friend advice/ self-esteem study

Jun. 12 Friend advice: I was reading the Globe and Mail advice column by David Eddie on Jun. 5, 2014.  The question is: “A friend turns our get-togethers into therapy sessions. How do we make her stop?”

The question: Six months ago a group of friends started a weekly coffee get-together to stay connected and celebrate the positive side of life. In that time our friendship has strengthened and I believe a special  bond is forming that I would like to continue, but it is in jeopardy. One of our friends continues to hijack the conversation to use it as a therapy session and even though time is given to listen and give advice, she will not stop going in circles.  When we try to branch off onto another topic, she will have a story that eventually brings it back to her issues. This week, two friends told me she is driving them crazy and they are not sure if they can continue to come. We all want coffee time to continue and I want to help my friend. How can I do both?

The answer: Your friend sounds like a real hmmm, not quite sure what the word is for
it, I may have to make one up maybe of those Germanic-type compounds.  How about: koffeeklatschenjammer? Your friend is a real koffeeklatschenjammer. Definition: someone who brings social occasions involving hot caffeinated beverages to a medium-fine-grinding halt with long, boring, solipsistic soliloquies. Her cold-beverage counterpart: the bierhau sblottobore.  I don’t have that problem in my world. My friends love to talk about interesting topics and only about themselves when the story falls into that category.

What a bunch of interruptenheimers, though! I say this with great affection. They are live wires, and I know it all part of the cut and thrust of social intercourse, but it’s getting impossible to tell a story of any length any more.  That’s it, I just gonna abandon this anecdote, I had to say at a get-together recently. Too many interruptions.  It was a good one, too, full of cops and teenagers and other hair-raising components. Anyway, onto your friend.

I have a theory: People who are overly focused on their problems are often adrift in life. They’re not busy enough, so have a tendency to fluff their footling issues into a frothy foam, same way a barista makes milk for a macchiato or cappuccino: by stirring them around a lot and applying frequent injections of hot air.  So if you genuinely care about your koffeeklatschenjammer friend, your long-term goal should be trying to help her regain her sense of purpose and direction in life, so she can put her problems in perspective in her back pocket and not in a giant rucksack she upends at your coffee klatsches.

Meanwhile, in the short term, I see no reason you couldn’t form a splinter group  a breakaway klatsch.  That may seem harsh, but if your self-involved friend is derailing your interactions with people whom you feel could one day become close friends, decisive action is called for.  If she catches wind of this splinter klatsch, all the better. Maybe it’s time to drop some tough love on her:

You’re burning everyone’s beans by endlessly pouring over the same grounds. We love you, we want to talk about you some of the time, but we also want to talk about other things, too.  Phrase it however you like. Just say what’s in your heart. Have a Spanish coffee first if you need to bolster your courage. (Personally I wonder if your group wouldn’t be better off switching to non-caffeinated, alcohol-infused drinks, e.g chardonnay, but maybe that’s just me.)

Sound like impractical, non-real-world advice? I don’t think so. My friends may be a bunch of unrepentant interruptenheimers, but I love them all fiercely, and when one of them recently brought up something that was stuck in his craw vis-vis me, I was really glad he did.  He was all frosty and businesslike at first (cough cough WASP-y cough cough) then I could tell he made the decision just to blurt it out: Listen, Dave, there’s something I’ve been wrestling with and I was so happy he did. 

Because here’s the thing: If he hadn’t, I wouldn’t have had a clue about the thing that was bothering him.  And I can almost give you my Damage Control patented Absofreakinlute Guaranfriggintee your friend has no clue about her koffeeklatschenjamming, either.  She may feel hurt and/or angry. But look at it this way: You’re doing her a favour, in the long run. Better to feel a little zinged for a while than to have people slowly tiptoe/moonwalk away from her socially, which is what is bound to happen over time.  Let her brew and stew over it awhile. But only give her the keys to get back in the klatsch if she dials back her me-me-me monologues and starts to show willing to take a back seat and listen a little more.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/relationships/how-do-i-deal-with-a-blathering-friend-whos-hijacking-our-weekly-get-togethers/article19004155/

My opinion: That’s some good advice.  That’s why I kind of prefer my weekly emails.  I’m sure some of you guys are like: “Oh no, she’s writing about Dateline: To Catch a Predator again.   I’m skipping that part.   Now she’s writing about Dr. Phil, so I’m skipping that paragraph.  Oh, here’s something I would like to read about.”

