Friendship trouble :(

[L]

SO I don't want to come across as a mean person so hear me out and if you bother reading read it all.

So I am an anxious person but I can contain my anxiety and if I don't speak most people around me wound't know I was feeling anxious.

I have this friend in college who has really bad general anxiety. I fully support her, I stand by her and try to help her out but it is getting a little too much for me at this stage. I have exams coming up in less than 5 weeks and I am getting pretty anxious about them. I am preparing for them and trying to keep up with the work, though I find it difficult at times.

My friend in college is 100 times more anxious and is looking for support off me for her anxiety which I just cannot give at this time. Last year during our exams she would come to me in a state almost crying saying she couldn't sit the exam she was too anxious followed by "you may have anxiety but it is nothing like this" I will never forget that comment but put it down to her present state of panic. I was anxious at the time and that didn't help me. If she ever says it again I will slap her.

Now she wants to study together. We are preparing questions and then swapping our answers. The thing is she is not putting as much work into it as I am. We swapped one question this week but hers is not as detailed as mine yet she clams her answer is as good as mine. I don't want to swap any more but how do I tell her that?

She always has something in her life that is causing her anxiety, if it is not one thing it is another.

I don't study in the same room as her any more because she never sits for more than 2 minutes and is always talking. She wants to run through answers ALL the time even when we are on lunch away from the books and taking time out. She wants me who is dyslexic to proof read her stuff and tell her it is right because I get help with my work and she doesn't. She attends the counsellor in the college who told her I was a great support to her.

She texts me at times telling me I am her best friend yet she never gives me anything in return. She doesn't speak to the rest of my class and where I don't see eye to eye with them all I like to sit with them at lunch but she will not allow this. She has made it clear that we are not celebrating the end exams with the rest of the class and this choice has been made for me. Even my friends in the general class she doesn't like and restricts my time with them.

I really want to down my time with her while I am doing exam prep but I know this is really mean. I feel used and my own anxiety is growing. She is relying on me too much, I spend too much time sorting her difficulties and not concentrating on myself. I will snap very soon and that will not help at all.

[Chantellabella]

Hi, my friend. I could have written the exact same thing years ago. I felt like I gave all the time and got nothing in return.

But the reality of it was that I kept getting involved in co-dependent cycles with people. I would rescue them, then I felt used and started resenting it. I would feel guilty for awhile which made me feel more resentful and trapped. Then I would snap and be really mean. Once I was mean to them, I would apologize and become friends with them. Why? Because I made them a victim by hurting them. Once they were a victim, I would set about rescuing them again. I was always miserable and had a love/hate relationship with a ton of very needy friends.

This was also the cycle of my marriage, but I was in the role of your friend. I was always the victim and my ex rescued me. He never let me solve my own problems and became my sole rescuer. That made me dependent on him. He was always afraid I would leave him and he couldn't stand being alone (he was a co-dependent), so he would rescue me. This made me feel helpless. But he would then see himself as a victim of me, i.e. he "always had" to rescue me. Poor him. Then he got resentful and mean. He would flip to a perpetrator and then hurt me. Once I was hurt, guess what? I was a victim again who needed to be rescued.

It sounds like your friend is trying to suck you into a co-dependent triangle. If you google co-dependent triangle or drama triangle, a chart will pull up. It explains how people go round and round the triangle playing the same three roles and everybody being miserable.

The only way to break free of this triangle is to stop the pattern. I had to stop being a victim with my husband, which forced him to stop rescuing me. I had to stop some of the friendships I had with co-dependents. See, it's very hard for a co-dependent person to see they get people into this pattern. My ex still hasn't figured it out. He went from my co-dependent marriage to a second co-dependent marriage and is just as miserable. If I had not put a stop to this merry go round, we would still be doing it over and over.

So it sounds like your friend is perpetually in the victim role. Rescuers are attracted to victims. I'm not saying helping people is bad. But there's a difference between helping people but giving them space to do things themselves and doing things for a person. It sounds like your friend is depending way too much on you for anxiety destressing if you're getting angry with her. She will continue to do it to you though, if you let her. You may need to be the strong one and be the establisher of boundaries.

My mother has been a rescuer her entire life. She complains about how people depend on her all the time and she resents it. She gets angry at them, yet feels guilty if she doesn't rescue them. I've told her to stop rescuing people but it falls on deaf ears. I finally told her that if she isn't willing to change her behavior, she can't expect others to change theirs. She can't understand that the only thing she has control over is her own behavior. We can't change other's behavior. She'll say things like "I would never do that to someone" and then wonders why they don't stop sucking the life out of her. When I ask her why she doesn't stop the cycle, she makes excuses. My guess is that she is afraid that if she doesn't rescue people, they will leave her. I used to feel the same way.

