These Skills Attract Great Friends to Your Life (4-Video Compilation)

research shows that people you hang out with have a bigger effect on how your life goes than just about anything else they influence the choices you make they influence the standards you set for yourself they influence the other people that you're going to meet in the future but the weird thing is people hardly talk about this we talk about romance and how to date but did anyone ever teach you how to have friends no it's assumed that we'll just pick it up by osmosis or from our amilies if this is something your parents didn't model for you or they couldn't model for you because they were really limited or damaged in this area too you are so not alone especially for people who grow up with trauma learning to have friends and be a friend is so tricky maybe you struggle to have friends or you have friends but the relationship stays on the shallow end and you don't get close or you get close but then your trauma symptoms can get the better of you and something happens to trigger you and the whole thing blows up big argument little argument that you can't really recover from or the friendship just crumbles has this happened to you I'm guessing it's happened a number of times if you grew up with abuse and neglect there's a high probability that having friends is a part of life that gets hard for you sometimes and this is a big reason why unhealed trauma can be so devastating to your life over time you end up isolated you don't have those people who love you and get you and who are there for you when you need them this is really important not having that is a big setback and I'm sure that it's robbed you in some ways of the life that you deserve but the good news is this can change and you can heal and the path of your life can start getting better right now if you can develop some friendship skills and learn to form friendships with good people now this is something I had to really work on in my life my trauma symptoms kind of got worse over time in my early adulthood and so good friends that I had were pulling away and I didn't know what was wrong now I know now we all know it's complex PTSD and it has a common pattern of symptoms that once you know what they are even if you haven't totally healed them yet it can clarify what may have been going on and going wrong in your friendships and what part of these problems is something you can change so here's what I learned first it's so important that you pick the right people for friends because if you're like a lot of people with childhood PTSD you find that troubled people have this funny Allure for you what is it about them it's a mystery they feel so charmingly comfortable so unthreatening so much like home and maybe you have a history of buddying up with the most troubled kid in the class or somebody who turns out to have a drug problem or people who are really not available to be good friends so the first thing is to start identifying who would be the good healthy people for you to hang out with now we talk about this a lot in my dating and relationships course and in my connection course because this broken picker problem is really common for people with childhood PTSD but the way you choose friends can be just as rickety now the key to get clear with yourself is to actually write down what characteristics are absolutely essential for you so let's say it's that people are kind right they're honest they reciprocate your interest in Friendship you don't have to know these people yet but you're defining what the right people are like how you will recognize them and then you also spell out what characteristics you cannot have in friends and this might be characteristics where you had a blind spot before and you know it brings your life down so I used to have a blind spot for people who had serious drug addictions first I wouldn't see it and then I would see it but I'd be too afraid of loneliness to say anything or stop hanging out with them and I had no business hanging out with serious addicts I was never into drugs myself but that's what I grew up with and that's where I felt at home and so I'd use kind of fuzzy reasoning to rationalize staying friends with serious addictions and it would introduce all kinds of trouble into my life drama shame people stealing my stuff I know right it didn't fit with the other parts of my life where I was fairly functional and I had to make a decision that I could not have that in my life anymore not with the blind spot that I personally have and the way I couldn't seem to keep boundaries at the time so you write down what your lines are what characteristics are a big no way for people that you let into your life okay so that helps keep certain people out and as you may be fearing it's true that setting boundaries about who can be in your life could introduce a period of loneliness you end some friendships and the new people haven't arrived yet you haven't found them yet now I know Finding good healthy people is easier said than done when you had a crappy childhood sometimes trauma symptoms show up that make things harder for that too maybe you get emotionally intense and fall apart friends might stand by you at first but part of falling apart is it makes a person very inwardly focused and in the long run this can push friends away too or Worse maybe your stress comes out as a tendency to criticize and blame your friends when you're feeling overwhelmed so there's conflict you're hurting feelings they don't want to deal with that so they pull away or maybe you're the one who pulls away so these are common trauma driven Dynamics and reactions to ordinary stress that can happen in a friendship and even if you're able to keep your feelings under control enough to not ruin everything in a big explosion that kind of self-control can really limit the depth of a relationship it can limit how much fun the Friendship can be if you're just holding yourself together tightly all the time there's not the Deep connection and trust between you and your friend that would be needed for a friendship to last and so over time being too controlled will cause a friendship to fade too and it's a sad and hard part of trauma healing that this this part can be so hard to change but you can change these Dynamics by working on yourself so one of the first things you can do to have great relationships is just pick good people and then work over time to be a good friend when you want to hang out with somebody I would suggest if it's at all awkward invite them to do something with you so not just random hanging out but an activity with good friends it's normal to get together without a plan or without an activity and that's really good with somebody you're already close with where there's no need to have a plan but if you're just getting to know somebody doing some activity can