Taking toll of toxic friends

An insincere and evil friend is more to be feared than a wild beast;

a wild beast may wound your body, but an evil friend will wound your mind.
Buddha
Good friendships permeate our lives. They influence our careers, marriage, family, lifestyle
choices and above all, our overall health and wellbeing. The alarming thing is that poor
friendships can take their toll on all these things and more, both directly and through the way they
affect our self-esteem, plus they come at a cost to other, potentially more fulfilling relationships.
A Brigham Young University study concluded that a strong social network of good real world
friendships improves your chances of living longer by 50%. It can also double your chance of
surviving cancer, ward off colds and it could even reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease,
claimed the studys lead author, psychology professor Julianne Holt-Lundstad.
Holt-Lundstad suggested that supportive friendships help you cope with stress, so you are less
likely to suffer its physical and emotional effects. A multi-university study took this a step further
and suggested that if a friend of yours is happy or even a friend of a friend then the chances
are higher that you are too (or soon will be). Study co-author Dr Nicholas Christakis, a professor
at Harvard Medical School, describes this effect as human beings are hardwired for emotional
contagion.
The flipside is that unhealthy friendships have the opposite effect they create stress, anxiety
and unhappiness. In fact, in another study series, Holt-Lundstad found that even friends you feel
ambivalent about will raise blood pressure even more than enemies, as people we simply dont
like tend to be predictable, so they are easier to cope with. When we care about someone on
some level, or at very least feel some kind of responsibility to them they have the potential to
hurt us so much more.

When friends are unhealthy

Many factors may create or define a toxic friendship, but the key is that after spending time in
these sorts of friendships you are likely to feel bad about yourself. Florence Isaacs, author of
Toxic Friends/True Friends explains that a toxic friendship is unsupportive, draining,
unrewarding, stifling, unsatisfying, and often unequal. You may also feel belittled if a friend has
been critical, reminded you of past failures or simply been insensitive to you. In other cases, you
dont like the behaviour you mirror in this friend maybe you speak ill of others, you act in a
manipulative way or you generally have an angry attitude to life.
Sometimes it is hard to acknowledge that a friendship is toxic because we feel we must have
seen good in the person to befriend them in the first place. The truth is, however, that we cannot
place too much blame on our initial judgements as there are several other factors.

Conditioned to friend
Human beings are conditioned to befriend. It comes from a need for approval, the foresight that
we will need support at some stage and the desire to be part of a group. This condition is
perhaps exacerbated in modern society, with its emphasis on networking for career and social
acceptance or gain, and then most of have the issue (to varying degrees) of reconciling our
online social networking with our real world networking. Online, we can accept, request and end
friendships with the click of a mouse and we can even have exact control over the level of
access a friend has to us. In the real world, this is not so simple . Making and breaking off a
friendship comes with a lot more responsibilities and consequences.
In a poll of 18,000 women by US magazine Self, some 84 percent said that they have had at
least one toxic friend. It begs the question, why would we possibly keep people close when we
know they are bad for us?
Inertia is the prime reason 83 percent of the women in the survey with one or more toxic friends
said that they put up with a trying relationship simply because it felt too tough to end it. According
to Susan Shapiro Barash, author of Toxic Friends, another key problem is that for women
especially, individual friends tend to be connected to a larger circle of friends and acquaintances
they value. Consequently, there is a strong fear that cutting a single thread could unravel their
entire social fabric. Another reason we cling to our unhealthy friendships is the fear of losing our
sense of identity, which psychologist Andrea Bonior explains in The Friendship Fix. If you have a
lot of shared experiences or have known each other for decades, losing an amiga can feel like

losing a part of yourself, too." Of course, this sense of identity goes beyond shared experiences
the trust we place, the confidences we share and the emotion we invest all form part of our
perception of our identity.

How many friends do you need?

Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give
them your confidence.
- George Washington
Social networking sites may have created a false perception as to how many friends we can
maintain. At one stage, Facebook capped the number of friends each profile could have on the
site at 5000 and still people objected that this was too low. The number of real-world friends we
can handle, however, is purported to be much, much lower.
In his most recent book, How Many Friends Does One Person Need? Professor Robin Dunbar
concluded that there are limits on the number of friendships we can maintain due to how
our brain works. Dunbar claimed the maximum size of a social network we can maintain through
informal control is 150 people. Of these there are probably about 50 who really matter, then
there is a sympathy group of around 12-15 and a clique of about five who we see most often and
feel closest to. This seems a cold mathematical breakdown, but we simply do not and cannot
invest the time or emotion to have the same level of intimacy with everyone in a 100+ network.
Dunbars studies also claimed that getting involved in a romantic relationship means that you
lose two friends in your network typically one friend and one family member. Other factors
come down to personality. People with extroverted personalities have larger social networks
while with neurotic personalities have fewer friends.

Assessing your relationship stocks

Go through your phone book, call people and ask them to drive you to the
airport. The ones who will drive you are your true friends. The rest aren't
bad people; they're just acquaintances.
- Jay Leno
Unlike family, we get to choose our friends. Its true that we can forgive certain behavioural,
moral and lifestyle differences in a friend that we would find hard to deal with in a relationship
with a partner. These factors should not be the first thing you look at when you examine a
friendship anyway. Instead, a good general rule to follow is that you should only choose to
surround yourself with people who bring out the best qualities in you. If you dont like the way you
act when youre around someone, then maybe its time to distance yourself.
Dont let your history rule your present. Too often we can look at someone and say that this isnt
a friend Id choose today, but because we were together ages ago, I overlook behaviour I
shouldnt accept. Another common excuse we make for these longer-term friends are, Its a
phase things used to be totally great between us. Be honest for yourself and for the sake of
the people close to you who are not getting the most of you because this person drains you. In
Toxic Friends: A Practical Guide to Recognizing and Dealing with an Unhealthy Friendship,
Loraine Smith-Hines writes, "Realise that you can't change your toxic friend or her behaviour, but
that you can change your own behaviour."
Step back and identify just how long this phase has gone on. Often it finds its roots in issues
that have been going on for years, yet the friend is not doing anything about it. You take on their
negativity and anger, but they do not take your help and advice and you cannot help someone
who doesnt want to help themselves. You will just end up drowning with them.
Acknowledge other problem symptoms. Do they undermine you? Are they so needy or
emotionally draining that they are a chronic downer? Perhaps they are self-righteous and overly
critical, or the only thing you can rely on them for is to be unreliable. Another problem is the friend
who is so self-centred that there is really no room in the friendship for your needs and concerns.
Be aware that this can manifest itself in a number of ways. For example, a friend of my wife she
even came to our very intimate wedding was without doubt generous and bent over backwards
to do things for us. Except one thing, something very important she wouldnt listen to us or
consider our feelings. In this way, so many of her actions (as generous as they may have
appeared) were really all about her. Add to this that she was a constant downer and we felt we
only had one option we had to let her go.

Bear in mind that a friendship should not keep score, but if you honestly cant see any likelihood
that this friend would be there for you when you need him or her or that you would be willing to
do things for a particular friend that they would or have already done for you then its time to reevaluate.
Ask yourself whether you relax and enjoy yourself when you spend time with this person or
whether catching up feels like an obligation. Do they make time for you? And an obvious one
do they really care about you? This is important sometimes you may want to be a friend to a
person because you admire them or find them fascinating or they can bring you some potential
benefit, but that person has no such reasons (or at least not to the same degree) to feel the same
way about you. As in relationships, friendships can bear an imbalance of passion or feeling, but
only up to a certain point.
Recognise that you can simply outgrow a friend. Not by status or wealth friendships should be
able to withstand such imbalances but by behavioural and moral choices. For example,
perhaps its true that you once used to enjoy badmouthing people, but now you just dont see the
point. Perhaps one of you has let go of the central facet to your friendship, leaving it a little onedimensional. Certainly, we all have people in our outer circle of friends with whom our
relationship is based solely on one area of our lives and there is nothing wrong with this. The
problem comes when we give such a relationship an elevated status in time, priority and
mental/emotional energy that it no longer justifies.

