How To Create More Meaningful Friendships

In this video, you will learn what healthy friendships really look like and the qualities that create strong, supportive connections and which ones may leave you feeling drained. We will also talk about healthy friendship behavior that you can practice on your end. Learn here with me!

Transcript

So the first thing you need to do when trying to create healthy friendships is start slow. I know this might sound counterintuitive because sometimes we meet people there's an infatuation process where we think we know somebody in a few weeks time and we really don't. It really takes a while to get to know who that person really is. You can't do it in a couple of weeks because when people jump into friendship too fast it's likely going to be unhealthy because dating is actually like interviewing. It's going to take you several attempts to really understand who that person is, What their values are, What their behavior is, How they handle anger and resentment, How they talk to you when there's a conflict. There's lots of behaviors that's going to tell you what kind of person you're dealing with. So you really have to go through an interviewing process whenever you're meeting a new friend or even a new relationship. But most people don't realize that in friendship. They just think, Oh, I feel really connected to this person. Person. We have a lot in common. I know I did this in my 20s and 30s. I globbed on to people way too fast thinking that I knew them when I really didn't and as a result those friendships didn't last because they weren't based on a strong foundation. Now the next thing I want you to do when you're trying to create healthy friendship is I want you to strive to be friendly but not too eager. Now again for me I made this mistake in my 20s and early 30s because I was really trying to fill the void with people I kind of used my friendships as band-aids because I was hurting and I didn't know what else to do. So I just wanted to fill myself up with lots of people. So in healthy friendship, I want you to strive for being friendly and the one way I have you do that is by being light and polite. Don't overshare. You don't want to dive headfirst into some really painful trauma when you don't really know that person yet. It's not going to go well. The goal here is to just strive to be friendly and light and polite because Getting attached too soon can spoil a friendship and I don't want that for you. Now the next thing I want you to do when you're trying to make friends as an adult, I want you to practice healthy friendship behavior. This includes things like being kind, Asking questions to show interest but not dominating the conversation, Respecting a person's limits and boundaries if they want less contact or they say no. You are okay with that because you're not putting all of your emotional eggs in one person's basket. Last friendship I developed took about a year. Usually I was slam-bam in a month. I felt super close to the person but it really wasn't healthy. But the last friendship we really did slowly over time and it took me having more patience and not putting all of my emotional eggs in one person's basket. The next thing I want you to do when you're trying to make friends as an adult is I want you to think about what kind of person do you want as a friend? What values are important to you? I assume trustworthiness honesty, Respectful might be at the top of your list and if they're not and you haven't had people like that maybe that's what you need to do is write a list of what kind of qualities and traits you want in a friend because that is going to give you a starting point. We don't want to just bump up against somebody and say oh you look nice and be their friend. I want you to really take time and write down what kind of person you want in your life because that creates a very specific intention and that's really healthy for friendship. So the next thing I want you to do when you're trying to make friends and create healthy relationships is I want you to start setting some little boundaries with them because that's gonna give you some really important information. Because friendship without boundaries is toxic and I don't want that for you. So part of what I want you to do is start noticing like 1. Do you have any boundaries with that friend? And 2. How do they react to your boundaries? And again, This is gonna take time. You're not gonna set a boundary the first week you know somebody but this is gonna give you really important information about who they are. So a really common boundary I might suggest if you're codependent or you tend to glob on like I did is have contact with the person only once a week. Don't reach out more than that. Try not to text too much too soon because again that can be a sign of dependency and I don't want that for you. So even just having a goal of once a week contact can be a really good boundary for you to set. It's also going to tell you a lot about the other person if they want contact right away several times a day, That may be a sign of a toxic friend or somebody who's going to be too dependent on you. So that's where your boundaries are going to be really important here for creating healthy friendship. So in that same friendship that I talked about earlier, She actually set a boundary really early on and she said she didn't want contact for a while because her dog had died and she didn't want to talk about it. Now in years past, I probably would have been offended or really busted through that boundary by trying to be supportive. That was a really good test for me because I could respect her boundary and not get freaked out or take it personally because she didn't want to talk to me and it was a great test because I could see that she was able to set her boundary in a healthy way. The next thing I want you to do when you're trying to make friends as adults is I want you to say hi more often and this is a really simple thing but a lot of times we get stuck in fear and we stay quiet and we think oh nobody really wants to talk to me but if If you're out and about at a Starbucks, At a park, And it seems natural because somebody's right next to you, Say hello and strike up a conversation because you never know where that's going to lead. And plus, It's going to help you build confidence in your own people skills that can help you create healthy friendship. Because making friends as an adult takes more effort. They're not going to fall out of the sky. I know for me, I had to really look at how am I going to make friends. And for me, I met a lot of my friends in 12-step programs because that's where I hang because saying hi is a really good skill to keep up with so that you can feel more and more comfortable talking to people. Now the next thing I want you to do for how to make friends and really create healthy friendship is I want you to be the kind of friend you want to attract. So how would you rate yourself as a friend from 1 to 10? Would you consider yourself a really strong friend? Loyal? Honest? Respectful? You have good boundaries? You allow them to have boundaries? How would you rate yourself as a friend? Because if you look at yourself and go, Well, I'm really not that good of a friend. I'd probably only give myself a four. That's okay. That's where you start to do some of this work by going back to the healthy relationship behaviors I talked about earlier and start practicing some of those. Another way you can do this is look at your past friendships. What's worked? What hasn't worked? What behaviors do you think you did to contribute to the friendship not working out? Because that's how we learn. I had a friendship crash and burn probably seven years ago. And I got so much out of that because it was so painful. I got to see my own friendship behavior and it was really toxic because I got globbed on too fast and I became way too dependent on that other person and it kind of turned them off and that was a huge turning point in my own codependency recovery and my own friendship history. But part of what helped me learn is to go back into the friendships that didn't work and dissect my part in that and that's what I want you to do because that's going to you create healthy friendship. Now the last thing you need to do for how to make friends and create healthy friendship is you need to cultivate a relationship with yourself. This is the part I avoided like the plague in my 20s and 30s because I did not want to do it. If I had done this one thing my friendships would have been a lot healthier because when you can depend on yourself and what I mean by that is enjoy your own company so you have a sense of yourself and you like who you are. You're not perfect, You've made mistakes, But for the most part you can accept who you are. That is going to help you create healthy friendship because you're not going to see other people as band-aids like I did. I don't want that for you but if you can start to cultivate a healthy relationship with yourself that is going to help you for sure avoid unhealthy dependency. Thanks so much.