kind of take the focus off the interpersonal Dynamic so much you know a little is good but a lot can be overwhelming now one of my favorite examples I always say this bowling right the bowling alley near me closed during the pandemic I hate that if you go to a movie with somebody right you can't talk if you go to a restaurant you have to talk the whole time but if you go bowling you can kind of talk Bowl talk bowl and if things get weird you need a breather you can just really focus on the Bowling for a little while and then come back to the conversation so doing things helps the next thing is about being a good listener now everybody knows this but try this okay when you get together with your friend spend 30 minutes just doing an experiment only listen to them don't talk about yourself and instead focus on listening and responding to what they're saying about themselves now I'm not saying do this forever but just as an experiment and as practice just listen to the other person and reflect on what they're saying and give them feedback now it may feel really uncomfortable to not talk about yourself at all right um because what's normal what people do often is you say hey this thing happened to me and it's normal for somebody else to say oh that happens to you me too one time you know and then you tell a story about how it happened to you so it's natural to relate information about yourself when someone tells you something about themselves that's a way many of us think that we're being a good friend and sometimes it is but when it goes too far it can make the other person feel interrupted and deflated about something they were trying to be heard about so it's good to really you know hear what someone's trying to say to really hear it so when they tell you about something that happened you can go wow what was that like for you and then what happened right and uh well wow that's that's weird you you you listen to what they're saying and respond to what they're saying don't relate it to yourself that's how you can get closer to a person 30 minutes just try not talking about yourself okay it will teach you a lot so this one time my husband and I went to a party where we didn't really know people and we were kind of anxious about the party because we both would prefer to be at a party where we know somebody so just as a strategy to make the evening fun we decided to do the experiment and we made a rule for the whole evening just a secret rule we didn't tell anybody we were doing it for the whole party we only listened and talked about what other people were saying we never ever talked about ourselves and it was funny we were so popular we got invited by two other couples to have dinner sometimes and honestly that rarely happens you know when we meet people they didn't know anything about us and here's the funny thing they never asked a single thing about us right see they weren't great listeners either and it it didn't feel great to never be asked but it really like raised my awareness about wow you know that is not what's going on in a conversation with a lot of people some are really great at it so anyway we never actually ended up having dinner with anybody but it was a really good lesson for me that you can just listen and you can actually learn a lot about people it reminds me um when I used to I I used to have this work that involved a lot of travel and a bunch of us would travel to other cities and do a consulting job and then travel somewhere else and a lot of times people got together and had wine at dinner and at a certain phase of in my life I decided I just didn't want to drink alcohol anymore and for like eight years I didn't drink any alcohol and um it was so interesting because when you sit together and you don't drink alcohol with people who are just having some wine with dinner like they they get very open about stuff and um and I was just very a aware of myself and it was a little bit of a contact high to be around people who were having a glass or two of wine so I felt relaxed I felt like myself but I wasn't accidentally self-disclosing a bunch of stuff which is what especially back at that time of my life was likely to have happened and the other thing I liked about it is that like if I would go to the ladies room at 10:00 at night and go to the mirror to wash my hands I look in the mirror and my face was still fresh it wasn't all like red with running mascara it was a nice little thing so you know not drinking wine and doing a really good job of listening is a way to really show up with other people with all your faculties and I'm not saying you have to be so perfect all the time that you're just with your faculties all the time sometimes you get to relax but I am saying if you struggle to make friends anything you can do to heighten your awareness of what the dynamic is and just pay attention to what your natural inclinations are what's hard for you what other people are like like I was really surprised I thought that these other people at the party were people that we had to impress but the fact that they never asked about us and talked about themselves you know uh I don't I don't know that just wasn't that impressive it was okay you know it just wasn't that impressive though so I learned a lot of people are not good listeners but just about everyone is hungry to be listened to so here's another thing to keep in mind and it's another form of good listening is don't give unsolicited advice if somebody says oh I had a hard day yesterday I had a headache all day you don't have to jump in and tell them what you do about a headache and go oh you know what you have to do they're not really telling you about the headache unless people specifically ask for advice hey what would you do if you had a headache it's you know it's just better to listen and hear what it is they really wanted you to hear which is that they had a hard day it was so hard they had a headache the whole time and then you can say wow that sounds like a hard day what did you do that's how a friend listens so similar to that you can give them affirmation you can give them a word of Praise recognizing something good about them a compliment people like to be appreciated more than you might think and obviously you shouldn't do it too much it you know at a certain point it becomes manipulative of other people and that's not good but when you can give a sincere compliment make it a clean compliment don't say oh gosh your blouse is so pretty mine is so ugly though but I love yours that's not a clean compliment that's kind of like loaded right you're putting them on the spot to say something about your blouse no yours is very nice a clean compliment is when you go you know that shirt you're wearing just looks great it's a really good color for you that's it and you just make it clean nice clean compliment and people like it and