The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Notes -
I have more updates from a previous situation. Things have escalated in a direction that I feel this may be more appropriate as an /r/drama post, but I don't go to such places, so I am here to share with you again.
Here was my last update
https://www.themotte.org/post/616/wellness-wednesday-for-august-2-2023/126205?context=8#context
What happened this week is that she posted in a facebook group of "World [obscure sport] players"
I am only minorly editing with []s what she said for some privacy:
We had a flurry of messages among the board to discuss this. Eventually we got the only woman on the board (and by far the coolest head among us) to send her a message that we had removed a bunch of emails from the list of people that are not in the area, and are not dues paying members. The problem lady then took the post down from facebook a few hours after being told that.
One of the other things I learned is that she told another board member (the one she accused of fat-shaming) that our board had caused her tons of stress in the last month and led to her to the point of a failed suicide attempt. That board member has been consulting with a lawyer. I'm consulting with you all. I feel there might be a different level of quality in the advice we receive.
The board member who spoke with a lawyer is now suggesting we implement a code of conduct and probably some other sets of rules. I would rather avoid this and just fall on the grenade and kick her out. Or not explicitly ban her from practice, but just let her know that she is unwelcome, but allowed to attend.
This is probably the part where I need some advice, probably from a psychiatrist rather than a lawyer. I know I am supposed to feel guilty or bad that she might kill her self due to my words. And that even if she does not kill her self, she will certainly feel like crap and have her emotions badly hurt. But I simply do not care. I haven't been able to find a speck of caring in myself for her plight. I am only slightly worried about showing that I pretend to care, just so people don't think I'm a sociopath. (I'm also pretty sure I am not a sociopath, I can feel quite deeply for other people, I get secondary embarrassment quite easily, cry at movies, and have felt physically nauseous watching my daughters go through pain).
I am perhaps seeing this lady as an enemy. And I really have no sympathy for enemies. She hasn't done much of anything against me personally, aside from be mildly annoying (but I put up with lots of behaviors that I find annoying in others). But she has harmed and attacked people I think of as my allies or 'my people' members of the club I am responsible for, and fellow members of the board. I find that what she does to piss off the other around me infuriates me the most, and has drained any remaining sympathy I might have once had.
tagging @TheDag and @Walterodim since they commented on the last update.
Is it reasonable/possible to establish a "We Don't Negotiate With Terrorists" rule regarding suicide threats?
That would be my preferred approach.
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To me, this says you’re a mentally healthy person with good boundaries. A codependent would be falling all over themselves trying to rescue her or advocate for her, and would thus enable her worst behavior.
As a Christian, I am called to do more, to love my enemies and my neighbors, yet not be codependent myself. So I ask my Lord, the divine Healer, to bring grace into her life and healing from the hurts she’s received and perceived. I give my worries for her to God, trusting that He will make all things right in their time. And having given her up to Him, I also pray for all who suffer similarly, that God would gently relieve them.
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Apologies this response is going to be briefer than I would like secondary to me being on vacation.
Also apologies I don't like diagnosing people second hand, but..... based off of what you said in the past and here this person almost certainly has cluster-b personality traits and very likely has borderline personality disorder.
This means a few things.
-People with this sort of personality structure have mangled coping mechanisms. They don't handle stress in a healthy way and that often includes lashing out in seemingly irrational and inappropriate ways, for instance "splitting" (people are "all good" or "all bad"). Now that the board is the adversary they are super evil and awful and therefore certain kinds of behavior is both justified and necessary. "Projection" is also very common.
-Self-harm, "fake" suicide attempts, and "real" suicide attempts are all common responses to distress in this population. It is questionable whether these behaviors are ever an appropriate response, but it's very commonly super duper out of proportion with the cause of stress here. They don't generally have very serious attempts though "if you break up with me I'm going to overdose...on melatonin" but do still have higher rates of completion than population average.
-If things aren't going well with people like this, they are super fucking frustrating. Don't feel about your response not being up to your standards. These people are hard to deal with and even professionals in a professional setting need to constantly stop themselves from going "Jesus fucking christ shut your fucking mouth."
-These people are very good at hijacking social justice, the legal system, and other avenues to get revenge, make changes to something, whatever. This is often distressing for everyone else.
In sum you didn't do anything wrong and while this person deserves some pity and human decency for being both a human being and mentally ill, they are still a threat to you and doing things that absolutely should drive you bonkers (and you shouldn't feel bad about it). Borderline is essentially the female equivalent of anti-social personality disorder (gross oversimplification but still) and while both deserve kindness you should take steps to protect yourself and not feel bad about it.
Outside of social justice communities most people have experiences with a person like this and kinda get the vibe.
Why are social justice communities so immune to noticing BPD?
