How do I (24F) tell my friend (26F) that she has ruined our friendship?

Throwaway – I can’t trust that she isn’t on reddit these days, she knows I hang out around here.

I met my friend online just over two years ago. We hit is off well, bonding over our mutual interest in a fandom and fanfiction community. I write fanfiction and original stories as a pastime and creative outlet that I’ve had since I was a child. It was my first published piece so I was happy to have found someone with similar interests to mine. We discussed in depth character profiles and dynamics of this show and I enjoyed having someone that was likeminded to bounce ideas off as well.

After posting a few relatively successful fanfic pieces, I found new interests and moved on to focus my attention towards them and planning my first ever book. My friend, however, was still very much obsessing over the show, or more specifically, the actress that plays her favourite character.

\*\*Now just for some background, I have ADHD and I’m on the Autism spectrum, so I can both relate and sympathise towards fixations, especially those developed in the realm of comfort characters and the people that portray them. I don’t tend to fixate on people specifically, but I will happily fixate on the opportunity to use them as a creative influence and let my imagination run wild. It’s never long-lived, so I’ve never seen it as anything to be concerned about.

My friend clearly has some issues that she has not realised are there. She is self-diagnosed with a few mental illnesses, including anxiety, alongside a whole repertoire of physical medical problems that she refuses to seek any professional guidance and help for. She refuses any offer of help in general, I’ve even asked if she would like me to contact her PCP and dentist when she has refused to in the past. \*\*

Since being started on meds last year, the way I go about life and how I deal with things has changed drastically. It has also opened my eyes to just how big of a problem her obsession is about to become, hence why I am here.

In the beginning of the friendship, it honestly seemed like she had a harmless crush. I knew she had a deep-seated admiration for this actress and the life and career that she has built for herself and I’ve watched my friend turn bitter and jealous about it.

I have lost count the number of times I have awoken to find 40+ messages from her, to find that there is an update of the actress and my friend has completely spiralled out of control. It can be the smallest of things but she manages to blow it completely out of proportion and trying to talk her down is exhausting. I have tried to tell her that these issues have gone way beyond my capability as a friend to help her deal with it, but she has either gotten funny with me or ignored it altogether.

In the past, she has mentioned purposefully wanting to plan trips to the places this actress lives and vacations in in the hope that she’ll be lucky enough to bump into her. She has bought the same clothing, or very similar, to the actress and the character she plays on the show. She will fixate on her body and go on about how she needs to get better at documenting with pictures when she’s having a ‘skinny’ day and I know this is rooted to the obsession, the actress is a fitness and health enthusiast and obviously has the trimmed figure that come with leading that kind of life.

There have been countless instances where she has had these spirals, triggered by just about anything to do with this actress, making it hard to pinpoint when they’re going to happen. The actress stepping back from social media after the show ended was a big hit to her and whenever she does make a post, my friend with rant for hours about how she has gone too private when she used to be so willing and frequent with her updates.

These spirals are unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Her behaviour is vile and she lashes out towards any kind of reasoning and it has now gotten to the point where if I see she is going into one, I mute our chat and hide my activity.

Her obsession is shrouded by her own reasoning that this actress is ‘haunting’ her every day. She is having dreams about this woman, every night, sometimes multiple times. She goes into extreme detail, which I found impressive at first because I never remember any of mine, now it’s slightly disturbing how much of it she tells me. Sometimes, it plays out that she is in a club-like setting and she bumps into the actress. They will start talking and either the actress will shower her with compliments, or the actress makes a move and they either end up sneaking away to a hotel room or she is propositioned for a threesome by the actress and her husband and taken back to their house. Other times, she is embedded in the family, either as a close friend or as one of the actresses’ children.

I guess this is my cry for help, to see if there is anything I can do for her before I walk away.

I have lost more than just sleep trying to help this friend. It has consumed my life for the best part of 18 months, having to sneak around when I went on that platform so that I didn’t accidently open a message and have to reply to her. Some of you might say I have boundary issues, but when your phone is incessantly pinging and the person on the other end is an unstable mess, you don’t feel like you have much of a choice.

Most of the messages she sends me now are full of negativity and I don’t know how to tell her that her obsessive behaviour has ruined our friendship. I feel selfish for writing this post but I’m at my wits end with being treated so poorly.

Welcoming any genuine advice. This has gotten so far out of my understanding that I don’t know what to do anymore.

I’ve been at the end of her beating stick one too many times and I’m just tired.

TL;DR – My friend has ruined our friendship because of the way she treats me when she’s in a spiral obsessing over an actress.