Thoughts that kept me around Fake Friends

I wish I could send this post to myself a year ago. She really needed it.

I cut off almost all of my Austin friends in September of last year. I'd known they weren't a good fit for a while, but it was such a scary decision that my mind came up with so many justifications to not do it.

Things I told myself to keep my fake friends:

It's a good thing I feel anxious around them, because I'm pushing myself outside my comfort zone. If I only have friends I feel comfortable around, then I'll never grow as a person.

Have you heard this advice too? To be around people who 'push you out of your comfort zone?' I thought I was supposed to hang with people who made me feel not good about myself for this reason.

My new friends inspire me to be a better person while not making me feel like an imposter. They're simply upstanding people who feel safe to be around.

It's my fault I feel anxious. I'm just not cool enough to be their friend.

A lot of my old group were aloof, and I thought it was just me they were like that with, and that they were clearly cooler than me. But they're actually just intimacy avoidant, and they put up walls and elevate themselves over others in order to feel in control of social situations.

My therapist shared with me this diagram of healthy relationships:

The people I thought I was not 'worthy' of being friends with, were actually in the upper left corner of this grid. It doesn't make them better than me. It just makes them incapable of intimate, healthy friendships.

I don't have very good social skills. I bet I'm the only one who feels uncomfortable around this person/these people. If I was better with people, this wouldn't bother me.

I used to do this in bad relationships too. If I was a stronger person, my partner's behavior wouldn't bother me. But a stronger person would leave- they wouldn't tolerate that behavior. And I have great friendships where I don't feel anxious, so, I think if I was better with people, I would just not hang out with folks who make me uncomfortable every time I'm with them.

“Finally, I can be somebody that is easy to love. But the years went by and I realized that the more I went looking for that feeling, the more time I ended up spending in places that didn’t actually have space for the fullness of me. And the more time I ended up spending around people that didn’t actually have any interest in loving me and caring for my needs. And the more I cared for all the parts of myself, the less satisfying it became to become a boundaryless person.” - some girl on Tik Tok