Someone You Know

So how should you react when someone you know continually plays the victim, taking your time and energy to listen to endless complaints?

Rules for those involved, in all communications:

Remember you are not a qualified counsellor. Refer him/her to professional help. “AA groups meet everywhere, and provide free counselling.”

Do not enable. Make no financial contributions, even if asked. State why: “Dr. Phil would say ‘Money is not the base problem here.’” Gamblers Anon would say never solve financial problems, as that is not the problem.

Use reflective conversations, restating what he/she says, so he/he knows you did hear and understood. “So what you mean is…. “ “It sounds like you’re thinking…”

Tell the truth, kindly, when asked for an opinion. Do not offer opinions unasked as he/she won’t listen anyway. “I think you have several options here, but it’s up to you.” “What energy are you putting out that invites others to victimize you this way?’ “ What action can YOU take to change this situation?” “What part of that would you say You are responsible for?”

Give hugs, smiles, encouraging notes, gifts of time or hospitality, if so inclined.




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Reading Journal: Memory Keeper's Daughter

OK, so I finally “finished” it, sort of. Honestly, I had to skip over a lot, reading here and there. Questions from the back of the book:

1) I understood how David decided to give up the child right at the start. My father told me to do that if I ever had such a severely disabled child, because he saw the bad effects in my mother from living with her Down’s syndrome sister. Faced with such a situation, I might have done the same thing. But I wouldn’t have lived a life full of regret forever after.
2) David feels like an “impostor” because he is dishonest with himself and to others, a lot of the time.
3) I think Caroline was right to keep the child, to raise as her own, since she was willing to do that. It was best choice for the child at that point. She had a sort of loyalty to David, and didn’t want to tell Norah till after his death, because she really didn’t know what the effect of knowing about the child would be on David’s family. But after his death, she has more loyalty to the child, making her known to her birth family.
4) If our purpose in life is to meet its challenges, then Phoebe does that very well and lovingly. Paul is confused by his father about what he is supposed to do with his life, as many are when there are expectations that do not fit one’s gifts and talents or inclinations. Phoebe might have been truly miserable being raised by David and Norah.
5) When we are at points of great personal awareness, we may dissociate, watching from a distance, since the outcome is uncertain. Yes, it happens to me. Those experiences help convince me that there is a plan to my life, a set of challenges I am supposed to meet. They are deciding moments in life.
6) David and Caroline are cut from the same fabric, caretakers in the medical field, so they have an instant mutual understanding. David married Norah because she was different. He fell in love from his heart, which is not where he usually lived.
7) The fight with the wasps was the first intentional action she engaged in, her tentative launching into more effective living. Maybe if she had had a Down’s Syndrome child she would have stepped up sooner in her defence, and maybe not. Norah was quite a whiner all through the book.
8) Rosemary needs help, reminds him of his rejected daughter, and he needs to do something to make amends, so he engages that situation.
9) Generally, I think the factual truth is best acknowledged, throughout life, even if causes matters to take a course you do not like at the time. Honesty is the best policy. It takes too much energy to sustain the deceitful state, and as it says in scripture, it “eats your bones”, quite literally. Long into the deceitful place, it may seem to do no good to reveal to others the truth, when even then, the truth is best adhered to. Horrible words said by the dying do not need to be relayed to their object. Passing on bad reports, even if true, is seldom necessary.
10) If David had been honest at the start, and he and Norah had faced the difficulties of raising these children as a team, their love might have survived, or maybe it would have fallen apart much sooner. I think David would have loved Phoebe, as he did his own sister, and honoured his son’s gifts more. Norah might have become her advocate. Caroline would have eventually married someone else. But that would be a very different story.




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Comments & Questions? Email: womenbefriends@yahoo.com