Dear Lovejonesss,

it does seem this friend of yours gives you a different advice than she herself would do in a given situation. You say she is more of easy going and amicable with people, even if they cross her. She is even friends with all her exes (or at least doesn’t block any of her ex’s numbers).

But when you complain about something that annoyed you, her advice to you is to escalate the situation, to confront the person, to cut contact etc. She advises more “aggressive”/hostile reactions than she herself would do in the same situation.

Your problem, as it seems, is that you take her advice without thinking twice and you do what she tells you. And then maybe later you regret that you were tough on someone, when originally you didn’t even want to be, and it wasn’t even an issue for you (e.g. when the guy you’d just started dating didn’t invite you to his home for Thanksgiving). So your initial reaction would have been cool, you wouldn’t have even noticed that there’s anything wrong about it. But then your friend brought it up and sort of provoked you into overreacting.

My immediate questions to those who may have insight are:
-Why is it that allow this person (my friend) to get me so riled up?

There could be more reasons. One could be that you unconsciously feel obliged to react on her anger – as if you were her. It’s called emotional enmeshment. And it might be due to perhaps your childhood circumstances, when you took e.g. your father’s anger at your mother as your own (perhaps?). This is a wild guess, based on some of the things I read on your previous threads.

So it could be that you take another person’s anger and you act on it. And she does seem like an angry person, since you said she is quite judgmental and sees wrongdoing in many situations (the way she’ll ask questions or do things comes off as judgmental). Maybe she is the kind of person who is always angry and upset about something, but never does anything about it, but just verbally vents. And then you take her anger and act on it… Anyway, that’s one possibility – I am not claiming it’s true, it’s just an idea.

Another reason for getting riled up easily could be that there is suppressed anger in you. It’s not the anger at the actual person or situation in the present, but mostly the anger at what happened to you in the past (in your childhood). And so it’s kind of always there, under the surface, and leaks out easily. So whenever your friend suggests you should be angry – you do get angry and you “strike”.

I don’t know if any of the two above explanations rings true for you?

I am evolving and recognize that I have kind of followed her lead in the past. Perhaps I was uncertain about how to handle things, so I turned to one of the people I felt safe with. But as I begin to become more observant, I realize that I have to set a boundary. It may not be me verbally saying anything to her, but being sure not to take any of her advice unless I am 1000% sure that is the direction that I want to go in. I am no longer going to allow her behavior to affect me, nor will I just go along to get along because it hasn’t served me.

It’s great that you are realizing you don’t need to follow her lead and do what she says. The bolded part is I think the most important – perhaps you don’t even need to tell her anything, but you make sure to think twice before reacting and do only what feels right for you. You don’t need to take on her anger, or agree with her judgments. Stay true to yourself, even if she urges you to react differently.

Or if you decide to address the issue, you can tell her that you noticed that she herself avoids confrontation, while at the same time urging you to be confrontational – and that you don’t like that.

But I think the first task would be to separate yourself from her judgments and opinions, and follow your own.