My Mental Health Journey Pt. 3 (Friendships)

In my Mental Health Journey Pt. 1 I experienced depression and anxiety through a relationship with achievement and healed through therapy. Throughout that journey, I deconstruct my performance based mindset when it came to career in my Mental Health Journey Pt. 2. Now I will share how I navigated and processed my social relationships through all phases of life.

TL:DR

• I moved around a lot so I had to make friends quickly by being vulnerable quickly
• This is where I developed people-pleasing tendencies and I was afraid of being excluded
• Healthy, long-lasting friendships have a balance of dependency and respect
• It’s ok to stand up for your own needs and lovingly confront issues in a healthy way to deepen the relationship

Breaking into social circles as an Adolescent

I’m grateful that my parents were a constant in my life but school & social communities were not. My intro fun fact is usually: ‘I never lived in a single city for more than 5 years at a time.’ I was a true nomad wandering without a sense of home. I had to make friends quickly out of survival. I learned to be personable and vulnerable quickly which lead to more meaningful and lasting friendships gratefully. Whether through humor, stories, or abilities I captivated an audience to win their hearts and friendships. However, managing relationships well and learning how to communicate deeply and conflict resolve things were challenging at times.

Maintaining friendships was tricky. The concept of inclusion / exclusion was a barrier I constantly felt. Being able to infiltrate a social circle, make a connection, and staying has been a key social survival skill I developed. I learned new ways of culture — movies, games, sports, spirituality/religion, music tastes, and even fashion as ways to assimilate and feel a part of the group at every life stage. There’s usually a unique social contract you abide by in every circle to gain acceptance, which carried a heavier significance for me.

There was a fear of “rocking the boat” and putting your needs out there. Obviously it depends on what it was and context but generally speaking in certain group settings I would people-please as a way to survive and become included instead of voicing my needs. I didn’t want to inconvenience or burden people or come off needy in a bad way. I just didn’t really know how. It wasn’t modeled for me in a healthy way.

Also as an only child, I didn’t have the oversight and guidance from an older sibling nor the companionship and reverence of a younger sibling. Additionally, my parents were not as available as they would have liked, but they were definitely there for most of the important events. However, the cultural gap often led to miscommunication and lack of understanding of each others’ values. I had to rely on myself. Trial and error and self-punishment were my methods of growth and accountability. We’re all hard on ourselves as a motor to push and elevate ourselves. For what it’s worth, it’s gotten me where I am today.

How to Pursue Friendships

Building relationships as an adult is hard. I remember relationships in NYC were built intentionally so I was very specific with people and followed through on commitments and showed up for others. I also learned to read the needs of my friends and the types of friendships we had. Some people were my weekly in-person crew where we went out, ate, and did our routine (board games + good food + nature). Some people were on a once-a-month cadence where we talked about more serious mature topics. Some were friends I caught up with quarterly to mostly reminisce on the good old times to ground my identity.

I slowly understood the core things I wanted in friendships and pursued them intentionally. When I first experienced depression, a friend of mine just sat with me in silence for nearly 4 hrs on a Saturday night as I experienced my first bouts of depression, patiently asking my questions and helping me process. It meant the world to me. That’s what I wanted in my inner circle of friendships and I found people that had emotional intelligence and capacity.

At the time I had a misconception about friendship. I thought to earn friendships you had to provide something for them so they would want you and stick by you. It’s hard to judge this as black or white as it provides some utility at first but hopefully your friendships develop to be more genuine / selfless as opposed to transactional. I think you can see a pattern of thinking where everything was performative. Having good friends meant I provided value to the world. If I didn’t, then I felt my worth deteriorate. I always felt I had to give and take care of others (which is well intentioned) to keep their friendship.

What do I look for in Friendships?

Over time, I’ve come to terms with what I need to build a deep, meaningful relationship. They’re not hard guidelines, but I’ve found my closer friends tend to have:

• High Emotional Intelligence — people that can go there with me to process complex experiences and emotions (satisfying)
• Shared / Similar Life Experience — people that can relate and more easily empathize with what I’m going through (valuable)
• Similar Values and Interests — people that I can spend time with doing meaningful activities with similar, aligned perspectives (steady state)

Granted, most of this is intuitive but this helps me manage and prioritize my time with friends, not to dismiss the possibility of friendships with those that DON’T have these traits.

There IS a give and take to friendships. I learned to express my needs to friends that received me well and developed a sense of loyalty to them. The real ones will like me for me and not for what I do for them. The people I shared really good memories with (roommates, weekly going out crews), I still made an effort to keep in touch despite moving to different cities. The advent of social media and workplace groups like Slack has made the keeping in-touch game easier.

It’s ok to depend and lean on friends in a healthy balanced way. Putting your needs out there and allowing friends to have to option to meet them can be very fulfilling. That is how you build trust. I always give the analogy of “Would you like to build furniture alone or with somone?” In my experience, it’s very doable to be self-reliant and put together a bookshelf by yourself, but it’s a lot more exhausting, time-intensive, and lonely. If you partnered with a buddy, it’s much easier, faster, and enjoyable. My keepers are those ones I can build furniture with.

Managing Boundaries

Pushing back and managing conflicts with friends has been a process. I used to assume a debt of love to all my friends which skewed how I balance the give and take. It was hard to validate my needs and boundaries as a giver / nice guy. It would take an awful amount of giving and burnout for me to stand up for myself and I realized my mental model was unsustainable.

I have a better sense of what my boundaries are — actions or behaviors that make me feel violated or disrespected. Communication through words and tonality matter a lot to me — when a loved one would disparage my character and identity without the entire story would feel like injustice. Knowing that another person might not be in a place to reciprocate nor appreciate what you give is a signal to disengage at times. Ultimately, my emotions can give me a clear signal if a boundary is breached.

Now, I’ve adopted a confrontation is love model. If I feel uncomfortable about an issue, it would be disrespectful and unloving of me to hold it in pretending like everything’s ok. If we have friction or a difference in expectations (which is very common) I would rather bring it up to you and resolve it to have a better, deeper relationship with you. Granted, not everybody can handle this intensity and sometimes require a heads up and a declaration of intent. Delivery is key.

Linguistically, I’ve adopted it the evidence and impacted emotions model of “When you do X, it makes me feel Y.” Using a passive tense helps extinguish some of the heat. “I know you have good intentions and didn’t mean it, but the way it was said / done to me made me feel discouraged.” We live in a world now where 95% of the time people mean well and just didn’t know a boundary or love preference, so all they need sometimes is a little nudge.

Conclusion

Relationships (friendships) are the key to living a fulfilling life. We often base our choice of living to be closer to family and close friends. We build much of our livelihood through community which translates to valuable, meaningful connections. We invest a significant amount of effort to finding and maintaining these connections because they’re worth it.