missmentelle

[missmentelle]

Is it weird that I google my therapist almost every week?

I don’t think it’s weird - it’s natural to feel curious about the person you spill some of your darkest secrets to - but I also don’t think that this is a particularly healthy habit to get into, either. 

I’m curious to know what your motivations are for googling your therapist. Are you trying to learn more about their personal life? Are you browsing their social media? Looking at their professional page? Do you miss them in between sessions? Are you just bored? Is this a coping mechanism you do when you’re stressed out or struggling? 

Although it’s natural to be curious about your therapist, I do think that this is a habit you should try to break. Boundaries between mental health professionals and clients exist for very good reasons. A therapist relationship is not like any other relationship in your life - it tends to work best when you don’t know everything about your therapist. 

You need to feel comfortable being completely open and honest with your therapist, and sometimes learning personal information about your therapist might unconsciously make you more hesitant to share with them. This can be perfectly innocent - if you find out, for instance, that your therapist’s husband cheated on her, you might not want to share your own struggles with being cheated on, for fear that you might trigger painful memories for her. If you find out that your therapist experienced something traumatic, you might not want to share your own traumas because you feel they aren’t as serious as hers.

Your therapy sessions work best when they are all about you and your emotions - when you know too much personal information about your therapist, you will have an unconscious tendency to try to manage their emotions alongside your own, which could impact what you are comfortable sharing with your therapist.  Sometimes therapists will choose to share information about themselves with you (this is called “self-disclosure”), but this is always supposed to be done strategically, and with the intent of benefitting you in some way. 

If, for instance, I’m working with a domestic violence survivor who is reluctant to share her story because she is convinced that I won’t believe her, I may self-disclose that I am also a survivor (although I will never go into detail) - the point of that disclosure is to show her that I get where she’s coming from, and to further reassure her that I will believe her. More disclosure than that would be inappropriate - if she knew more about my specific story, she might decide that her experiences don’t “count” if they weren’t as severe as mine, or she might feel like she has to stop and comfort me, which is the opposite of what is supposed to be happening. If I’m sharing something about myself, there has to be a purpose for it, and it has to benefit the client - NOT me. 

Professional boundaries are also important because in some cases, getting too “close” to your therapist can actually make you less likely to share with them, for fear that you are personally disappointing them. Instead of thinking “wow I am not doing well, I definitely need to let my mental health professional know about this”, people can get into a place where they think “wow I am not doing well, I’m letting Sarah down so much by relapsing like this after all the hard work she did, and she’s going to be so upset”. Your relationship with your therapist is the one relationship in your life that is truly about you, and it’s best to keep it that way.  On top of that, I would recommend not googling your therapist outside of work because there is just not much you can gain from that. Your therapist probably has her social media profiles on “private”, and even if she doesn’t, she isn’t allowed to add her clients. She has a life outside of being a therapist that her clients are not part of, and she also deserves to be able to maintain that boundary. 

I know it’s hard to break the habit of googling someone you are curious about, but it’s important to try. Find other things to occupy your time - google other subjects you’re curious about, chat with friends, explore new hobbies. If you feel comfortable, talk to your therapist about this behaviour and how you can work on changing it. In the long run, your professional relationship with your therapist will be better for it.  Hope this helps! MM

#Anonymous #AnsweredByMM

[missmentelle]

Hi. I am wondering how someone like you or people in similar professions cope with so much pain from other people? I imagine most people who choose these kinds of professions are people with high empathy and people who want to help other people. But the fact that you just can’t help everyone, when you see how much pain and suffering so many people are in, isn’t it hard to bear? Or actually, you can’t really help anyone, you can only try to be there and be a sort of guide in what they themselves decides they want to heal/change. You can’t MAKE anyone heal, in the end it’s all up to them, no matter how much you want to and try to. How do you detach yourself from their pain and the outcome, when at the same time you need to be empathetic and invested in their life and emotions? What do you tell yourself? How does one manage that balance of not either becoming indifferent and shutting off empathy or become consumed by their emotions and worrying sick for them and wanting to interfere? I find it really difficult to cope with. (I’m not in this profession but I have considered it, this is just a big problem for me) It pains me a lot when people around me are hurting, even watching/reading/hearing news is so difficult for me that I avoid it, because I just want to make it better and help somehow but I can’t, not enough at least. Because I’m the end I need to leave it up to themselves.

To be honest, after nearly a decade in this field, the thing I struggle the most with is not the people who don't want to be helped - people have the right to make their own decisions, and I can make peace with that. What I really struggle with is seeing the many, many people who desperately want help, but have no opportunity to receive it.

I have worked with homeless and insecurely-housed youth for most of my career. I have watched many, many youth that I have cared about cause a lot of harm to themselves and others, despite doing my best to give them support and connect them to the right resources. You are absolutely right - you cannot make someone heal, and sometimes people are simply not in a place where they are ready to start the healing process, or even to start thinking more critically about their actions and experiences. Sometimes, people never get to that point - I have known a lot of people who did not get to live to see 25. That's an enormously painful and heavy thing. I remember the name and face of every youth I have ever lost, and there are countless more that I worry about all the time, even if I am no longer part of their lives.

It's not easy to cope with that kind of pain, but I find (I think) healthy ways to manage it. I do have to remind myself that it is not my role to save people; it is my role to do the best I can to provide the best support I can for whatever amount of time I have with a person, and I think I do that for all the folks that I work with. The support that I can give to a young person is not nothing, even if their stories do not have happy endings - if I can give a young person even a single day where they felt listened to and heard, even if I could not solve the problems, that is a worthwhile thing. My goal is not to steer people toward "good" decisions - my goal is to offer accurate information and a space for people to think critically about their decisions, and make informed choices about the decisions and risks that they feel are best for them. I am at peace with the work that I personally do with the clients I work with.

What I am not at peace with is the system I work within. For every client I work with who simply doesn't want help, I have dozens who are screaming out for it and are unable to get it. At the moment, I manage a short-term residential program for youth in crisis. The youth we work with have so many needs - they need housing. They need stability. They need a mental health appointment that isn't eight months away. They need reliable access to their prescriptions. They need educational and employment opportunities that are meaningful to them, with the supports they need to succeed. And for most of them, those basic supports are simply... not available. It doesn't matter how ready and eager the youth is; waitlists for basic services are months or even years long, and there's just nothing that any one individual worker can do to fix that overnight. It is not realistic to expect a person to make huge progress with their mental heath while they are living on a cot at an emergency housing program, cared for by a constantly-revolving cast of strangers, and yet that is what our system requires of its most vulnerable young people. Our system is pointlessly cruel, and benefits almost nobody. That part, I struggle with a lot.

As far as working in the field goes, I now supervise a large team of other professionals, and these are feelings that I help my staff work through in their own practice. The best advice I can give to people in the helping professions - or people potentially interested in a career there - to maintain your own mental health in the face of so much suffering is:

Take breaks. Use single every minute of your paid time off. Sometimes you need to take a break from a particular setting or even from the field entirely; if you feel burnout or despair or nihilism starting to creep up on you, start looking for an exit route. There will always be more jobs in social work/healthcare/emergency response, etc, but there is only one you.

