Hi Anita,

Thank you so much for replying. Yes these definitions that you shared seem to really apply to my friend lately. She’s believing in some absurd things, and this isn’t the first time. She’s fallen into cult-like groups before and also has a tendency to be paranoid. example, after nearly every breakup she thinks the guy is stalking her. I don’t know if there is truth to any of it, but I find it very hard to believe that EVERY single ex boyfriend becomes so obsessed with her that they all end up stalking her. Also she seems to have problems in every workplace with other women, and ends up getting into HR battles with women whom she thinks have it out for her. So in a sense I am a bit alerted that now she has turned these conspiracy theories onto me. She’s saying minor things, like I purposely “liked” something on Twitter so that she would see it and get offended. That wasn’t the case at all. LOL. My husband did joke that I should stay away from her or she will get me on some kind of dangerous person list with these extreme people she seems to be in with. But I’m not all that worried because she lives out west and I’m on the east coast, so there’s thousands of miles of distance.

My biggest hangup I think is my ego, telling me I SHOULD be able to make this work, because I am so kind and compassionate, that I don’t want to think my long time friendship can fall victim to a simple difference of politics. I am taking it as a personal failure that I couldn’t make it work. I think that when I really think deeply about it, that’s the hardest part to let go of. Her as a person, we have nothing in common anymore, can’t see each other often because of distance, and this tension now just seems insurmountable. The things she said really just distubed me and as much as I want to a) snap back and say something nasty to stick up for myself, b) say we are better than this and “fix it” as was my role in my family all my life, I know that the ONLY viable choice right now is c) LET IT GO. It’s just hard because it confirms my failure to fix it.