THE "YEAH...BUT..."

Beware the Help-Rejecting Complainer, or HRC, not to be confused with this: . The call of the HRC species is easily recognizable. It is a repeated "Yeah...but..." in response to any serious attention to its sob stories. 

Yes, my friend, you can avoid hours, if not years, of frustration by not engaging with an HRC. Believe me, I know from hard experience. 

The HRC is perhaps the most common of chronic psychotherapy patients. I would speculate that wealthy HRCs have financed luxurious lifestyles for many fortunate psychiatrists, psychoanalysts and psychologists. But these listeners earn their money by enduring those billable hours in a room alone with an HRC.

The HRC is incurable simply because the HRC is unable to internalize anything that comes to their person from outside their own narcissistic bubble of self-torture. The HRC complains to complain, not to seek any help or useful information. Complaining with immersion in their own suffering in an effort to pull any willing listener into that suffocating quagmire is the modus operandi of the HRC. 

It may be hard to believe, but this is what gets the HRC off: Being miserable with tortured company. 

The more the unwitting or unwarned listener pays attention and then offers consolation or (gods forbid) helpful advice, the tighter the web of suffocating rejection is spun from the HRC's lips. Once entrapped in that web of endless vicious circles, the listener cannot make a healthy escape without utterly rejecting the HRC and running away. 

Fear not. Despite the frequent playing of the suicidal threat as a lure to prevent that escape, the HRC seldom actually commits suicide. P.T. Barnum's slogan can be a remedy for the surviving listener's guilt: "There's a sucker born every minute." The HRC will find a replacement with amazing ease. 

Healthy human beings are vulnerable to the HRCs entrapment because, as social animals, we are hardwired to pay attention to calls for help. The perceived underdog is more likely to be given the benefit of the doubt than the alpha, whose robust aggression exudes an air of invulnerability and independence. 

The HRC's bait is typically a sob story about a bereft childhood, one marked by neglect, abuse, tragedy and loneliness. The adult HRC may indeed be suffering the effects of such a childhood. And, some HRCs can gain sufficient insight to stop trying to torture others by seducing them into a futile attempt to heal the devastation of a poor upbringing from the outside. These rare, insightful HRCs are also called "unhappy functional adults". 

Once trapped by an HRC, the listener has several choices. The wise professional listener, or therapist, can play along for years at a weekly rate for profit without getting sucked into the vortex between sessions. The seasoned listener with a happy life, who may actually choose to hang in there for a while, may find that there is a workable friendship outside the HRCs habitual attempt to pull them both into Hell. The amateur is doomed. Once trapped, the amateur will fall prey to depression, manipulation and even financial bilking before waking up and fleeing. 

I have been all three at times in my life. My advice to the uninitiated is simple. If you meet a person with a sob story that just doesn't seem right, flee immediately. If you offer a person with a sob story concrete aid or rational advice which is off-handedly rejected, flee immediately. If that person has managed to get you into bed with sexual charms, flee immediately and change you phone number.