Have a life outside of helping. I can't work full-time in this field and also spend every spare minute of my free time on activism and volunteering in this field. Perhaps some people can manage that, but if I tried it, my rage would simply consume me. I need other hobbies and interests if I'm going to be a functional person - whether it's painting, Netflix, novels, working out, cooking, time with friends, sports, camping or cars, everyone needs something they just enjoy.

Have a good supervisor. Obviously this is easier said than done, but if you are working in a field where you are constantly exposed to others' suffering and trauma, you should expect to have a supervisor who is available to debrief, discuss, vent and provide helpful feedback on the work you're doing. Supervision needs to be a safe space where you can speak openly about your struggles. If you do not have a supervisor who is doing that for you, it might be time to start the hunt for a new, more supportive job.

Remember your role. If I task myself with personally saving the whole world and fixing all of the problems I will lose my goddamn mind. I think it's important to remind ourselves "This is my role, this is the support I can provide, this is how I will know that I am doing a good job". "Saving people" can never be the goal I assign myself; if my role is to have supportive conversations and make connections to resources, I need to remind myself that those are the things I need to evaluate myself on and that I am doing a great job by doing that well, even if I am not "fixing" the client's entire life.

Remember your clients' autonomy. I think it's actually incredibly harmful for people in the helping professions to entertain the idea that they can "save" people, or that the outcome of someone's life is all dependent on how they do their jobs - I think that harms the professional as well as the client. We need to remember that we are not there to make people's choices for them. If a client continues to engage in "high-risk" behaviour, but they are well informed of the risk and know where they can find information and resources on managing that risk, that is a successful outcome, even if it doesn't instinctively "feel" like one.

Compartmentalize. Going home after work and staying up all night worrying about my clients might seem like an empathetic thing to do, but it benefits no one - it doesn't change their circumstances and just burns me out faster, leaving them with less support. Obviously we are all human and it can be hard to "switch off" concern and thoughts about clients after leaving work, but I think it's a skill that is important to develop over time. It might feel cold to think "okay, it's 5:05, no more thinking about clients until 9am tomorrow", but doing this allows me to be more effective in the hours that I am actually available to provide support.

I would honestly encourage anyone in the helping professions who is struggling to seek mental health support for themselves. Many therapists have their own therapist. It is, truthfully, not easy to process the sheer amount of pain and suffering we see on a daily basis, and I think it's actually very important for all of us to seek the appropriate professional help with it, and not simply "suck it up" and push away our own pain because our clients are suffering more. And, ultimately, this profession is just not for everyone. Some people are able to do this work and still enjoy their own lives, but some people simply are not, and there is absolutely no shame in admitting that to yourself. It is okay to realize that being exposed to that level of pain every day will harm you, and that that's not something you're able to take on - there are ways to help that don't involve such constant direct exposure to human misery, and we all need to keep ourselves healthy before we are able to help others. Hope this answers your question! MM

#answeredbyMM

[missmentelle]

Can being a fan/avid follower of someone with mental health issues cause problems with your own.

I'm asking because I am a huge fan of this musician with pretty severe mental health issues (depression, anxiety, dark thoughts and so on) the longer I ve been following them the more i've noticed I feel anxious,sad and sometimes suicidal

Is it possible they have made me like this or have I probably always been like it and they have made me aware.

I don't think that being a fan of someone with mental health issues can cause you to have your own - rather, I think there are two things at play here.

For starters, I think people who have underlying issues with mental health are more likely to seek out public figures who struggle with the same thing and include a lot of those things in their work. It's possible that people who have these sorts of feelings only start being able to identify and express these feelings for themselves after seeking out media that helps them explore their own experiences. That's not to say that everyone who consumes "dark" or mental-health-themed media has underlying mental health issues - some people might just be really into the music - but I do think that for a lot of people, the personal connection they feel to the artist's experiences are a big part of the draw.

I also think that a person's "media diet" - basically, the media that you consume all day - has an impact on your mental health. "Dark" media can be wonderful, and I don't believe it can cause mental health issues to just appear out of nowhere - but I do think that when you are in a vulnerable place mentally, sometimes bombarding yourself with it can make your pre-existing issues worse. When our brains are in a place where they want to believe that the whole world is garbage, consuming a whole bunch of media that constantly says "the world is garbage" can make it more difficult to get out of that mindset.

Again, that's not to say that following people who make very dark kinds of art is bad, or that you shouldn't consume this kind of media - it can be great, and many people find it very meaningful to follow artists who understand what they're going through. But it can also be very valuable to think critically about how often you're consuming this kind of media, and when taking breaks is the healthiest option for your mental health.

Hope this helps! MM

#answeredbyMM

[missmentelle]

Hey, I was wondering it you have any advice/guidance/tips for how to figure out your emotional own needs? I've recently realised I was raised in a codepedent family and I'm kinda stuck with where to start figuring out how to take care of myself beyond the physical stuff like heathly eating and sleeping enough

Honestly, taking care of your own physical needs is a good start - many people in codependent situations struggle to make their physical needs a priority. If prioritizing your own need for food and sleep is something that you've struggled with in the past, working on that is a pretty healthy place to start.

As far as your emotional needs go, that's something you may need to figure out through some trial and error. Everyone's emotional needs are different - discovering what your needs are can be a bit of a process, especially when you were raised in a codependent situation where you were never encouraged to prioritize your own needs or develop your own identity outside of the family struggles.

But even though I can't tell you what your emotional needs are, I can certainly give you some suggestions for things that you can start thinking about, like:

Time to yourself. This is one of the most important emotional needs that most people have, and it's one of the hardest things to get in a codependent situation. Even very extroverted people need occasional down time by themselves to reflect, recharge, and just figure out who they are when they aren’t trying to meet the needs of other people. 

Creative expression. Everyone needs to express themselves. This can look different for different people - it could mean journaling, writing poetry or painting, or it could mean creating playlists of songs that are very meaningful to you. Figure out what helps you get your feelings out of your brain and into the world.

Dreams and goals. When you are codependent, you don’t typically have goals of your own - you have goals for your codependent relationships and the people you’re in them with, but your own goals and dreams are an afterthought. Figuring out what you want is a huge step in reclaiming yourself as an individual person - even if the only thing you can come up with right now is a list of what you don’t want, that’s a big step. 

Social needs. People need people. We all need people in our lives who make us feel loved and supported and give us a safe space to open up when we’re dealing with something difficult. The key is to form relationships that don’t have the same codependent tendencies as the old. Be intentional with your relationships - reflect on what codependency looks like for you, and seek relationships that don’t have those same patterns. 

Personal meaning and fulfillment. We all want to sit back at the end of our day or week and think “yes, I’m doing things that are worth doing”. For some people, this comes from their career. For others, it’s raising a family or pets. Some people find meaning in travel, or creative ventures, or time spent in nature. Codependency often means making your codependent relationships the centre of your world, but it’s time to look beyond those. Take some time to figure out what sorts of things give you personal satisfaction and make you feel like your time was well-spent - and then carve out space in your life for those things.

