My friend is accidentally harming my mental health

Need Reassurance...

I know this seems silly compared to other stories here but I genuinely do just need to get it out.
So I have a friend, we’ve known each other for a long time. We’re both chronically ill in various ways:
We’re both Autstic, have BPD, and depression/anxiety.
She has pseudo seizures and POTS.
I have CFS, hEDS, Chronic Bronchitis, and unnamed heart and GI complications.
I’m an introvert and always have been. I’m a homebody, so after work, I either rest or I work (I’m writing a novel and I do character design). I’ve recently been taking myself out, like going to movies by myself or taking myself out for dinner. My therapist said this is great for someone like me because just getting out of the house period is leagues better than when I would stay home, drinking to cope. I have to mentally and physically prepare myself, usually days in advance, because going out is a sensory nightmare—noises, temperature changes, people who don’t understand personal space, and people trying to talk to me constantly—and with my job, I’m interacting with others a lot, meaning I’m masking a good chunk of the day. My friend wants us to start hanging out together more, saying it’s good for my mental health because it’s ’not healthy for people to be alone all the time’. I know she cares deeply about me and I care deeply about her, but I feel like she hears instead of listens. We hang out at least once a month and she calls me once a week (though lately she’s been calling me almost everyday) and even that is exhausting for me because of my CFS and hEDS causing dislocations and subluxations due to my physically demanding job (the issues cluster near my hips and my shoulders). She suggested that I can come over to her place just to hang out but I’m having a hard time telling her that I physically can’t without triggering a spiral (yes, I know it’s not my job to protect her feelings but having BPD myself I know how bad the black and white thinking and rejection sensitive dysphoria gets. I know this likely isn’t true, but it feels like she has an ‘if I can do it, you can do it’ as sometimes when I say I can’t hang out or can’t talk, she mentions that she struggles too. I know she’s trying to tell me that she understands that I’m struggling but she’s putting her coping skills on to me. So having POTS, going out frequently and exercising is a good cope but it’s very different with CFS and hEDS, I have to be very careful to not push myself past my baseline because it can actually lower my baseline and make it harder for me to go out. As stated, I’m a homebody. I genuinely do enjoy being alone, it doesn’t impact my mental health as severely as she thinks it does (I’m not saying there’s no impact, just that being alone for a few weeks is actually better for me in the long run because it helps raise my baseline. It’s not isolation because I still have human contact, it’s just not frequent). She even suggested I come over to work on my novel or art instead of doing it at home. I don’t know if she understands that I need to work alone because it takes every ounce of my processing power (I’m creating an entire world, multiple languages, cosmology, species, subspecies, and a unique magic system all from scratch and it’s far more complex than people realize). Working requires total focus and with my ADHD, I’m far too easily distracted. She also has a tendency for physical contact and, jokingly, calls herself ‘the exception’ to my no contact boundary. I know she’s kidding, but she also does initially unprompted physical contact. A few days ago, I was having a low energy day and only went out because one of our other friends I see often would be there. She attempted to hug me and I locked up and leaned away in slight panic. She apologized later that night but at some point in the evening called herself the exception when she touched me again and immediately apologized for that instance. We’ve discussed this before, she’s very heavy on physical displays of affection whereas I prefer verbal and I asked her to at least ask (be it verbally by actually asking or by gesturing, like holding out her hand or her arms) before actually initiating the contact because some days I’m averse to it than other days. She forgets. A lot. I had told her as soon as I got the event that I was a little low energy (I worked that day) and had messed up my shoulder so I was in a bit of pain already. I have to be extremely careful because of my hEDS because a wrong move could lead to dislocations, rib slips, subluxations, and pinched nerves and she was trying to hug me on that side, which is why I panicked and didn’t say no. I’m also not good at keeping my own boundaries. My whole life was spent having my boundaries pushed and broken—being forced to work in groups with people I didn’t know well, having to give presentations with my speech impediment and stuttering, effectively faking my emotions to make others comfortable, having pretend that things didn’t bother me out of fear of being see as ‘too sensitive’, and forcing my tone so people didn’t accuse me of ‘having an attitude’ or ‘not being excited’ when I should but also hiding my emotions because of the risk of again being seen as too sensitive when every emotion is at its peak constantly and feels like a live wire or exposed nerve. I don’t get sad, I fall into depression. I’m never angry, I’m furious. I’m not happy, I’m entirely euphoric. I’m not scared, I’m petrified. We had a brief conversation on my comfortability, she’s self-aware enough to notice she’s pushing but usually not until long after the conversation. I told her it wasn’t her, it was me, that I’m changing and I’m not comfortable with a lot of things I used to be. This was when she started pushing that I could come over and just watch a movie or I could work while she watches something. I said I’d think about but I don’t know how to explain what’s going on in a way that won’t cause a confrontation. It’s not just a mental thing, I physical cannot exist like the average person because I’m disabled and I feel like she thinks that since she goes out with our friends, then I can too and I’ve tried explaining that we have two entirely different physical limits and copious amounts of interaction can actually make me worse. I don’t feel comfortable talking about my feelings, it’s how I was raised, and I’m trying to get better about that but I also don’t want her to blame herself or think that she’s hurting our friendship. If anything, she’s just hurting me by trying to help when she doesn’t seem to fully understand what’s going on. I genuinely feel like I’m hurting myself more than she’s hurting me but the fact remains, I don’t know how to tell her. I also avoid talking about my future. I want to disappear. I plan on moving states when I have to funds and I don’t want to contact anyone currently in my physical orbit but I know that would be awful so I will at least do limited contact. I know no one will take that well, and I feel bad about wanting to just up and leave but I just want to be alone and I feel like no one understands that and it’s been pretty detrimental to my overall mental health.

Posted Jul 13, 2026, 4:37 PM UTC

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