[robocat]

How can we help our friends that buy into this self-victimisation?

Our culture accepts and normalises the behaviour of using self-deceptive excuses. Our culture provides prepackaged excuses which are socially unacceptable to confront. It is a self-reinforcing system including professionals and woowoo practitioners.

The word trauma gets trivialised to be used as an outcome for the normal vicissitudes of life: blame your parents for everything and accept you can never "recover" and you must never repress. Woowoo past-life trauma and regression therapies and discussions - arrrgh.

My responses so far are limited to (a) dropping people I like from my life because their behaviour was unacceptable, (b) playing along with the beliefs of other friends regardless of the damage of those beliefs, (c) slowly trying to influence those I care about the most (d) blithely ignoring everything - training myself to not care.

We can all clearly see faults in others. Our other problem is to recognise within ourselves when we are making self-deceptive excuses or blaming others for things under our own control. Should I buy into the self-help industry? Counselling, coaching, or woowoo?

[8n4vidtmkvmk]

Have you tried telling them straight up that their behaviour is unacceptable? That they need to stop feeling sorry for themselves and complaining or no one will want to be around them?

I found out this lesson the hard way. I was a miserable kid. I don't know how it figured it out, but feeling sorry for yourself accomplishes nothing. Maybe life is shit. Maybe you're over-exaggerating. Doesn't matter, you're not going to get out of that situation by 'woowoo'ing.

Sometimes folks just need to reflect. One core memory I have was when I was really young. I was crying over something. My older brother's friend said to me "Why are you crying? You just want attention!" and that shut me right up. I thought about it, realized he was right, and realized I didn't need to cry.

[robocat]

> Have you tried telling them straight up that their behaviour is unacceptable?

Yea, but it isn't effective on anybody that is fooling themselves or that isn't interested in listening to me. I lack the skill of influence. My usual outcome in this situation is that I drop anyone that is unwilling to listen because it isn't healthy for me. I do give people the benefit of the doubt. Both parties need to respect each other - one-sided submission is unpleasant.

The majority of people learn for themselves as they mature and they are easy to communicate with. Your examples fit this.

The problem is the people that never learn or don't care to. I don't know what to do with them.

[shermantanktop]

It's not clear whether you think the problem is them or is you.

They own their problems, and the best you can do is tell them what you think, and maybe encourage them if you see some positive sign. You can also act as a positive role model, but people in that mindset are unable to draw lessons from others.

But if you hang around people who you think are miserable and self-defeating, and you don't want to move on, but you don't like it, maybe the problem is you.

[riehwvfbk]

Well, what's the alternative? What's not "woowoo"? Something along the lines of "you are bad, tainted by original sin and deserve to suffer?" Or is it "you need to hustle harder?" Well, guess what - self-harm is no more productive than self-delusion.