Please Help, Realizing That Relationships Are Too Needy And Stressful

[maryiscontrary]

Hello amigos,

I am coming to a realization early this morning, and I need your help. I have spent a huge amount of time at Drs. offices and hospitals taking care of family since I was 20. It is very triggering, as it always seems I get stuck holding the bag, and making the hard decisions and doing the back breaking emotional work.

Of course, this has always been one sided. The very few times I have been ill,. I have dealt with it completely on my own.

Well, I have a family member who lives below me here in Ecuador. She is a nurse and cared for my dad after he got septic MRSA in the hospital several years ago. I was so greatful to her. I have since sat with her in the hospital when she got sick several times, and would assist a bit with care the next day.

Well, I took her to the hospital a month ago. And I felt really bad and triggered the next day. Then my boy friend needed some heavy dental work a week ago, and needed me to translate. Then, he got a badly infected parotid, then they found a lump in his neck. Again, I was there at the hospital, and missed a lot of work, which was stressful.

I had told this family member a couple days that I was really exhausted from dealing with endless illness, and that it triggered me, and that I really needed to concentrate on myself. I really felt bad, and that my cup was really empty.

So what does she do yesterday? She calls me NEEDING me because she has a severe GI bug. OK, I take her gatorade, bananas, and offer to get her anti diarreal medicine. Well, she emails me with "HELP", and she is incapacitated and shitting on herself, and refusing 911.

I called her pastor, who is a nurse, and her friends, and they all try to hang ME with taking care of it. I went ballistic and told the Pastor that I had a shit tonne of work I have to get done in the morning (self employed), and that I didn't have the resources to be a primary care giver. Still no offer to come, but ambulance did come. Finally he came, and he was yelling at me, as he did'nt not want to be there at the hospital.

OK, I am realizing that I cannot handle relationships, because people are just excessively needy with me for some reason. I mean, there are other people who don't get thrown into these situations very often, but I have, and it ruins my life.

I mean, I am a very caring person, but it seems like these people try to exploit my compassionate nature. I mean, I don't lean excessively on ANYBODY. It really seems like my relationships are REALLY unbalanced.

So, of course I am a villian, the evil motherf*cker. But I enforced boundaries, told the pastor to deal with it, and went home.

I do not have the equipment to be in relationships, because of the drains they cause, and they entitled attitude these people think they have to my compassion and energy.

Please help.

 

[Jane.l]

There's nothing wrong in putting your boundaries in place and saying actually 'stop leaning on me I can't take it' in fact I would say here it's essential . You can not be responsible for everyone else - read a saying the other day - ' not my circus - not my monkeys' - I like that - don't beat yourself up people will take advantage if you allow it - you need to say no - you did

 

[maryiscontrary]

Jane, I am doing something to attract needy people. The expectation is unbelievable. I am a badly PTSD injured person, and it takes everything I HAVE to function, make a living, keep a small pet, keep house, take care of business. WHY do they even DO this to me? What am I doing to attract this bullshit?

 

[Friday]

Not saying no.

It works, it works synergistically, when both people are putting the other one first. Most of my family is like that. Most of my old friends are like that. But then I hit several years where everyone in my life were users. Because I always leapt into the breech, that's simply what I did. Bu no one did it for me. WTFO? I was completely baffled. It got so bad I began to realize even when I did say no, people just flat out ignored me (post op, drugged to my eyeballs, I'd arranged babysitting for my own child because I was incapable of caring anyone... And people are dropping their kids of?!? I didn't run a daycare. But people were in the habit of my saying yes. So they just brushed off my no. "Oh, it'll be okay. He'll be fine." NO! I eventually had to call spouses to come pick up their kids, since their wives were batshit deaf. No. No. No. I cannot watch your kids. I'm high. I need to be taken care of. Not the other way around.

So I started saying no. A lot. Even when I didn't need to. (Especially when I didn't need to). Nope. Sorry. Can't that day. Can't today. Maybe next week. My aim was to at most only say yes 1/3 of the time with anyone. And on top of that, to start calling in favors. Out of all my outstanding favors I got one, count them one, returned. Out of scores.