it boosts their Spirits they need encouragement and they like it when they're accomplishments and the good things about them are noticed that's just a good friend thing to do is to notice and encourage what is good in another person now here's another good listening thing when your friend has told you about a big thing they're expecting maybe they're giving a speech at an event next week or they they have a final or they tell you about something that was hard like they recently had shoulder surg surgy a good friend follows up on that maybe calls them a few days later and says hey I was just checking in how'd the speech go or how's your shoulder doing today if you think about it people who do that for you those are the people who you end up closest with that's like showing up for people and actually paying attention not just in the moment in the conversation but over time that's what a good friend is who you know it's not just small talk it's it's it's connection it's it's a durable connection between you that's what a good friend is if you want to have a friend you've got to be a friend and if you want to have a good friend you've got to be a good friend now another thing is to be a believer in your friend everybody has self-doubt and when we become friends with people we'll begin to reveal what those doubts are and they might be something like well you know I'm thinking about changing jobs but I think I might be kidding myself that anyone would ever hire me so you know what a good friend is it's someone who sees sees your very best potential and believes in you and can express that to you and remind you of your strengths and why you are employable and supports you in finding ways to make that happen that's how to be a believer in your friend I think a lot of people we tend to think that if we don't put somebody down then we're not causing any harm but actually people need to have a witness that they're doing something right and that there's potential for them to do something even better so good friends can believe in the best possible outcome and always encourage a friend toward that next step a good friend also shows up for the hard stuff and that means picking people up from the airport visiting them in the hospital helping them move their furniture and sitting with them when they're grieving when they've lost a loved one I know that when there was a period in my life where I had a lot of tragedy I really found out who my friends were a lot of people who I thought were good friends they disappeared they didn't help they didn't even call or they said let me know if there's anything I can do or I don't know what to say you don't even know what you need when you're in that state so a when people say you know if there's anything I can do you'll notice nothing really follows up and that's kind of baked into that comment of like let me know if there's anything I can do there are special people who know how to ask if you need help they know what to say they suggest a thing or two they say would it help if I picked up some groceries on my way over and would it be okay if I wash these dishes right now it was the people who did that for me who took the time to come see me in the hospital even though it was far away and so boring and creepy and hard to park and they are the people who made a huge difference in my life right when I was the most depressed and they encouraged me and took me for walks around the corridors in the long run those are the people who became the lifelong friends it's a beautiful thing to do for other people so you want to show up for the good times the weddings the parties the celebrations but you ALS want to show up for the hard stuff and a good friend shows up for the good and the bad you never want to talk behind your friend's back that's important I'm just going to say this you don't really want to say anything bad about anyone who's not present but especially your friends don't ever talk about them behind their back I mean even if you know for a fact they're never going to know just on the off chance that the energy reaches them you know our nervous systems are connected and we can feel these things in each other you know if somebody says no I'm not mad you can feel when they're mad right we're connected the people we love especially you know can feel that so you don't want to talk about your friends behind their back have their back protect their identity protect who they are protect their hearts and finally stay in touch with them this is one of the terrible things about contemporary times is that we think well I said hello on Instagram and I texted happy birthday or I stuck it on Facebook but if you're not talking to people face to face or at least on the telephone it's really hard to sustain a close friendship messaging on social media it's not nothing but for those purposes it just doesn't count so whenever you can go see people face to face if you can't see them face to face talk on the phone or video chat if you can't talk on the phone send an email and if you can't send an email send a text and if you can't do that okay fine talk to them on social media if I I do all those things for people they don't do it for me then go back to the beginning of the video where I said the first thing is how you choose people it's all about how you choose your friends so these are some of the ways that you can be a better friend one really hard but ultimately positive part of healing your past trauma is when the friends who used to be a great match for you just don't fit anymore because you're changing now some people don't want you to change and some are okay with it but the way that they're dysfunctional will gradually start to be more visible to you as you heal your own dysfunction and it's easy to think on any given day that you know you're all healed now and maybe even you would look down on people who are still stuck in their trauma driven behaviors it's okay to set your boundaries on behaviors you don't want in your life anymore but I want to show you a middle ground between codependent hanging out with people who are still dysfunctional even though they drag you down and on the other hand treating them like they're you know evil or you know treating them with contempt there's a place for them in your life but with boundaries so this often happens when people have begun to emerge from trauma driven living but they haven't yet learned to set boundaries totally normal phase of healing so my letter today is from someone I'll call Riley and she writes hello Anna thank you for all you do for so many people I just broke off a 4-year friendship with a friend who goes into a rage I ended contact with her 2 years ago and resumed contact with her a year ago assuming that we both had grown in our recovery all right I'm circling things with the my pink pencil here today and I'm going to