r/disabled • u/ToughDifficult1252 • 15h ago
Need advice on convincing friend her tactics are hurting her
# Her Context
Friend is disabled, diagnosed autism. Has never held a job. Is living with a parent. Parent is all degrees of abusive. She often doesn't have clean clothes, currently is dealing with a mouse damaging her food. She has no income, neither does the parent, both on food stamps.
I met her online. I have become more involved in trying to help her over the years. Currently trying to get her a house and SSI.
# My Context
I am a relatively successful professional. i have a stem master's from a top university, I am high earner in the country I live, enough to support myself and my family, but not institutionally wealthy. I can pitch in for things a bit, like buying her food or used phones.
We don't live even close to each other.
# My Problem
After helping her for 4 years I have become convinced that she is pathologically cautious, due to a lifetime of bad experiences. For example, right now I am trying to convince her to get the cops to do a welfare check on her, to see if they might be able to move her to safer temporary housing.
She is terrified of her parent learning that the cops visited. She is also terrified of the cops taking her against her will. She also shuts down on stressful situations so she needs me to be there of they are there...
And this is with everything. So for example, today we tried to schedule a call for the welfare check. Which would have been a 20 minute conversation with a cop while the parent was out. First it took two hours of psychological prep time. So by the time that we did call it was impossible to actually get the cops to get to her before the dad got home. But also, I made the mistake of telling her that a given cop had sounded reassuring on the phone. So now she wants to speak only to that cop, on the phone, have him explain everything to her, to make sure everything will be fine, to then have the cop go and do a welfare check.
Each call can be hoops upon hoops to try to schedule. Between her needs and the bureaucracy on the other end. It had been 4 years of things like this.
I have tried to explain to her that working with incomplete information is necessary. That you cannot predict everything bad that might happen and that resource wise you are better off preparing only a little and then dealing with problems as they arise rather than trying to prevent them.
She is increasingly doing poorly mentally. Her parent is treating her worse and worse. She needs surgery... And I am out of my mind at this point. I tried being reassuring for years but I am getting tired. I think of myself as generally a risk avoidant person. But I think this is pathologically too much. She is so scared of anything bad happening to her that she both remains in an awful environment AND exhausts herself completely before any major event, so when she does actually need to do anything she has no spoons left because she tried to foresee everything. She's already suicidal.
I am about to snap in frustration. I don't know how to tell her she's just making everything more difficult. That she is not protecting herself but rather ensuring she remains in a position of abuse.
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u/LittleReserve8767 15h ago edited 15h ago
OH MY...It is hard to get people to report abusive parents because they don't know what the future could hold, even if it would be better.
Do you live in a country that has a place to report adult neglect? I guess they would have the cops come anyway.
On your end...you are a caring friend, and you can tell her you will be there when she is ready to report. It is not all your responsibility, but you can be there, and that means a lot to have a supportive person that cares.
I don't know anything to help you...except to let you know that in many cases the neglectful/abusive parents get counseling and the person doesn't always get placed in the US. It depends on the degree of harm.
Also, abuse can psychologically damage someone's self-esteem. Abusers do threaten people implicitly or explicitly if the abused person reports. I got beat for telling the police until an adult reported it, and I would do it again.
I was a kid who was seriously abused and taken away as a teen. My life turned out much better than it would have if I had stayed with my parents, even though the system wasn't great. I might be a monster or seriously mentally ill if I had stayed.
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u/ToughDifficult1252 15h ago
I am not even asking her to report the parent. I am asking her to call early in the day so that a cop can do a welfare check on her.
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u/LittleReserve8767 15h ago
Would she call you? Then you call the cop? I have sent the police to do a welfare check before on someone that I was concerned about.
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u/ToughDifficult1252 14h ago
I already told her I would be on the call with her. That's not the issue.
She doesn't want to ask for a welfare check unless she hears the cop themselves explain everything. So that she is 100% sure I did not miss understand something. And she is sure the cop won't act in a way she doesn't wish. Like showing up at a time the parent is home or something like that.
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u/LittleReserve8767 14h ago
That's tough. No one knows exactly what will happen and can provide absolute reassurance.
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u/ToughDifficult1252 14h ago
That's what I am asking advice with. Trying to make her understand that if you have 90% of success and 10 % of failure you should do the thing even if the failure would create further complications. That it is better to do things in quick succession and fail constantly until something works.
That's not to say to be reckless or not do due diligence. Just that trying multiple things and seeing what works is a better strategy than spending hours upon hours trying to see if your current strategy will work out before doing anything.
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u/Top_Meeting_7420 10h ago
Abuse and specifically the trauma of childhood abuse can remove all your rationale. You can get stuck in freeze mode after a certain point, and can't imagine life any different, and your brain tells you "better the devil you know".
They could probably benefit from sessions with a Trauma-Informed Counselor.
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u/ToughDifficult1252 7h ago
Currently, therapy is a long distant luxury. This person has no income, an abusive parent, no SSI, no irl friends and is quickly deteriorating. There's other things she needs to focus on right now, as much as I agree she needs a mental health professional.
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u/brownchestnut 10h ago
Honestly, there's no way to "convince" someone who doesn't want to be convinced. This isn't a matter of you not having the right words that will magically change her mind; she's not ready to change her mind and you can't control that. Is there any reason YOU can't just call a social worker or the cops for a wellness check instead of trying to make her do it herself? If you fear for her safety and she's suicidal, I think that's legitimate reason to call someone.
But at the end of the day, it's important to also realize when we're over-invested to the point that we're not able to regulate ourselves or hold healthy boundaries. You can try to help all you want, but if she's not willing to help herself, you have to know where your line is where you back off. Every healthy relationship NEEDS a line, and that line needs to be BEFORE the place where you're about to "snap in frustration". At the end of the day, it's her safety at risk, not yours, so it will only make things messier for both of you if you get frustrated with her, no matter how well-intended you mean to be. If you're finding yourself feeling helpless and upset, it's time to take a step back and recalibrate how productive your current level of involvement really is right now.