Within a few months, almost all the users were out of my life. They need an easy yes. One they can count on for free shit. Whether it's time, expertise, transportation, childcare, financial, etc. If they actually have to be considerate? They go find another sucker*

*I still say yes. I still jump into the breech. But now, only for people I know aren't users... Or with no expectation of return, for very brief periods of time. It's not a sucker to be a person you can totally count on, who leaps in, etc. But users look at people like me as suckers. Becausee they sucker us into thinking that they're decent people you can count on, too. Cause they suck. And need to attach suckers to people since no one would do anything for them if they knew what lousy people they really are. So lame!

Those years blew my mind. I have never been around so many self centered, take-take-take people in my whole life.

 

[Jane.l]

Maybe you need to get your boundaries in place from the start - so it's perfectly clear that it's not ok to take advantage - maybe doing some work in therapy on assertiveness may help if it's something you are not comfortable with .

 

[Jane.l]

I almost never agree to anything straight off - I usually say ' I will get back to you on that ' which I find helps me not to agree to things I don't want to do .

 

[maryiscontrary]

I really appreciate you guys! Wow, thank you so much! Being raised by sociopaths and addicts, I have trouble differentiating callousness and throwing someone under the bus cause ya' can't be inconvenienced and setting boundaries cause I just don't have the resources to give.

How do you determine the difference? I think a discussion like this would help a LOT of people. How do you distinguish between relationship destroying selfishness, and simple taking care of yourself?

 

[RussH]

The fact that you are a compassionate person is enough to attract needy people. But please don't lose your compassion.

The two most important things for you to employee is:
Learn how to say no, and you have already started doing that.
Prioritize the people in your life. You cannot take care of everyone, so make a short list of people you would be willing to help, when the need arises, and stick to that list, but also make sure there are others willing to step in to help as well.
Taking care of all your family and friends is not your job.

 

[Jane.l]

I think it can just be as simple as whether you feel that you want to help a lot of the time - that is simplifying it in the extreme but sometimes your needs do have to come first - you can't help anyone if you end up an exhausted, depleted mess.

 

[maryiscontrary]

Yes you guy are correct. I am going to implement these suggestions further---just did not do enough. Being around empathy impaired family, and how they would just hang others out to dry, and how disgusting it was how they would dodge responsibility, and the huge neglect I suffered massively from parents that just didn't care. I never wanted to be the person who just walks out, but as you guys say, it can swing abusively into exploitation in the other direction.

This is a problem with being raised in a severely abusive environment, with subsequent abusive partners, realizing this, and trying to self parent myself to what is appropriate.

 

[Go Hungry]

Looks like I'm a little late to the party, but I found myself in this situation too. It was because I wanted to be a good friend and help out people, part of which was my desire to feel needed and appreciated by someone, ANYONE.. And lordy were people happy to dump their ills on me. I even ended up being the primary caregiver in a co-dependent parent/child dynamic with a grown man who was actually older than I was; which nearly killed me.

And believe you me, when you try and throw off those shackles, those needy people (and their friends) will scream bloody-murder! The next people they attempt to latch onto will try and get you back into the job because they don't want to do it, which sounds exactly like what that pastor was doing to you. They will use guilt and shame and any tactic they can to try and make you that slave again. They'll blame you for things you have nothing to do with. It's co-dependence at it's finest. And it's super common among people who came from abusive and neglectful backgrounds.

Caring about people does not mean offering yourself up to be devoured by them. I've had to head off other people at times before, because I knew that once I did that One. Single. Favour. that they were asking me for, then they would expect me to do it all the time. You gotta stop it before it starts.

So yeah, you're dead right about putting up boundaries and telling them no. It'll take courage, but you got that in spades... :tup:

 

[maryiscontrary]

Go Hungry, I have studied very diligently about the mechanics of codependency, and I second what you just said. I live in a city in Ecuador that happens to have a lot of retired baby boomer gringos (north Americans and Europeans). Though there are a lot of cool older people here, there is a hell of a lot of self indulgent entitlement.

They look at me, cause I am young, and want to devour me with asking for favors and assuming that I have shitloads of free time just because I work at home with a business I have spent many years and sacrifice building. Really, many of these people really rub the natives (whom are educated, classy, and dress to the teeth) the wrong way acting all entitled and arrogant.

This is why I am busting chomps to be fluent enough just to hang out with Gen X south americans...LOL! Gringos are huge liabilities to deal with here (no offence, I am one).