Friend didn't want me to talk to her about my upsetting personal stuff

[Sparklybutold]

Friend staying for the weekend. I experienced an extremely toxic and abusive childhood filled with suicide, murder, severe mental illness, premature death, all forms of abuse, the list goes on. This is a relatively new friendship so we are getting to know each other so naturally stuff about my childhood comes up. Later on in the day when the conversation swayed that way again she commented along the lines how my stories are just so sad - I asked whether she preferred I stopped, she said yes - I did. I was left feeling hurt, confused, invalidated but also kinda empathised. The stories are awful and just so sad, so much so that part of me switches off from them and I struggle to believe they're actually true. Alot of my experiences are also filled with shame and I was silenced so much, so to then be silenced again because it's too much?

This experience makes me question how can I be close with this person if she can't tolerate the not so nice parts of me? Is this reasonable? I couldn't imagine switching someone off like this?

It is your use of the word 'again' that jumps out. I think you talk about this more than you realise.

But I know I can play nicety nice because I spent a whole fucking childhood playing nice.

If I were your friend, I would find time to listen. I really struggle to tell friends about myself and my traumas, but I’m ok with listening to other people. It doesn’t make my troubles/mental health worse.

I understand that you weren’t asking her for help/counselling. To get to know you, your past matters. Perhaps try baby steps with this, if you feel you want to continue the friendship.

I hope you feel better when she’s left.

I am.so very sorry for your experiences. However, this isn't an established friend who has shut you down when you've said 'I really need someone to talk to today'. It's a new person who has accepted your offer to change the subject when the conversation got unexpectedly (for her) hard. She acknowledged that your childhood experiences are sad but it's not fair to expect her to validate you or make you feel heard or undo any of the concerns you mention that come from your childhood. I fully understand that you would have welcomed a different approach, one where you would have felt listened to more, but it was just a bit much too soon. Try not to hold it against your friend.

@Happymum12345

Thankyou for your compassionate response. Lots for me to reflect on.

I hear a lot of traumatic things at work, and it's emotionally exhausting. I wouldn't shut down a friend in distress but if someone was not distressed, but filling in context, and offered to leave it for now, there are times when I'd take up that offer. I'd also suspect when they offered that they were asking - do you need to know details to accept that I've been traumatised, and I might think they wanted validation without having to pour out details

There are lots of ways of reading this situation - I hope the friendship works out for both of you.

@Sparklybutold And yet you are angry that she didn’t filter her feelings and instead was honest with you about her boundaries. So it seems your expectations only work one-way? Honestly you sound incredibly self-absorbed and entitled. You set conditions on friendships and have zero empathy towards the capacity of others to deal with your trauma.

You need professional help if you think ambushing a new friend with your stories of trauma is a reasonable way to spend a weekend. I say this as a survivor of significant abuse who has had very good therapy and wouldn’t dream of offloading in the way that you suggest. Because I’ve had effective therapy, new friends do not need to know my trauma to know me, because it no longer influences my actions or my life. If your previous trauma plays such a pivotal role in who you currently are and how you currently behave, you need to deal with that professionally, not offload it into friends who do not have the resources to deal with it. Expecting current friends to have to manage you based on your previous trauma is utterly unreasonable, and sounds as if you’re using your victim/survivor status to define your current self.

trauma dumping on any friend is unfair and selfish. Trauma dumping on a new friend is unfair and selfish and shows an extreme lack of awareness and an unwillingness to maintain healthy boundaries. I’m sure she’s also keen to end this visit/ friendship

I had an abusive childhood. But t there are certain things I wouldn't share with friends I have known since school.

Have you had any counselling? It does help. Also writing things down. There's something called emotional release. At the end you burn what you have wrote down as a way of letting go.

Or do an effergy to symbolize a person or people who have hurt you in the past.

I wonder if she felt overwhelmed, unsure how to react, ill equipped of the tools to deal with such sadness, to know what to do/say.

perhaps she needs a little time to process, understand. can be true for myself in all sorts of situations.

if so, then it’s not a reflection on you, she’s not silenced you. More that she’s ill equipped, wasn’t sure how to deal with that topics, couldn’t process what she was being told it & you offered her a way out.

I'm sorry to read about your past life OP - you have had far too much to carry over the years. I hope that everything is better for you now and that you have found support and solace.

On the matter in your post:
It is a new friendship - so there might be much that you don't know about her and her own lived experiences. You'd be amazed how many people quietly carry around far too much. She might not be in a place to share this with you and your memories might be ones difficult for her to cope with at the moment. If you knew more, you might choose to hold back.

You are in a place now where it feels liberating to share.

That is great but I expect you can remember times when that wasn't easy - and someone demanding sympathy/empathy made you feel worse?

Do you tell people the whole context often?

I realised that I was being like the ancient mariner (the one who stopped a wedding guest and forced him to listen to an awful tale ) and was telling people who asked a little, much much more than they needed to know. I didn't want to leave them 'sadder and wiser' - it just helped me at the time. It was probably a stage of recovery (I don't do it now) but thinking back, there are people I'd have spared :)

Absolutely.