Questioning lived experience and emotions is typically a no-go in those communities so it's really hard to challenge borderlines. Likewise it's common to not be able to challenge them when they use social justice language/concepts. This leads to a feedback loop of poor coping skills and reality testing that can lead to poor outcomes in these patients and difficulty in treatment.
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This is good advice, thank you
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Since I was tagged in a reply by @TheDag I will add the following (note: I am not a psychiatrist, I just, like you, dislike people such as this lady):
Western culture is heavily Christianised. Anybody growing up in it, regardless of whether they be Christian, atheist or whatever inevitably have certain aspects of it imprinted upon them. One such aspect is the idea of doing well to your enemies, regardless of how they behave towards you, indeed it appears many many times in the Bible, perhaps most famously in Luke 6:35 : "But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great." and Matthew 5:39-40: "But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. 40 And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well." (both are sayings of Jesus).
This is all well and good when everyone in your society is living a proper Christian lifestyle and believes all the other God stuff as well. That leads to a stable system. Unfortunately God has been killed, and one of the consequences is that people have adopted certain tenets of Christianity and turned them into what "every good moral human being clearly does and if you don't do it then you are a Bad Person", and doing well to your enemies is unfortunately one of them.
"Treat your enemy in the same way as your treat your friend" may well have been adopted by baseline modern culture from Christianity, but many of the people currently benefiting from it are not Christians, they may well be actively disdainful of Christians and as such I see no reason why they should get any protection based on this maxim when they so clearly reject the whole which it comes from.
Indeed I personally far prefer the Confucian solution to this problem, namely that "Treating your enemy the same way as you treat your friend is an insult to your friend". Think about all the other people in your club that you do like and are friendly with. Treating this woman in the same compassionate way as you would treat one of them is not you doing a "good thing", it is you insulting your friends, plain and simple. They are helpful to you, pleasant to be around and in general make your life better and you decide to repay them by treating them no better than someone who quite openly wants to hurt those your care about and will go to large lengths to do it? Shame on you!
My point is that you should not feel bad in the least about not treating such a person well. Remember to cover your ass and not do something that could hurt you and yours and absolutely make sure to not give her any ammunition. If you don't feel particularly vengeful towards her then it's perfectly fine to not do anything beyond protecting the group from her attacks, this just means she is not worth your time, but you absolutely have nothing to feel guilty about from seeing her suffer and doing nothing to alleviate it. If she wanted your help, maybe she shouldn't have attacked the club you are a part of.
My TL;DR advice: If she's a believing Christian, maybe go somewhat easy on her, otherwise: Let it Rip!
I like this, and it gets at what has bothered me about how some of my fellow board members have responded to this problem lady. They have been very accommodating. Once the facebook post came out, and she started speaking with a high up and powerful person in the [obscure sport] community I felt that all bets were off. It was scorched earth time, and if it was solely my decision that is the route we would have gone.
I'm not sure if she is Christian, but I'm certainly not, so maybe I should bother with the mercy either way.
Vestigial Christianity fucks stuff up again. If modern society wants to reject Christianity it has to reject it fully, not just reject small parts of it like belief in God etc. That gets you to where we are now in the world. To quote the great Chesterton:
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The fact that we have created a society in the West where an insane, weak and tiny (but growing) fraction of the population can bring the force of the legal system to bear on normal, healthy people for not catering to their desires is embarrassing and frankly quite scary. I'm sure @BurdensomeCount could back me up here with some more colorful language. And @self_made_human, I wonder if this trend is why cultivation novels/progression fantasy have become so popular recently? Extolling the virtues of strength in a world like ours is starting to make more and more sense.
I wouldn't be worried that you're a sociopath man. By our natures it make sense that you would feel some sympathy and compassion for her plight, but it's clear that she is trying to weaponize her weakness and the fact that your entire group isn't catering to her. She's basically someone who's weak, trying to get someone who's strong (the state) to punish you and yours for not doing her will. It's a messed up situation.
That being said, it's still good to act with pity towards people in her situation, even and especially our enemies. Whether or not you no longer feel sympathy on an emotional level, intellectually you can still recognize that she is probably suffering terribly. She's making bad choices and being immoral etc, but at least for me it helps to remind myself that at the end of the day she will reap what she's sown. People that go down her path don't tend to find happiness.
The annoying thing here is that it is more fear than actual ability to bring the legal system against us. We are not an employer we are a private club formed for the purposes of promoting local obscure sport. She isn't local and she is actively making it harder to recruit people, she is against the strict purpose of our organization.
She hasn't ever sued anyone as far as I know. Also fat shaming is not illegal. You could maybe make a case of hostile work environment if this was work, but it's not.
She seems to mostly be using emotional manipulation and Karen energies. Which are fully outside the legal system and only gain power if you grant them power.
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