Hello Better help, I’m a first time poster who needs some support due to something which has been happening with one of my friends recently.
My friend, we’ll call them Lucy, has been one of my best friends for years, and I love her deeply. She experiences borderline disorder and feelings of abandonment, which she often seems to believe rather than treating them as intrusive thoughts.
This has caused us to clash on more than one occasion, while always managing to move on eventually. Because she often feels abandoned by her friends and I often see her in difficult mental situations, I try to help the best I can, but it always ends up going wrong in some way and I can never give her what she needs, often making her more upset or improving nothing.
I’ve been feeling like my attempts, and the attempts of other friends to help her, have been falling on deaf ears, and it’s been impacting my own mental health as well as my anxiety.
This evening, I was on a discord call with her and another friend, and it was perfectly relaxed the entire time. I’d just finished my dissertation for university and was relaxing with them both.
It got late, and I said I wanted to come off soon and sleep. She said ok but I find it very difficult to leave without seeming rude or wanting to make her feel like I’m abandoning her.
I stayed in the call for another hour getting progressively more tired and admittedly frustrated that I couldn’t sleep, and the conversation had also moved to more personal territory so it felt even harder to leave.
Thinking I was inaudible, I said “please just let me leave” and it was picked up by the mic. She heard it and is now extremely extremely upset, again.
I feel so stupid and guilty for saying such a thing and I keep getting intrusive thoughts about me being an awful person, feeling like I’m losing my friend. I know what I said was wrong, and I regret it so much even if it was a mistake, but I just need some words if validation and common sense to help me through this time.
My friends tell me I’m good, as do my family. I’ve messed up and don’t know how to move forward. I’ll be mentioning it to my therapist in the next few days also.
Thank you for reading and I wish you all every last bit of peace with your own problems