come back to some of this let's just read through Riley's letter and I can see what's going on and then see if I can help what precipitated the final breakup was her raging at me and cursing at me because I had refused to pay the valet for her car she threatened to make me get out of her car and cursed at me I knew there was no point in arguing with her in the state she was in so I sat silently along the way said a tur goodbye then got out got into my car and left I texted her that night to tell her that I wanted to end the relationship and then blocked her phone number we still have a recovery meeting in common at this point I want nothing to do with her I want nothing else to do with her if I were to see her at the meeting I don't even want to acknowledge her presence not to punish her but to show myself enough respect that I decide who has a place in my life would you say hello to such a person I won't leave that meeting as I have a leadership role and a spony with whom I support but I don't feel any need to engage with this former friend either verbally or via technology please offer your thoughts if you're willing thank you Riley all right I love that you have a recovery meeting that you go to that's really positive so I want to tell you something based on my experience I know how it is when you are actively working on your healing which you are um you are going to go through changes but when you're in a recovery meeting by its nature everyone in that meeting has problems so I think there's this expectation sometimes when people get into a 12st step program or something they go oh my gosh you know um there was this guy he hit on me what a terrible program hey you know people go to the they go to these meetings because they are struggling so a person needs to have boundaries at meetings and often when you first get there you don't have boundaries and you don't have a red flag detector so I see what happened here you got there and in your earlier phase of recovery you became friends with somebody who would rage at you and probably there's something in your past and your programming that made you think oh that's okay I can put up with raging and you just got to a point in you're healing when you're like no I cannot put up with people raging at me I don't want to to do it anymore and you set a boundary so that's good you got out of the car you ended the relationship great so here's the thing you are seeing each other in meetings now and you even have somebody you sponsor who is seeing how you act so I don't know about you but there's a pretty big emphasis in in 12-step recovery on dealing with resentment so when you um continue to see a friend who really made you angry you didn't like how she treated you it doesn't really have anything to do with respect I get that it feels like self-respect to give her the silent treatment but the silent treatment I there's a there's a middle ground here let me just tell you what it is I've had plenty of people you know burn me and I've had I there was somebody I sponsored once who just she spread all these like nasty rumors about me it affected my reputation with people I was really offended I ran into her not that long ago and she's like hey how's it going and I was just like it's going all right and um I Heard that she told people that we were all patched up and it's not patched up she never acknowledged what she did and you know it's still I still feel like o danger person you know don't let this person into your life but I'm totally polite I'm totally polite to everybody I see in a meeting because a meeting is a place where everybody needs to be there for their healing and if anybody has made it that far they just kind of deserve a little bubble of um decency now that doesn't a boundary doesn't mean you have to give the silent treatment that's not a boundary a boundary is you don't hang out with them you don't maybe talk about personal things but I see no reason you can't go hello when you walk in and leave not to be a big drama show you know you don't want to bring drama into a meeting you don't want to um Model Behavior that you punish people who are in a 12-step meeting because because they still have very very common symptoms of things that go along with 12-step problems I don't know what your fellowship is here but whether it's AA or alanon or something yeah people fly into a rage that's why they're there so I encourage you to focus on your recovery work with your sponsor to deal with your resentment about this and with your sense that you don't have adequate ways of protecting yourself from treatment like this you do you have your awakened mind so that you don't get into friendships like that anymore you don't have to anymore and sometimes you know it it happens it's so normal but that is one of the things that characterizes friendships um it's a terrific thing I know when I got into recovery I was so grateful to have a group full of people and instant friends and people I could hang out with and I went through these growing pains where you know sometimes people they were they would be really nice and then all of a sudden they would blow up or they or they would um I don't know just be gossipy or blamy it didn't happen very often I mean the ratio of like difficulty with people compared to all the great things I got out of it was small but I remember my sponsor told me it's like hey this is 12-step recovery this is why people come and I guess I had had this I had a fantasy I had this idealization that everybody there was all all recovered now and they had scooped me up but actually you know within a not that long amount of a time I became one of the people who was supporting other people and I always always tried to be polite and you know civil to everybody weird stuff happens right I had somebody in a meeting once she was she came in and was very disruptive she started interrupting everything that was said and you know demanding that she have the floor for all this resentment she had and I spoke up and I said hey you have to raise your hand like everybody else and a lot of people were really angry that I said that but that's what I thought was the right thing you know you don't get to just go in and start interrupting the whole thing and somebody will speak up with you that's just saying so just as an example boundaries you're allowed to have boundaries you're owed to tell people to stop you're allowed to get out of the car you're allowed to block contact but I just would not give the silent treatment in the context of a recovery meeting you don't need to um if you are fearful that that gives her the idea that she can come and attack you it's not so you have a boundary and I think what you said is I won't leave the meeting but I don't feel the need to engage oh that's what it is um I I want I don't want to acknowledge her presence not to punish her