Friendship rollercoaster

[SoulWolf]

I have this weird thing where some days I'm totally happy with my friendship situation, where I'm grateful for the people in my life and everything that's awesome about them... and then I have other days where I can't stop obsessing about everything that isn't right... everything I'm still missing, I question if they really care about friendship at all, I worry that they're going to abandon me, etc.

 

Everything else in my life is pretty stable, it's really just friendship that I have this issue with. Does this happen to anyone else?

[Dodecahedron314]

Definitely. I know with me it's usually tied to my anxiety, so I'm not sure if that's what's causing your uncertainty with this or not, but even if it might not be for the same reasons, I still certainly get this. (Yay for having self esteem issues and abandonment issues.)

[techno]

At times. Sometimes I have no fears or worries about a friendship, and the next minute I'm caught up in everything that is or could go wrong.

[Natkat]

yes I get this alot. I think for me its because I have many casual friends I like to hang out with but not many intimate ones in the sense that I am a pretty touchy person but for most of my friendships we dont really do more than a simple hi and goodbye hug, (if we do hug).

 

also the last few years I lost a small handfull of very important friends and I had a few ones I felt in constant fear of losing, so I guess I feel alittle vulnerble at that point.

 

[Mezzo Forte]

Very rarely, but when it does, the friendship tends to be especially precious to me. Still, this is partly because of an experience I had in my high school years when I became very close with someone, only for them to suddenly emotionally wall themself off to me with no warning or explanation. I'll never forget the pain of deciding that I had to let the friendship go and stop trying to invest in this person who was no longer investing in me.

 

Now that a close friendship developed under similar circumstances, (an initially casual friendship that suddenly became far more emotionally intense,) my brain jumps to that experience that happened so many years ago, and I have to really fight to stop myself from assuming that the same thing will happen again. Thankfully, I can actually posit logical arguments to myself to help sway the fears sitting in the back of my head, even if they'll still lurk there regardless. I know myself far better now than I did six years ago, so I'd like to think that I'm more emotionally equipped to handle these fears.

[SoulWolf]

6 hours ago, Mezzo Forte said:

Still, this is partly because of an experience I had in my high school years when I became very close with someone, only for them to suddenly emotionally wall themself off to me with no warning or explanation. I'll never forget the pain of deciding that I had to let the friendship go and stop trying to invest in this person who was no longer investing in me.

 

Now that a close friendship developed under similar circumstances, (an initially casual friendship that suddenly became far more emotionally intense,) my brain jumps to that experience that happened so many years ago, and I have to really fight to stop myself from assuming that the same thing will happen again. Thankfully, I can actually posit logical arguments to myself to help sway the fears sitting in the back of my head, even if they'll still lurk there regardless.

Yup, this is why it's happening to me as well. I literally have to keep reminding myself that there's far more evidence in favour of everything being fine than there is to support any of my obsessive imaginings of what can possibly go wrong. In my case I had a string of friendships disappearing for no apparent reason, to the point where I started to actually think it's some kind of curse.

 

I've been reading a lot of stuff about insecurities, breaking bad habits, and self-pity... so far the negativity problem hasn't come up in a few days, so that's good.