So I’m pretty good friends with this girl, and we both like each other, we’re both the same age and into similar stuff, but she has this problem that’s been around for probably 3 years…
She used to like this guy (still has a weird relationship with him), and he liked her, but she wouldn’t talk about him with anyone. She started hiding her feelings from everyone with this, and then it progressed to hiding more feelings from everyone, and eventually it got to the point where she would barely talk to anyone about anything that was personal to her. She’s tried to explain it to people a couple of times. One of the times the person just couldn’t understand, and the other time this other guy got scared out of it and left. Now she’s sort of apathetic and is obviously really confused about a lot of things. I mean, she’s a teenage girl, so it seems to be a standard to be confused, but she seems especially really confused. She told me about the whole thing a while back, and ever since then I’ve been trying to help her. We talked about it this one time for a while. Afterwards, though, she distanced herself. I can understand her feeling like she’s exposed herself and wanting to back off and stuff, but I don’t know what I should do. Should I keep trying to talk to her about it? Should I back off? We’ve been talking a bit recently, not really about this, but about us and stuff in general.
For the record: don’t say that stopping communicating with her or distancing myself from her is an option please. Also, and I think this has a quite a bit to do with it: her father died when she was at a young age, and her mother has been on and off in relationships since then.
Can’t help her unless we know something of her issue. All that I can say for you is; Do not push just be patient and hang around. Let her know she is not alone. When you are a teen the world and life problems can be very formidable. You do not get a manual on how to handle trauma. Teens tend to turn away from troubled teens like pain is contagious. Everyone has their own issues to deal with and it gets hard to take on someone elses apparent painful issues.
You may need to evaluate how you think your relationship in the future with the young lady will evolve. Plus you’ll need reflect on your motives in regards to her. If it appears to be a long lasting friendship, then time is on your side. Use that time to get to know one another slowly without delving too strongly about past experiences.
Vulnerability of someone’s feelings at that young age can be fragile. There is no need in my mind to move beyond shared interests (music, movies, other friends, hobbies etc.) because these times you both have is in the stage of finding out what personal relationships involve. If love hasn’t come into the pictue yet, don’t rush it for her sake. There is no telling what had happened in her previous relationship and in time things will bear out her feelings in this regard. If she is important to you at this point, then taking things slowly seems to be the best course.
There is one more thing that you have to be aware of. If she is sort of shunned by peers, then by hanging around her you too will be considered in that capacity. It could turn to resentment towards her. So judge yourself and either hang till the end or cut her loose if you can’t handle the pressure. If you hang for a while and then you break , it will cause harm.
Yes, and I sure as hell didn’t waste a moment of it moping around well, not for long, anyways
I’m not saying that the subject shouldn’t analyse the situation, but analyse it and then carry on with enjoying your life, for one should not allow a person to have such a negative effect on one’s personal happiness/existence.
A while back she stopped going to normal high school. Now she’s going to one of those schools where you come in a couple days a week, complete a packet of homework, rinse and repeat a couple times, and then take a test. She did this mainly because she got sick of the people at normal high school. They left her alone, and she left them alone, she just disliked them and how they were. She wasn’t seen below them in a peer group; she just tried to get completely out of their peer group.
For the past two or three months, she’s had really bad back problems - so bad that she went to the hospital and they found salmonella right next to her spine. For the past like month she hasn’t been going to THAT school, and now most of the time she’s at her house in bed or doing something similarly lethargic. She’s been taking antibiotics for that, and that’s supposed to be gone sometime soon, but until then she’s basically doing nothing. I’ve been taking community college classes and most of the time I live twenty miles away from her, so I can only see her so much so a lot of the time we’re either talking online or over the phone, which I like a lot, but it limits the amount of time I can see her. Because of this, and because of her generally getting more non-communicative, she’s distanced herself from a lot of friends and it doesn’t seem like she sees too many people that much any more. And the worst part? She’s generally apathetic about the situation.
Her thing with the boy - it never went anywhere. There was no big traumatic event, she just stopped talking to people. I mean, that’s what she’s told me so far, and it doesn’t seem like there was any big event.
I’m not a doctor, but I play one on the internet. She sounds clinically depressed - perhaps a “situational” case or perhaps a congenital one. I know I’ll take some lumps for this, but I have known more than a few people who have been helped by professionals for this.
It’s difficult to help as just a friend, not so much because clincians have magic, but because depressed people tend to seek re-inforcement of that which is bad for them, and so choose friends based on that.
Yeah, I’m familiar with depression; I have a family member who’s clinically depressed and has serious anxiety problems. I don’t think that’s it, though. For one thing, there are periods that my friend goes through where she’s not depressed and is okay, and when I do see her, she doesn’t act like she would if she were depressed. I mean, she’s depressed some of the time, but I don’t think that it’s clinical.
Maybe you don’t want to think so. However, pay attention to what Faust is saying, it may be something really serious, and she’ll probably deny that she’s really depressed to the end.
Ok I may get slammed for this but, her period may be giving her some trouble. If she is fine and then other times she is not ,she may be having hormonal issues, she is a teen and this is not abnormal. She might need to go to her doctor, it may be as simple as regulating her period with birth control pills.
Yeah, Kris - this can happen. I almost asked if there was any possibility that she’d been pregnant, as the end of pregnancy can also play a little hormonal roullette, and sometimes bring on a depression that doesn’t go away.
@Fab - I’ve thought that before. I’ve thought that maybe she really feels like shit all the time and she’s trying to hide it. Honestly, though, I think she just has some social communication problems that aren’t getting helped, and the fact that she’s alone most of the time at home doesn’t help either. I’ve been with her a bunch of times before when she’s been seriously happy and excited about stuff.
@Kris - I don’t think it’s that at all. She’d probably talk to her Mom, and if not, she was in the hospital for three or four days and they would have noticed that.