Best of luck to you! MM

[missmentelle]

Can narcissists learn to be less entitled/self-centered? (As in npd, not as in a character trait)

I wish I had a better answer for you, but unfortunately, we don't really know. There are currently no research-based treatment guidelines for Narcissistic Personality Disorder, no approved medications for the treatment of NPD, and very little information available on possible treatment options or long-term outcomes.

The tricky thing about studying NPD is that - sort of by definition - people who have it don't tend to believe they have a problem and aren't really interested in changing. They tend to believe that other people are the problem, and often don't particularly care about the impact that their behaviour has on others. Even in cases where NPD is destroying their relationships or careers, they are still typically not interested in treatment because they don't really recognize the connection between the way they behave and the problems that they're facing.

Needless to say, it's very hard to study possible treatments for a group of people who don't think they need any treatment. Most NPD studies simply fall apart because the participants just stop showing up for treatment. We're probably not even diagnosing a fraction of the people who meet the criteria for NPD - a lot of cases are only discovered when the person seeks treatment for another disorder like depression or anxiety, and professionals figure out that they also have NPD. There is some research that getting proper treatment for other mood disorders or mental health conditions can improve the person's quality of life, but NPD people drop out of NPD-specific treatments at such high rates that we aren't really sure if treatment can make a difference.

Even if we did have treatments for NPD, however, it can be hard to say what we're actually treating. Treatments for other personality disorders, like Anti-Social Personality Disorder, probably don't actually make people experience true empathy for others deep down in their hearts - it's more about making people realize that doing X behaviour causes Y unwanted consequence, and helping them come up with strategies to stop doing X behaviour. Even if we did have treatments for NPD - which, again, we don't - it's likely that they would focus on measurable outcomes (like maintaining relationships or holding down a job) rather than trying to make someone truly less self-centred deep down.

The good news in all of this is that most people who display narcissistic tendencies don't actually have NPD. Narcissistic traits are extremely common among people in their teens and early 20s - it's sort of a naturally self-centered time in most people's lives, and our developing brains are not especially good at understanding the impact that our actions might have on the people around us. Most people naturally grow out of these narcissistic traits over time (although a few do not). If you're concerned that you may have narcissistic traits, don't come away from this thinking that all narcissism is totally untreatable; you can always work on yourself and challenge yourself to offer greater empathy and support to others.

Hope this answers your question!

MM

[missmentelle]

Firstly, I'm sorry for your loss, and I hope that you are healing well. <3

Secondly, thank you for taking the time and energy to answer the questions you receive. I've never seen you half-ass an answer or a post on here, and I appreciate how much you put into this blog to educate anyone who comes across it, especially with accepting anonymous asks and your services being free.

Lastly, I hope to write TV shows in the future with diverse characters, especially in the realm of mental health. I currently want to focus on learning about all of the different classifications of disorders (personality vs. dissociative vs. learning vs. trauma, etc.). Do you have any books that you could recommend that introduce the types of disorders?

(I've only minored in psychology, and continued learning about mental health via learning about my own and my friends' disorders and watching videos about DID. I mention this so you know my starting point.)

Thank you for your time, and have a nice day!!

Thanks, I really appreciate the kind words!

I think it’s great to want to write about mental illness and include mentally ill characters in your fiction - good representation is incredibly important, and really shapes how our culture views and understands mental illness. I also write fiction and screenplays, and have often found myself incorporating the things I’ve learned over the years from working in this field.

If you want to write authentically about what it’s like to live with mental illness, I actually don’t recommend that you focus your time on learning about the categories and classifications of mental illnesses. I can tell you from my experiences working with mentally ill and neurodivergent people for nearly a decade now that the vast majority of people don’t fit neatly into categories. It’s pretty rare to find someone who ticks all the boxes of any particular mental illness - two people with the same diagnosis can have wildly different symptoms, and two people with very similar symptoms can have two very different diagnoses. Most people will have a smattering of symptoms from several different possible diagnoses, or symptoms that definitely impact their life, but only “sort of” match any possible diagnosis. When we diagnose people, we’re not really saying “this is for sure the exact thing that they have”, the way that medical doctors try to diagnose - we’re usually just saying “this is probably the best fit for their symptoms based on what we know right now”. Knowing someone’s diagnosis doesn’t ultimately tell you much about them. 

Understanding what it’s like to live with mental illness also means looking beyond a diagnosis and exploring how a person’s environment and social context interacts with their mental illness. The circumstances of your life determine your experience of mental illness, and in turn, having a mental illness will impact the circumstances of your life. People are not all equally likely to develop a mental illness, and people with mental illness do not have the same prognosis - things like your culture, your socioeconomic standing, your family support, early childhood trauma, your religion, your location, your access to services and your gender all play into how (or whether) you will experience mental illness. A person with bipolar disorder who grew up in a loving, stable home and has supportive parents who can afford health insurance and private therapy is going to have a very different experience of the disorder than someone who has no health insurance and grew up in a violent and unstable home with a parent who also lived with unmanaged bipolar disorder. All of these factors matter - you cannot separate a person’s experience of mental illness from the context in which they experience it. 

Ultimately, I think the best way to learn how to write convincingly about mental illness is to read first-hand accounts of lived experience. Memoirs from people who live with serious mental illness (or memoirs from family who’ve tried to help loved ones navigate a very broken mental health care system) are a great resource - I already have a reading list of  books that can get you started. With some digging, you can also find a wealth of blogs, vlogs and articles from people who live with mental illness and neurodivergence; these will ultimately give you a much richer idea about what mental illness is actually like than a clinical description or a list of symptoms. 

Best of luck to you! MM

[missmentelle]

My friend is absolutely obsessed with my twin brother and has basically been emotionally punishing me for me a long time because she can't have him. No matter how many times I ask her to stop she continues the behavior, and when I confront her she breaks down and cries about how she's sorry and she just can't help it because "it's her mother talking." I used to confide in her, but that was greatest mistake of my life, because she has twisted everything I told her into ways to insult and shit on my family. She's had a very traumatic upbringing and is bipolar and we've had a lot of good times together, so I've tried so hard to be kind to her (I even invited her over to my house for the holidays a couple years ago) but she's burned that bridge because she constantly makes them uncomfortable by all the weird things she says (she has zero filter and gets angry at people for "censoring" her and being uptight when they tell her to stop). She refuses to take medication for her severe mental illness. I'm completely exhausted and so hurt because it hurts ME to hear someone say bad things about my twin, and she projects all of her self-hatred onto him but somehow still thinks they'd have a happy relationship if I didn't stand her in way, even though he knows she likes him and doesn't reciprocate her feelings, in fact she creeps him out. I've also noticed that since she's realized that my other friends don't like it when she treats me this way, she waits until we're alone to say these things, it's very sneaky. I feel chained to her and I'm so tired, I'd ditch her but she's part of my larger friend group and she's known them all longer, plus she's really good at making people feel bad for her to the point where I doubt my own pain and frustration a lot. I'm to the point where I fantasize about running away and not telling anyone just so I don't have to deal with her anymore. My heart is breaking because we once had a beautiful friendship and were like sisters, but I feel torn apart. She's yelled at me and made me cry multiple times and once almost got me into a car accident because she forcibly hit the brakes to show off how angry I'd made her. I don't know what to do anymore and I guess I just want a little advice from someone removed from the situation.

