Advice on a friend with conspiracy beliefs that are threatening our friendship

[jinglejanglebells]

Hi - name changer in case the person involved ever sees this.

I have a very good friend who Ive known for a number of years and been through a lot together whose conspiracy beliefs are starting to threaten our friendship.

She has always been into alternative stuff like Reiki and crystal healing etc etc...which is fine - Im not a total cynic and believe if it helps people than thats what matters although I dont necessarily believe in the source of the healing (i.e vibrations or whatever)...

In more recent years she has completed in training in further alternative type stuff like EFT and reflexology and become involved in an online community that favours websites like natural news that purport to be about uncovering the truth around the so called conspiracy theories around "big pharma" 9/11 etc.

We have had a couple of difficult conversations about MMR but have always kept it respectful and agreed to disagree. Same about 9/11...agreed to disagree

However, I recently found out my mum has terminal cancer and am in an awful place emotionally with it right now. She is deteriorating rapidly and we expect her not to make new year. This friend has taken to posting "meme's" on facebook with quotes about how big pharma and the US gvernment etc have covered up that cancer cures exist. I am finding this deeply offensive and feel I cannot talk to her about it as I'll lose my temper.

Rationally I know shes probably doing it to try and "help" me but my less calm side is absolutely furious with her for doing this.

Can anyone please offer me any advice on either how to deal with this in my own mind or how to address with her without offending her. I am getting to the point where I feel I am going to have to cut the friendship off as I feel so angry and also that theres no end to the disagreements we are going to have as she continues her journey into alternative stuff.

TIA

I've now hidden her updates but its how to deal with the invite to hers on new years eve when I want to stomp in there and screech at her to shutuuurrrppp about stupid fake cancer cures!!

Go to fakebook
Hide feed of friend
Make cup of tea.

If she asks 'did you see I posted x on fakebook' say 'No, I hid you after all that passive aggressive posts about cancer cured when you know my mum was ill so I decided to hide your posts'.

Oh - just seen you already have...good on you.

Don't go to hers new years, tell her you are seeing family.

So sorry to hear about your mum OP, this friend really is being insensitive and you shouldn't have to deal with it now

Haha Thanks FunkyGoldRibena.
MurderofGoths thanks, I feel properly sorry for myself! Its a bit pathetic really!

OOps I mean FunkyBOLDRibena

I am so sorry to hear about your mum. THis is such a hard time, and I wish you so well in dealing with it, and just living through it. What you do now you will remember for the rest of your life when you think about your mum. Do what is right for her, and don't worry about your friend. Don't even give her a thought. She'll just wind you up, and you can't spare the energy of having to be find a tactful way of saying: mind your own business you silly cow.

I nursed my mum at home until she died of cerebral lymphoma. I had a similar situation in which a friend of my brother called with news of a miracle that could heal brain tumours, etc. The friend pestered my brother, who didn't know how to handle it, and who I suspect was hopeful that there might be a cure. To appease my brother I called the people who had found the miracle cure, who told me how they'd already told brother's friend not to go around telling people this, as it was very specific to a certain type of tumour (blastoma)and to age (children) and many other variables. But I could say I made the call and that they had said it wouldn't work for my mum. That stopped the pestering.

But bloody insensitive when I had other things to think about.

Your friend -I have one just like her. Luckily I don't see her any more.

I think you have enough on your plate for now, looking after your mum. If you cut contact with your friend whilst your mum is ill, I expect your friend will still say something tactless and hurtful when you do see her again:like how, if you had given her a rarified potion made from urine secreted at midnight by menstruating leprechauns and collected into a cup made out of sand from Atlantis, blown by the seventh son of a seventh son, well, then she'd be alive today. Some people are insensitive and totally self centred.

My friend -I loved her, really loved her. We met during our A Levels, and I thought the sun shone out of her behind. I imitated her, I wanted to be like her. And then I slowly realised she was a fantasist who lied. She was so desperate to win everyone's approval for being 'trendy'. I even believed her when she told me she was drinking her own urine. I was there during the political affiliations, the reiki, homeopathy, the Toa, the I-Ching, the Ti-Chi, the Tarot,. The feeding cats a vegetarian diet and using a homeopath not a vet. (All of this is fine, and her cats did live until they were 14, so clearly she did something right.) But the lies, some of them about me to other people to discredit me in their eyes. I never see her now. I don't miss her. I now see her insecurities are at the root of a lot of her destructive behaviour. But understanding doesn't make it better.

I really like FunkyRibbon's suggestion about Facebook. Take comfort and support from those able to give it.

AngelaDaviesFriend – I have an ex friend who is into all this woo stuff and is in fact a woo practitioner. She's also a massive control freak. I've always felt rather as though being a practitioner of woo gives free rein to her need to tell others how to live their life the way she thinks they should, rather than to actually help them do what's right for them.

Whenever I was sick she would just send an email telling me to see a woo practitioner, while not bothering to, you know, offer to come see me or do some shopping. Which seemed ironic.

I also had a friend that was fervent about conspiracy theories. She also latched on to a train of thought that suggested that the government had put some "cloning" type drug in the MMR's to make us like robots, hence not letting her son be vaccinated

I'm afraid I had to distance myself and end the friendship. It was because of the above alongside the fact her son had launched himself at my DS totally unprovoked, in view of both of us, and injured him. She refused to discipline him so I did

OP, you've had very good advice.