I'm sorry it is punishment it is but to show myself enough respect that I decide who has a place in my life I want you to respect yourself and I want you to decide who has a place in your life and giving somebody the silent treatment changes nothing about your difficulty with those boundaries your continued recovery always is going to depend on facing and getting free from um this the resentful ways that you've tried to protect yourself from difficult people you're just like us you know you're just like everybody it's normal but as you recover terrible treatment silent treatment that sort of thing it's um it's not necessary for you to have boundaries if you didn't get cared for properly when you were little it's hard to read other people when they actually like you and there's potential for real friendship versus when they're just being friendly but the connection between you isn't going to stand the test of time and what also complicates making new friends is that so many of us need a friend so badly that there's pressure on the relationship from the get-go old childhood wounds sneak out and make it feel urgent that you connect that the Friendship happen and when it doesn't it can feel devastating so how do you know when someone is really interested in friendship and how can you get to know them in a way that gradually lets you observe what they're actually like do they get you or is it superficial do they belong in your life or are they just using you as a a Time filler or as a stepping stone to some other friends and when you feel weird and bad with them is it just you or is it not a fit my letter today is from a woman I'll call merera and she writes dear fairy I recently had a situation with two newer friendships got the fairy pencil I'm going to circle things that stand out to me in this letter I want to come back to but let's do a whole read on mea's letter and see if I can help all right she says of these two newer friendships one I H hung out with one-on-one and she seemed very interested in me and we would could have deeper conversations she kept asking questions about things I was doing I thought it was out of conversation but soon I could see she was kind of copying me I started teaching a yoga class at a popular spot and she asked me about it and attended my class and said she wanted to make it part of her routine we're both new to the city and she hadn't made any other friends yet she was telling me she wanted to lead some kind of discussions at her house or somewhere because she's a quote life coach well before I know it she's having them at the same place I am and use the connection with me to get it in her many Facebook Vlogs I noticed she mentioned once if you don't want to do yoga like everybody else you don't have to and it seemed like a jab at me because that's what I was doing but I let it go then I introduced her to some new friends and she seemed eager to make friends I know noticed she kept asking me to invite other people I then started working outdoors with a newer friend and mentioned it to this girl and she immediately jumped on it she's not even a morning person and the workouts are super early and far for her so it was strange that she would join then I saw she'd just focus her attention on this other friend almost as if I wasn't there I was really annoyed she'd also Post in our group chat asking to go to events on days that I was teaching my class which felt weird then as soon as she had something else to do she didn't come to my class she didn't have to but why say you will come then she invited everyone I introduced her to dinner which felt weird no one was there that I hadn't introduced her to I heard this term friend poaching and this is what I think she was doing anyway I didn't want to but I ended up inviting her to a weekend geta away because I felt she'd feel left out this other girl and I had planned it she jumped on that too even though it was last minute the whole time it seemed like she just focused her attention on getting close to the other girl and I felt left out I admit I often do which could be part of my PTSD but there I was feeling a competition vibe from this girl I had a horrible time and even said at one point where they did something without me and they apologized but still the same Vibe was there I felt left out and I didn't interact much which was a cptsd response but it was too much for me to deal with I was so disregulated after the trip I stopped going to the workouts I started with the other girl and the needy one posted pictures of them working out and how she is the best workout buddy she's also posting constantly on Facebook and making this image of how close she is to the other girl but she barely knows her it's very off-putting to me but now I'm the odd one out it strikes me as weird and needy behavior and she's a life coach I also got her a client before I knew she was like this but when sharing it with others she didn't credit me did I totally misread this person how do I know when my cptsd is triggered and when to trust my judgment how do I assess good friends and develop good friendships I want to have a better friendship but find them tough it's hard to trust and I find I'm I'm often too open and then have to close up because I see they aren't that good I'm constantly second-guessing myself in my perception I'd love your perspective thank you okay Mera you know I love this letter because your dilemma is like a perfect dilemma you could do one reading of your situation and you're being ridiculous you know she's just making friends what's the big deal she's trying to build her yoga practice there's this other read on it that I can see very well also because I've had this happen to me too and I think other people thought I was being unreasonable but it went on for years and I felt really ripped off I felt that somebody had really used my friendships and social connections and social Gatherings and things to develop their own thing and then never um acknowledged me befriended me included me and after a while it was sort of a hopeless mess and it started to taint my feelings towards other people I'll tell you how I resolved that how I became happy and free of that whole thing in a minute but let's go through so you were saying this person was kind of copying you okay um yeah you could just you could think you know let's just okay let me put on the hat where I'm like Mera you're being crazy this is nothing copying you they just have things in common and um she wanted to lead discussions and then she used the place that she found out that where you were teaching already okay well it is hard to find a good venue and she liked that venue so she thought she'd do that and then in her video she said if you don't want to do yoga like other people you don't have to well what could be more common sense than that why did did you take it