Identifying toxic friends

If you’ve deliberately looked for this page, you must know whether or not your friends are toxic already, or, you fear they may be.

If you’ve just happened to stumble across the page, why not read along? Who knows what you might discover.

Toxic friends come in all shapes and sizes. Before we move on to how to deal with them, let’s make sure you actually have them. We don’t want to go around blaming people who are actually trying to care about you.

A caring friend would:

• Listen to you
• Notice your mood
• Confide in you
• Respect your privacy
• Never judge you
• Stick up for you
• Tell you when you’re wrong
• Help you
• And more

A toxic friend would:

• Make everything about them
• Not care when you’re upset
• Not tell you secrets
• Share your secrets
• Judge you
• Never have your back
• Lie to you
• Refuse to help you
• And more

Are your friends consistently ignoring your problems and telling you theirs? Always ignoring when you get upset, or when they upset you? Do your friends ever tell you secrets? Do they confide in you? If and when you confide in them, do they keep it between you? Do your friends make fun of you? Do your friends support you? Do your friends tell you when your outfit looks bad? These are some questions to think about.

If you have any further concerns about identifying toxic friends, feel free to ask me about it.

Behaviour

Something unique about toxic friends, is that they tend to not let you be yourself. They will often split you apart from your other friends and change you to act like them.

For example, I once had a friend that convinced me to say something nasty about someone I liked. Although this seems like nothing major, how would you feel if you found out your best friend called you a nasty thing? It would really upset and confuse you. It could be something as simple as that, that proves them a toxic friend.

In fact, it could be the way you dress. The way you pose in pictures. The kind of people you enjoy hanging out with. The kind of decisions you make.

What to do about it

Try lightly confronting them about it, without causing a huge argument. Ask them why they never listen to you, never tell you things, etc. If you’re like me, and you get angry easily, maybe don’t take this approach to things.

If you want to lose them as a friend, try making new friends and slowly losing connection with them and becoming closer to your new, healthier friends. It may take a while to find the right one.

If you don’t want to lose them completely, try making new friends and slowly losing connection with them, but not completely. Just as much as you want to.

Personal Help or Queries

If you need help with anything to do with toxic friendships that aren’t on this blog, don’t assume I can’t help with it! I just want to make sure I don’t go off on tangents about things that aren’t relevant. Feel free to email my business account: iiBxllaBae@gmail.com

Blogging

Feel free to check out ‘The Writer’ to find out why I blog! And thank you so much for reading my first blog. If you found it helpful, shoot me an email and let me know! I’d also be very appreciative for helpful criticism for improvements. Thanks again!