So in summary, this is a "friend" who:

treats you poorly

treats the people you care about poorly

does not respect boundaries

does not accept feedback about the negative impact she has on others

shows no interest in taking accountability for her actions or changing her ways

openly makes you miserable

Respectfully - what are you currently getting out of this friendship? Do the positives of this friendship still outweigh the many negatives? Because based on what you’ve told me here, I’m guessing that they probably don’t. 

It can be extremely hard to distance yourself from someone you’ve been friends with for a long time, especially if that friend really seems to be struggling, but sometimes it’s necessary. There’s a firm line between “having a hard time” and “actively harming the people around you no matter how many times they ask you to stop”, and it sounds like your friend sprinted over that line a long time ago. As difficult as it might be to start extracting yourself from the relationship, it sounds like it’s a necessary step you need to take - at this point, being her friend is putting both your emotional and physical safety at risk. 

Ending a relationship with someone who treats you and your family badly is not an act of unkindness toward her; it is an act of kindness toward yourself. 

Be prepared for the fact that distancing yourself from her might be a long process. From the sounds of things, she’s pretty entwined in your life, and a big confrontation about her behaviour isn’t likely to be helpful; it sounds like you’ve already had several conversations where you've discussed boundaries and her poor behaviour with her, and nothing changed. 

Moving forward, you’ll likely have to be very firm and consistent with enforcing your boundaries - this can mean ending conversations or interactions on the spot when she starts badmouthing your family, or refusing to get into cars with her anymore because she has behaved in an unsafe way while you were driving with her in the past. Don’t give her opportunities to argue or push back; if she is not respecting your boundaries, get up and leave, end the phone call or stop answering her text messages. Anything less gives her more opportunities to try to manipulate you or continue the harmful behaviour. Start putting yourself and your family first. 

Above all, know that you aren’t crazy and you aren’t overreacting. She is mistreating you, and you do not deserve to be treated this way. From the sounds of things, you have been more than fair to her, and you have given her endless opportunities to change her behaviour and salvage her relationship with your - although she’s dealing with a lot of difficult things in her life, she ultimately decided for herself that she was going to keep mistreating you. The fact that she changes her treatment of you depending on who is around shows that she knows her behaviour is wrong, but she’s choosing to continue it anyway. 

At the end of the day, you deserve friends who support you and make your life better - not friends who make you want to run away. Remember that. 

Best of luck to you.

MM

#AnsweredByMM #askmissmentelle

[missmentelle]

Howdy! I read your list on abusive behavior, and my partner exhibits some of these behaviors but not all, does that still mean I'm in an abusive relationship? This might be a dumb question to some, but I think I might be in denial.

You might be.

It's hard for me to give a distinct yes/no answer without having any of the details - there isn't always a hard and fast line between "imperfect but non-abusive relationships" and "abusive relationships". But I can definitely try to help you find the answer yourself.

I can tell you right off the bat that a relationship absolutely does not need to check off every box on a list of abusive traits to be considered an abusive relationship. The vast, vast majority of abusers do not tick all of the boxes. Some will tick very few of the boxes. There are many different ways to be abusive, and two equally abusive people can have almost nothing in common with one another. The partner who screams and throws things and punches holes in the wall when they're angry is abusive - but so is the gentle, soft-spoken partner who never raises their voice when they tell you that you're ugly and crazy and no one else will ever love you.

If your partner is physically or sexually abusive toward you, your relationship is almost certainly abusive, even if these behaviours are rare. This would include behaviours like:

slapping, kicking, punching, hitting or choking you

punching or kicking holes in walls or otherwise damaging property

throwing things

breaking your possessions

physically intimidating you (getting in your face during arguments, cornering you, posturing that they may get violent with you, etc)

making threats of violence

threatening you with a weapon, whether directly or indirectly (reminding you that they have a weapon, displaying it during conflicts, etc)

threatening your pets

coercing you into unwanted sexual activity

Emotional and psychological abuse can be harder to pin down. A partner who ignores you for hours after a fight might be intentionally giving you the cold shoulder, or they might legitimately need to take some time to themselves to calm down. A partner who doesn't want you spending time with your friends might be trying to control and isolate you, or they might have noticed that your friends treat you like garbage. In general though, there's a very good chance that your relationship is abusive if:

You always seem to be the one in the wrong. You always seem to be the one who ends up apologizing or trying to explain yourself, even if you went into the conversation feeling very confident that your partner was in the wrong. You're consistently made to feel that the problems in the relationship are your fault; it seems like no matter what the issue is, your partner is able to twist things so that you end up feeling like you are the problem.

You find yourself making excuses for your partner. When you're talking to friends and family, you often downplay and minimize your partner's negative behaviours toward you. You might avoid telling your loved ones about the worst of it and try to avoid discussing your partner altogether. If your friends and family witness your partner treating you badly, you find yourself trying to make excuses for them and explain away their mistreatment of you.

You "walk on eggshells" around your partner. There are times where you feel like you have to tiptoe around your partner to avoid setting them off. You might feel like there are different "versions" of your partner, and that you have to use extreme caution whenever the abusive version of your partner shows up.

Your relationship feels like a cycle. You walk on eggshells around your partner for a while, until eventually there's some sort of blowup. This doesn't have to be physical - it could be your partner yelling at you, or calling you some particularly vicious insults, or going through your phone and demanding that you answer for everything they find on there. Afterwards, they are extremely loving and apologetic and everything is great for a while. Then the sensation of walking on eggshells comes back and you do it all over again.

You don't feel like you get to make your own choices anymore. Your partner might directly tell you that you are not allowed to do certain things - like wear certain clothing or speak to certain people - without their consent. Or they might simply give you such a hard time for doing certain things that you eventually decide it's not worth the fuss. They might closely monitor you by tracking your social media or your phone's location, or demand regular access to your social media accounts and messages, and they may regularly require you to "prove" that you aren't cheating.

Your partner threatens suicide or self-harm if you leave. Making threats of suicide is abusive; it's an emotionally manipulative thing to do to a person. If your partner has hinted or directly stated that they will hurt themselves if you leave them or do something they don't like, that's a very unhealthy situation.

You don't feel like yourself anymore. Being in an abusive relationship can erode your entire sense of self over time. You might come to find that you no longer pursue your dreams or hobbies, never see friends, and no longer have the self-confidence that you used to have.

At the end of the day, a relationship doesn't need to meet any kind of "official" criteria for abuse to be a bad relationship for you. If you're in a relationship where you feel unsafe or unheard, that's probably not a relationship you need to be in. Think about how you would want your best friends or loved ones to be treated in a relationship - is that how your partner treats you? If not, you may have some soul-searching to do.