personally why did you think it was you now again Mera I'm just I'm just being the voice of like this is silly why are you being so petty because I do understand the other side so then um you introduced her to some friends and because she really wanted to meet friends she kept it asking you to invite other people well how friendly you know what a good idea maybe she's somebody she's a social Catalyst she gets somebody like you to sort of participate and create more social Gatherings and everybody needs that right people are so lonely we've been isolated ated for a long time so then you noticed that a new friend was going to her thing and it was odd because this other friend normally wouldn't go to an early morning thing and it was far away and many things like that your friend stopped coming to your class anytime she had something better to do but hey Mera right I mean she has a life what do you care whether she comes and then you heard the friend the term friend poaching well you don't own people do you anyway you say you invited her to a we can get away cuz you didn't want her to feel left out you wanted to leave her out right but you didn't want her to feel left out that's so kind of you and another girl in you had planned it and she came and the whole time she just seemed like she was trying to get to know the other girl and it was your friend and somehow your Alli you felt like your alliance was getting ripped apart well come on didn't you want people to get together then these two friends start showing up on Facebook how buddy buddy they are and you couldn't believe it because you know this person is a life coach and life coaches are supposed to be better than that but I'll tell you a secret about life coaches and I guess technically I'm one I rarely coach anymore but but the secret is everybody's just a person even licensed therapists are just people who everybody's Bound by Common ethics and people with a license are bound by legal legally binding ethics but everybody's capable of being a jerk we've experienced that right so then you before you knew that she was weird and something was off you referred a client and she didn't credit you well I don't even know if that's common wouldn't that be a violation of privacy for a client I don't know crediting you so there's me merera just being the voice that you undoubtedly have in part of your head just going I'm being silly why don't I just get over myself here's what I think the whole thing just feels bad you made a friend and time and time again it didn't feel good you felt this weird feeling that you were sort of you know she was shoving past you to get to your friends out of some Vision she wanted to have clients friends a life so I would just say because her line of business is stuff like yoga and coaching or you know whatever everybody does it is important to network with people and some people they Network at the expense of the very real organic relationships through which that sort of networking happens is she left you feeling weird and bad about the interaction she's not a very good networker and I would say that tenden is likely to leave her clients feeling bad down the road that she has an insensitivity or a um tone deafness to how you're supposed to act around that she's motivated by her own you know agenda and so I don't knock people having their own agenda the hard part and I say this as somebody like I have my own business too and my business depends very much on relationships with people it never works to treat people badly along the way sometimes I have to set boundaries against people who are abusive or you know dishonest sometimes rarely mostly even when I realize that a working relationship or a friendship can't work for me there's no reason to slam the door on the way out you know just being kind leaving things on good terms is always a good idea so I'm really sorry this happened to you I think you wouldn't be watching my channel if you didn't have a background of trauma and Trauma just does this it makes it hard to read other people so I'm just here to give you a reality check if it feels bad to you it feels bad to you and I think the one way that we can get in trouble when we're trying to draw a boundary against this feeling that we get from people against people who treat us in a way that leaves a bad taste you know just that leaves a stink in the air right it just doesn't feel good you can't always put your finger on it but that's how it feels is go ahead and step back and you don't have to make a pronouncement to her how terrible she is because technically when I read the other side of the letter like technically she's done nothing wrong it's just that you're not interested anymore it doesn't feel good so you you literally don't have to tell her you know your criticisms of her you can just stop calling her and Fade Out from the interactions and I know some people in the comments will be like no let her have it and tell her and that's always an option too sometimes in healing if you've never had the opportunity to be straight with somebody about how you feel it can feel good to do it I also think if she asks you if she's like why don't you ever call me anymore what what's going on but the greatest thing you can do is when and if you do decide to talk about what happened with her and why you pulled away and didn't feel good about it you can do it without resentment or fear about what's happening and it will come out very powerfully and clearly in a way that possibly she could hear and how you get to that point is by taking the resentful and fearful thoughts into a practice where you can keep rinsing them off what's left is your clear and honest communication not a bunch of like leftover baggage from what happened in childhood and once I had this friend and you know my parents used to invalidate me all that stuff is more than anybody can possibly take responsibility for so it clutters up their ability to hear what it is you would prefer they do take responsibility for which they usually don't I'm just giving you a heads up you can tell her how you feel it doesn't she doesn't sound like somebody who would be open to that but you would be doing her a service if gently kindly without a bunch of other issues kind of mix in there you could just tell her what it was um but if she doesn't ask I wouldn't do it most people really can't they're not in a place where they can hear that and hearing criticisms of them like that when they're not actually asking for it can trigger backlash and then they say things to hurt you then you're disregulated for three days and who does that serve so in short I'm saying you have choices about how you want to deal with this but stay with yourself stand by yourself honor the gut feeling you have that this yeah you know she's she's she doesn't care about you and she cares about her and I don't mean to