What to do with STUBBORN friends

[MisterTinkles]

I have a friend who does all the wrong things....and she ends up sick a lot.

Im talking about BAD sick.......severe migraines and close calls on strokes and heart attacks.

She wont take her pills unless we all badger her, or until she gets so bad she is about to die. And we forget to badger her about them a lot, so she does not take them.

I don't know what to do about her.

DRIVES ME NUTS!!!!

[matty7]

Does she have a phobia of taking pills or hospitals etc? Reason i ask is that my friend lost her parents weeks apart and in front of her, shes terrified of treatment,doctors,hospitals u get the picture, she's. Just had pnumonia but didnt go to hospital till she could not speak, doctors said a few more hrs n she would be dead now - is your friend like that? mine has had 3 near deaths now, she even has 2 kids but refuses treatment till she pretty much passes out

Or is she just stubourn and doesnt accept been ill, if thats the case then keep doing your wonderfull job as been a freind, reminding her I gues is all u can do

[Edward]

She clearly doesn't appreciate her life and what a great gift it is to be alive. I believe she's an adult, so there's not much you can do. After all you cannot babysit her forever, you have your own life to live. She has chosen her destiny.

Maybe there has been something that has made her not to care about her well being? Maybe she's depressed or something?

[Chris]

Maybe it's the opposite. She's so laid-back that doesn't care about her health and lives according to a maxim Carpe diem. If this is a case then you should probably use different arguments but you didn't describe precisely what kind of person is she.

[partis]

If shes having close calls on strokes and heart attacks she needs to speak to somebody but ultimately only she can do for herself… this is like self-harm

[southbiochem]

Not really much you can do for someone who refuses to take care of herself..

except exerting violence and shove the pills down her throat..

she needs someone 24/7 to keep her on check, but that's job for family or hired help I'm afraid, not for you.

[loserguy]

You can't force anyone to do anything.

[Woollyhats]

What are the reasons for her not taking her pills? Laziness, a belief that she doesn't need them, illegal drugs, etc.?

A lot of people don't take their pills because they can't keep track of them, which is embaressing for them but a real problem. One of my aunts is a nurse and cares for mentally impaired clients in her home, and they take a huge number of pills a day (unfortunately, many of the pills are needed to counteract some of the life long side effects of whatever they did to them in the old institutions). She uses one of these:



Simple, but very helpful .

If it's illegal drugs, you might be literally saving her life by reporting her. Getting clean in prison might help, as horrible as that sounds.

And if she doesn't think she needs the pills, which she obviously should, maybe it's time for a friend with some sort of medical qualification to give her a talk. Might not help, but it's the best you can do.

One last thing: If she can't afford the pills, it sounds like whatever problems she has are disabling (strokes/heart attacks kind of make it hard to function), so maybe she could consider disability. In a lot of places (....In Canada), disability will cover many prescription drugs...maybe she can see if it's the same where she lives. The reality is that when she has impending strokes and heart attacks she's a liability, so there's no shame in that.

[Shakeskweer]

"She wont take her pills unless we all badger her, or until she gets so bad she is about to die. And we forget to badger her about them a lot, so she does not take them."


Sorry to say it but the part I have quoted suggests she could be an attention seeker. It similar to a couple of friends I had who needed to be noticed so much they convinced themselves they had anorexia. How did I know they did not have anorexia? Anorexics hide the fact, they did not. Use to draw attention to it by ordering food and eating a ridiculously small amount then running to the toilet to give the impression they were throwing up.

I do not know them any more. I restrict myself to helping those who really need help. And you do get bored as time goes on.

[MisterTinkles]

I loves her "to death", but she is a literal blond............she forgets.

She keeps herself stressed out too. I have made her see reason, but she forgets and stresses herself out again.

She doesn't want to kill herself, but she keeps saying "it doesnt matter", because she does not want to do anything to change the position she is in.

She is constantly defeating herself, and is her own best enemy. We have all told her, and she claims to know this, but she still does not do anything to change it.

She is a very nice woman, and we all love her to pieces, but she gets really exasperating sometimes.