If you are looking for more information or resources to figure out whether or not your relationship is abusive, you can always reach out to domestic violence services in your local area, or go online to some of these resources to learn more:

Healthline

Heartwise Counselling Quiz

Women's Health Mag

WebMD

Best of luck to you. Stay safe. MM

#answeredbyMM #tw abuse mention #askmissmentelle

[missmentelle]

is it normal to feel numb after a traumatic experience? a friend of mine attempted suicide several months ago, and it was absolutely horrible in the moment + immediate aftermath, but now i don't think about it often at all, and when i do i only feel what I'd describe as a dull terror, if my mind doesn't immediately go off it. i love my friend so much, and nearly losing him was horrific, but like i said, i just feel numb, and i rarely think about it. is this a normal reaction?

Hey, I'm really sorry that you went through this. I lost a friend to suicide this past September and it's been an incredibly difficult thing to process. I’m very glad to hear that your friend survived. 

Feeling numb after a traumatic event or experience is a very common experience, and is perfectly normal. Emotional numbness is a common coping mechanism - sometimes our brains just go "woah, that’s way too much for me to process right now” and just don’t experience the full emotion right away. Processing the full pain of reality all the time is just too much, and self-soothing with distractions or daydreams or numbness is a normal way to cope. 

It can take weeks, months or even years for a trauma to fully “sink in” after for some people after they’ve experienced it, and that’s perfectly normal; people pretty commonly report feeling absolutely nothing at the funerals of close family members, only to be overwhelmed with grief months’ later. Others, like you, might feel the full weight of the pain right away, only to find that the pain lessons dramatically in the weeks and months afterwards. Experiencing trauma is not a linear process; there are often good days and bad days, or good weeks and bad weeks, and it’s perfectly normal for your feelings about an event to evolve and shift in the months and years after it happens.

It’s also very normal for traumatic events to become less painful and take up less space in our minds over time. That’s sort of the end goal of the grieving/processing journey; we go through pain and come out the other side having reached a place where we accept what happened and might still have lingering sadness or anger or grief, but are otherwise able to move on with our lives. You don’t actually want to be in a place where the pain is still completely fresh and you’re still constantly dwelling on an event months after it happened - that’s a sign of PTSD. I think the narrative about trauma has largely become something like “you should expect to still suffer side effects of all your trauma for the rest of your life”, but that’s not actually borne out by research - only 8% of people develop PTSD after experiencing a major traumatic event. Most people get past the trauma caused by one-time events (long-term abuse is a bit of a different story); they struggle in the immediate aftermath, and over time, they find themselves thinking about the event less and less, and being less distressed by it whenever they do. That doesn’t mean that they don’t care about the event or the people impacted by it - it’s just a normal part of moving on. 

If you ever experience the kind of emotional numbness where you no longer care about your life or get enjoyment out of things, that’s something you should definitely talk to a professional about, but painful memories becoming a lot less painful over time is healthy, and a regular part of the coping process. 

Hope this answers your question! MM

[missmentelle]

Hey, I'm in a tough situation right now, and I'm wondering if you could give me any advice. A couple months ago, when I was 14, I met this 23 year old guy during a family roadtrip, and he was really kind and funny. I was on bad terms with my sister, and he made be feel validated, so we started communicating over text and meeting up at night. I knew it was wrong, but it felt thrilling to keep a secret, and he was charming. We started dating, but as time went on, he became more and more demanding, soon wanting me to shoplift medicine for his friend (my dad works at a pharmacy), but I always refused, and he always got more aggressive. One day he threatened to hurt my sister if I didn't listen, and I had no choice other than to get him the medicine, but I cut ties with him shortly after. Lately, he's been really flirty with me, trying to get back together, but I don't know how to process my feelings towards him.

I still love him, but I can't get over what happened, and I'm worried he might actually harm my family if I don't get back together with him. Any advice?

Get away from this man. Block him, delete his number, and get him out of your life.

This man is grooming you.

No 23-year-old has any business romantically pursuing a 14-year-old. When someone his age goes after someone your age, what they’re most attracted to is your vulnerability, and the fact that it’s easy for them to manipulate you. That’s not a slight against you - all 14-year-olds are vulnerable, even if they are mature for their age and at the top of their class. You simply haven’t had the life experiences that a 23-year-old has. This guy knows that a woman his own age will tell him to go pound sand the first time he asks her to shoplift, so he has to go after high school students to get the amount of control he demands. 

No person who truly loves and cares about you will threaten your family to get you to obey them. Period. End of story. People who genuinely love and respect someone will never even fathom doing such a thing. Threatening you to try to force you to break the law and steal things for him is outright abuse. This guy is bad news, and he’s only going to get more extreme as time goes on. You need to get far away from him. 

I really think you need to talk to a trusted adult, if you can, and tell them what has been going on. This guy is dangerous, and it sounds like the situation is well beyond what a 14-year-old should have to deal with on her own. Getting the adults in your life involved is probably the best way to keep yourself and your family safe, and get this guy to back off - this is something your parents or guardians need to be helping you deal with at this point. 

Stay safe.

MM

#answeredbymm

[missmentelle]

is self diagnosis valid?

I mean, it sort of depends on what you mean by "valid".

Are many people good at recognizing for themselves that their brain works differently than the people around them, or that their brain is actively getting in the way of them completing daily tasks? Absolutely. Do people face systemic barriers that make self-diagnosis their only real option? Absolutely. For people who don't have access to a professional diagnosis, or who come from demographics that are frequently under-diagnosed (like women and girls of colour with ADHD) sometimes a self-diagnosis is all you've got. People who want to join online support groups or other disability communities should absolutely be allowed to do so on the basis of self-diagnosis.

Is self-diagnosis a substitute for a professional diagnosis? No, it's usually not.

The thing that most people are missing when they read a symptom list is context. Meeting the criteria for a diagnosis is more than just deciding that a particular symptom does or doesn’t apply to you - human traits and characteristics are on a spectrum, and things need to be at a certain level of severity before they cross over the threshold from “regular quirk” to “diagnosable symptom”. The point of diagnosis is to identify conditions that are having a measurable, serious, negative impact on your ability to function in your daily life, and not just to see which sets of characteristics sounds like you. 

Let’s take a look at some of the official symptoms of ADHD, for instance:

restlessness

difficulty focusing on a task

poor time management 

difficulty multitasking

difficulty prioritizing tasks

struggling to follow through and finish tasks

issues coping with stress

disorganization

Many of the symptoms of ADHD will be relatable to a person who doesn’t actually meet criteria for a diagnosis, because these are very common traits in the general population. In our productivity-obsessed culture, many people are extraordinarily hard on themselves and don’t have a realistic sense of what a “normal” human attention span actually looks like - a lot of younger people especially are inclined to believe that something is wrong with them because they can’t force themselves to work non-stop while also maintaining a spotless home and strict workout regimen. In reality, most people procrastinate on tasks that are difficult or not interesting. Many people struggle with multitasking. Many people are somewhat disorganized and misplace their belongings from time to time. The vast majority of the population could skim the list of ADHD symptoms and find a few that they relate to at least some of the time. 

