Whenever I speak with someone who is more "down" than up (whether this is happening in my personal life---or professionally at my office), there always is at least one common thread present. That thread is what I will be speaking about today in this post. It is the thread of "disconnection"...
Just yesterday one of my fifteen-year old clients was struggling with identifying exactly "what" it is that has caused her to risk what she has over the past several months. It took a little while, but she finally was able to articulate it as follows: "I don't have enough friends." Gotcha. So let's talk about how and why this state of being can happen to any of us at any time in our lives....
Friendship is considered to be a gift. It is a gift to you and a gift to the person you are friends with. Unfortunately, many so-called "friends" are not really friends at all. I can remember as a young woman in my mid-teens and early 20s how easy it was to spot OR to be someone who just needed a warm body to join them at the bar (or a party) on any given night. Being authentic "friends" didn't even enter into the equation. If you were alive, breathing, and didn't look like a complete hot mess...you qualified for receiving a phone call around 8:00PM asking "Do you want to go to Coral Gables tonite?" (Don't ask, Coral Gables used to be a real place o.k.?!) Back then, it didn't matter if you had any real conversations or not while "out" with one another; the whole goal was to party party party and then make sure you made it home before 3:00AM. I was just as guilty of treating my "friends" back then as objects as they did me. There were too many new people to meet (as it usually is when you are 16-25) and if people ended up dropping out of your life or you dropped out of theirs, who cared? There were always more where they came from!
Yet it is this type of thinking that is at the very heart of the problem. When we start getting used to loving things and "opportunties" more than we do people, we can get into a kind of trouble that follows us throughout our adult lives. People are NOT things to be used to advance our opportunities...make us "look" good....or to help us only when we are in real trouble. We are ALL of us people each with our own unique needs, wants, feelings, attitudes, opinions,and beliefs! Even a fool knows when he or she is being treated like a thing. It doesn't feel good.
Treating each other as "equals" instead of "I'm up here and you're down there" or "You're up here and I'm down there" is the first step towards making the "right" kinds of friends for yourself. Don't forget it. It's easy to forget it especially when you meet someone whom you feel is "SO great!" or "SO together!" or "SO amazing!" Nobody is that great, together, or amazing o.k.? Get over it. We're all equals!
Having said this, the "next" issue I see that most influences a person's ability to make or keep "good" friendships is how they handle conflict/disappointment/incompatible (fill in the blanks) which may arise. I had a childhood friend who had a whole lot of expectations regarding her "friends" that I never realized until she started yelling at me about what I "did" and "didn't do" as her friend (that she of course did NOT like!). This after watching her "lose" a considerable amount of friends over the years for similarly self-perceived transgressions committed against her. You don't "owe" your friends a good life...you don't "owe" them an entertaining evening (though I have to say I am really good at that one!)...and you certainly don't "owe" them happiness if they aren't happy people to begin with! Some friends you make may end up being more "high maintenance" over time than you ever dared to imagine. It's o.k. to either forgive them and accept who they are while maintaining your friendship....just as it is equally o.k. to give them the ditch. Just be honest with yourself (and with them!) if you are going the route of the ditch. Nobody is going to get "better" if they don't know what they did to ruin the friendship (in your eyes that is!). So tell them. And don't be a chicken about it either.
The last issue I am going to bring up about friendship has to do with knowing yourself well enough so you can "be" yourself in the context of a friendship relationship. If you don't know who you truly are, you are ripe for becoming anyone you "think" anyone else wants you to be....which is not a good thing in the long run. This ties in to the "you're a person and not an object" issue described earlier in this post. Just because someone approaches you as a potential "new" friend does NOT mean you have to respond if you don't want to. Did you always say "yes" to any person who asked you out on a date? DOH! You don't have to always say "yes"...and you can say "no". It's o.k. It's not the end of the world. Rejection whether it is real or perceived is neither fatal nor contagious! If you need time to figure out who you are, please take it! There's nothing worse than a "friend" who is so afraid to be themselves that they end up feeling like a flea on a dog's back for anyone who knows them!
