To not understand why "friends" are abandoning a friend in need?

[runnermum1974]

My friend attempted suicide and did real serious damage to themselves.

Days after the attempt 3 of their close friends have said they are going their separate ways. They have given some reasons, but they are pretty lame - like they are not compatible, and deciding that now, after 5 years of friendship!!

I am not saying that they have to be friends or anything. But the timing is bloody awful.

I do not understand how friends can abandon a friend in need. Anyone can be a friend in the good times. The test of friendship comes in the hard times.

If anyone has a story about abandoning friendships when a friend is in a difficult place, then I will appreciate the insight.

AIBU to think it is unkind to leave a friend in need?

ALso, more generally: if someone has a personality disorder, it's fair to say that s/he can't actually help having it, yet that surely doesn't mean that friends and family have to put up with abuse, manipulation, drama etc indefinitely with no hope of a cure.

Quite. Besides which, you are doing the sufferer no favours whatsoever by allowing them to think that their behaviour/victim complexes/thought distortions are justified or acceptable anyway.

I have a friend who is a wheelchair user. The most help he ever needs from me is the very occasional bump up a kerb or slightly more planning on where to meet due to accessibility issues. That's it.

I have a friend who uses a wheelchair and she can kvetch and moan like the best of them. I've also met a lot of people who don't have any physical or mental illness, but are just draining whingy selfish gripe-bags all on their own.

You just can't generalise either way.

2rebecca yes I think my friend has a personality disorder too. She can turn on and off her 'can't cope with anything' mode as and when it suits, so the most difficult of tasks if it involves something she is interested in and wants to do, becomes easiest of all to do and the menial things she needs to focus on she 'can't - and they are too difficult for her' . This is where my frustration comes in. She can't cook for her kids - they eat sandwiches every night, but she come down the pub on a weeknight, go shopping with the girlies and can arrange for them all to go on a camping holiday - because she knows friends will take pity on her and help her out when she can't do stuff.
All of our friends are beginning to get wise to the fact, and
what they see is just 'laziness' not depression. I have tried to help her, but she seems to turn on the tears when things are not going her way. I sometimes wonder whether it is as bad as she is saying or just something she pulls out of the bag as and when required.
I know when I felt bad, I would not go out and socialise, meet up with friends, go to the pub etc ... she does ... but gets very defensive and angry if you ask her any questions which seem to question how she is feeling and suggest ways she can self help.
At the moment the bunch of friends we have seem to be all over a barrel because no one wants to upset her by saying or doing anything that may be seen as unkind to her.
I am the only person who has told her to stop being aggressive when things are not going her way and she is not being agreed with, or wont take advice. This backfired on my behalf and now I feel bad.
All of our joint friends are a bit stuck in the middle now and it's a bit awkward when we all meet up.
I am sticking to my guns though... I don't need the stress in my life.. someone else can help her now.

Interesting that NOrman Tebbit's wife suffered from depression and she was later crippled in the Brighton Bomb. She was asked which was the worst, the depression or life in a wheelchair - she said no contest, depression was by far the worst.

Most people with eg depression can't help it either. No different from a personality disorder in that way - it is an illness . As I said, lots of judgement on here about mental illness eg victim complex etc

Just in reply to your message to me up there^
You did ask for insight.
I am a compassionate person, and have a lot of experience with unstable people in my own family. Several family members suffer anxiety and depression and serious mood disorders. One I did stop contact with for a while, they were so violent and scary, during which time they were arrested for some violent actions and then later hospitalized and put on the proper medications, that have helped them be on a more even keel.

There comes to a point when it is too draining...I have spent many hours worried sick and sitting in the hospital ER waiting for the Crisis Intervention team to evaluate someone. I deeply care about people, but I only can handle so much. Two of my children and myself have chronic illnesses, and I need to save something for us.

I stumbled upon the Serenity prayer that AA uses a few years ago, and is kind of what I remind myself when things get crazy. I removed the religious part.
"Grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference."

I also find some of the views about PD’s etc here very sad.
Yes the effects of them on people around them can be absolutely awful and drive friends away or piss them of, and I can totally understand people wanting to get away from that, I often do and it’s not a judgement on either my friend or myself, just a reaction.

Perhaps I’m naive and there really are people with PD’s that can turn it on and off and choose when to be affected and have time of when it suits, and use it to their advantage, but I've not met them in R/L.

My experience of my friend and that part of their MH difficulties, has been of an all-encompassing and wretched condition driving away the thing they want the most; security, and causing confusion, turmoil, misery and wrecking a life, reducing them to only being able to cope with the most basic and menial things, despite a high IQ and prior abilities, and no innate ability to control their problem, or overview that might allow them to ab/use it for their benefit.

I’m wc disabled and wouldn’t swap problems with her for anything.

JGOWI - I think people are drawing a distinction between people with PDs, who as you say can't help who they are, and people who happen to be selfish individuals but don't have a PD.