What actually makes a person meet the criteria for ADHD is the severity of these symptoms, the impacts they have, and whether they appear in all contexts of a person’s life. Non-professionals often don’t have a good sense of where that “quirk/symptom” cutoff lies. I have seen people self-diagnose with ADHD because their apartment is messy sometimes and they can’t work 8 straight hours without getting distracted - but that’s a pretty regular human experience.  A person who struggles to remember to water their plants and often ends up rushing to finish assignments at the last minute doesn’t necessarily have ADHD - those are pretty typical struggles that have a fairly manageable impact on the person’s life. People with ADHD generally face pretty severe disruptions to their lives because of their symptoms - they are likely to struggle with poor grades, regardless of their intelligence, and are disproportionately likely to fail out of school, be fired from jobs, get into traffic accidents, run into financial issues and struggle to maintain relationships as a direct result of their symptoms. 

Of course, for the most part, there isn’t a ton of harm in accidentally mis-diagnosing yourself. If self-diagnosis works for you and helps you connect to supportive people or just not be so hard on yourself, I think that’s great. The only caution I would give would be to avoid boxing yourself in too much. I’ve worked with folks who have self-diagnosed conditions they didn’t meet criteria for - things with symptom lists that are easy to relate to out-of-context, like ADHD or BPD - and then turned that into a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you tell yourself “I’m incapable of having healthy relationships because I have BPD”, that can turn into you putting less effort into your relationships because you believe they are already doomed, which leads your relationships to fail, confirming your belief that you are incapable of healthy relationships... and so on, and so on. 

It’s also very easy to accidentally self-diagnose the wrong condition. Do you have a hard time maintaining relationships, experience sudden mood swings and tend to fly off the handle easily when you’re frustrated? Many people might self-diagnose with BPD, but those symptoms can very easily be untreated ADHD. 

Long story short, if self-diagnosis is the option you have before you, go for it. Many people face systemic barriers to professional diagnosis, and sometimes trying to self-diagnose so you can find a community where you feel you belong is the best option you’ve got. But it’s important to remember the practical limitations of self-diagnosis - which may include being open to the possibility that you may have misdiagnosed yourself.  Hope this helps!

MM

#askmissmentelle #AnsweredByMM

[missmentelle]

Hey, I was wondering it you have any advice/guidance/tips for how to figure out your emotional own needs? I've recently realised I was raised in a codepedent family and I'm kinda stuck with where to start figuring out how to take care of myself beyond the physical stuff like heathly eating and sleeping enough

Honestly, taking care of your own physical needs is a good start - many people in codependent situations struggle to make their physical needs a priority. If prioritizing your own need for food and sleep is something that you've struggled with in the past, working on that is a pretty healthy place to start.

As far as your emotional needs go, that's something you may need to figure out through some trial and error. Everyone's emotional needs are different - discovering what your needs are can be a bit of a process, especially when you were raised in a codependent situation where you were never encouraged to prioritize your own needs or develop your own identity outside of the family struggles.

But even though I can't tell you what your emotional needs are, I can certainly give you some suggestions for things that you can start thinking about, like:

Time to yourself. This is one of the most important emotional needs that most people have, and it's one of the hardest things to get in a codependent situation. Even very extroverted people need occasional down time by themselves to reflect, recharge, and just figure out who they are when they aren’t trying to meet the needs of other people. 

Creative expression. Everyone needs to express themselves. This can look different for different people - it could mean journaling, writing poetry or painting, or it could mean creating playlists of songs that are very meaningful to you. Figure out what helps you get your feelings out of your brain and into the world.

Dreams and goals. When you are codependent, you don’t typically have goals of your own - you have goals for your codependent relationships and the people you’re in them with, but your own goals and dreams are an afterthought. Figuring out what you want is a huge step in reclaiming yourself as an individual person - even if the only thing you can come up with right now is a list of what you don’t want, that’s a big step. 

Social needs. People need people. We all need people in our lives who make us feel loved and supported and give us a safe space to open up when we’re dealing with something difficult. The key is to form relationships that don’t have the same codependent tendencies as the old. Be intentional with your relationships - reflect on what codependency looks like for you, and seek relationships that don’t have those same patterns. 

Personal meaning and fulfillment. We all want to sit back at the end of our day or week and think “yes, I’m doing things that are worth doing”. For some people, this comes from their career. For others, it’s raising a family or pets. Some people find meaning in travel, or creative ventures, or time spent in nature. Codependency often means making your codependent relationships the centre of your world, but it’s time to look beyond those. Take some time to figure out what sorts of things give you personal satisfaction and make you feel like your time was well-spent - and then carve out space in your life for those things.

Best of luck to you! MM

#AnsweredByMM

[missmentelle]

Any thought on the show and characters on the show "You" on Netflix?

Why do you think so many people are attracted to Joe?

Minor spoilers for “You” follow. Honestly, I like the show. I liked the books, too. It gets (in my opinion) a little bit corny and far-fetched as it goes on, but it’s an entertaining story with some very entertaining characters. I put it on in the background while I do dishes. It's not an accurate source of information on psychopathy, psychopathology or relationship dynamics, but it never claims to be - Joe's terrible behaviour isn't presented as something that people should aspire to or admire - he gets what he wants in the short term, but the whole point of the show is that the obsessive, monstrous things he does just keep catching up with him and making his life worse.

I've seen a lot of people wringing their hands over the fact that people relate to Joe and find him attractive. But honestly... I don't think it's particularly surprising, or something to be concerned about.

For starters, Penn Badgley (the actor who plays Joe) is a very attractive dude. He has a head of thick, dark curly hair and a bookish, Edwardian vibe that a lot of people are really into. It doesn't really matter what sort of character he's playing - so long as he looks like that while staring soulfully into the camera, he's going to end up with admirers. 

I think it’s also important to remember that the show is written from Joe's perspective - we're meant to sympathize with Joe on some level, even if he does terrible things. The show goes out of its way to show us that there’s a good side to Joe, even when he’s not mixed up in all the stalking and murdering stuff - every season has a subplot where Joe goes out of his way to protect a vulnerable child from danger, even as he does terrible things to other people. We are repeatedly reminded that he had a shitty childhood. He has a deep love and reverence for books. In the later seasons especially, we see over and over again that Joe wants to be a better person, but gosh darn it, he keeps getting dragged back into the serial killing stuff again. What’s a guy to do?

From a writer’s perspective, there is an art form to making people sympathize with characters who are bad people, and You is sort of a textbook example of it. Yes, Joe is undeniably a terrible person and a monster, and if he existed in real life, he’d be reviled. But Joe is a fictional character, and the audience knows that - watching a piece of fiction (especially one whose plot gets as... creative as the later seasons of You) requires audiences to suspend their disbelief and buy into the world the show has created. And there are careful lines that the show does not cross. Joe does not harm or abuse children. He does not physically torture people (save for one child abuser). Most of his violence takes place off-screen. The show (again, spoiler alert) even flips the script on Joe in the later seasons by pairing him with someone who is possibly even more of a psychopath than he is, showing him what it feels like to be stalked by a deranged admirer. He murders several men who abuse or take advantage of women. None of that makes him a better person, but it makes it easier for the audience to connect with him. 

