I’ve had a friend for 12+ years and she’s soon to be my cousin in-law because I’m marrying her cousin. Anyway, she has some problems and it makes me wonder if she has a severe mental disorder that needs to be addressed by a license professional or if she’s just straight up immature.. I will list some things she does. This is a 25 year old woman.
– Very bad with money management. Time and time again she will get into a lease or rent a room and will have to move or get evicted because she’s unable to keep up with the rent, whether it’s $500 or $1,000. She falls behind. She’s about to be evicted from her current apartment because she owes $3,000 since she’s almost 3 months behind. Her cousin splits the rent with her so basically she hasn’t been using the money to pay rent, at least for the half he’s paid her. She happen to obtain this lease right before officially getting evicted from her previous apartment that she was only at for 2 months because she was having drama with her roommate. Now she’s lasted only 5 months at this new lease.
– She will buy iPhones from T-mobile, AT&T and then end up selling them when she needs money for something such as rent (which as you’ve read she also doesn’t keep up with) even though she has a contract on the phone!! Then somehow will buy another iPhone once she gets the money only to repeat the same process over and over. Mind you she keeps the phones for only a couple months at a time if even before she has to sell it.
– She’s used her mom’s social to obtain a co-signer for a lease behind her back. Also used her mom’s business to get the iPhones which both cases her mom has had to report these cases as fraud so her credit report won’t be affected. Because her mom actually has herself together, wants to buy another house soon, etc.
– her mom bought her a car before but when times got tough (per usual) she got a title loan on the car, which ended up getting repo’d because guess what, she didn’t pay the loan. Then wants to blame it all on her mom for kicking her out of the house when they got into fights. She ends up hopping back and forth between her mom’s house when she gets evicted from somewhere but then doesn’t want to respect her mom and follow her rules so she blames everything on her mom when things go bad. So basically her mom lets her borrow one of her cars indefinitely. So she gets to keep it in her possession at all times but just doesn’t have the title in her name so she doesn’t go off and sell it.
– Can’t keep a job. Mainly will work fast food but something will happen and she starts no call no showing.
– impulsive. Has left behind her apartment before to move cross country to California for a month. Then came back.
– has interesting interests or behavioral problems. She’s very intelligent but struggles to stick to a schedule, such as staying in school. She’s had to drop every college course she’s ever signed up for. Even if it’s only 2 classes at a time. Spends her money on anime stuff, wants to marry an Asian man as she has a fetish for Asians, wants to go live in Asia somewhere convinced that life will just be better.
– will talk to lots of boys online, meet random people for hookups even if she has a boyfriend already.
This is a woman who doesn’t drink alcohol or do drugs. This is just how she is. Does this come off like someone who’s autistic or something and doesn’t have their mental health under control or what??
4 comments
maybe adhd, but also why does it matter. i dont think you can armchair diagnose a stranger.
One thing I’ve learned from being outside of the mental health “industry”, from studying psychology, and from being a longtime patient with a slew of diagnoses, is that there are good and bad sides to diagnosing and treating people like they are flawed in some way. People don’t respond well to the mentality behind psychology, which tries to objectify and treat problems through narrow scopes. Even so, there are great individuals and pockets of therapy. Most of those steer clear from trying to fit any individual into a diagnosis, and instead work with each person without labeling or implying negative assumptions.
Your friend sounds like she’s trapped in a cycle. She seems afraid to commit and control certain aspects of her life. That fear of control may show up in the impulsivity in both spending, and spontaneously traveling. I get it, where I live, life feels pretty glum, and there’s an urge to escape and go find something better, rather than change myself to fit in. It seems too that her upbringing, especially with her mom, she may have been enabled a lot, instead of encouraged and shown how to take care of herself. She’s used to being able to find a way to get her needs met without having to give into any system that tied her down. Some of her behaviors are definitely manipulative and she doesn’t seem to have many people holding her accountable for how she’s affecting others. As her friend, id try to approach her with a balanced statement. Life is f***in hard, and sometimes we get stuck in cycles that aren’t healthy, she may feel trapped and/or think that she’s dug herself too deep with debt, feels incapable or unimportant in the work environment, and therefore she digs herself further into escapism: trying to go somewhere else and start over. She sounds like someone who might appreciate you being upfront though and calling her out, as you have. Maybe sitting down and brainstorming what steps she’s willing to take. Those may be finding a therapist that understands her and has a compatible approach (I’ve been to… a lot of therapists. Learned from each one, and don’t always trust the system, but as I said there are people who will jive with how you think, and let you lead the sessions). Or maybe it looks like finding other methods of self help, finding supportive groups who struggled with impulse control, reading books that match her ideology and beliefs. Diagnoses and meds can still be helpful, sometimes it’s a matter of reframing them in a way that is helpful for her?
Either way, I hope you’re able to support her. The cycle she’s in seems self defeating and from personal experience, hard to break out of. She may just need an extra shove to throw a wrench in it- help her see that she is always capable of breaking out.
Bipolar/manic behavior, childish, irresponsible.
To find out for sure, she would have to have a clinical evaluation. If you can convince her to do that, great! If not, there is nothing you can do.