"My experience of my friend and that part of their MH difficulties, has been of an all-encompassing and wretched condition driving away the thing they want the most; security, and causing confusion, turmoil, misery and wrecking a life, reducing them to only being able to cope with the most basic and menial things, despite a high IQ and prior abilities, and no innate ability to control their problem, or overview that might allow them to ab/use it for their benefit. "

Yes. I totally agree. There is no doubt that mental illness can do all the things you mention in the quoted paragraph I have been so low I have wanted to die. I have been so low I actually stood on a mway bridge and wanted to jump off. Only reason I didn't is because I had my dog with me and illogically I was more concerned about keeping him safe than all the other hideous consequences of my suicide. There are times when I have been reduced to a sobbing shaking wreck in the supermarket because I simply could not cope with the noise, the stress, the inability to work out what I needed to do. I have wanted to curl up somewhere dark and quiet and stay there.

The problem is that what I NEEDED from someone then was for them to take my hand, tell me what I needed to do and then physically FORCE me to go the GP. And I wouldn't have gone willingly until the point when I was ready to go. I needed someone to think for me, to act for me, to take over my entire life. You can't do that for someone else. My husband might have been able to convince me but at the time he was not all the invested in my wellbeing (to put it nicely ). I tried with my friend but as she had taken herself off her med about 3 months prior to her partner leaving she wasn't going to take any advice on that! You can't force someone to seek help against their will. You can only support and support and support and it's exhausting, demoralising, frustrating and it can leave you pretty low yourself. Not to mention those of us who have families need to prioritise - I know that sounds callous but it's true.

I would suggest the friend in the OP is probably in the best position to receive medical help and support that she has been for years. Because she has finally done something that cannot be ignored. Is it kind to abandon her? I am not sure that kindness is going to be much good to her - intervention might be.

If the intervention is available

Did anyone see the A&E (I think?) series where they focused on parademic intervention with people with MH difficulties? Even the paramedics were largely ignorant of what they were facing (and most desperately admitted that). One man they visited was completely off his head, repeatedly saying to camera I NEED HELP! HELP ME! but the NHS had ignored him, despite his repeated pleas. At the end of the prog they showed a clip of him 'in his right mind' ie he had received intervention. (the LHA probably heard he was going to be featured on the telly, or someone Important intervened and wouldn't let go )

Actually, that's a point - perhaps a constructive step could be to harangue the LHA to do something about treatment/intervention? yy the patient has to be the first to make the move but at least it's on record and, like the man in the programme, perhaps the patient has been begging for help but they're deemed NOT ILL ENOUGH

My former friend was intelligent, witty, and creative. She could be very good company and was superficially at least, kind and interested in others. We had a lot of common interests.

She had also threatened suicide many times, turning up at her neighbours' flats holding knives and saying she was going to harm herself, so that they had to call 999. She was persecuting the psychiatrist treating her (not her first-others had had to withdraw) and had viciously abused other HCPs when they displeased or thwarted her. She absconded from hospital. She had no boundaries, frequently behaved in a very sexually provocative manner and then had a crisis if the men concerned appeared to reciprocate her interest. She was preoccupied by her condition and situation to the exclusion of just about everything else and expected all friends to be similarly preoccupied with it. Anyone who befriended her was cast in a helping role while she was the centre of attention. She betrayed my confidences and tried to exert control over what I did.

I accepted I had no control over what happened-this was an extreme drama in which no one could predict how things would end up. I was not prepared to hand my life over to her. I bailed. When I told her, she actually said she understood. I do not regret it. I do not actually think my being there would have made a great deal of difference: her problems were complex and ingrained and she was very resistant to all the therapeutic or treatment suggestions put to her (as she often told me).

I'm dealing with this right now. I am suicidal, there I said it. Out loud.

I have no one. My friends know how I am feeling. I've lost my Mum, Dad, most of my pets and am by myself. I thought reaching out was the right thing to do. I've heard nothing from the person I thought cared about me the most. My male friend (gay). He is always out partying, surrounded by people. I'm alone at Christmas, New Year, everything. I have tried to be a good friend to all my friends but have had to admit defeat since I started to feel like this. My male friend promised my Mum he'd never abandon me.

So I'm at a point now where I think I should not have told them. Like it's my fault I was honest. So where it's a different side of the coin to your topic, I just wanted to say that it f hurts to be left. I don't know why we are encouraged to talk about mental health if this is what happens as a result. Thanks for letting me talk.

@Bobbie1976 I'm sorry to hear you feel so terrible. Have you seen the mental health topic- you could post in there your story as I don't think many people will see it on this old thread from years ago. I have found the Samaritans very helpful when you feel like no-one else will listen, definitely call them if you want to talk:

www.samaritans.org/how-we-can-help/contact-samaritan/talk-us-phone/

Hello @Bobbie1976 , we are really sorry to hear you are feeling this way.

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