me, immediately feeling guilty for thinking I mattered enough to talk about: yeah haha sorry it’s nbd lets forget about that but what about you how are you??? What are you up to? Tell me about your day??!!?!???!?!
dspill07 reached out to me and helped me expand the “How to Help a Friend” series! DPD is an illness that isn’t very well-known, so before I talked to dspill07 I wouldn’t have known how to help someone with DPD. Thanks so much!
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How to Help a Friend With DPD (Dependent Personality Disorder)
1. Please don’t get upset with us when we frequently ask for your opinion/advice. We are terrified of making our own decisions because we fear we’re inadequate. We suffer from extremely low self-esteem, so that’s why we look to you to make decisions for us–even if it’s something as simple as deciding on a shirt to wear. The idea of making our own decisions, especially regarding major life choices, is so terrifying for us we may not be able to do it at all.
2. Encourage us to start making decisions on our own. You don’t have to be our therapist, but if we’re asking for your help with something small–like deciding on a shirt to buy–you can decline making that decision for us.
3. On the other hand, if we’re asking for your help with a major decision (like deciding on a college), it’s okay to give advice. Major life decisions are hard for most people, with or without DPD, to make entirely on their own. If you feel you’d normally give some input on the choices at hand, you can do that for us. Just sharing your input isn’t going to worsen or enable our illness. There is a difference between giving advice and actually finalizing the decision, however, and you are not obligated to actually make the choice for us.
4. We might apologize excessively. Some people get annoyed with this, but that just makes us want to apologize to you again for annoying you. If we do apologize for things we don’t need to apologize for, it’s okay to gently remind us we don’t need to be sorry, but please don’t get upset with us.
5. We’re terrified of being alone. Many of us have intense separation anxiety and feel that we must always have someone around to comfort us. But the reality is that there are times we’re going to have to be alone–that’s true for everybody, and we realize that. Remind us of the independent things we like to do–maybe sketching or researching specific topics online–so we have healthy ways of managing separation anxiety.
6. You don’t have to “fix” our low self-esteem, but when appropriate, saying something positive about us can be really powerful. We might have one or two traits about ourselves that we value, such as compassion, and targeting that value can make a compliment more meaningful to someone with low self-esteem (sometimes people with low self-esteem brush off or deny most compliments). For example, if you confide in us and go to us for support, saying something like “I know I can always talk to you because you really care about other people” would mean a lot to us.
7. We sometimes need reassurance that you’re still our friend. This doesn’t mean you did anything wrong; it’s just that we’re afraid of being abandoned by people we care about. This is also true for people with social anxiety or BPD (borderline personality disorder). A way to reassure us you’re still around is to just initiate contact every once and a while. If we don’t hear from you for a while, we assume you don’t want to hear from us, and we may stop contacting you altogether. So sending us a text or asking to hang out every once in a while helps us realize you’re still part of our lives.
8. Be careful with put-downs, even if you’re joking around. Again, we suffer from extremely low self-esteem, and there are certain criticisms we may be especially sensitive to, even if it’s meant to be humorous. We have a hard time voicing disagreement, so if you want to know if there’s anything we don’t like being teased about, just ask.
9. Recognize that we have a very hard time voicing our opinions, especially disagreement. We’re agreeable to the point of even compromising ourselves because we really believe your views are more valuable. We also want to ensure you accept us, and we fear we may lose that acceptance if we hold opinions that differ from yours. Reassure us that it’s okay to hold different opinions.
