I belong, as you may have guessed to an online support community. I haven't found any for ME-none of us are "energetic" enough to have the wherewithal to regularly participate I suppose, and it would probably soon be, as my dad puts it so well, be "canncelled due to lack of energy (he usually says interest)."

Migraine passed, whew!!! Makes ya grumpy, though, I guess!!!! Pain will do that to a person.....


One woman is the mother of a son who is schizophrenic, and she is "highly sensitive" it seems, to comments regarding mental illness--I suffer from mental illness, and she takes it home more than I do; and maybe as a mother watching her child suffer from invisible demons-who knows?

But she sent a nasty-gram to everyone who "used" to be on her "friends" list, and then "unfriended" them. The thing with her though, is for many, it was a case of how many times they had been "un-friended" by this woman. It makes you wonder about her stability, but also:

• what kind of support is she getting?
• She has full-body RSD, no picnic, and the syndromes that go with it.....
• Who is looking after her mental health. Depression and personality disorders are common in parents of schizophrenics.
• How does she look after a son with schizophrenia while having full-body RSD.........or does she? Now, far be it for me to play anyone's "doctor" and say whether or not anyone has RSD, ME, or any other problem they claim to have....Why?
• To them....in their mind....they have it, it's all true....
• But RSD is disabling in one limb, let alone full-body while caring for a son with schizophrenia...also a very center-stage, disabling illness
• Did the RSD come after her son left home to make his own way?

But it would be a case of

• You're her friend
• Not her friend
• You're her friend
• Not her friend

I can't make heads or tails of a relationship with someone who bounces you around like that.. It's too much, too hard, too whacked. I wouldn't do it in a relationship face to face. I wouldn't do it in any relationship. It's too fucked up, it's too much to be in and out, in and out, and exhausting: too much to ask of anyone.

Let alone someone who is sick. I have both RSD and ME.....and to be jerked around by someone who probably has an untreated personality disorder, and undertreated depression. And when she sent her nasty gram, and again "unfriended" everyone on her list, instead of holding her responsible for her behavior, as we would any normal person, the community coddled her, and held her hand, and made her "Oh, it's okay, you've been through so much," and burped her like a damned baby.

Did we do her a favor? Were we even showing her compassion when we did not hold her responsible for her own attention-seeking behavior?

I believe we were not.....and I have separated from the community in this, and have not been burping her like a baby, and coddling her.

She is an adult. She needs to act like one, and the compassionate thing to do would be to hold her "lovingly accountable" in some fashion. However that may be, I don't know. But babying an adult woman is not being all that compassionate because she does not then learn to function as an adult in the adult world. I don't believe that to be compassion. Many have a mistaken picture of compassion of a woman holding a baby, or in some way reassuring a person that "everything is going to be okay." Sometimes everything is not going to be okay, and to lead an adult woman who apparently doesn't know otherwise is not compassion.

It would have been holding her "lovingly accountable." Is that welcoming her with open arms? Not quite. Welcoming, yes. Placing limits on what we as individuals will tolerate--that would have been more compassionate.

She seems to suffer from Borderline Personality Disorder though. And sometimes, dammit, it doesn't matter what you do, you're the enemy, once you have drawn a boundary. And walking away is sometimes the healthiest thing to do.

You have to be compassionate to yourself too! When do your own needs come into the picture? With a borderline? Ne.ver