Impossible people, the vamipires of mental health

It has taken me my full life to really understand there are people I just can not get on with.  The saddest thing is some of these people are my closest relatives.  No matter how hard I try to talk reason with them it is as though I am on a different planet. They will not listen, and even if I begin by listening to them, to do my best with all the skills I've picked up, such as empathy, unconditional positive regard and active listening. They will not return the courtesy.  They are stuck in the same repeated behaviours and discussions time and again. No matter how I approach them the results are the same.  I if I give an inch they take a yard.  They always want to talk about themselves about their problems, about how things are so bad for them, they don't give a shit about pulling anyone else down into their insular quagmire of depression. Those of my family should be loving, compassionate and supportive, but everything is with a caveat. I resorted to not speaking to one person for about 12 months. Difficult seeing as I live with them, the self-centreness of them. I just can not handle it.  I want to communicate, to really chat but there is no avenue for words to be let in, the doors are closed. Realization and understanding in this situation are alien terms.

There are times I always question whether it is me, am I the one who has some mental illness because I can not communicate with them.  Yet I can communicate with many other people. Then the realisation breaks through it is not I who has the mental health issues it is them. One has been been hospitalised for mental health issues, another has been on long term anti-depressants and has varying degrees of agoraphobia, a third has been to counselling and recommended anti-depressants but refused them.  An in-law is an alcoholic and lives with the first depressed individual.  It's got the point I can recognise a mentally ill person faster than a cowboy can draw their gun in a duel. I too find I change my attitude and behaviour pattern when I am around my relatives, they have been given too much of my time and effort so now I don't want to even bother, I don't want to engage and this in itself could be another contributing factor.  However, I do my best not to converse to any great extent with them. Not engaging is a self preservation strategy and it doesn't waste heart ache and soul. I'd love them to change or to make an active effort to change their lives, but it seems to me there is no motivation to do so. They will carry on as they are, until the day they no longer breath.

These people do not just exist in families, they exist in every walk of life. The next worse place to encounter them is at work.  Here they sill remain impossible people but there is an unavailability about them. Some of them are able to climb the ladder of responsibility, they get into positions where it is inexplicable how they got there in the first place. It is inexplicable they are able to take the responsibility, and quite frankly they don't. I recall one woman many years ago at work who just talked a load of shit all the time. But staff had to listen to her because she was a middle manager. Eventually higher management got rid off her through a restructure and her next job was substantially reduced in grade and responsibility.  Another manager I remember with utter distaste was one who thought she was a lovey dovey actor type personality, however more than this she thought she knew best on everything. Those who did not share her opinion had no opinion worthy of listening to, she was said to have been responsible for giving her manger a mental break down. But the plain truth of the matter was, she was an invidious bully and  those around her had to suck up or they would become the next victims to her bullying practices.

I read an article about impossible people on the internet. Simply you are never going to change these people and at some point you have to let them go from your life, even if they are relatives. If all they do is pull you down and depress then there is no alternative.  One strategy mentioned is silence, another I guess is doing your dam best to make sure you see them as infrequently as possible. Or you can treat them like children.  Yet they are adults in every sense.  They have lived decades and haven't learnt or introspected on their actions, on how other may see them.  If they can't be bothered to listen to you why should you be bothered to listen to them. Let them get on with their life and be what they are going to be. If help is refused and the only help they really want is your own mental well being to be as warped as theirs. Then it's just not worth it, for I will guarantee depressed mentally ill family members will either not have a job or have a really crappy job and forever be moaning about it.  But they will not see they have any power to do anything about their own situation, preferring to attribute the locus of control outside of themselves.

The thing is, normal people can not actually deal with abnormal impossible people. Another expression I've read used for these persons is Emotional Vampires.  Which is so true. It becomes a difficult task keeping your own sanity around them. Stopping yourself from getting angry, or from getting into those vicious circle arguments which go nowhere and achieve nothing. They just will not learn or understand, and it takes your own realisation and conscious decision making process to stop your own behaviour from providing oxygen to their fires.  It also leads me to an inevitable conclusion, you can not expect emotional or psychological support from these people, you can not expect them see anything other than their own point of view. They will never break out of this and they will never change their ways or seek to improve their situation. Which means, you can only change  your ways or run for the hills. Up in those hills you may even find another person who knows where you are coming from. Stephen Covey in his book 7 Habits of Highly Effective people terms this as being Pro-active.  By this he means you have to change your own rose tinted spectacles through which the world is interpreted and how you act.  It's like consciously saying, this person may be the most obnoxious person in the world, but I'm not going to let anything they say or do have any meaning to myself.  Although insightful, it is very difficult to do, but it can be achieved.

South Africa and the signs

It has been sad that one of the after events to linger on in public consciousness is the fake sign language interpreter.  I really don't know who he thinks he his kidding but to me, he doesn't know how to sign at all. So it is pretty obvious he has more than 15 minutes of fame and he got paid a handsome wage for it as well. His excuse of having schizophrenia has not been verified by any medical professional, so it even compounds his lie further.  Further this suggests to me South Africa is has an element of corruption so deep in it, allowing a fake signer to interpret at an international world event which puts South Africa on the world stage is one of the worse things going.  A developing country should never of allowed this to happen in the first place. In my opinion the only thing this man should be signing is the receipt for his personal belongings after coming out of a cell.  If South African's take no action and fail to investigate this further it could suggest they are resigned to their own corruption and the world can not take them seriously. 

I ask could this be the return of a tribal state as well?  In watching an episode of the politics program called Question Time which was broadcast from Johannesburg it seemed evident a lot of black south African's felt angry at white South African's and contrary to Madella's view of reconciliation and forgiveness, these people came across as wanting not just their land back but blood.  It's clear the country is dissatisfied with Jacob Zuma and the ANC.  It is in a conflicting state of mind because it was the ANC Mandela was a member of, but as they say, things change. The danger is of an extreme right wing who now get a chance and foothold. If they do we'll see yet another African state at war with itself with mass murder and possibly genocide.

Who know's what the outcome is going to be over the next few years, but there is no doubt in my mind this is a country in the throws of political uncertainty.