My last post in the Survival Mode Series was going to be about repeated trauma and prolonged trauma and how that affects our nervous systems in different and unique ways, but apparently this series of posts has been rather timely and helpful with folks and the same question has come up repeatedly this week so I thought I’d write an extra post to address it for everyone.
How do you navigate the ‘Toxic Friend’ who is making your situation all about them right now?
We all know ‘that’ friend. The one who’s secretly SUPER jealous of you and totally insecure. It can be a very tricky situation to navigate when you’re already going through something awful. Your hard time will be the perfect time for them to throw a tantrum about how you’re not meeting their needs, or how you’re somehow a bad friend right now, blah blah all about them and the lack of attention that they’re getting from you.
Let me ask you a question? How much time do you typically spend trying to build this person up? How many hours of your day are spent listening to their drama and giving them advice? Do you avoid telling them good things about yourself or stuff that happens to you because you know they’ll react poorly?
Narcissists love to accuse other people of being narcissists. Typically very loudly to anyone who will listen. I always find it amazing how often the actual abuser claims that they’re the one being abused. It’s basically gaslighting 101. They will portray themselves as the victim to score sympathy from anyone who will give it to them. It’s how they find their next attention fix to feed on now that you’re not giving them the attention they need. If you’re not going to give it to them, then they will make you the villain in their narrative and use it to get attention from others. These folks are expert manipulators and tend to get very angry if you set a boundary. They’ll get all huffy and up in your face trying to push your buttons to make you react and then try to make you feel bad for it, claiming that now you have to apologize to them. They’re baiting you so they can use your reaction in their next victim narrative to get attention from and bait other people. That’s why they wait for when you’re going through something - you’ll be more reactive. Remember that saying ‘the only people who get mad at you for setting a boundary are the ones who are benefitting from it not being there’? It’s a saying for a reason. They’re going to get their attention fix from you or because of you. So don’t fall for it. You stay calm and keep setting good healthy boundaries. It helps to protect you from people who would cross them and prevents them from using you in their manipulations with others.
Trust me, life is always better without these people in your life, so think of it as a blessing that they’re removing themselves from it for you, even if it’s a little messy at first. True friends have your back when hard times hit. They understand that sometimes life gets busy and awful. They try to help. People who were just feeding off of you are the only ones who throw a fit when life throws you a curve ball and you have less time for them. Remember, rejection is protection. Let them go. And try not to take it personally. It’s not about you. It’s about their ego. Honestly, if someone can’t set their own ego aside and look at what’s happening with empathy for someone they supposedly care about - that’s pathological. That’s not something you can fix for them. That’s something broken in them, not you.
Use your newfound free time as the gift it is and spend it taking care of yourself. You’ll see just how much time and energy you’ve been wasting on a person who wasn’t worth all that effort. It’s always amazing how much stress and how many problems magically disappear along with that person. So thank them for the gift of their absence and move on. Life gets so much better once they’re gone, I promise.
But! Stephanie, the things they’re saying about me to our mutual friends… Trust me, people eventually figure out who the real problem was. You just stay focused on taking care of you. Don’t bad mouth them to ‘do damage control’, that will only make you look petty and will feed into their victim narrative. When they go low, you go high. Keep your head up and just get through it. Anyone who believes their garbage also isn’t worth your time. So don’t waste it by focusing on what other people might be thinking or saying. That’s never helpful. You stay focused on the people who actually have your back. Be grateful for them. They’re worth their weight in gold. Make sure they know it rather than obsessing about folks who don’t deserve even a second of your consideration. Everything else will take care of itself.
I’m going to drop a little science here.
There are two points in our lives when our interactions with others are actually coded as survival mechanisms in our behavioural programming, the first is during our early interactions with our parents - their early approval or rejection of us affects our survivability as infants so there are a few different kinds of strategies that occur during this time - and the second is during our teenage years with our ‘tribe’, or friend group - our likability within our community also determines our survivability within that community. Again, our nervous systems are still programmed for little tribal groups living in the woods. If your tribe kicks you out, your ability to survive alone tends to decrease.
Because behaviours learned during these times are linked to our survival mechanisms, they’re much harder to change when we’re older, even when we realize that they are now maladaptive. Our brains will fight us tooth and nail because, to our nervous systems, these behaviours are the only things that keep us alive. But, that’s a different post. I can write more about that later.
What I want to focus on here is why we tend to hyper-focus on the ‘threats’ in our ‘tribe’. Meaning, during Survival Mode times, the person who is most likely to either bash our head in with a rock or bad mouth us to everyone else, even (and sometimes especially) if it’s all lies, is the threat to our survival. We will focus all of our efforts on winning their approval to secure our safety within our tribe.
