it was like watching someone tormenting helpless small animals. They've patched things up since, but because the anorexic friend reached out and listened to what the friend had to say. I think that if you think this friendship is worth salvaging, you will need to be the one who starts the process.

Posts like this are hard to judge. I know someone who was sectioned numerous times. The story they tell might be how they genuinely see things but they’re unaware of the stress they put others through who couldn’t cope anymore so had to move away from their relationship with this person.

I hope you’re doing well now. I’d try to move one and not worry about the relationship if it’s over.

With your last update- she is a very bad friend. Based on one period of your life due to a traumatic event, she judged and dumped you instead of offering support and compassion. Your kids were with your dh and parents- not neglected. Honestly just leave her cut out op. Sounds like she wasn’t a good friend

I think maybe you’re forgetting something about the way you treated her. It all sounds very one sided tbh, I bet she’d tell a completely different story.

I'm so sorry, both about your mental health and being let down by your friend. I hope you are doing better now.

I too would feel let down. You presumably knew her very well and (if she's never explained) you might be able to work out what was going on in her head.

She might have really underestimated/misunderstood how bad/ real your mental health was getting and she really did think you just needed to "pull yourself together" or she got very worn down and exasperated by it - mental illness can be very hard and draining on those around you.

She might have felt hugely embarrassed about her remarks once you were sectioned. Or she could be an avoidant type who is terrified by mental illness. Or she might just be a horrible unsympathetic person who still thinks you could and should have snapped out of it. You will have a much better idea than me of which is likely to be true.

The friendship might be lost but working through the reasoning might be a helpful step to manage the hurt.

What did she mean by selfish and a bad mum?

before she disappeared, she said some really harsh things to me – that I was selfish and a bad mum

Why did she say this?

That’s horrific behaviour

Firstly I am sorry to hear what you have been going through but some some people do struggle to deal with other people’s mental health issues and sometimes have to step away in order to protect their own mental health. My daughter had a friend who was receiving therapy for mental health issues. As part of the therapy she was told to share her issues and talk about them to those closest to her. Without going into too many details sharing things like suicidal thoughts and more became far too much for my daughter, who was just 18 at the time and also living away from home, to handle. The burden of that responsibility and the ‘what if something happened’ was far too much for my daughter to handle and she had no choice but to take a step back in order to protect her own mental health. Even years on she still talks about that being such a difficult year for her and I’m sorry to say that their friendship never did recover from that but sometimes a fresh start can be better for both parties.

i think if you’re at the point where you’re telling someone that they’re selfish and a bad mum then you have given up on the friendship. It sounds like she has given you all the information you need for “closure”. sorry for what you’ve been through but yabu to be confused about why she dropped you, although yanbu to feel hurt.

was she not aware of the mental health situation when she said those things?

Agree with PP, without knowing what behaviours led to your friends comments it's hard to know whether she was unreasonable or not.

I think this is most likely the case. “But I had bad mental health so I should be allowed to get away with it” is a mindset a lot of people have and unfortunately it’s not always the case.

I had a LOT of grace for my friend struggling, but I felt like only she was allowed to be depressed and her issues were always worse than mine. I was exhausted, drained and felt like a 24/7 live chat therapist for her.

Most normal people do not randomly call their friends bad mums or selfish.

Maybe OP needs to think about her actions whilst going through a bad time and perhaps reach out to her friend and ask for a chat to work out what went wrong.

It very much depends. If she didn't know you were having mental health issues and you were neglecting your children, she would have been right to say something.

You said she hasn't contacted you, but did you contact her at all? Did you let her know you were out or is it possible she thinks you're avoiding her?

I had to defriend my ex friend with mental health problems. It was starting to affect my own mental health too much.