This past week has been a very introspective week for me. I’ve spent a lot of time alone and thinking about my past. For whatever reason, I decided it was time for me to clean up my social media feeds a bit. This sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole of memories. As I scrolled past each name, I was reminded of a connection (or lack thereof) that we had upon making this digital connection. Some of them stung a bit, and I realized it was time that I let go of the connections that no longer served me.
This process got me thinking: What about the friendships that I had that were once really close? What did I do to cause the dissolution of this relationship? Why does it still hurt?
When I was in middle school and high school, I had a best girl friend. I confided in her with everything. We did so much together, and we found that we had a lot in common. When I reminisce about this relationship, I glaze over a lot of the toxicity and the discomfort that I felt while in this friendship. I felt so much pressure to be a supportive friend while experiencing so much frustration at how my needs weren’t being met in this friendship. Of course, teenage me did not realize that these frustrations should have been communicated directly with her. The most important thing for me was to not ever cause emotional distress to my friend, because I didn’t want to feel that distress through her. This twisted thought is led by empathy. In the end, our friendship exploded spectacularly in the most dramatic fashion. We haven’t spoken in 11 years, and we never will again.
I am an empathetic person, and I take on so much emotion in my relationships and friendships. I do this automatically. Some would say I do it voluntarily, but there are times when I “over-feel.” This is, by no means, a technical term. When I say “over-feel,” I really mean that I overthink the possible emotional reactions to my actions or words. It spins out of control, even when my mind is pleading for it to stop. I actively avoided conflict by bottling misgivings and my feelings in order to “shield” people from discomfort. I was taught that caring for other people’s feelings is the most important thing. Doing so made me a “good person.” But there was an overwhelming amount of angst and guilt that was generally looming around the person I was trying to shield. I didn’t understand this then as I do now, but I was hurting this person by shielding them. I think this was the biggest reason why our friendship ended so dramatically and so suddenly. I let too much boil up inside, I let it out inappropriately, and it hurt my friend.
The second part of how empathy hurts is that I tend to think about the situation in their perspective. Let’s take the above description of my part in the unraveling of a friendship early in my adult life. Due to empathy, I am constantly trying to live in the “what if” of being in the other person’s shoes. For years after the dissolution of my friendship, I would think of myself in the worst way possible. I saw myself as an insincere friend that I couldn’t trust, just as she had described me in our last conversation. This perception I had of myself hurt.
As I have been thinking about this ancient event over the last week, I realized that empathy and a lack of boundaries and self-love is what leads me into toxic friendships. I cannot discount the fact that our friendship, over the years that it lasted, was toxic. Toxic friendships are rarely one sided, and while my former friend may have leaned into my willingness to please and keep peace and crossed boundaries, I definitely did not respect myself enough to formally put up boundaries. My desire to alleviate every friend from discomfort or emotional distress was innately selfish. I didn’t realize it then, but I realize it now. I know that the reason why I did not wish emotional distress upon my friends was because, as an empath, I knew I would experience a piece of that distress myself.
My fellow empaths, remember that our ability to be empathetic is an asset only if we do not sacrifice our emotional wellbeing for it. The reason why you’re feeling uncomfortable with a relationship or situation is likely because you know that the other person is pushing your boundaries that you have not formally set. Remember, it is your responsibility to set those boundaries, but whether or not they react well or accept those boundaries aren’t your responsibility.
Turbulent Mind 