I'm the OP, and I'll go first: I'm quite lucky on many fronts, but there's a close family member who is very extreme in their views on SARS-CoV-2 and related stuff. Let's call her Alice.
Alice is very intelligent, she's a bit old but not too much. She spends a lot of time on the Internet, and follows pretty much every nut novaxxer you can find. She believes crazy things like "vaccines are made with fetuses from forced abortions", or "Covid is just a common cold", or other conspiracies.
I'm not asking for solutions here. Just sharing this. When I did recently, a friend was almost relieved to know that he wasn't the only one suffering from something like this.
Thankfully, most of the rest of my life is going quite ok. Hope it lasts.
It’s oddly distressing to be around others with beliefs radically different than our own. Especially when our knowledge and philosophy are grossly contradicted. It’s often hard to resolve those feelings, and so we tend to try to change other’s beliefs to relieve our own distress. This is pretty exhausting, for both parties and, oddly enough both are trying to do the same thing - change others. I find the concept of “radical acceptance” helpful. It means to fully accept the situation or environment and letting go of fighting it. That doesn’t mean you like the situation but you let go of fighting what you can’t change. And focus your mental effort on what change (if any) is productive.
I understand your frustration, Simone, but these are the times in which what in your area was called, I believe, "Come Cristo Comanda" (expression for "properly"), was replaced as "Obsessive Compulsive Tendency". Superficiality, the bar. Communication level, the shout.
Your resort is discussion.
Removed the illusionary veil, the same figure that twenty years ago shouted "Education, Education, Education" as The Cure - and it is -, now uses the qualification of "idiots" (or similar) for (apparently) people who take decisions he cannot understand. Clearly, education is interaction, communication, and the latter is its opposite.
By the way: you are calling the friend with «extreme ... views», «very intelligent». If she is intelligent, how can she now believe lunacies? She should have become a lunatic to believe lunacies. There is full appearance of miscommunication in your relation. If you are right, you should be able to convince her. If she is, she should be able to convince you. Ask her to convince you. You don't seem to be debating.
Alice is very intelligent, she's a bit old but not too much. She spends a lot of time on the Internet, and follows pretty much every nut novaxxer you can find. She believes crazy things like "vaccines are made with fetuses from forced abortions", or "Covid is just a common cold", or other conspiracies.
I'm not asking for solutions here. Just sharing this. When I did recently, a friend was almost relieved to know that he wasn't the only one suffering from something like this.
Thankfully, most of the rest of my life is going quite ok. Hope it lasts.