Would this drive you nuts?

[TheAverageJoanne]

A friend watching The Chase and Tenable all day each day to the point where it's on TV all the time and watching the same episode twice a day? It's one of those channels that shows old episodes.

It's her life and all that but I don't want to go to her house now as I'm fed up of seeing it and the Chase music has become an earworm!

I don't watch either of these shows myself.

She doesn't leave the house btw. She watches Tenable "with" a man she "knows" online who doesn't work and yesterday she messaged him to say she had to go as her friend was here and I felt guilty!

I can't say anything, it's her house! Would you ask her to change the channel or what?

Does she not have a job? It sounds like a mental health issue to me.

No she's not working because of health issues.

Definitely sounds like some neurodiversity or mental health issues at play. But if it makes her happy then that’s fair enough. I have autism and I have a lot of repetitive behaviours.

This has only begun fairly recently, and when she was with her partner she moaned about quizzes being on all the time and said when he left she didn't miss them.

I love quizzes but not these two shows really. Perhaps I could get her interested in some quiz game to do with her rather than passively watching the same ones all the time.

Has she always been like this? I'd find it really rude if I was visiting someone and they were glued to the TV.

Otherwise she could be feeling overwhelmed and it gives her a sense of comfort. If she doesn't leave the house, it points to a mental health issue.

Can you meet her outside the home? Local cafe or whatever?

I've not noticed it so much before. She does talk to me and hold conversations while this is on TV but also gives me in depth details about the Chasers, and the rounds of these shows, that I don't really care about. I'm thinking it's quite odd behaviour.

She won't go out. People visit her.

She sounds quite unwell.

(Also, quite apart from anything else, who keeps the TV on when they have a visitor?)

So does she have a mobility issue or is it a MH problem preventing her from leaving her home? How long has this been going on?

If it’s the latter, I would consider the obsessive quiz show watching another symptom of her MH struggles.

If you don’t enjoy visiting her, then don’t.

I mean, was she always glued to the TV when she had visitors? If not, there's obviously a big change in her behaviour which points to something wrong.

I would gently encourage her to see her GP.

It's both, since she's been on her own she doesn't go out and avoids it when people offer so it's a vicious circle that affects MH. She's also got cataracts that she's too afraid to have treated in case something goes wrong. She can't really function tbh.