Genuine friendships can mean something to a person. Whether it’s your friends making you laugh to a point where you actually don’t remember how to breathe again. Or it could be your friends sending you hundreds of TikTok videos for you to watch. Either one of them is good either way because your friends know you the best and know how to bring a smile out of you.
But what about those friendships that seem to only drain you? The ones that only seem to care about you when they need something or even those types of friends that purposely make you feel bad about yourself. If they hurt you once, who says they’re not going to do it again?
Friendships should never try to affect your emotional health in any way, but it’s confusing seeing how quickly a friend can bring down your mood in an instant, especially when you used to have a special connection with them at first.
When a friend constantly tries to put you down, you ignore it and think ‘They probably didn’t mean it like that’, though there’s no excuse, because they have the pleasure of telling you things knowing it will only hurt you. Accepting their behavior is only going to make it easier for them to take advantage of your well-being and will only lead to them continuing to treat you badly since they know you won’t do anything about it.
But how does one know if a friendship is toxic? “You should watch out for signs of a toxic friendship, such as feeling like you are being taken advantage of, feeling exhausted or drained, feeling like you have to be constantly lying or covering up for them, feeling like you are in competition with them. A good friendship should not cause you that much stress,” School Psychologist, Ms.Reyna, explained.
Removing these types of friends means you need to start prioritizing your feelings and realizing that you deserve to have better friends. You can’t let them continue disrespecting you because at what cost is it ever going to make you happy in any way? Friendships like that are never worth your time and energy.
Learn when it’s time to let go, and only then will you start realizing how much happier you can be without them in your life. Once you stop letting people give you the benefit of the doubt, better people will come into your life. There are billions of people in the world, and you are bound to find genuine friendships who will care about you. So be kind to yourself and never let anyone try to make you seem worth less of yourself.