One thing you should not try to do is actually engaged with your friend's ideas. The problem with positions that people haven't been argued into is that they're impossible to argue them out of. Attempting to unpick the nonsense that the conspiracies are built on (in the case of "there's a secret cure for cancer they won't let you have", for example, the fact that cancers are as varied as flakes of snow but any company that "cured" even one of them would be richer than the dreams of avarice so why would they suppress it?, or in the case of 9/11 nonsense that it would be easier to hi-jack a few aircraft and crash them into buildings) is pointless, because the belief itself isn't founded on a rational footing.

JoanRanger, you were obviously friends with my SIL.

Thing is, people who are that far into woo-bollocks are fundamentally not very nice. They are losers looking for someone else to blame - usually lazy, self-obsessed and inclined to bully anyone they suspect is vulnerable. Push any conspiracy theorist far enough and you'll find racism, homophobia and/or misogyny - I was once having quite an amusing, lighthearted conversation with a bloke who had announced himself as a 'professional' conspiracy theorist. Until he got onto 'It's all the fault of the Jews' at which point I told him to go and fuck himself.

Sorry about your mum, wishing you peace and comfort.

at which point I told him to go and fuck himself.
.

A friend of mine died in the towers on 9/11.

A very old friend of mine, for years, continued to bring up the BS line that somehow all Jewish people got some sort of group email about 9/11 in advance and were all mysteriously out of the towers that day. (My friend who died in the tragedy was Jewish). At a dinner party my husband (also Jewish) lost the rag with the old friend, yelling, "Our friend was Jewish, maybe she didn't get the damn group email. And I'm Jewish but I just wasn't arsed calling her. And everybody knows that Muslim terrorists only tip off the f'ing Jews". Party ruined. But we never heard another piece of crap out of that friends mouth.

I'm really sorry about your Mum jingle. Don't feel that you have to respect such an idiotic opinion at the worst possible time. Lots of people cannot process tragedy, and their reaction is to try to explain it by making it a conspiracy, something that they can argue is true or false, rather than what it actually is: a tragic event that happened, or is happening.
I wish you and your family a peaceful Christmas/Holiday Season, filled with love and memories.

slug after the first post I thought that the OP's friend needed to read John Diamond's "Snake Oil". I didn't need to click to know you'd linked to this humane, rational, compassionate and funny book.

OP, I'm sorry to hear about your mum, and sorrier you've had to endure this shite from your friend. In the end all the conspiracy theorists sound no better than the the awful "everything happens for a reason" airheads: and that reason would be…?

All the best at Christmas and beyond.

"how to address with her without offending her."

It's a pity she didn't extend you the same courtesy really isn't it? There you are treading on eggshells and there she is with all the intelligence and sensitivity of a housebrick. IME people like your friend are either very thick skinned and don't care what others think.... or they are deeply insecure/stupid and have to resort to 'woo' to make sense of the world. Glad you told her to stop

OP - if you want to be kind and sensitive, you can stress that you understand that your friend's intentions were good and were not meant to offend you. BUT - they do hurt you and are not helpful or solicited at this time.

Hiding your friend's Facebook posts is a really good idea, because it is the simplest way to avoid the conflict and re-focus your energy on your family.

Later, when you have time and inclination, and if this relationship will still be important for you, you can discuss it with your friend. I know you think that raising it might damage the relationship, but your resentment towards her behaviour will damage it too. If you don't confront it, you give her a green light to continue, you effectively deem it acceptable, and that's not what true friendship is about.

"Followers of conspiracy theories tend to be people who permanently feel disadvantaged and marginalised. Searching for anonymous powers and conspirers that hold you at their mercy is a convenient way to not look at your own mistakes and omissions. During individual as well as collective times of crisis, this desire to simplify everything grows." -- Conspiracy theorists are dangerous

@Glenshee... that same paragraph could equally apply to the fervently religious. Also dangerous.

OP I would tell her to stop being a dick and I would sack her off as a friend.

Maybe this is why my dance card is a little empty though

I often hide woo friends facebook posts about religion, animal rights / vegetarianism / david icke type conspiracies. If they were posting it at such a hard time and it related to my life I would tell them to FO. You have much more important things to be concentrating on now.

So sorry to hear about your mum

Thanks so much for all your comments. Ive gone from Angry to feeling sorry for her to sad at her disregard to clarity that its really not acceptable to behave the way she has at this time.

I think when I have the space and time mentally to deal with this I'll be able to use this thread to clear my head and formulate my thoughts and speak to her. Unfortunately I dont yhink that time will be until after the worst has happened with my mum.

Thanks again. I appreciate your comments amd time very much.

Jingle x

Glenshee is spot on about what draws people to conspiracy theories.

Funny thing is, they are persuasive. It's the person who believes nothing in the media and everything on the internet, the 'democracy of nonsense'. I once read a Paul is Dead website, which suggests evidence the old chestnut that McCartney died in 1966 and was replaced by a lookalike (and soundalike and talent alike presumably). Utter rubbish, yet the fact that someone has gone to so much trouble over it, and totally believes, makes it convincing up to a point. Otherwise, you kind of think, why would they actually bother if it wasn't true?

In a way it's the modern equivalent of believing in ghosts, which nobody much talks about these days. You can never really prove they don't exist, and never really prove they do, so there is never any resolution.

I wouldn't say she is being 'incredible offensive' as she sounds a sensitive sort, but maybe say her stuff isn't really hitting the spot for you and can she lay off a bit. Maybe point out that presumably not all that conspiracy stuff can be true. Er, actually sort of what Joysmum says (I've just read the above).

So sorry to hear about your Mum jingles my thoughts are with you and yours.

WRT your friend, I think it's a tricky one. I don't think you should tell her to alter what she posts on her own Facebook. It is her page and she can speak freely on it. I would hide her posts so you don't see anything she writes on there. If she notices you are being cold towards her then explain how upsetting you found her posts.