Avoiding triggers- fair or selfish?

Hey, so lately I've been very triggered by two friends of mine who are badly physically ill. People being ill just makes me so jealous that I want to hurt myself to make myself worse than them. I also hate the jealousy and beat myself up for being so selfish, which makes me even more likely to want to hurt myself. It's completely pathological jealousy and basically floors me and makes my BPD worse. It also makes it hard to try and get better because my brain decides I have to get worse to get the attention they are getting.

The worst thing is Facebook. Both the friends have recently posted statuses about their health problems and got a lot of sympathy back. This makes me both want to post statuses about my mental health issues, which people then ignore and I feel worse, or to hurt myself.

They are both good friends and have helped me in the past and I don't feel like I can tell them the truth, although I've told them both about this issue in the past so they are aware.

My idea is to come off Facebook for a while, tell them I need to that for the sake of my health (they both know I have a lot of issues) but not go into specifics and tell them both they are welcome to text me if they need to.

I feel like I need to focus on myself here and that this will help in me getting better. However, I'm worried that this is a completely selfish thing I am thinking of doing and that I should instead just suck it up and deal with it.

Can someone tell me if my plan is fair or incredibly selfish?

-- Mon Jan 09, 2017 5:06 pm --

Also, I feel like updating my status 'taking a break from Facebook for health reasons. Text me if you need me'. It annoys me that I feel that's not appropriate, whereas those with physical illness are 'allowed' to post things like that. But I also suspect I'm doing it for attention. Should I avoid it?

Oh my gosh I can't imagine what you are going through right now. Well, I kinda can, being both BPD and pathologically jealous too, but I mean I'm not in the situation you're in right now and it sounds so, so hard on you. I get jealous just overhearing the overwhelming sympathy other people have for those with physical illnesses, so I can't imagine how you must be coping with this with it being pretty much on your doorstep.

It's absolutely terrible that us with severe and absolutely debilitating mental illnesses just get shoved under the radar, unable to ask for help or even tell other people what our illness IS, for fear that we'll get the very thing we don't want: rejection and isolation.

Try your best to remember that you HAVE a very severe illness, and therefore you are WELL within your right to AVOID such triggering situations. I am very sure that these people wouldn't want to trigger you as well, and would rather you look out for your own health. x

Thank you so much for your understanding reply x

I'm glad you think I'm doing the right thing. It's sometimes hard for me to know if I'm being unfair or not but I can't keep feeling like this.

There are triggers everywhere- as I am the best friend of the guy from work who is in hospital, people keep asking me how he is and showing sympathy and it's very hard, especially the person recently who basically said 'aren't we lucky not to be seriously ill like that'. I just wanted to say 'I'm not lucky, I have OCD and BPD, they are serious mental illnesses and life is a struggle' but it didn't seem acceptable to say it, instead I just feel despair and jealousy as it made me want to do something to end up in hospital so people could be discussing how worried they are about me instead.

I can't avoid things like that, but the Facebook thing is something I can control to an extent.

I think I''ll avoid the status about coming off Facebook as I think I would be doing it for sympathy, and it won't get me the sympathy I want and then I'ill just feel worse.

i think i avoid triggers that is why i wonder if i am avoidant.i can not understand . it makes me high functioning but doesn’t help at all emotionally is awful.

i wanted to delete facebook and avoid it.it annoys me most often

i'm unfriended everyone on facebook and visit it only because of a study group and we post questions on and off regarding the studies.

i often think that it would be easier to live if i had a physical ailment than a mental one. one reason is i myself would be able to guage as to whether i'm improving or not.

there was a time when i wanted to get ill for sympathy. while playing video game, i once wished i were blind so i would get pity from others. now that's not the case. i dont want to trouble myself more or my friends more than i have.

no more fantasy that life should be worse than it is.

My friend keeps saying how lovely I am for asking how he is despite all my issues and I feel so guilty because I'm only being so nice to make up for the jealousy I get when anyone gives him sympathy.

Are physically ill people really receiving a lot of attention? I don't have any such friends, so I have no idea what it looks like. I'd think that they would be more like looked down upon because they can't contribute as much as able bodied people.

Yes, my friend's Facebook is full of messages about how sorry people are that he's so sick. I want people to care that I am sick.

Is he sick in a way that might make him drop soon? That would justify their behavior. They want to appear nice before the poor sod kicks the bucket.

If he's not dying, then they might be responding with sympathy because it's polite, not because they feel genuinely sorry. They might just be messaging each other how sick they are of his whining and how they dislike being around him.