BG: I am a regular on an advice board for people who are caregivers to people with a specific disease. I am fairly knowledgeable about the disease and enjoy giving people feedback they find helpful. I also enjoy interacting with the other members on the board, who are a pretty remarkable set of people. /end BG
One member of the board constantly posts for advice about the person she is caring for. However, her personality issues get in the way of anyone actually helping her. People will give her well researched, carefully thought out suggestions and she will reject them because of personal biases or because it isn't the answer she wanted to hear. The threads tend to go like this:
"I am having XYZ problem with my loved one. We have already tried treatment A and it isn't working as well as I'd like. Any suggestions?"
People will respond with "Well, there's treatments B and C that are standard and a lot of people have had success with." And her response will be something like:
"Well, I am against treatment B because of (obscure, unlikely side effect that is mild compared to dealing with inadequately treated XYZ problem) and treatment C would probably work and what the doctor recommended but I refuse to financially support the company that produces it for moral reasons, so that's out. I guess my loved one will just have to suffer and I'll just have to deal with it."
There is an endless litany of excuses along those lines that basically boil down to this poster not accepting the realities of the disease. She would rather bang her head against the wall than try anything outside her very rigid parameters. When people have pointed out flaws in her reasoning she gets super defensive and has even had threads locked.
It is disruptive to the board because people will put in a LOT (like hours worth) of research trying to help this person only for her to immediately dismiss the suggestion for flimsy reasons (which, much later, she has sometimes even admitted were flimsy). If someone tries to gently suggest that the problem lies in her attitude she shuts them down and complains to the moderators.
I think that she may have a martyr complex and enjoy showing off what she sees as her "high standards" but what is more like her being a control freak and insanely rigid. She's killing herself from stress doing it but I think she perversely enjoys it. The sad thing is that she is putting her own feelings before the wellbeing of the loved one she cares for.
I am tempted to either put a block on her so I can't read her posts, or complain to the mods that she is basically antagonizing people by asking for help and then always rejecting it because it's a huge waste of everyone's time and energy.