Anxious friends: how do you maintain the friendship without catching anxiety?

[Priddy]

I spent yesterday afternoon with someone I've known for donkey's years: home owner, security, has chosen to work part-time order to have lots of quality time at home with her dog and garden and partner. We used to meet up and have rewarding times together: a chat about the world and our lives and a few laughs. Now whenever we meet it's one non-stop anxious whinge about Covid and vaccines and conspiracies and she sits quivering with terrified indignation and turning every topic of conversation to her and her anxieties. She's 48, she's healthy (even though all she does is worry about her health) and she has no money worries. She's had innumerable MH assessments, she's been assessed for autism and ADHD and has been told that she doesn't have either.

I dread conversations with her. They always leave me feeling down and nadgy and vaguely wound up. There's another like her but not quite so bad. Gone from being someone I can relax and enjoy being with to someone whose negativity about everything drains the life out of me. Doesn't want to take any medication because of big-dharma etc.

With both of them I feel like they'd both just sit and rant/whinge at me for the entirety of our time together if I didn't occasionally force them to converse about something other than themselves. I come away feeling unseen, unheard and vaguely abused by it all. Do they see the way they're behaving or are they so far gone that they think this is okay? They were never like this before. What's going on?

Are you me? I have the exact same thread in relationships.
Nadgy and wound up is exactly right!
Anyway you are about to have your arse handed to you because apparently they can't help health anxiety.

My friend also doesn't take.medication because of big pharma, won't use Whatsapp because of big data etc etc.

@Holluschickie I'm not you, obviously! I'm braced now for the onslaught.

Sorry to hear you've had this experience too. If people here start doing the 'we can't help it, you have to listen and empathise and put up with it' thing I'm just going to walk away from both these 'friends'.

What are you actually getting from this friendship?

Life's too short to spend your time with people who don't enrich you.

You're not this woman's support human, you have no obligation to hang around and be her misery sponge. Distance and ditch.

I decided that I am not going to walk away, as my 2 friends with anxiety are very dear, old, friends. But I am no longer going to travel with them, have them to stay or do " big things". Will just meet for a coffee or in their homes or for a quiet walk.

I feel sorry for people like them. Not enough to listen to it forever more, but I imagine their lives are utterly miserable. Unless it’s caused by a mental illness making it impossible for them to change, I do wonder what they get out of it

You need to restrict your time with them and maybe think about an activity. I always think about if I leave someone with more or less energy. If it is less then I spend less time with them.

The really frustrating thing is they keep telling me how 'lucky' I am to be healthy. I am not any healthier than them. I just take medication when I am told to and don't keep Googling cancer symptoms.

I have regular mammos and had a lump in my breast. Went to the GP immediately, had it investigated and found it was benign.

Friend keeps saying she has cancer but never gets mammos or smears, so if she does have something they won't find it till too late.

Anxiety sounds beside the point, as from what you say these are dull, self-obsessed people who monologue, and you aren't getting anything out of the friendships. Meetings leave you feeling miserable, unseen and unheard. Just don't see them. You'll feel much better.

I long ago gave up doing much at all with the friend in my post. Too complicated. Yesterday I went round for a couple of hours for a cup of tea, and it was an almost non-stop anxious rant about people down the road who'd held a retirement party and invited neighbours and warned them that they'd be having loud music till midnight. It went on for an extra 21 minutes, apparently. This so distressed my friend that she called the police to complain about it and then hadn't been able to get to sleep till 4am because of the adrenaline, and she was still in a state when I arrived at 4pm.

For context, we met at dawn after a dance party on a beach in Thailand in the late 90s. She was far more adventurous and easygoing than me. I was the one who used to put the brakes on her plans when she proposed things that seemed too much for me. We went to university, we went into proper grown-up careers, I've had children, she took on her partner's children. We both have stable, established lives.

I've tried talking to her about whether something has happened to bring this anxiety on, but she hasn't had any trauma that she's aware of. What I do know is that for the last few years she's been involved with a number of people who, from my perspective, are exploiting people with health anxieties. She spends an awful lot of money on supplements and dietary advice, cranial osteopathy and homeopathy and other 'wellness' therapies that are doing nothing to solve the anxiety problem. And through those things she's met other anxious people and I think they've now almost normalised their anxiety. She's also in a women's spiritual group which seems to attract people like her and who look to the goddess for guidance and the universe to support them. I'm knocking that, but it does add an extra bit of distance from there here and now and reality. I'm not sure she would have got into any of that if she hadn't been anxious. She was, in the past, very cynical about what she used to call mystic woo. And now she's out lighting candles and celebrating the phases of the moon with other women, all of whom seem convinced that we stand on the brink of doom from the way she talks about it.

From where I am — quietly content with my pretty ordinary life and glad to be living at a time when there is so much available to see and do and read and learn about, so many places to travel, and when women have freedoms and independence that our grandmothers could only dream of — the negativity and anxiety seem terribly damaging.

@Priddy we clearly have the same friend again!
My friend has also been sucked in by woo and wellness. She used to be so adventurous. I am sad as we used to go away at least once a year, but I can't deal with the anxiety any more. My other friend is a little better because her spouse and DD won't stand for it.

I was going to suggest maybe she needs a support group but it seems like she has found one anyway.
I've definitely noticed a few friends negatively impacted by the covid/lockdown times, increase in anxiety/gone a bit feral/ lost basic conversational skills and tend towards monologues, which are inevitably draining.
I'm loathe to let go as they are long term friends, but I realise i need to have better boundaries and take care of myself in the friendship, as well as realise people do change and not all friendships are forever.

I know that seems the obvious thing, but when you've known people for years and when they've changed so drastically I think it's natural to want to hang in there in the hope of them re-emerging again.