Ever heard of trauma-bonding? Manipulative people use this mechanism to get you to pay more attention to them. They’ll manufacture some outrage, get all mad about something, and wait for you to try to fix it. This especially works in women who’s Survival Mode responses tend more towards the Tend and Befriend side of things (more on that in my next post) rather than the outbursts of anger side. Think like how and why Mean Girls keep friends - people are always walking on eggshells around them, worried about what horrible gossip they’ll spread if they don’t keep them happy, etc etc. It’s also how abusive people get otherwise smart and rational people stuck in horrible relationships. It is a very powerful mechanism. The potential loss of our standing within our tribe can keep you trapped in some very terrible and abusive friendships and/or relationships.
In the beginning, these kinds of toxic people will test you with their drama about other people. They’ll ask for your help and advice. Notice that it’s almost always about how someone else in their lives is mistreating them and how they want to make it better. This makes them come off as sympathetic and caring. Then the relationship will evolve to them constantly needing your help and advice. They’re incredibly needy. Almost every conversation will be about them and focused on their own insecurities. You will constantly be trying to build them up. You’ll start to neglect your other friends. At some point, the relationship dynamics will shift. It will almost always be because something is now actually happening in your life that takes your constant attention away from them.
This is when everything changes.
Suddenly, everything will be your fault and you need to fix it. They’ll have emergency after emergency, and lord help you if you’re not immediately available to them to tell them what to do. They’ll start loudly complaining about you to everyone close to you. You have now become the new lure for them, you see. They’ll start with your mutual friends. This is both to punish you and try to get you ‘back in line’ as well as find any weakness - like underlying envy or insecurity in others, especially in regards to you - that they can exploit and manipulate for their benefit.
Good people don’t talk smack about others, even when they’re having trouble with them. Good people don’t exploit other people’s hard times for their emotional benefit. Good people don’t need to turn other people against you.
I know it feels unfair. Often, it’s the auxiliary friends we lose that hurt the most during this time - the people you didn’t think could ever be turned against you like that. Recognize that there had to be underlying stuff there for it to happen. If someone can be turned against you that easily, it’s because that person was actually pretty toxic too. Only someone operating from a place of ego, insecurity, and envy can be turned like that. They become the weapons used against you. It’s better to not have them in your life. Let them go.
Be okay with leaving that tribe. Even if it means that you have to start over. Everyone in it is stuck in the same abuse mechanism as you. So, focus on the good people you have in your life. We all have them - the folks we haven’t been paying attention to because they’re actually safe and not at all a threat to our survival. When you take a step back from the abusive and manipulative person, really think about the folks in your life. Who isn’t causing you drama? Who isn’t making everything all about them and their insecurities? Who’s just normal and healthy and enjoyable to be around because they’re calm and grown up and easy? Switch your focus to them. They’re the folks who don’t give you a hard time for neglecting them. They don’t always have some drama happening that they need you to fix for them. They’re not demanding your time or energy to solve their lives for them. They’re the fully functioning adults. Spend more time with them. Your life will be so much better for it. Trust me.
I know that it sucks. There will always be some collateral damage during the fall out from ending this kind of friendship or relationship. It’s unfair. But you can either dwell on that or focus on all of the good things you still have. Start to rebuild your life. One that the toxic person can’t ruin. Be quiet about it, because they likely will still try. For a while, anyone in your life will become a target for them. But the truly good ones can see through that sh*t. Again, you just keep your head up and let life sort them out. Focus on you and your health and happiness and things really do get better. You get to control how much you let this person affect you. Don’t continue their abuse for them long after they’re gone.
Think about it, a true friend doesn’t need you to be wrong so that they can be right. Fully functioning adults understand that most stuff isn’t about them and that people can act poorly sometimes but that’s usually taken as a sign that something big must be happening in their lives. They don’t use it as an excuse to get mad about their own lack of fulfillment and take it out on you. They ask you to go for a walk or get a coffee and listen. They don’t get all judgey. They don’t accuse you of neglecting them. Children do that. Or adults who haven’t emotionally matured past childhood. Do you really want your friend group full of emotionally immature people working out their own parental or teenage drama on you? Really take a good hard look at the people you call friends and ask yourself if these people are worth the heartache? And then go focus on the actual mature adults. Trust me, they won’t even make you feel bad about however long you were gone for. They’ll just be happy that you’re back now. In fact, most of the time, they’ve actually been waiting for you to see how awful that person actually was and will be proud of you for moving past them.
As always, if you need some help with this, drop me a line. It’s amazing how much a little outside perspective on the situation can help.
You’re going to get through this. I promise. In the immortal words of Eric Draven (The Crow): “It can’t rain all the time.”
Till next time, Folks! And Happy Halloween!!