Hi Stephanie,

I will be away from my computer for a bit but I do want to respond to you. I first just want to start by saying that you are not unworthy of love, friendships, and happiness. No, you deserve all the good things out there. Again, I will further elaborate when I return. In the meantime, I wish you kindness and comforting thoughts to mitigate your anxiety.

Hi Stephanie!

First of all, I’m so sorry you’ve been going through this and so much more. I totally understand what you’re feeling in terms of your toxic friendships because I too have struggled with toxic friends for what seemed like a never ending amount of time. Up until very recently, I thought that I’d never find a healthy friendship with anyone and thought that there was something wrong with me because all of my past friendships were toxic and ended badly. I started thinking that I wasn’t deserving of true friendship because of all my past experiences.

But now that I have grown and found truly fulfilling friendships and relationships, I can look back and reflect on what was really going on with my toxic friendships, and maybe I can help you out a little bit with what I’ve gone through?

1. There’s NOTHING wrong with you. From what you said, it sounds like you really value your relationships with others, but others have not returned that unconditional support and love to you. This shows that there may be something “wrong” with them. Not that I’m insinuating I know anything about them, but I do know that people who bully or abuse others do this out of their own sense of insecurity and experiences they’ve had. Let me emphasize that this does NOT justify their actions towards you, but just know that the bullying and abuse is likely coming from deep emotional conflicts within them.

2. You deserve love, respect and support from your closest relationships. All relationships are a two-way street: both parties receive and offer their love and support to each other because that is the core of relationships. One thing that all humans have in common is they are capable of giving love, kindness, support, etc. and we all do this to varying degrees. Because we give love, we deserve love.

3. I know what you mean when you say “I cant help but feel deep down that I wish for someone to say all these horrible things to me again.” And again, there’s NOTHING WRONG WITH YOU for feeling this way. You’ve been repeatedly exposed to toxic relationships, and sounds like you may have never had a really healthy friendship. I’m also almost the exact same age as you, and I’ve also experienced the same feelings up until about a year ago because of my history with toxic friendships. When you repeatedly have toxic and abusive relationships and haven’t quite yet experienced healthy ones, you think it’s normal to be treated the way you have been. Or even if you know it’s not healthy, you think this is what you deserve because this is what you’ve always experienced. This is what you’ve been surrounded with for practically your whole life.

The fact that you are aware of how your past relationships have made you feel now is great. Learning from and reflecting on our relationships can teach us more about ourselves and what we want. So now that you know that your previous friendships were toxic, you can keep that knowledge in the back of your mind when you make new friendships.

In my opinion, half of the friend-making process is luck, because you’ll either click with someone or not. The other half is knowing what you want and don’t want in a relationship.

I understand you may feel hopeless in your search for a loving, supportive friendship, but I promise you will find it one day. It takes a lot of time, reflection and communication to develop a healthy relationship, but it WILL happen for you.

And always listen to your gut!

I wish you the best <3