Different Kinds of Toxicity

[silk_noir]

Do you have any friends whom you think are awesome wonderful people, but somehow they have a toxic effect on you? Not necessarily through any doing of their own, it's just how you react to them

Comments

[jamiam]

God, yeah.

[summersdream]

Not really. If I feel self-conscious next to any of my friends I figure out why and then try to correct it, or else I'll just mock myself cause I think it's so pointless to be freaking out about something I can't change. I think that's what you're talking about? It would mostly make me reexamine my own self-esteem issues because alienating someone I adore because I've decided they're somehow cooler than me is so... ridiculous.

Or do you mean like people whose personality somehow reacts with your own and turns into a hypertoxic explosion? Cause I totally have friends I can't hang out with because somehow if I get left alone with them life can/will turn into a bad rendition of a Hunter S Thompson book and I stop being able to recognize myself in my own actions because somehow around them I don't have the same thinking processes. Idk.

People all interact with each other differently.

[amichaels]

I do have one of those. My best friend is really awesome and I'm sometimes insecure about it and feel like a sidekick. I always have to try and remind myself that she is friends with me for a lot of reasons and that it's my own insecurities talking and past history of friendships with girls like her who used me in the past.

[sparkymonster]

Yeah that happens to me sometimes.

I had a friend from college who well. Our relationship was always vaguely fraught. Literally every guy I knew had a huge crush on her. Guys would come into our room to hang out with me and then start grilling me about her. Etc. etc. All of that was not her fault at all but the situations end up poking me in the soft tender places.

My method of dealing was to consciously & deliberately create new behavior patterns. I did a lot of reminding myself the interactions between the two of us have always been good. It helped. It took a while but it helped

[caleidoscopia]

I think people get jealous even when they really, really don't want to *and* we can't help it, at least not quickly. We get jealous about areas in which we're insecure. For instance, I get jealous of people whose houses are clean because, for whatever reason, I'm ashamed that mine isn't. I don't get jealous of people who drive fabulous cars, even though our cars are very old, because, for whatever reason, I'm not ashamed of that. I think it's speaks to your strength of character that you admit jealousy and want to rectify it. I'd guess you'll work on it more efficiently if you don't feel bad about it. You're just admitting to something most won't. :)