But the truth is that when I left the co-dependents behind, I found true friendships. Equal friendships. There were no rescuers, no victims and no games. It's scary to change these behaviors and it takes a lot of practice to get out of it. It took me about 6 years to finally be able to recognize when I was in a co-dependent triangle and then I had to learn how to break the cycle.

Anyway, sorry, I'm preaching. I'll bet you stop reading 6 paragraphs ago.

Remember to take care of you and do what you need for yourself to be well or to do well in your goals. You're a lot like me in that your heart is so caring for others, that sometimes we forget to put the oxygen on ourselves before giving oxygen to others.

[SmileyFace]

Hi, my friend. I could have written the exact same thing years ago. I felt like I gave all the time and got nothing in return.

But the reality of it was that I kept getting involved in co-dependent cycles with people. I would rescue them, then I felt used and started resenting it. I would feel guilty for awhile which made me feel more resentful and trapped. Then I would snap and be really mean. Once I was mean to them, I would apologize and become friends with them. Why? Because I made them a victim by hurting them. Once they were a victim, I would set about rescuing them again. I was always miserable and had a love/hate relationship with a ton of very needy friends.

This was also the cycle of my marriage, but I was in the role of your friend. I was always the victim and my ex rescued me. He never let me solve my own problems and became my sole rescuer. That made me dependent on him. He was always afraid I would leave him and he couldn't stand being alone (he was a co-dependent), so he would rescue me. This made me feel helpless. But he would then see himself as a victim of me, i.e. he "always had" to rescue me. Poor him. Then he got resentful and mean. He would flip to a perpetrator and then hurt me. Once I was hurt, guess what? I was a victim again who needed to be rescued.

It sounds like your friend is trying to suck you into a co-dependent triangle. If you google co-dependent triangle or drama triangle, a chart will pull up. It explains how people go round and round the triangle playing the same three roles and everybody being miserable.

The only way to break free of this triangle is to stop the pattern. I had to stop being a victim with my husband, which forced him to stop rescuing me. I had to stop some of the friendships I had with co-dependents. See, it's very hard for a co-dependent person to see they get people into this pattern. My ex still hasn't figured it out. He went from my co-dependent marriage to a second co-dependent marriage and is just as miserable. If I had not put a stop to this merry go round, we would still be doing it over and over.

So it sounds like your friend is perpetually in the victim role. Rescuers are attracted to victims. I'm not saying helping people is bad. But there's a difference between helping people but giving them space to do things themselves and doing things for a person. It sounds like your friend is depending way too much on you for anxiety destressing if you're getting angry with her. She will continue to do it to you though, if you let her. You may need to be the strong one and be the establisher of boundaries.

My mother has been a rescuer her entire life. She complains about how people depend on her all the time and she resents it. She gets angry at them, yet feels guilty if she doesn't rescue them. I've told her to stop rescuing people but it falls on deaf ears. I finally told her that if she isn't willing to change her behavior, she can't expect others to change theirs. She can't understand that the only thing she has control over is her own behavior. We can't change other's behavior. She'll say things like "I would never do that to someone" and then wonders why they don't stop sucking the life out of her. When I ask her why she doesn't stop the cycle, she makes excuses. My guess is that she is afraid that if she doesn't rescue people, they will leave her. I used to feel the same way.

But the truth is that when I left the co-dependents behind, I found true friendships. Equal friendships. There were no rescuers, no victims and no games. It's scary to change these behaviors and it takes a lot of practice to get out of it. It took me about 6 years to finally be able to recognize when I was in a co-dependent triangle and then I had to learn how to break the cycle.

Anyway, sorry, I'm preaching. I'll bet you stop reading 6 paragraphs ago.

Remember to take care of you and do what you need for yourself to be well or to do well in your goals. You're a lot like me in that your heart is so caring for others, that sometimes we forget to put the oxygen on ourselves before giving oxygen to others.

One of the best things I've read on this forum.

I agree with you 100000% on this one.

When it's part of one's nature (if you want to put it that way) to rescue people so often, you will feel as if you're caught between a rock and a hard place, when in reality... that really isn't the case.

Took me a long while to accept the fact that sometimes, there's only so much you can do for someone. And if you continue to go out of your way trying to do everything for them and not accomplishing anything because they're not doing squat for themselves, it's very imminent you'll be resentful towards them (and maybe yourself, in some cases).

Like chantellabella said, take care of yourself. May be easier said than done for some, but that's really the only way you can go about things to function well around others without feeling the need or pressure to rescue everyone (especially people who don't need your help).