Restart or Game Over?
When a Friend Loses their Grip
Dear Death,
I have an old best friend from all the way back in elementary school and she was always zany and fun. But during the pandemic years she went from what I will call eccentric and amusing Woo Woo to scary and uncomfortable Woo Woo. What started as crystals and astrology has turned into vaccine paranoia, weird dietary restrictions and weird QAnon sounding stuff. I gently tried to tell her how she sounded and she called me an “npc”- which I take it means like a non-person from a video game?
I got angry and snapped back before I cut off communication for about 6 months. Now I miss her. I don’t have any other friends that go back all the way to childhood. Do I reach back out to try and restart or let it be game over for our friendship?
- Player Character
Dear Player Character,
Your childhood friend is caught in the psychosis that’s most likely to make a person miserable- the belief that some other people, for whatever reason, aren't as fully human as they are.
You expect white supremacists or Nazis to dehumanize other people. Less so astrology girls who love crystals. But this psychosis is dangerous because it is contagious. Someone in the grips of resentment or fear is vulnerable to conspiracy theories that blame other people for what is wrong with the world. From there, it’s only a small step to dehumanizing the people being blamed. After a couple disorienting and scary pandemic years, a lot more people became vulnerable to bad ways of seeing the world, often spread on the internet.
That “NPC” idea is basically saying you are brainwashed by the mainstream media or Dr. Fauci or whatever boogeyman she blames today. Because you aren’t one of the believers, your life is less than hers. It’s a kind of New Age faith test you aren’t passing, that isn’t that different from many religions of the past and present treating people outside their religion as less than themselves.
This particular psychosis causes death and misery like few others. You can look at events from The Trail of Tears, to the The Tulsa Massacre of 1921 to the Holocaust and easily find people dehumanizing each other as an excuse for monstrous acts of violence. It doesn’t sound like your friend currently has the power to hurt you beyond voting for people who might do these things. Instead, she will experience the misery of this psychosis for as long as it lasts.
So let’s talk about human misery for a second. As you experienced, this psychosis makes people unpleasant but it also makes them very unhappy. Humans are social mammals and experience mental well being when they enjoy rich social relationships. It is breathtakingly isolating when you cut off even the possibility of connection with another person by denying their humanity. Feelings of profound isolation are as bad for your physical health as a pack-a-day cigarette habit according to recent studies and I’d say it's even worse for your mental health.
The communities that encourage these kinds of psychosis tend to also encourage resentment and anger at others. If all your friends are QAnon people, you might talk to them all day about absurd fantasies of child abuse in basements of Pizza Parlors that don’t even have basements. Time with that group will whip you into states of rage and helplessness and resentment so deep you can’t enjoy your life. It may satisfy the human craving for intensity, but like an addiction to hard drugs, it leaves people isolated, strung out and miserable. So this psychosis cuts you off from connection from all but the most toxic people. People in this psychosis often burn bridges and become estranged from family and friends.
So what can you do? First, be the bulwark and dispel even the hints of this psychosis from your mind. Your friend is a human being who may recover one day. You can practice the opposite of this psychosis with a simple Metta meditation. Also known as kindness practice, find a place to sit quietly and close your eyes. First imagine family and friends you feel fondly for and wish them well. Wish them good health. Wish them happiness. Acknowledge them as humans who will one day perish and whose every day is special and precious. Then in a widening circle of friends to acquaintances to strangers to people you don’t like very much, do the same well-wishing. Eventually make sure to include your childhood friend and see if you can feel some compassion for her and her suffering in your heart as you wish her well and wish her recovery.
It’s your friend's responsibility to reach out and apologize so don’t feel like you have to save her from herself. You can’t after all. Creating boundaries is good for all involved. But if you do want to reach out, tell her what she said. Tell her why it hurt you. Then tell her you can welcome her back into your life when she can acknowledge you as a human being and not before. Disagreements are normal. Dehumanizing your friends is not.
Sincerely,
Death