More threads by iamcurious

I have a friend going through a hard time right now that I care about and am trying to help, maybe you guys can be of assistance. There's alotta background here, so bare with me. Note that the first part is an excript of another post I already made. Next are some exrcipts from some voncersations and some e-mail transcripts.

I met Robin in October of 2003, I had just switched schools mid quarter. We live in a very small community, our school of 7th-12th grades contains only about 190 students. We hit it off right away as we are both strongly politically oriented and would exchange commentary on the matter. We are also both very bubbly for a lack of a better term, we're always being joculare towards one another. We finishe dout the schoo year forming a strong social relationshop, but didn't talk much over the summer as I was off driving the country hitting up music festivals.

When we got back in the fall of 2004, we picked up right where we left off. We would always discuss things we both enjoyed from literature to life, and we began holding phone conversations. She would always want to talk for extended periods of time on the phone, and she began to open up her family life and her personal problems. We grew closer as we got more intimate and we ended up eating lunch together everyday and just spending time together whenever possible. We rivaled one anothe rin a certain sense as we are both intelligent and intellectual and so we would bump heads in our small pond, usually taking opposite sides in debates. It's really neat, we are largely on opposite ends of the political spectrum but could pleasently converse about affairs none the less. I've helped her through alot of conflicts with friends and saved her on tons of academic affairs.

We both love to read and listen to music, and she is always asking for different albums and novels to fuel her thirst for culture. I enjoy this as we can then discuss the books together and listen to the music with one another.

Our relationship has also carried a slightly sexual undertone. She credits me a sbeing the only person to have made her blush, and we often verbally flirt the topic of engaging one another sexually. Not just typical sex, but along more kinky lines. I know I am attracted to her in such a matter, and she has certainly alluded that she feels the same way about me.

Robin has a strange relationship with her family, but then again I gues we all do. She is always striving to be accepted by her father (who is a county supervisor and ex hippy), and her mother is always striving to be accepted by her. She diligently defends her younger brother of two years, and greatly looks up to her older brother of three years. Her older brother is her safety poll if you will, she'll go to him when family problems explode. This has been compounded lately as her parents have been considering getting a divorce. Her mother was also recently hospitalised with severe tumors forming around her colon. I won't go into all the details of the medical issue, but she has been in the hospital for a month, in and out of the ICU. We're now seniors and we just had our senior trip last week. We all trecke ddown to San Francisco as a group, during which time Robin began hanging on me more than ever. She was just constantly looking for affection physically and emotionally, always curlign up in my lap and engaging me one on one. Our class was largely split up during most of the trip, and I came back with a bunch of blotter acid (I have alot fo friends in the city) and a groupd of six of us got together and dropped tabs. It was her first time, and she had a marvelous experience despite having to work up to dropping the blotter. We all conversed and she and I curled up together and were simply euphoric. We were exhausted fromt eh trip and ended up sleeping on one another for the six hour ride home, and things progressed well since our return.

Convo 1:

<admin edit: I don't think it's appropriate or fair to your friend's privacy to be publicly posting private communications - transcript deleted>

I came back and raised a couple points to her regarding this coversation the next day:
1. She's like the boy whistling in the graveyard to show he's brave, if he was really brave he wouldn't be whistling. If she really believed she was stronger than people, she wouldn't feelt he need to demonstrate it.
2. The thing about taking power and then giving it up is due to her conflicting desires to have power and please. She wants the power, but desires to please, and so she feels guilty and sucumbs again.
3. She is interpetating anything that could possibly be negative as anger. She has so much on her plate and feels like she's inadequate. Her mom has been in the hospital for over a month with tumours around her colon, and then the doctors screwed up and punctured her colon. She;'s in San Francisco which is five hours away, so Robin is probably very worried for her mom. Her father is there five days a week, so she has to take care of the house, take care of her little brother, go tto school, work on scholarships as we graduate in a month, and run the family store. This is normally a time when the parents step in and say let me help, but they are away. Whenever the dad is home, he justs works her more at the store, and she feels like she's not doing enough. To top it all off, her cat that she treasures has been missing for a week.
4. She was just inexperienced when she was younger, but interprets it as weakness, and feels the need to compensate. You could also extrapolate that she sucumbed to society's message of worying only about the now and not the future: if it feels good now, partake.
5. On a more minor note, I said he statement that she would feel more if she was blind was a misconception. Losing a sense simply makes you more aware of the others, it doesn't heighten it. You can gain awareness without losing some.

E-Mails: This weekend was the big opening for the store, as it was Memorial Day weekend and there's a huge bike race that they cater. I sent her mine on Friday night, she replied saturday night.

<admin edit: again, this is private communication - deleted>
 
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I didn't think the commuication mattered as there is no way for anyone here to know who it was between. I am simply asking what what I can do to help her...
 
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She's depressed, I see her attributing all her family's problems upon herself. Se crys often as a result, and it's only compounded by the fact that she's so self-concious. She wants to maintain power to compensate for what she views as people getting the best of her earlier in life, but then desires to please, so she has this struggle between maintaining herself and pleasing others. She constantly thinks she fails her parents (a combination of the previous two issues) and fails to hear any good, she dwells on the negative. I just want to help the girl get some things straightened out so she can be a happier person...
 

David Baxter PhD

Late Founder
Okay, I think what you should probably be doing is encouraging her to see a counselor/therapist to help her address the depression and self-concept issues and whatever other issues exist.

As I said to someone else in another thread recently, you can be a friend or a therapist but you can't be both. I get the impression you are confusing those roles and trying to be her therapist. As a friend, you can listen, you can try to be supportive, and you can encourage her to seek professional help. To go beyond that, she'll likely need the help of someone else.
 

David Baxter PhD

Late Founder
"self-concept issues" =

she has this struggle between maintaining herself and pleasing others. She constantly thinks she fails her parents (a combination of the previous two issues) and fails to hear any good, she dwells on the negative
 
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