What's the best way to deal with help rejecting complainers?

[steve2470]

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-couch/201410/whats-the-best-way-deal-help-rejecting-complainers

F. Diane Barth L.C.S.W.

Adrienne* is basically a nice woman. But she seems to feel that bad things only happen to her. Or when bad things happen to her, they’re worse than when they happen to anyone else. For instance, when her upstairs neighbor’s water pipes burst and leaked into Adrienne’s guest bedroom, Adrienne was sad about it for weeks. She talked about all of the terrible consequences of the disaster, including all of the money she would be spending on re-painting the damaged wall and ceiling in the room. During that time, a friend had an accident and broke her arm. Adrienne was very kind to this friend, even taking time out of her own schedule to visit, shop, and run errands for her. But soon the friend had tired of Adrienne’s ongoing chatter about the leak, the terrible struggle to get the walls repaired, and how terrible things always seemed to happen to her.

Is there is someone in your life who seems to always feel sorry for him or herself? Do you find yourself offering advice that never gets accepted? And do you feel guilty, because instead of sympathizing with their difficulties, you frequently feel frustrated with them?

If so, you are not alone. While Adrienne has some good friends who genuinely like her and feel that she does often get a raw deal in life, she sometimes irritates them. And she has difficulties at work because, although she is good at her job, she appears to drive her supervisor crazy.

Why does someone like Adrienne, who so clearly wants us to feel sorry for her, end up irritating us? And what can you do about the Adrienne in your life?

[SWBTATTReg]

1. These people seem to feel better bringing down the rest of us all around them...

don't let them. They gain some measure of power over you when they do this to you. Sadly, you must move beyond them, and live your life. You've already attempted to help them, didn't seem to do one bit of good, and re-injure themselves deliberately in order to gain a voice that they feel that they couldn't get otherwise.

Seems like another shade of our racists and other such as them to get a voice, any voice. Sadly, they never realize that it is them that's causing their ongoing issues (that they hyperventilate on endlessly).

No matter what you say, what you do, it's not good enough.

Enough, I say! Move on and live life to the fullest. Know that they alone, can only deal w/ their issues, not you.

[irisblue]

2. I described that behavior as an emotional vampire

Sucking the emotional (& other things like help, work )from a victim.

[mopinko]

3. as the child of a brilliant alcoholic, i learned early on

that some people just are focused on the bad things that happen to them, and they will take you down w them if you let them.

my dad had a wonderful wife, and 7 great kids, some of whom he saw as worthless, even tho they were anything but.
he never got over the crash of his childhood dream that slipped through his hands.
he did so much damage w this crush he had on his rage, this unhealing wound.

we all had to shut him out to some extent. most of us shut him out altogether.
i managed, in my 60's to let go of the bad parts and cherish the good parts, but it was really a matter of landing, unexpectedly, in a place where the things he gave me became my life.

in the end, you have to save yourself. that is what he taught me.