When Being A Good Friend Is Not Healthy

Friendship is a very healthy quality that allows us to establish deep and enriching bonds with people outside our own family. On many occasions, these camaraderie relationships are much deeper and closer than the bonds we maintain with our own family members.

For this to happen, it is essential that this friendship is accompanied by balance and respect for both parties. Otherwise, we can no longer speak of a healthy friendship, but of a toxic relationship.

Effects of a violent environment

Many people come from dysfunctional families in which they have lived, for years, subjected to different types of physical and / or verbal violence. At the time, to survive in these environments in which they always had to show blind obedience to authority (their elders), these creatures adapted and sought camouflage strategies to go unnoticed and thus minimize the chances of receiving a scorn or a hit.

“If there is no conflict, there is no harm” is the maxim that they learn and that is really useful in these first years of life.

We could think that by growing up, leaving the family group and forming their own friendship bonds, these people show themselves capable of freeing themselves from their repressions and they manage to start, from scratch, with their friends.

Submission mechanisms

However, the reality is much more complex, who has learned (and assimilated as natural) the mechanism of submission (blind obedience), will continue to repeat it in other settings, even if the dangers of the past have disappeared.

These adolescents or adults (subjugated as children), when they go out with their friends, they always submit, they allow others to choose the type of salad that is ordered, the movie they are going to see, the trip they are going to take, etc. They never protest, they get carried away and they always conform to what the group decides.

Avoid conflicts

The pattern that operates in the background in these situations is the same that they learned (and assimilated) in childhood: “I don’t want them to get angry with me” or “I don’t mind giving in if others are happy”. To avoid possible conflicts, to avoid the pain that they entail (remember, in the past, emotional and / or physical) they prefer to give in on everything and, by proceeding in this way, they allow others to end up abusing them.

Messages to be docile

On the other hand, in addition to these harmful early childhood learning, these people are also not helped in their liberation process, receiving, from society, continuous messages of the benefits of obedient behavior.

Being generous and sacrificing for others, even if we are harmed ourselves, is an attitude so well seen that it even gives us value and social recognition. Under this type of advice that praises repression, the pattern of submission is reinforced and continues to repeat itself ad infinitum.

Silvia’s case

To find a practical example, I have not had to go very far, since just a few weeks ago, a young woman who came for a consultation, gave me the phrase that has inspired this article. Silvia is working to strengthen her confidence and free herself from toxic relationships, both friends and couples.

She told me that she has a lifelong friend whom she continues to see, even though they hardly have anything in common now. This friendship is an example of an abusive relationship. They always meet when the friend needs someone to vent, but she never lets Silvia talk about her problems.

He always calls her to ask for help, but she is never available when Silvia is the one who needs a favor.

In one of her last outings, the friend told her: “What I like the most about you is that everything feels good to you.” At first glance, this phrase may seem like a compliment, however, under this compliment is a very harmful implicit message: I can abuse you and I know that you will not complain.

This simple and apparently innocent phrase from Silvia’s friend is indicating the existence of an unbalanced relationship, a relationship of submission, obedience and repression.

Silvia had always prided herself on being very good friends with her friends, but after this event, she began to realize that she was always immersed in unbalanced relationships.

Change your attitude

But what happens when we start to assert our opinion and complain when we don’t like something? What happens when we put limits on others and stop allowing them to abuse us? Often many of the friends disappear.

In fact, it is common for this type of people (who present this pattern of submission and repression), when starting their therapy, to tell me that they have a considerable number of friends, but, after a while, in parallel with the progress in their work of liberation, point out to me that the number of friends has decreased.

Friends are lost, but self-esteem is gained.

In the end, the friends that remain are few, but they are the ones who really appreciate us and love us just the way we are.

A non-toxic friendship

In summary, and linking with the beginning of the article, friendship can be very positive and enriching, but as long as it is free from submission and judgment.

Friends can become a second family, much more important than the family of origin, precisely because we have the ability to choose them, but in order to do so, we have to free ourselves from the patterns of submission that we assimilate as natural in our childhood.

Friendship yes, but balanced.