I need help helping my girlfriend with her stress. We've been together for 3.75 years, i'm 21, shes 18, and we're both in college. She is stressed about everything, her mom is getting a divorce(not from her father), her mom is having job troubles, she has so much to do in school, and she thinks she has no friends and they all dislike her.
She is very bad at dealing with her stress, not good at taking criticism at least from family, gets her feelings easily hurt, and constantly telling me what is going wrong in her life and how much she hates all the things listed above. I like to listen and want to help but you can quickly see why its a double edged sword for me.
When she talks to me it seems like she wants my help, but when I try to give her a suggestion she generally just gets mad and tells me how that is not going to work. For example she says her friends ignore her and are rude to her, so she will say something to them about it which just causes more hostility between her and the friend which makes her feel like no one likes her. I tell her to ingore whatever they are doing, and she responds that it won't work because she's not the type of person to just let them be rude to her. I don't know how her friends think of her, but when she snaps and tells them off I don't imagine it is helping her at all.
If i were to suggest that maybe the problem is her and that she needs to not take it so hard (wouldn't say it in those terms), she either gets very pissed off at me or will start crying and telling me how she is the worst human being and that she is such a bitch. To which I have to respond by comforting her to make her feel like she is not the worst human being and not a bitch which seems to make her go back to feeling like she doesn't need to change anything. It seems to me like she goes from thinking its someone else fault to thinking she is the worst, there is no in between, its either complete bitch or complete angel to her, never a minor screwup in between.
So i'm stuck. I don't know how to help but feel like i'm closest to her and that I'm the one that needs to help. I have thought about talking to a counselor at school, and may do that if anyone thinks its a good idea.
Part of the problem may be me, as I am almost never stressed out and have a hard time understanding how other people get so incredibly stressed out and so I don't know how to help her.
What do i do? How do I help her to get stress free, to possibly not take everything so hard, and to realize her faults without thinking she is the worst person(because she's the best
).