Passivity leading to being trapped in difficult situations

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We all know Aspies don't find it easy to speak up and ask for help. But when you are the passive type, this makes it even worse.

I am in a situation with a friend (who I've only known for months and is not a close friend), where she is pouring all her health and emotional problems on to me. I am not a good listener, I try to offer practical solutions and if someone wants extended sympathy I feel highly uncomfortable and even stressed and panicky as I want to get away from it. Extreme displays of distress are the worst because I just don't know what to do, I've gathered over time what I'm supposed to do but it's not in me. But because I don't know how to speak up for myself and make convincing excuses to extricate myself, I've realised that in my life I've been in this situation quite a few times.

People, unintentionally perhaps, use someone like this, especially in the absence of other people taking their problems seriously or wanting to get involved. It's like you're the nearest they will find to a good listener, purely because you are apparently entertaining them by hearing them out. But it's not good listening because I don't want to listen it's just that I don't know how to tell them to leave me alone and go away. It's like they are selfishly offloading onto you because everyone else (NTs probably) all ran a mile. I just worry they will be offended if I say I don't want to hear it and can't help so I get stuck in really uncomfortable scenarios.

Because of this, this friend in question has become more and more demanding on me and it's culminated in me having to send her an email spelling out in the kindest way I can, that I am not the right person to lean on, I can't do extended sympathy and to stop phoning (which she is doing constantly) me etc.

Do any of you have problems like this?

There are two sides to this same coin. The displeasure which comes from hearing about other people's problems may come from selfishness. The only way it doesn't is if love exists. Love is sharing. When someone is sad and another person feels his sadness with him, it takes the pain of loneliness away. When someone is happy and another shares her joy, then that makes happiness real. Remember what Christopher McCandless (the movie "Into the Wild") said (in his book just before he died) about this, "Happiness only real when shared."

What kind of world are we expecting to have if no one wants to hear other people's problems? Nobody is supposed to need anyone? I'm confused. I don't think I think like other people do. If someone tells me about their problems, I feel valued by them... not annoyed. I pray I can help them. If I can't, I trust God will either use someone else or have something better in store to do.

Thank you for clarifying. I get what you're saying now better. I should have paid greater attention to the word 'passivity.' If I'm understanding you correctly, you're getting taken advantage of? If that's the case, then you'll need to toughen up. I've gone from being at one end to going to the other. Now I'm learning to adjust myself according to what the situation demands.

You probably know this... you can't stay passive. The only way I stopped being like that was because of extreme abuse.

If someone makes me angry, through mistreatment, injustice etc. I can stand up for myself. But when someone is nice and hasn't done anything wrong to me I worry so much about it being mean if I tell them I can't deal with what they are offloading on me. This could be because of lifelong problems in understanding peoples' intentions, motivations etc. and social faux pas bringing negative reactions making me paranoid, but I don't know how someone would take it if I tried to remove myself as politely as possible. And because I'm so honest, I can't make convincing excuses or tell white lies. So because I may e.g. try hints and they don't work, I get really stressed as to how to deal with it, almost like a child stuck in a problematic social situation without knowing how to sort it out, and I end up getting dragged into these situations.

This happened to me too, with a "friend". It got so stressful for me that after several years of her doing this dump-emotional-baggage-via-telephone-call, that I took action. I went to the store and bought an answering machine which showed who was calling. I stopped answering it when she called, she would fill the message memory to max, and I was not dragged into a pointless listening-game. Eventually she stopped, thank goodness. I have nothing against her, except her thoughtless "use" of me as a trash receptacle.

I have been told I'm a good listener, but I'm really not. I have this one girl who seems to have become somewhat emotionally dependent on me and will call me (I despise phones) and just go on and on about her problems. I find her problems are the same things over and over again (she has a lot of mental instabilities and dual personalities) and she's self-defeating. Like, she freaks out over freaking out. There's actually nothing I can do except let her talk and I always end up zoning out. I guess I make the appropriate sounds, but I'm not a good person to deal with problems unless I can actually fix them. I love looking for ways to fix things. However, I can't tell anyone to leave me alone. I get so mad at this girl for her self pity crap, but I can never let her know. I've been used, taken advantage of, and I know it. I try not to let it bother me, but I feel like I'm going to snap some days.

Yes I have the answerphone on all the time anyway, and once she started calling me repeatedly (following having emailed me repeatedly over several months, which I always replied to) I started ignoring her calls. But then she left one message saying in a really worried voice could I call her, without enlarging on why, so I thought something awful had happened. When I called her she just started going on endlessly for half an hour and would have continued but I just said I had to go as emphatically as I could. Today was the worst, she turned up this morning, with her children in the back of the car, when I saw it was her through the window I didn't answer when she rang the doorbell. Then she started hammering loudly on the door. When I didn't respond to that, instead of thinking that I may not be in and leaving like most normal people would, she went round to the front windows and started hammering and yelling my first name out really loud repeatedly. This was so embarrassing that I had to answer the door, as I have to live here.

All she wanted to know, she said, was how long it takes for her medication to take effect (and I'd already sent her an email two days prior discussing this) and then proceeded to stand at the door talking loud enough for the neighbours to hear for ages, about how she was worried she was going to die, who would look after her children (she has anxiety and gastric problems which she has been to the doctor about, it's nothing life-threatening) and that she felt like everything was running away from her, etc. getting teary eyed, and I didn't know what to do or say, but she put me in such an uncomfortable situation carrying on banging the windows and shouting like that I had to answer the door. I rang her husband and left a message asking him to tell her as gently as possible that I couldn't deal with this behaviour, and then I emailed her to ask her never to do this again as kindly as I could.

This is what happens, because I'm so passive, I don't know how to deal with people before it gets to an extreme situation and they take advantage of me. I know she is stressed and not taking advantage in a mean way, she genuinely needs support, but she's totally ignoring stuff I'm going through and forcing all this on me and she just can't see that it is totally unreasonable.

I wish I knew how to fend people off and not get into these types of situation in the first place.

For over 20 years I thought I was someone's best friend because she always told me all her "deep, personal secrets". Turned out she was just a needy attention-sponge who would dump on any poor sucker patient enough to listen to herand mousy enough not to expect reciprocation.

Yes, that's what another male Aspie friend of mine has said.

It just mystifies me, how people can be so short-sighted that they can't tell the difference between someone 'held captive' by passivity who isn't showing signs of comforting, and someone actively listening and keen to do the whole arm round them and offering to do comforting things for them in a supportive way.

Perhaps because they are so wrapped up in their problems they don't notice (or don't care either way!) or something, but if I needed comfort and someone sat there like a stone I wouldn't want to tell them anything or ask them for help. I mean, probably my face isn't expressive enough that they can't tell that I don't want to be there listening/involved but I thought NTs were the one who could read non-verbal signals. I truly must give off something so different to what's going on inside!

Wow, I can really relate to this. It's really hard for me to set boundaries, or even give proper body language to indicate my discomfort. I just go on faking being normal as always, even through circumstances I ought to get out of. I can fake being normal-happy, but not normal-get-away-from-me.

This happens to me in all kinds of situations. I really have to work on it and practice ahead of time, things I can say, and remember that I have rights and it's not my responsibility to make the other person feel not-offended. I try to convince myself that I have just as much right to being socially comfortable as they have, so if I'm making myself uncomfortable for their sake, it's a problem. It's hard to believe that and act on it tho.

Hugs and sympathy. I wish I had more solid advice to give the both of us.