So---there you have it....friends!
Just yesterday one of my fifteen-year old clients was struggling with identifying exactly "what" it is that has caused her to risk what she has over the past several months. It took a little while, but she finally was able to articulate it as follows: "I don't have enough friends." Gotcha. So let's talk about how and why this state of being can happen to any of us at any time in our lives....
Friendship is considered to be a gift. It is a gift to you and a gift to the person you are friends with. Unfortunately, many so-called "friends" are not really friends at all. I can remember as a young woman in my mid-teens and early 20s how easy it was to spot OR to be someone who just needed a warm body to join them at the bar (or a party) on any given night. Being authentic "friends" didn't even enter into the equation. If you were alive, breathing, and didn't look like a complete hot mess...you qualified for receiving a phone call around 8:00PM asking "Do you want to go to Coral Gables tonite?" (Don't ask, Coral Gables used to be a real place o.k.?!) Back then, it didn't matter if you had any real conversations or not while "out" with one another; the whole goal was to party party party and then make sure you made it home before 3:00AM. I was just as guilty of treating my "friends" back then as objects as they did me. There were too many new people to meet (as it usually is when you are 16-25) and if people ended up dropping out of your life or you dropped out of theirs, who cared? There were always more where they came from!
Yet it is this type of thinking that is at the very heart of the problem. When we start getting used to loving things and "opportunties" more than we do people, we can get into a kind of trouble that follows us throughout our adult lives. People are NOT things to be used to advance our opportunities...make us "look" good....or to help us only when we are in real trouble. We are ALL of us people each with our own unique needs, wants, feelings, attitudes, opinions,and beliefs! Even a fool knows when he or she is being treated like a thing. It doesn't feel good.
Treating each other as "equals" instead of "I'm up here and you're down there" or "You're up here and I'm down there" is the first step towards making the "right" kinds of friends for yourself. Don't forget it. It's easy to forget it especially when you meet someone whom you feel is "SO great!" or "SO together!" or "SO amazing!" Nobody is that great, together, or amazing o.k.? Get over it. We're all equals!
Having said this, the "next" issue I see that most influences a person's ability to make or keep "good" friendships is how they handle conflict/disappointment/incompatible (fill in the blanks) which may arise. I had a childhood friend who had a whole lot of expectations regarding her "friends" that I never realized until she started yelling at me about what I "did" and "didn't do" as her friend (that she of course did NOT like!). This after watching her "lose" a considerable amount of friends over the years for similarly self-perceived transgressions committed against her. You don't "owe" your friends a good life...you don't "owe" them an entertaining evening (though I have to say I am really good at that one!)...and you certainly don't "owe" them happiness if they aren't happy people to begin with! Some friends you make may end up being more "high maintenance" over time than you ever dared to imagine. It's o.k. to either forgive them and accept who they are while maintaining your friendship....just as it is equally o.k. to give them the ditch. Just be honest with yourself (and with them!) if you are going the route of the ditch. Nobody is going to get "better" if they don't know what they did to ruin the friendship (in your eyes that is!). So tell them. And don't be a chicken about it either.
The last issue I am going to bring up about friendship has to do with knowing yourself well enough so you can "be" yourself in the context of a friendship relationship. If you don't know who you truly are, you are ripe for becoming anyone you "think" anyone else wants you to be....which is not a good thing in the long run. This ties in to the "you're a person and not an object" issue described earlier in this post. Just because someone approaches you as a potential "new" friend does NOT mean you have to respond if you don't want to. Did you always say "yes" to any person who asked you out on a date? DOH! You don't have to always say "yes"...and you can say "no". It's o.k. It's not the end of the world. Rejection whether it is real or perceived is neither fatal nor contagious! If you need time to figure out who you are, please take it! There's nothing worse than a "friend" who is so afraid to be themselves that they end up feeling like a flea on a dog's back for anyone who knows them!
So---there you have it....friends!