Ever wonder why it’s taken you years to recognize an unhealthy situation involving a friend or family member?
We all know the saying: “You can’t see the forest for the trees.”
How do you know what a healthy family looks like if all you’ve experienced is a dysfunctional one?
How do you know what a real friend is if you’ve never had one?
If it seems like your life is a continuum of dysfunctional or broken relationships that have left you feeling exhausted, used, and angry; it may be that you’re not allowing yourself to recognize your own feelings and as a result you’re not playing an active enough role in who your friends are.
If you don’t have healthy people in your life you’re more susceptible to letting the bad ones in. In addition, you have no frame of reference. You just know you’re not happy in your relationships and you might not even know why.
This is why support groups are so important. People in them are like mirrors. Each one gives you a different reflection which helps expand your paradigm beyond your own and allows you to see the ‘forest’ despite the trees.
Jodie Stevens
So true in my experience as well. A wise friend (that I met in a support group) once said, “You need to spend two hours around healthy people for every hour you spend around unhealthy ones. The gorilla in the room thing speaks to me in a more narrow fashion as well. That is a great description to me of what it feels like when there’s an extreme tension in the room when two or more people know there are unspoken negative thoughts about each other present, but none is willing to address or acknowledge them. I hate those times. Gratefully, they’re few and far between these days.
I love that! Two hours for every one! Great stuff. Thanks for reading.