Kindly, I think it’s time to head back to therapy

She was ok first time then when you brought it up again decided to nip it in the bud before it was constant chat.

I bet the new friend wants to leave as well...it sounds tense.

She doesnt have to listen to you
Just the same as you dont have to listen to her

For you to say ‘I cant wait to get her out of my house’ is a bit harsh i think!
Just because she doesnt want to listen to your life story, you want to forget the whole friendship?! Odd!

This absolutely.

Without reading further comments, I think you should consider having /more/ therapy. A friend isnt for offloading heavy stuff from your past. Great if they can do that for you but you cant force it on them. Also choosing to do so when she is staying with you and has no escape is a bad idea. SOrry you are this hurt.

OP - one thing you can do is to talk to the Samaritans.

They are listeners who have chosen to be there for you and will be able to cope with what you have to say. (No-one will listen to you as well as they do!) You are exactly the sort of person they want to pick up that phone for.

Talking is odd - it helps you straighten things out in your own mind but also helps you put really disturbing distressing things away. I know what you mean about sometimes feeling as if it couldn't be true.

Putting the awful things into words contains them and gives you control over them.

It can take a few tellings to work though.

When you call the Samaritans, you usually speak to a different person each time - so you can work through it all and not feel you are over-burdening anyone.

I get why you felt rejected by your friend’s response OP after telling her such difficult stuff and I’m concerned AIBU may be the wrong place to post this - you may feel invalidated all over again.

This sentence in your OP stood out to me though:-

“Later on in the day when the conversation swayed that way again she commented along the lines how my stories are just so sad”.

It sounds like your past was being discussed/offloaded in detail which is probably too much information for a new-ish friendship. And I don’t think it’s about her not being able to tolerate parts of you, it’s just that details of your history might be more than she needs to know about or can cope with. As a pp said, people shouldn’t need to know the details of past abuse to know you.

I'm sorry for what you've been through, OP, but people can't always cope with others' trauma, it's too much for them. We're all fallible humans and when you asked her whether she wanted to change the subject, she was honest and said yes.

I have friends of 30 years who don't know everything about my upbringing, even though I consider them very close friends. Some events would shock and upset them, so I've never mentioned them. I didn't even tell my DH about one parent's MH problems until we'd been married for years. There are still a few things that he doesn't know and I've not intention of telling him as it won't change the past. He wouldn't know what to say anyway, it would be an emotional burden that he doesn't need.

I'd give this friend and chance and keep things light for now. Have fun together and perhaps at some point you'll be close enough to share more with her. Or perhaps she'll be a fun friend with whom you don't share much. There's room for different levels of friendship.

I've found that the only people who can really listen and understand my experiemces of domestic abuse are those who have been through it themselves.

I know that doesn't mean others don't appreciate that domestic abuse exists and how awful it is, just that the grisly details are a place they cannot really 'tolerate' mentally, for want of a better word as that sounds like I'm condemning them. There have been times when I've really wanted to confide and been shut down so I understand the emotions you're going through. For example, one person said 'oh so he wasn't very nice' - which seemed to on one level be a trivial description that negated just how very not nice he was - but thinking it over I realised that was her way of validating my opinion/experience, not undermining it at all.
So* *it doesn't necessarily mean that she can't be a good friend, just that she has her own boundaries of what she can manage emotionally. For example, I personally can't tolerate horror films as I feel really uncomfortable with my emotions being manipulated into a heightened state whereas others enjoy it! Not every personal relationship needs to be at the same intensity. I see it as a good thing that you realised she might be uncomfortable and asked about it, then held back.

I think key to this is whether you gave her any warning before you told her. Most therapy should discuss the concept of trauma dumping.

Fine , obviously, with a therapist where there are boundaries and rules. Not OK to do to a friend without consent. Not fair to argue that the hurt here is just yours being silenced.

From the outside it looks like the friend was staying at yours so not in an easy place to leave, on your home ground so to speak , it sounds like there was a level of trauma dumping (contextualised doesn't mean it wasn't trauma dumping) in a scenario where they were effectively trapped and without warning . They put boundaries in place to allow time to process and now you are arguing your needs , that you are silenced without considering the harm you chose to do to your friend?

I'm truly sorry you had those experiences. I have far more knowledge and experience than I would ever choose to with this. However it is not OK to harm someone else by using them as a validation in a scenario they are not likely to be able to process it.

At no point on these posts have you considered how unfair you have been to your friend. Only how it affects you.

Even with my DP of nearly 7 years we warn each other if something comes up from our past. On the grounds it's not fair to use our pain to hurt someone else by landing it on their lap and expecting them to react in an affirming way. Certainly not without warning

That's not being silenced that's about not causing harm emotionally to others because you can. Other people do not have to take on your pain without their consent. It sucks but it's true. Handing it to them verbally without warning and boundaries is doing exactly that whether you mean to or not.

You don't need to be silent , you do need to consider whether it's harmful to do it your way. That's the case for everyone , with trauma or without.