[Estragon]

    He had spent seven years sacrificing himself, driving himself to the
    point of breakdown, nearly to death, trying to help these people,
    and they didn’t care about him at all. What was the point? He knew
    that if you were suicidal it was difficult to understand other
    people’s problems, but still—he had been talking to some of these
    people for years, and now here he was dying and nobody cared.

When I volunteered on a suicide hotline, the frequent callers were by far the most disheartening aspect of the job. I believe some of them had borderline personality disorder... at any rate they were highly manipulative, and a large part of the training for the job was about how to avoid being taken in / drained by them. There were one or two people who had figured out the duty roster for the call center, and you would be guaranteed a call from them if you were on duty... multiple hours-long calls, if you let them.

The hotline didn't ban them unless they became sexually aggressive towards female volunteers, I think because they helped keep the call numbers up, which was important for funding.

[lilsunnybee]

If they had BPD (borderline personality disorder), in all likelihood they were not acting manipulative at all, and were just very often in distress and experiencing very strong, dysregulated feelings and emotions. BPD people being "manipulative" is a negative and inaccurate stigma, based on misunderstanding. It is also highly harmful, as people are told to always hold in their emotions, always be wary of trying to be "manipulative", or reveal their true feelings to anyone. Since Borderline people likely went through significant trauma in childhood, contributing to the disorder, they are being made to suffer a second round of emotional abuse and/or neglect due to ignorance and people not getting their facts straight.

People with NPD (narcissistic personality disorder), or ASPD (antisocial personality disorder) might exaggerate feelings to get attention or something else from you. Though if you were on a suicide hotline, ASPD people would have no reason for calling if not genuinely in distress, and i doubt you were encountering that many NPD people.

Is it that hard to believe that some people might actually be commonly dealing with very strong emotions and impulses they can't control? It's really unfair of you to label others emotions as fake and attention-seeking, when you really have very little data to go on as to whether that's the case or not.

And above all "Borderline people are not manipulative!" I wish i could shout that from the mountaintops, but i can't and most people don't care to listen anyways. You're inaccurately and likely prematurely applying the wrong label, and should give even regulars and even people you think you know well the benefit of the doubt.

[Snhr]

Thank you for this comment, I don't know why but I decided to do a google search on dysregulated and the first link was

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_dysregulation

Hours of browsing similar wikipedia articles to find out something but nothing describing exactly the issue only to come across an unrelated comment on hacker news unexpectedly that helps a ton.

[lilsunnybee]

The correct way to handle behavior that you think might be manipulative? Have boundaries and rules. Limit call times to a reasonable limit, or if the person seems to be done talking about anything substantial, move towards concluding the conversation. If somebody is just going around in circles with stories or thoughts, cut through that mess with a directed question. Try to get to the heart of any issues that might be at play. Don't let yourself be played (by upholding boundaries and limits), but don't label or dismiss people out of hand either.