• Relationships How to Walk Away from Toxic Friendships
  • Love Find out if you are a toxic lover
  • Psycho Learn to identify and break a toxic friendship

Friendship is one of the feelings we value most, along with love for family. The luck of finding good friends is a guarantee of joy and well-being that requires mutual care. They are the ones who give us the support we need in difficult times and help us grow as people.

But if that were not enough, there is more: a large-scale Swedish study showed that people with fewer social relationships had a 50% higher risk of dying from cardovascular diseases. And another, published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, argued that those with strong social support have more favorable prognoses and fewer symptoms of depression.

There is a reason why it is said that whoever finds a friend finds a treasure ... However, there are times when friendships not only do not bring anything positive, but become a source of stress and discomfort.

If it has happened to you, forget it: it was not a good relationship but a toxic friendship. When a bond begins to take this drift, the other person ceases to be for us a refuge, a safe place, and becomes instability and suffering. Sometimes, the feelings behind that bond are envy, selfishness, emotional dependence, lack of empathy...

How to Identify a Toxic Friendship

To identify them, from the online psychological care platform TherapyChat explain that sometimes, toxic relationships are revealed when a close person encourages you to do things that can harm you. These 'friends' are not a relief, nor a consolation for our problems, but cause or favor them. Thus, they try to influence the other to carry out acts that will bring problems with the family, the couple, work, the authorities, etc.

Criticism is also one of the most visible warning signs. They are not jokes, nor advice that one party directs to the other in a constructive way, but subtle observations that disapprove of your behavior or your opinions, piercing your self-esteem little by little, without big fights.

One of the characteristics of these relationships is that they take root without us realizing it because of the emotional bond that binds us to that other person. While in the eyes of others the dynamic is very evident, from within it is very difficult to recognize it. Once you've done that, the next and inescapable step is to break up with it.

How to get out of a toxic friendship?

  • Detecting a toxic relationship is the first step to curb all the discomfort it generates. And for this, there is nothing as effective as listening to what our emotions reveal. Do you continually get angry with that other person? Do you feel guilty in their company? Do you feel like you control the relationship and don't allow you to be authentic? Then, it is likely that you are facing a toxic friendship, detailed from TherapyChat. If, in addition, they continue, you notice that you always prioritize their needs instead of yours and you feel pressured to do things that you do not like just to please her, it is probably not a healthy relationship. However, the determining factor in identifying if you have a toxic friendship is to analyze how exhausting the idea of spending time with that person is. If after each encounter, you feel overwhelmed, it is very likely that you are dealing with a toxic person. Once you are aware of this reality, then you will be ready to take the next step:
  • Learn to deal with it. At this point, it's crucial to accept that toxic people don't change easily, so instead of focusing your efforts on asking your friend to behave differently, tell them how you feel. Telling them how it makes you feel can be a good way to put the relationship in perspective and get them to commit to changing their attitudes.
  • It is recommended that you build a kind of protective shield to stay away from that negative influence and also, mark limits in your bond.
  • And, if you still feel that the relationship with that other person does not work and you get all the energy, maybe the solution is to mark distance.

How are the friends who do love you well?

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The American psychotherapist Erin Falconer has just published How not to break up with your friends (Zenith, 2023), whose subtitle, Learn to take care of the relationships that add value to your life, is a harbinger of the content and objective of the book. In it, the author tells how the painful loss of a friend led her to a safe place: she preferred mediocrity, reducing emotional expectations to avoid future pain.

But she also explains how the pandemic took her out of that lukewarm comfort zone and how she reflected on her friendships. He analyzed who were expendable people and who he longed for in his heart and determined that it was better to look for sincere and meaningful links. Eye, who also reviewed how to be oneself best friend to others.

Falconer devotes one of his chapters to dissecting what a good friendship looks like. The first thing, he says, is not to judge the other person but the relationship you maintain, that is, if it works, if you like how you feel and also how you behave inside it. A good friend is not one to just hang out with and should be a bond that can evolve and overcome conflicts, tensions, and even absences.

In his opinion, these are the qualities that a good relationship should have:

  • Positivity." It's not about always being like castanets, but in the context of a friendship, positivity is everything that generates a good feeling," says Falconer. It's also not about not being able to rant with your friends, but the important thing is that everyone, in the end, feels good.
  • Constancy. You have to take care of it. If you don't see each other more than every six months, the bond weakens because it is not possible to cross the surface. But beware, it is essential to find the balance between freedom and commitment.
  • Vulnerability. With a good friend you should be able to show your fears, your defects, your weak points. Not only when something happens to you that requires support, such as a breakup, the loss of a loved one, etc.
  • Confidence. Trust is essential. The author insists that, in the face of a confidence, "you should not feel the need to say: 'Please, let him stay among us.'"
  • Balance. We need friendships where there is a certain reciprocity, that is, there must be synchrony between what you need from that person and what she needs from you. If not, the balance is unbalanced.
  • Limits. They mark which behaviors you find intolerable and which are not in a friend. For example, if you have little time and someone is consistently late for your appointments, "they're making it very clear to you what they think of your time." Other limits are set by one's own values. A friend doesn't have to share them, but they do have to respect them.
  • Sincerity. There must be enough trust for a friend to give us his honest opinion about something. That does not mean that he is constantly giving his assessment, if you have not asked him.
  • Rupture and repair. Do not avoid conflict with a friend. It is comfortable, but it is not a symptom of a deep friendship. Discrepancies must arise, but you must also be able to work on the repair. That's growth.
  • Time. A good friendship takes time. The faster they start, the faster they finish. "You need to be aware of how long you've known that person and how much you know about them," says the psychotherapist.
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