Honestly, I think we’ve seen this “why do people like this psychopathic main character” thing play out before - anti-heroes have been big for the last couple of years. Dexter, Walter White, The Joker, Hannibal Lector, Deadpool, Jamie Lannister and Bojack Horsemen are all recent examples anti-heroes who were embraced by fans, sometimes to the surprise of their creators. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia has become the longest-running live-action American sitcom, despite the entire premise of the show being the fact that all of the main characters are terrible, unlikeable people. Why is it so easy for people to overlook the murderous tendencies of beloved main characters? Hard to say. Maybe we’re just hired-wired to connect with the protagonists of stories, even if they make outrageous moral choices. Maybe this kind of exaggerated villainy gives us an opportunity for escapism, by letting us temporarily connect with a character who makes decisions we never could or would. Maybe, again, Penn Badgley is just very, very pretty. Maybe it’s all of the above. 

Either way, I’ll be watching the next season of You.

MM

#AnsweredByMM

[missmentelle]

How do you think we can make the foster care system better?

Honestly, by making sure as few kids end up in it as possible.

Contrary to popular belief, physical abuse is not the most common reason that kids end up in foster care. Only 13% of kids taken into foster care are there because their parents physically abused them. The biggest reason that kids end up in foster care is actually neglect - neglect is the primary cause of 62% of foster care referrals.

When you look at those numbers, though, it's important to remember that "neglect" doesn't necessarily mean that parents withheld food and necessities from their children because they were careless or lazy or cruel - it often includes parents who desperately want to provide the necessities to their children, but can't afford to do so. Many jurisdictions don’t really make a distinction between kids whose parents purposely starved them and kids whose working parent left them home alone because she couldn’t afford daycare - that makes it hard to really know what we’re dealing with here. 

And you might be surprised to learn what child protective services considers to be "necessary" for children. In most parts of Canada, for instance, children over the age of 5 are not supposed to share a bedroom with opposite-sex siblings. Having six-year-old fraternal twins share a bedroom can be categorized as neglect; technically, the parent is failing to provide the children with adequate housing. But of course, the genders of your children don't influence how much money you get from your employer or from public assistance. In my area, a mother with a boy and a girl is required to rent a larger apartment for her family than a mother with two boys - but it's up to her to find the money to afford that. Partitioning one room or co-sleeping with the children is not allowed, and is also considered neglect. It might sound ridiculous, but I have worked with multiple families that have ended up on CPS radar because of this, even if family co-sleeping is the norm in their culture.

1 in 10 children in the US foster care system are there at least partially because their parents don’t have adequate housing. Keep in mind, there are 424,000 children in the US foster care system on an average day - that means that housing was a major factor for more than 42,000 of them. Before we can truly reform the system, we need to understand what it is, exactly, that we’ve created - and what we’ve created is an incredibly expensive, inefficient and culturally insensitive system that is stretched so thin by the task of “solving child poverty” that it can’t do what it was actually designed to do, which is protecting abused children. Instead of a child protective system, we have an intergenerational meat grinder that effectively turns traumatized children into traumatized adults who create more traumatized children to go back into the system. Around and around we go. 

The question of how to “fix” foster care could be a doctoral thesis, and it’s a far bigger problem than any one person can solve. But my few cents as someone who has worked with at-risk and homeless youth for nearly a decade now would be:

Dramatically increase affordable housing. Trying to fix child homelessness with foster care is like trying to put out a grease fire with a sledgehammer - it’s not solving the problem, and it’s only causing more damage. Truly affordable housing would keep many families off CPS radar - if affordable housing was available, many victims of family violence would be better able to flee their violent partner with their children. Calls to CPS because families are living in cars or shelters would cease to exist. “Fixing housing” is easier said than done, but I don’t think we’ll ever solve foster care without also addressing this.

Decolonize child welfare standards. In most parts of the US and Canada, child welfare standards adhere closely to Western European parenting practices. Things that other cultures have been doing for generations - like co-sleeping - can land non-white families in trouble with CPS. And there are huge discrepancies in how child welfare standards are applied - wealthy white families can homeschool, deny their children medical treatment and co-sleep without CPS knocking on their doors, but Indigenous families cannot say the same. 

Create universal affordable childcare. Many families needlessly end up on CPS’s radar because their parents cannot afford childcare. Single working moms of colour have found themselves losing their children - or even facing prison time - after leaving their children unsupervised to work or attend job interviews. Compounding the issue is the fact that many working-class parents have shiftwork jobs, making it even harder to secure childcare.

Improve access to free and confidential family planning education and services. People who find themselves with unplanned pregnancies that they are not financially or emotionally ready for are at greater risk of ending up on CPS’s radar. When people are given access to family planning resources, they are better able to delay pregnancy until they feel more prepared. 

Improve wraparound supports and early intervention. Removing a child from a home is - and should always be - a last resort. CPS are often alerted to at-risk families before they reach the point where removal is required. To truly do their job of protecting children, CPS needs more resources to offer these families in order to help them stay together in a healthier way. Culturally sensitive in-home and community-based supports, including mental health supports, addictions supports, and material supports, should be immediately available to all families who are potentially at risk. 

Offer greater support for placements within families or communities of origin. Sometimes parents unfortunately just aren’t a healthy or safe option for their children. There are always going to be cases where that’s simply the reality of the situation. Many of these children, though, may have a family member who would be willing to take them in with the proper supports - which they can’t afford on their own. Offering more resources to family placements could help a lot of children stay within their families of origin instead of being sent to live with strangers. Likewise, many children from small communities - particularly Indigenous communities - end up being sent hundreds of miles away for foster care placements because the resources for them simply don’t exist in their communities. Ending this practice and committing to caring for children in their own community would help children grow up more connected to their roots and culture.

Decrease CPS worker caseloads. Many of the systemic issues with the foster care system stem, at least in part, from how abysmally and unbelievably overburdened the system is. There are too few workers and placements for far too many kids. In the US, the average CPS caseworker has 67 children on their caseload - in six states, the average is over 100. Nobody can provide adequate care to a caseload of 67 children, many of whom may have complicated cases. It’s just not possible. The workload contributes to the immense amounts of burnout and high turnover within child services - the average turnover rate (how many staff quit every year) for most agencies is 23-60%, with some agencies actually exceeding 90% annual turnover. We have a system of new, inexperienced workers burning out and passing on their enormous caseloads to newer, even less experienced workers and everyone is worse for it.

Provide more training, resources and support for foster parents. Many of the children entering foster care have complex trauma, as well as complex mental or physical health needs. Some areas do a better job of preparing foster parents for this reality than others - and everyone suffers when foster parents don’t have the resources and education that they need to meet children’s needs. 

Extend aftercare supports well into adulthood. Many youth make an abrupt exit from foster care - at some point between age 18-21 they suddenly “age out” of supports, at which point they are effectively on their own. Some areas do offer supports that extend into a youth’s early 20s, but many of these areas require youth to be full-time post-secondary students to continue receiving support - youth who aren’t able to take that step often have no support, despite perhaps needing it the most. Outcomes for former foster children are bleak; only around 55% finish high school (compared to 87% of their peers), and in Canada, as many as 90% are on welfare within 6 months of aging out of care. Realistically, as it becomes more difficult for young people to achieve financial independence, many of these kids may need support that extends well into their late 20s and beyond. 