Drawing the boundaries

A friend to all is a friend to none.
- Aristotle
To be a true friend to those who really deserve it, accept that you cant be everyones saviour.
Google + and Facebook had the right idea when they each developed the option set access
limits on different levels of friends. Perhaps this is something we have always done
subconsciously in real life and something that is consciously required for certain unhealthy
friendships.
If you would like to give this friendship another go, then your only option is to speak to them
about how you are feeling. Stand up for yourself first and the friendship second.
Other times, you may feel you need to take a step back. As small as it is, No is still a powerful
word. Say no to 20 phone calls a day. Say no to your friend insulting anyone in your family. Say
no to inconvenient visits or expecting you to drop everything for them. While you no doubt want
to be there for a friend, you need to save your energy for when it is truly needed, otherwise it is a
case of the boy crying wolf all over again.
Boundaries are not meant or be rigid or cause tension they are meant to keep you comfortable
and functional. Take celebrities as an extreme example. They have many people trying to
befriend them far more than they could ever reciprocate and they need to be friendly to
preserve their image. Yet they must set boundaries for their own sanity and to protect those who
are truly close to them. Like the celebrities (well, many of them), you should use tact and
sensitivity after all, you are trying to loosen the reins on some friendships rather than create
new enemies.
Drawing boundaries might be a necessary step when you realise that someone is getting
considerably more from your friendship than you are from them. This may not even be a
deliberate action on their part they are probably not plotting away with charts in a secret bunker
but if you cant see this imbalance changing, then you may need to consider the opportunity
cost of what you put into this friendship.
Ending a friendship is never easy. In fact, Susan Shapiro Barash writes that because female
friendship has similarities to a heterosexual romance, the break-up can be devastating.
Sometimes it can be as simple as spending time with people with you really value, keeping busy
and making new friendships over time you will naturally drift apart. Friends who have been very
close or around for several years deserve a more direct approach, even though you may feel
uncomfortable with the idea of confrontation.
Take time to write down why you want to end the friendship so its clear in your head. Sit down
with the friend and explain how you have been feeling and why the relationship is not healthy. Try
to do this without blame or accusing the friend of being a terrible person.
Its always best to end as nicely as you can, for their wellbeing and yours. It is also essential to
forgive them, even if only to yourself, if not face-to-face. This is the key to your own personal
healing and feeling at ease with what you have done.

If you feel you have been manipulated or betrayed in the friendship, then this may be an
occasion when one-way communication is justified, as you must be true to yourself. Your resolve
may not hold in person or even over the phone with someone who has the ability to manipulate
you (in action or emotionally) and the way you feel is not open to negotiation. In the email,
speak your mind directly, but avoid saying anything you would not say to the friends face. In the
end, you are ending the friendship so you can be a better person, for yourself and for others, so
you may as well start that process here.

[BREAKOUT]

Letting go
Follow these essential steps to letting go of unhealthy friendships.
See the positives
Remember the friendship for the good times, learning experiences or any other positive effect it
had on your life. If you view it as a failure, then you are allowing the negativity of this friendship to
pervade your future relationships.
Share
Talk to other friends, relatives or partner about what has happened. This makes the experience
less alienating and supportive feedback will help dissipate any doubts you have about the action
you have taken. Be analytical rather than critical or complaining your rationality will make it
easier for people to empathize with you.
Stay away
Resist responding to the friends requests to contact you these can often be knee-jerk reactions
fuelled by negative emotions. Often a friend will be attached to other social circles of yours.
Leave some healing space while still connecting with your common friends individually or in
smaller groups. This need only be a temporary arrangement.
Seek closure
If there hasnt been a mutual and agreeable understanding met at the first attempt to end or
downgrade a friendship, then leave time for both you and the friend to emotionally detach
yourself from the relationship before seeking closure. Send a message that shows you bear no
hard feelings and only wish the best for them. This way, you will avoid the haunting dread of
crossing paths with the friend again as you surely will, eventually!