Constantly being ranted to by a close friend

(I just wanted to apologise in advance for how long this is. I really needed to vent 😅 sorry)

I have this friend that I’ve been friends with for a good few years now, and I do care a lot about them. I find it fun to hang out with them, and I appreciate them a lot.

however, I’m starting to feel like she mostly likes me because I’m a therapist friend to her. She rants to me practically every single day, sometimes about small inconveniences.

I’m someone who my friends come to for help quite often, and I’m happy to help them. However, if it’s practically every day, and they open up the text by ranting and don’t thank me, it kind of gets tiring, and this is what that friend does.

They rant to me a lot, and don’t thank me after ranting. Most of our daily conversations are her ranting and me listening and trying to help. Either that, or she’s talking about herself. She’ll sometimes listen to what I talk about, but the conversation mostly goes back to her and sometimes she also doesn’t show that much interest in what I’m saying.

Sometimes, she rants to me about things that I can’t really help with. Things that she should be talking with a professional about. I’ve hinted toward her maybe getting a therapist last year, and she told me that she was searching. Well, it’s been months, and still no therapist. It gets mentally taxing, as I don’t know how to help her. Most I can do is listen and try to give advice where I can, but this isn’t something I can help very much with. And plus, she doesn’t really seem to want to help herself either.

It’s like she rants to me, and then goes and talks about fun things with her friends. I feel like she basically dumps her emotional baggage on me and once she feels better she goes and talks to her other friends :(

She says that she likes the fact that I can tell if something’s up with her if she texts differently, but I hate having to be so nervous if she has even a bit of a change in the way she texts. I get nervous that she might be annoyed at me, bcos she doesn’t typically tell me. It stresses me out. Yet, she doesn’t seem to notice that there’s any issue when I tell her that I’m “losing interest in a lot of the things I do.” If it were me, I would’ve immediately identified that as a subtle call for help from her. She didn’t notice. I know people are different but it annoys me how she expects me to be able to identify even the smallest change in her mood and texting while she can’t even see my calls for help.

She knows I have mental health issues yet she never really makes that much of an effort to ask how I am. Any “how are you”s mostly end up in her talking about herself. Ranting about herself. I feel like she can have mostly normal conversations with her other friends that don’t involve her mostly talking about herself and mostly ranting. It gets so tiring and i sometimes get very annoyed at her when she gives me dry replies to me talking about my day/ myself. It’s so hurtful, especially when I never do that to her.

all in all, I just wish that I wouldn’t be treated as such a therapist. I feel like she really only likes me for the help I give her when she vents, and not much else, and it makes me sad. :(