This is just barely skimming the surface of what needs to change - there is so much that’s wrong, and I’ve barely touched on how to fix it. But when it comes to foster care, I really believe that an ounce of prevention is worth 100lbs of cure.

MM

#foster care #AnsweredByMM

[missmentelle]

What the Hell is “Trickle-Truthing”?

Imagine you’re sitting at home one day when a friend messages you to let you know that they’ve just seen your partner’s profile on Tinder, and the photos look fairly recent. You and your partner have an agreement to be monogamous, and being on Tinder is definitely not part of the deal. 

So you confront your partner, and ask them outright if they made a Tinder profile. They deny it, and act as shocked as you are; they tell you that someone must have stolen their photos from social media to make a fake account. They seem pretty sincere about the whole thing and they aren’t budging on their story, so you decide to drop the subject.  Just to be sure, though, you ask your friend if they have any screenshots of the profile, and they send some to you. Right away, you notice that several of the photos are not on your partner’s social media pages, and the story they gave you can’t possibly be true. So you confront your partner again, this time with screenshots in hand. After an hour of insisting that they have no idea how the profile came to be, they cave in and tell you that their friend actually made the profile to pretend to be them. They insist that it was all just a big joke, that the account was never actually used, and they they didn’t tell you because they thought you’d get angry with them. 

Something still doesn’t sit right with you, though, so you message your partner’s friend to ask about the profile. They have no idea what you’re talking about. You go back to your partner a third time with this new information, and after two more hours of playing dumb, they finally admit that it was their profile after all, but swear that they only made it because they were bored and wanted to see how many matches they’d get to boost their ego. They insist that they had no intention of ever meeting anyone. 

At this point, you are very suspicious, so you keep pressing your partner about the issue. After two days of denials, they admit that they were chatting with several other people, but claim they never met up with anyone.  You lose your patience and ask to see their phone, and two more hours of arguing later, they break down and admit that they met up and slept with someone else.  You’ve just experience “trickle-truth”.  As you might have guessed “trickle-truthing” is a practice where a person slowly and gradually reveals the truth to you over a long period of time, while still keeping as much of the lie intact as they can for as long as possible. Getting the ‘full truth’ - or as much of the full truth as they are ultimately willing to reveal - out of them is a long and painstaking process, and often involves repeatedly confronting them with evidence that they’re lying. It’s exhausting for the person who is being lied to, and you can never be entirely certain when you’ve actually arrived at the full truth. 

A person who gives you a trickle-truth does not respect your intelligence. The stories that they expect you to believe are often full-on ridiculous, and they will try to keep them going for as long as possible, even after you’ve presented them will evidence that their story is false. They look you straight in the face and lie over and over again, revealing a small crumb of truth only when they think it can get you off their back. But you only get those crumbs if you persist long enough - the other person will keep feigning ignorance and keep denying the proof right in front of their eyes, thinking that you’ll be dumb enough to buy their version of events if they tell you the same story enough times. 

A person who trickle-truths is also not serious about taking accountability for their actions, and there’s a good chance they aren’t actually sorry for what they did. If they truly regretted it, they would have admitted to their actions the first time you confronted them - instead, they chose to see if they could keep getting away with it. People who trickle-truth will often try to defend themselves by claiming that they were too “scared” to tell the truth, or that they “told you the truth in the end”, but they should not be allowed to get away with it - they get no credit for honesty, and they don’t get to claim that it’s your fault they hid the truth from you. They had an opportunity to come clean, and they did not take it. 

It’s hard to trust someone who tells you 5 or 6 stories before getting to the truth, and you are well within your rights to decide that you can never trust that person again. After all, there’s no way of knowing that version 6 is the whole story - maybe there’s a version 7 or a version 8 still to come, and it’s not your responsibility to keep digging to find out. You deserve someone you can trust, and a person who makes you relentlessly fight them for the truth is not that person. 

[missmentelle]

hi i want to ask how i can deal with someone who maybe has BPD (self-diagnosed), i am also aware that she’s manipulative and abusive. She’s my roommate and i can’t stop living with her at least for this year. Living with her has got me a lot of traumas, problems with my mental health and affect my work. what can i do?

Boundaries, boundaries and more boundaries.

Unfortunately, you can't single-handedly create a positive and healthy relationship with someone if they aren't willing to meet you halfway. This can't be a one-way street. Whether she does or doesn’t have a diagnosis of something doesn’t matter - what matters is whether she’s willing to work with you on creating a healthy living environment for the both of you, and from the sounds of things, she’s not. You can try sitting your roommate down to explain the impact that her behaviour is having on you and work together to figure out some strategies to have a healthier relationship going forward, but if she's not willing to have that conversation and make meaningful efforts to change, then... that sort of limits your options here. At some point, if finding another living situation really isn’t an option right now, then keeping your distance from her becomes your best bet for keeping your mental health intact.

I don't know the details of your living situation with your roommate, but one of the most effective strategies for surviving a bad roommate situation is just to avoid being around them as much as possible. Find reasons to be out of your apartment, or in your room with the door closed. Know your roommate's schedule, and try to use the kitchen/common spaces when they aren't home or when they tend to be in their room. If you have friends or a partner you can stay overnight with sometimes, that might also be a good option to get a break from your roommate. It might sound a little bit simplistic, but the less time you spend around your roommate, the fewer opportunities they have to start conflict with you.

In addition to getting some physical distance from your roommate, try to get some emotional distance as well. Limit the type and amount of information that you share with her. Keep conversations basic and stick only to necessary topics - shared expenses, maintenance issues, etc. Steer the conversation away from personal topics if that sort of thing tends to fuel drama. If you’re having a lot of arguments around household chores, this might be a place where you have to pick your battles - just sucking it up and dealing with her dishes in the sink and hair in the shower might be less of a headache than having the same arguments about household responsibilities over and over again. 

Most importantly, start figuring out arrangements for housing that don’t involve living with this person. It’s much easier to tolerate bad situations in the short term when you have a plan to escape from them and can look forward to getting out. I don’t know the details of your situation, but even if you have a while to go before you can get out, start brainstorming - are there friends you could live with, a partner you might be ready to move in with at the end of your lease, apartments in the area you can afford on your own? Sometimes the only way to tolerate the present is to stay focused on the future. 

Best of luck to you! MM

#answeredbymm

[missmentelle]

Uhhh someone’s personal beliefs should be at the core of their personality. That’s what makes people different from each other. People like you don’t actually want to help anyone. You want to make sure everyone is a plain, moldable piece of clay so they stay in line and never question authority. Someone daring to question authority, in any circumstance, might show that you don’t have the answers behind human behavior. You see anyone with quirks or a personality as abnormal. Someone who needs to be fixed. I’m not even sticking up for the altright guy, I just know people like you that run these blogs have a savior complex. I’m sure you talk about anyone you ‘help’ to others on here too. Every single one of you does because people are nothing but case studies to you. Tell me, if someone’s beliefs shouldn’t dictate their personality or who they choose to be in life, why do anyone’s experiences in life matter?

Touch some grass, friend.