What can be done about a friend who constantly complains, but does nothing to improve her life?

Question

A friend of mine is constantly complaining about her life. Everyone else is to blame for her plight. If she doesn't have a job, it's because there aren't any, if she's broke, everyone else is supposed to chip in to pay for what she needs. It is always Woe is Me. She always plays the victim. I know jobs are hard to come by, but in her case, there are offers but she thinks they are beneath her. What advice would you give her ?

Answer 1

The "poor me" personality is the hardest to bring around. Anything you say will turn you into the attacker too.

Here is what you do: you stop supporting her whiny behavior. When she starts to complain, suddenly you have someone who needs your help - someone who WANTS to change her life.

After 10 or 12 times of being cut off from your listening ear, she is going to confront you. What you say at this point, and how you say it, is going to be very important. You're either going to send her away thinking you're "one of them" or she's going to seriously look at the way she deals with reality.

"I love you but I can't support your negativity. You just don't see how you can change all this. It's really up to you. You blame everyone else for your problems, but if anyone is going to do something about it, it can only be you. Let me know if I can help, but I just can't listen to how the world has done you wrong any more."

You may never hear from her again. But that would be her choice.

Answer 2

My own dear friend, there are even 2 of them (!), is just the SAME way--cut from the same cookie cutter. One thing I do know after all these years is that until SHE is ready to HEAR, no matter what you say-it will fall on deaf ears.
Laying blame is one of the easiest traps to fall into--and I did two different things.
The first friend, I QUIT doing things for! If she had a cold, I had pneuomonia! If she hurt her back, I just fell off a ladder! If SHE was broke, I was looking to get on Food Stamps for myself. I had been enabling her all thru the years and simply decided to STOP!
The second friend sings the same sad song, second verse, only a little bit worse....over and over and over.... and motion sickness level of bouncing back and forth from sympethetic to amazed to constructive feedback made me whirl!
So, for her for Christmas, I gave her the little blank journal I found at Costco Book department on COUNTING HER BLESSINGS AND DOING IT DAILY WITH GRATITUDE!!!!
That is the best I could do for her. I cannot change her circumstances, I cannot purchase her monthly medications for her, I cannot make her son a good guy and call her on her birthday, I cannot bring back her dead cat.....but I CAN show her that her Higher Power, the ONE in control of everything CAN!!!!
I could have done it with a school spiral bound notebook that was only 1.29, rather than the 10.60 this one cost, but the little poems and messages in it said what I wanted to gently bang over her head or scream at the top of my impatient lungs!!!!
Fighting for and arguing for the right to be wrong is big
with folks like this, they want to have the last word PROVING that IMPOSSIBLE is their situation (s)....and as long as they operate under such "stinkin' thinkin'" they remain
100% Absolutely RIGHT!!!!
My question to them is - Hey! How's that workin' for ya?
How is that showing up in the REST of your life???
Good luck, YOU are kind to even care.
Don't beat YOUR head against this brick wall!
Let her or him do it on their own!!! Alone!

Answer 3

I know people like that. I try to avoid them.
They don't have a job, so they don't have a car. Then they expect to take them everywhere.
I work hard for my money, and they feel if I have some extra cahs, I should be treating them.

Answer 4

Tell her to suck it up.