paint her as a bad person she just doesn't have that capacity that's not where she's coming from and you can just step away from such people you don't even have to condemn them smear them anything like that just step away save your emotional energy for the really cool people who do show up in your life and then gradually become friends I think becoming friends with people if this type of thing happen has happened to you it's very similar to what I recommend in a dating situation which is go slowly have some coffee talk about things let information come to you about who they are what they're like notice do they get in touch again later or do you always have to do the calling or do they Hound you do they you know hunt you down are they always saying hey can you get more friends at the party so you get to pay attention and you get to keep doing a gut check how do you feel about it now if you're using a tool like the daily practice where you're sort of facing your emotional reaction to things couple times a day and just kind of processing it letting it go down Downstream you will learn so much about the nature of reality you'll start to be able to perceive perhaps for the first time in your life what's really happening between you and another person I can't recommend it enough for people who were traumatized as kids those Hallmark card sentiments all over Facebook about how very dear a good friend is it can be like an arrow through your heart and it's really normal with cptsd to struggle with friendships maybe you haven't yet had a genuinely close friend who gets you and stands by you through thick and thin or you have friends and you do things together but you've never really felt like you could be yourself like like you were safe with them and you don't know if it's because you chose the wrong friends or if somehow it's you it's hard to face but it's possible that your trauma driven behaviors are part of why things aren't working with friends and today might be the day if you're ready to take a gentle look at this in the video I'm about to share with you this could be the day that you begin to heal one of the biggest reasons why people who grew up with trauma struggle to maintain good relationships is because of our own behaviors whether we want them to or not we do things that push people away I'm Anna rle also known as the crappy childhood fairy and I teach people how to heal from the effects of abuse and neglect in childhood I teach a lot about triggers the way people and experiences can just totally disregulated us and throw us off neurologically physically and emotionally now triggers are important but what's also important are the ways that we act when we're feeling triggered or when we're triggered and don't even realize it and we end up hurting or alienating other people and this makes me so sad it's why so many of us have suffered so much loss and we've often gone through our lives longing for connection and not finding it or alone and scared to even try anymore and I'm here to say there is so much healing possible and I can show you how because if you want to change any negative pattern everything depends on your ability to see and change to find the little spots where you have some power to change how your life turns out and this can happen when you lovingly courageously shift your focus from what happened to you to to how you're handling life right now when you have a choice in the question of what happens next okay behavior number one that can push people away our loneliness gets leaky loneliness is like the number one symptom of early trauma and sometimes it spills out into the way that we relate to other people and it makes us seem I hate this word but needy some ways that this can show up when we're first getting to know someone we dominate the interaction with our story wories and our feelings for friendship to Blossom there's got to be some give and take talking listening talking listening caring about the other person and being genuinely interested in them here's another thing our loneliness makes us do we sometimes confuse being open with other people with just you know spilling our pain have you done that if you're just getting to know someone and you're bringing out all your trauma stories and let's face it we have lots of trauma stories and they've kind of crowded out a lot of the other possible stories we could be telling but if you're talking about that stuff as soon as you meet someone you might want to catch yourself and decide to just pull back and set aside the sad stuff and then measure it out in little increments over time it's totally important to share this part of ourselves with people close to us but unless it's an established relationship with someone who cares about the totality of you you run the risk of overwhelming people or freaking them out I know I did and then they close their hearts to you it's just too much now one exception to that is when you're talking to people who are very traumatized themselves or who are in an altered state from drugs or alcohol or who don't care what state you're in because they're trying to get something from you so pouring your heart out in that situation might lead to a connection of A Sort but this is exactly how we so often end up entangled with inappropriate or destructive people we get very intense the people who can hand it are the very people who are not good for us to be around so be measured little bits of your story shared over a slow time frame will help you start to build authentic friendships now you might also be leaking your loneliness when you do too much of the initiating of get togethers you call them you text them you've got fun ideas they might enjoy but it's always you doing the asking now if you know someone who's been depressed and wants a little encouragement there's there's no problem with doing this but in an equal relationship where no one's trying to help the other person it's better to allow for reciprocity you invite them to get together then wait for them to invite you maybe they'll happily surprise you and be right there with an invitation very soon after the last time you got together or maybe you won't hear from them for a while when people don't make an effort to get together that is information it's good for you to know about what kind of a friendship they're interested in and what you can expect like maybe not much of a friendship in that case and definitely not a romantic relationship so when one person doesn't pan out into a reciprocal friendship it's just time to meet some extra people some new people not to keep pushing invitations on the same person okay second behavior that pushes people away we get overly other focused do you know what I mean we get very wrapped up in what the other person is thinking and feeling at the expense of what we are thinking and feeling and this is one of