I have a friend called X who has some serious problems with boundaries. She seems to be completely detached from reality and thinks that she loves a teacher, whom she has been practically stalking for months to a year and who has now left their job because of her, to the point of heartbreak now that the teacher, Y, is gone. She now hangs around outside other teacher's rooms, despite being told she isn't allowed to speak to them. Once she attempted to get into a teacher's car, and she writes the first letter of Y's name on her wrist in every day - a pseudo-tatto. She has a social media account in which she rants about her "love interests" saying things like "I can't f****** cope now that she's gone". Anyway, its started to affect her friends now too. She went over to my friend's house the other day. When over at A's house, X tried to go into A's room. Now, A really, REALLY dislikes people going into their room because that is their own safe space. A was on the verge of tears begging X not to go in, but X went in anyway, looked around, and then came out again showing no signs of remorse. Things like this often happen. What should we do? What should she do? X has written suicidal things before on her social media. The school is… Trying? We aren't sure, X lies whenever she goes into counselling, tells the counsellor she is fine and then leaves. The school is trying to keep her away from teachers but… Is there anything we can do?
The school should handle the situation with the former and any current teachers. As long as they're fully aware of what's happening, I don't think you have any further obligations to that situation. As far as your friend's place, and not respecting boundaries there, the simple solution is that if she won't respect people's space, stop inviting her over. If you want to continue offering support based on things she's writing online, that's fine, and that's your choice to make, but you're not obligated to give her access to any place she likes. You could just as well meet for coffee, or a snack somewhere, and talk there.
thanks for the reply! I agree that the school should handle it but they seem to be unable to. At least they are trying, I suppose, but me and my friends agree that if it gets worse we should pressure them into giving X proper psychiatric care. Yeah, will do. Up til now I've avoided inviting her over at all, but we agreed now to never invite her over when its just us, always bring backup. And even then try to avoid it (she can be really pushy).