When I call you guys on the phone or I bump into you on the street, I ask: “So have you been reading my weekly emails?”  Then you guys can pick and choose what topic you want to discuss like some of you are: “Yeah, I read that one about the news.”  

When I email people, no one really emails me back.  But when I call you on the phone or talk in person, I ask about it, then it does prove you’ve been reading it or not.

There was that one time my friend Michelle had to email me back about Alison Redford, and couple of my other friends joined in on it too.  

Jun. 22 No consequences rebuttal: I wanted to add about that time in gr. 12 math class, the teacher Mr. Stabile was yelling at this girl for sleeping in his class.  This girl Lindsay yells at him and says: “Yeah, well you’re a jerk.”  The class says: “Ohhhhhhhh.”  

Earlier I said Lindsay didn’t experience any consequences because she didn’t get sent to the office.  However, she did get mild consequences because Mr. Stabile yelled at her.  The class said “Ohhhh” and no one supported her by saying: “Yeah, that’s right!”

Jul. 3 Gaining weight to stay in school: The other example I had was of someone eating a lot and not gaining any weight.  I saw this on Yahoo news:

“A 92-pound Yale University student has finally ended her faceoff with school officials who spent months insisting that she either gain weight or be suspended. And Frances Chan, 20, who contends she never had an eating disorder to begin with but is simply genetically thin, could not be more relieved.”

“Just visited Yale Health with my parents and met with a new doctor. She apologized repeatedly for the ‘months of anguish’ I went through and admitted that BMI is not the end all be all,” Chan posted to her Facebook page on Friday. “She also looked at my medical records since freshman year (which the previous clinician had not done) and noted that she saw that my weight had remained around the same. So she trusts that I do not have an eating disorder and admitted that ‘we made a mistake.’”

https://ca.shine.yahoo.com/blogs/healthy-living/yale-university-drops-threat-to-kick-out-student-for-being-too-skinny-180302055.html?vp=1

My opinion: So there is consequences for not gaining weight in Chan’s case.

Jul. 4 Self-esteem study: I read in the Metro on Jun. 30, 2014 “Let friends help you see the bright side.”  This adds to the friend advice topic.

Professor Denise Marigold, from Renison University College at Waterloo:

“People with low self-esteem want their loved ones to see them as they see themselves.  As such, they are often resistant to their friends’ reminders of how positively they see them and reject what we call positive reframing: expressions of optimism and encouragement for betting their situation.”

Article: “Participants reported that consoling friends and colleagues with low self-esteem was exhausting and frustrating due to their friends’ fundamental lack of desire for positive reframing.”

Marigold: “If your attempt to point out the silver lining is met with sullen reminder of the prevailing dark cloud, you might do best to just acknowledge the dark cloud and sympathizes.”

Article: “Participants reported that trying to cheer up a friend with one such dark side often made them feel worse about themselves, suggesting that low self-esteem is contagious.”

“Being open to positive reframing and allowing friends and family to cheer you up can greatly enhance self-esteem.  The findings were published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.”

My opinion: That’s a good article.  It reminds me of watching Dr. Phil.  I get frustrated and exhausted watching this show because it seems people don’t learn anything and there are cases where Dr. Phil isn’t really helping people as much.

I mentioned before about telling people to go to counseling in this blog post “Help Tracy Get a Job/ Generation Boomerang”:

http://badcb.blogspot.ca/2014/06/help-tracy-get-job-generation-boomerang.html