How to deal with friends that are very needy and want to offload problems to me all the time?

[BringOnTheBotox]

But in a way so as not to hurt their feelings?

I have a couple of friends that are both very needy and both negative. Both text me regularly throughout the day and have constant problems and things to moan about. One of them also constantly wants help and favours.

I have started saying no to some of the favour requests but what is the best way to deal with the constant moaning? Both do need my friendship so I wouldn't want to dump them or upset them in any way.

Bump.....

Do they sound as though they might be suffering from depression?
Do they need to talk to a professional?

Are they always like this or are they just having a hard time for temporary reasons? And do they ever show interest/sympathy for you?

This is always difficult. I'd ignore the texts for a couple of days, then reply, e.g. "I'm a little overwhelmed with my own stuff right now - can I get back to you when I'm less snowed under?"

Then wait another few days and suggest a get together 'next week`, e.g. "I'd love to go and see Little Women. Are you up for it?" But make sure what you're suggesting has a positive spin to it, so as to reduce opportunities for her moping and offloading.

Thank you so much for the replies!

Both of them suffer from mental health issues and take medication (I do, too).

Neither ever really show any interest or sympathy to me, there is usually just a token 'how are you?' Or 'How did X go?' but they don't really want to hear the answer.

I could have written this post last year, OP.

Same same, myself and two other very close friends have MH and had kind of a support group going. Only it stopped being supportive and started to dragging us all further down.

I had to step back from them and I let them know that it was negatively impacting my life to be in a constant negative cycle.

So we chilled on the messaging and tried to say more positive things to eachother.

As a result we are all more settled in life.

Boundaries, tell them to get therapy, changr topic, distance.

You are probably quite a nurturing person and they can sense that. You are probably a more grounded, parental figure in their lives too. It's important that you realise how common one-sided 'friendships' are. In some ways, it's similar to a parent-child dynamic. However, this is meant to be an adult two-way relationship.

Whilst it's important to off load every now and again, it's also necessary to balance that with spending time doing something that has nothing to do with your problems.....thing is, they might already be doing that (with another person) leaving you to be their parent/on-call councillor. It will zap you of mire and more energy, and if they have no interest in you, if this relationship is very one sided, then you won't miss them being around. You might find they lose interest in you once you start stating that enough's enough, or you might get accusations of bpnot being supportive enough. Ignore them, and instead, focus your energy on finding new friends.

Start off loading on them.
It doesn't matter if they don't want to hear it.
It's by text so let rip.
Do it a lot.
Once they have had a taste of their own medicine they may improve.

Thanks again for the replies, they're much appreciated.

The thing is, neither of them are what I consider close enough friends to want to share things of my own with in detail. I'm lucky that I've got other friends where the friendship is very two sided. I'll have to invent some mundane rants to text to them haha.

One has literally just sent me a long rant which came through as 5 separate texts it was so long, along with photos of an itchy bit of skin she has today. I won't be replying to that for several hours

Hours? Try making it days and you might start to see some improvement.

You are making the mistake of thinking that you have to be friends with these people who are not acting like friends to you.

I guess I just feel sorry for them as they don't seem to have anyone else (although it's not really surprising that they have no other friends)

I've still not replied to the text. I probably won't reply at all. Feeling really pissed off about it.