Oops! Slipping a bit.

Didn’t manage to blog yesterday. No excuses. Today I wasn’t wildly inclined either but I’m trying. (Yeah, I know – very trying!)

Yesterday I was trying to tell someone that other people don’t really care what happens to you. She has a hang-up about caring and she thinks everyone should make allowances for her when she’s been ill, just because she says she’s been ill. She frequently says things like “They don’t care about me. I could drop off a cliff in front of their eyes and they wouldn’t notice”.

Now in real life I know some people are very attentive if they know you have been crook, but these people are few and far between. Most of us say we care and we think we are caring people but we don’t ever follow up with some caring act. And that’s what is the norm. Sure we care while we’re saying it but we forget a minute later and never do anything. This is accepted but is abhorrent to people who are Narcissists (who also never do much for anyone else either). Narcissists think everything is about them. If their electricity goes off during a suburb-wide outage, they have the loudest voice at the front door or on the phone, describing all the disasters the outage has created at their place. They never ask if it caused a major inconvenience for you even if you’re obviously halfway through drying your hair. But their oven clock stopping is everyone’s problem and you’ll never hear the end of it. It will be sooo difficult to restart and you have to run through the whole twelve hours before you can reset it to afternoon time… and it’s sooo hard for her to hold 2 buttons down at once with her fresh nail job!

Narcissists also prey on people via social media. They have some problem and they want everyone to pay attention to it. For instance, it might start with something simple like where to buy a certain type of light bulb. But when they get little response they can up the ante until they’re demanding you come over and stop them from over dosing or similar. Kind but naive people can become virtual servants to narcissists who operate this way and start phoning or going around to check they are OK! The best thing to do to protect your own mental health is to kindly and firmly explain to the narcissist that this is exactly what you are doing. Tell them you are protecting your own mental health and you can’t afford to be taking care of others at this time. Advise them of the accepted channels for getting urgent help and wish them well in therapy, meditation or whatever they may have chosen to assist them after you cut ties. Then un-friend or cut contact, block their number on your phone if you have it and start concentrating on yourself again!