those things where it always feels like no one should be able to tell that you're doing it because hey you're trying to be a good friend right but think about when people have done this to you asking how are you doing trying to read your mind trying to fix problems that aren't even there they're always kind of like pecking at you with this it feels yucky right this is a classic fawning Behavior that's one of the major expressions of cptsd fight flight freeze or Fawn and with fawning it's like our whole being get taken over by trying to read another person and yes this was a survival tool for a lot of us when we were little and trying to gauge our own safety in unsafe situations but now the mode of behavior completely kills genuine connection it's a form of being in our own heads of not being present of giving all our power to someone who has not even asked for our power the relationships you want never require that you shut down or mentally flee the situation or give them all your power and this is similar to another thing some of us do when we feel rejected and hurt but aggressively covered up by being cheerful helpful agreeable no problem this is what people who were abused as kids get way too good at I call it crap fit and I'll share a video with you about that at the end of this one but going right into people pleasing when you're attacked that's what it is if someone's not treating you well you can say something or you don't have to and of course you can always leave but if some old hurt part of you responds to mistreatment by jumping in and doing a song and dance to show that hey you're not hurt you're fine you're cool is there anything you can do this is not connection this is you playing a role and if this is familiar to you ask yourself if that's something that you're doing with any people in your life right now real friendships never require taking crap or abandoning yourself as a means to cope real friendships are made of you being present you are present that presence is one of the most remarkable things that begins to show up I love watching that with the people in my programs so many positive changes flow from there okay the third behavior that pushes people away it's having a lack of clarity about when it's just you meaning you have trouble accurately seeing your own role in problems either blaming yourself too much or denying any responsibility or in fact the thought that you play any role just like makes you angry have you dealt with people like that either way black and white thinking I'm totally responsible I'm never responsible it's a way of checking out of reality and people who are not in reality are very hard to connect with so some signs that you might be doing this include you apologize too much have you ever had someone do that to you but for something they only imagine had offended you and you're saying please you don't need to apologize but they keep doing it and they keep doing it and they feel so ashamed and it's not Good Feeling to be either person in that so if you're profusely apologizing all the time and key indicator here is that the other person keeps insisting that you don't need to or seems uncomfortable Let It Go just Let It Go the same goes for putting yourself down saying oh my gosh I'm such an idiot I look awful I don't even belong here you don't mean it this way but it can come off like like you're begging for something what's really going on is you're drowning in fear of course and healing this that's what I teach in all my courses but telling everyone the contents of this like trash can in your mind it just can be off-putting now sometimes people who already have a trusting relationship might confess to each other the doubts they have about themselves but blurting your fears out every time you make a mistake is consciously or unconsciously it's an attempt to get other people to make you feel less fearful they probably would help you if they could but they can't so it just makes things awkward now on the other side of the is it just me syndrome are behaviors where we're oblivious to the fact when something really is our fault which happens right and this shows up when someone says they're bothered by something we did and we skip over hearing it or caring how they feel and go right into defensiveness or even blaming them everybody knows what this feels like and absolutely no one likes it now it's true that sometimes people are going to blame you unfairly for a problem but the thing about having cptsd is our judgment can be a bit slow or off so it pays to listen now I'm not talking about listening to abusers here that's a whole different thing when someone gaslights you or attacks you for Imagined offenses and they can't be reasoned with those are not friends okay we get really fuzzy on determining is this person's criticism right now something that I need to hear and take seriously and the answer is as a rule yes if you like and respect someone it's it's only fair to hear what they have to say now healing our childhood PTSD involves a balancing act between being open to hear things like criticism but not instantly taking it inside our innermost heart and making it our truth there's this place I call a front porch in our emotional world where we can listen and consider what we're hearing and take a moment to decide if we're going to let that inside our emotional home our place of Truth listening on the porch allows us to respond and responding it's not the same as reacting is it reacting is how we end up lashing out and running away from people responding means considering another person's feelings showing courtesy even when you don't see truth in what they're saying not yet anyway and making an effort to understand the spirit of what they're saying and responding to that you don't have to Fawn and gravel and you don't have to annihilate them you can say wow I I didn't realize you felt that way let me think about that and see if I can improve on that that now notice all you said was that you'd think about it that you'd see if you could improve you didn't invalidate them you didn't collapse emotionally right sometimes during considerations it's magical the right words just come to you so you can be real and tell the truth and still be a caring friend those two things truth and caring that's what allows friendships to deepen and that's how healing Works little changes made over time so don't give up with small steps in your overall healing you can learn to connect better better connecting it's like jet fuel for your overall healing so it's this positive cycle that just keeps getting better one thing leads to another sounds good doesn't [Music] it [Music]

Channel: Crappy Childhood Fairy

Views: 37,969

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Id: Tomkeu2MQz4

Length: 54min 30sec (3270 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 24 2024