SilkRoad
Lay the coin on my tongue
- Joined
- May 26, 2009
- Messages
- 3,932
- MBTI Type
- INFJ
- Enneagram
- 6w5
- Instinctual Variant
- sp/sx
I had a friend visiting for a few days. I think she may be ENFP - she tested ENFP a few years back and it seems to fit in a lot of ways. Really not sure of type though.
We fell out a few years ago and actually only reconnected fairly recently, because she was definitely going through issues at the time (social bullying, etc etc) and I felt that she was sort of projecting negativity onto me. But in a strange way. I'd say "I hope the weather will be good when I go on holiday to Morocco", and she'd be like "You're always imagining the worst! YOu need to let go and just be happy instead of worrying all the time!" Uh, yeah. That sort of thing, and worse. Meanwhile, she was actually dumping quite a lot of negativity onto me because she was having a difficult time with people in her life and so on.
Anyway, we patched things up and reconnected and she stayed with me for a few days. It was nice to catch up with her and she does have some good advice about staying positive, minimizing the impact of negative people, etc. But... Some stuff kind of got to me too, and unfortunately it reminded me of why we fell out. It's almost as though she won't even allow a negative word to be spoken, it's her new technique for staying "happy". Or if I comment that a friend has had problems, she tells me that I have too many negative people in my life and I need to surround myself with positive people. I tried to make it clear that at the moment I have a decent number of low-maintenance and quite positive friends around me, and only a couple who are a bit of a drain, but she kept trying to bring it back to how I need positive people around me who share similar interests...sort of implying that I have none of those. I mean, I even told her that one of those low-drama good friends had a near home invasion recently, and she's like "You know so many people with problems!" I actually got a bit annoyed and said "just because my friend had to slam the window in an intruder's face doesn't mean she 'has problems'".
Then after she left to continue her travels, she emailed me and basically...well to me it was very much telling me that I'm not happy in this city and need to move on. I just feel again that this is her projecting. Because I betrayed some negativity - and it has more to do with some difficult circumstances this year than anything else, not much to do with the place I live, I think - she's concluding that I am going through what she went through in this city; lack of upbuilding people around her, feeling seriously isolated, depression, etc. She definitely talked a few times about me being "lonely" or "isolated" when I hadn't actually said that at all. Even when I'd been talking about my friends, how I spend time with them etc. I just don't like the fact that she's sort of telling me what I feel, and drawing conclusions that it's not really her right to draw. It's almost to me as though she wants me to be her, again, and to do what she ultimately did, which was decide that this wasn't the place for her and move on. But I'm not her, and though I have my struggles and my ups and downs I don't feel that there is a better place for me currently. (The last time I moved away from a city, I had no doubt at all that it was the right thing to do. I don't feel like that at all right now.)
Her technique to approach life now seems to be to not acknowledge negativity at all, and to me that's just not realistic. It really did kind of annoy me that every time I said "oh, I worry about so and so" or "It annoys me when people do this", she'd be like "Why? Why let it annoy you? Why should you worry about them? I don't give people like that space in my head any more." It was like she had to call me on EVERYTHING of that nature that I said. I realise the need to protect myself and to avoid excessive negativity, I've seen the value of that increasingly this year. But honestly, don't try to convince me I'm in a worse place than I am...I know myself the best.
It's not that I want to break up the friendship again, but honestly my inclination is to just keep her in my life in small doses, and to not tell her much about what's going on except that I feel pretty good and cheerful about everything - whether or not it is entirely true. I can imagine this sort of thing really stressing me out otherwise.
What do you guys think about all this? Any similar experiences?
We fell out a few years ago and actually only reconnected fairly recently, because she was definitely going through issues at the time (social bullying, etc etc) and I felt that she was sort of projecting negativity onto me. But in a strange way. I'd say "I hope the weather will be good when I go on holiday to Morocco", and she'd be like "You're always imagining the worst! YOu need to let go and just be happy instead of worrying all the time!" Uh, yeah. That sort of thing, and worse. Meanwhile, she was actually dumping quite a lot of negativity onto me because she was having a difficult time with people in her life and so on.
Anyway, we patched things up and reconnected and she stayed with me for a few days. It was nice to catch up with her and she does have some good advice about staying positive, minimizing the impact of negative people, etc. But... Some stuff kind of got to me too, and unfortunately it reminded me of why we fell out. It's almost as though she won't even allow a negative word to be spoken, it's her new technique for staying "happy". Or if I comment that a friend has had problems, she tells me that I have too many negative people in my life and I need to surround myself with positive people. I tried to make it clear that at the moment I have a decent number of low-maintenance and quite positive friends around me, and only a couple who are a bit of a drain, but she kept trying to bring it back to how I need positive people around me who share similar interests...sort of implying that I have none of those. I mean, I even told her that one of those low-drama good friends had a near home invasion recently, and she's like "You know so many people with problems!" I actually got a bit annoyed and said "just because my friend had to slam the window in an intruder's face doesn't mean she 'has problems'".
Then after she left to continue her travels, she emailed me and basically...well to me it was very much telling me that I'm not happy in this city and need to move on. I just feel again that this is her projecting. Because I betrayed some negativity - and it has more to do with some difficult circumstances this year than anything else, not much to do with the place I live, I think - she's concluding that I am going through what she went through in this city; lack of upbuilding people around her, feeling seriously isolated, depression, etc. She definitely talked a few times about me being "lonely" or "isolated" when I hadn't actually said that at all. Even when I'd been talking about my friends, how I spend time with them etc. I just don't like the fact that she's sort of telling me what I feel, and drawing conclusions that it's not really her right to draw. It's almost to me as though she wants me to be her, again, and to do what she ultimately did, which was decide that this wasn't the place for her and move on. But I'm not her, and though I have my struggles and my ups and downs I don't feel that there is a better place for me currently. (The last time I moved away from a city, I had no doubt at all that it was the right thing to do. I don't feel like that at all right now.)
Her technique to approach life now seems to be to not acknowledge negativity at all, and to me that's just not realistic. It really did kind of annoy me that every time I said "oh, I worry about so and so" or "It annoys me when people do this", she'd be like "Why? Why let it annoy you? Why should you worry about them? I don't give people like that space in my head any more." It was like she had to call me on EVERYTHING of that nature that I said. I realise the need to protect myself and to avoid excessive negativity, I've seen the value of that increasingly this year. But honestly, don't try to convince me I'm in a worse place than I am...I know myself the best.
It's not that I want to break up the friendship again, but honestly my inclination is to just keep her in my life in small doses, and to not tell her much about what's going on except that I feel pretty good and cheerful about everything - whether or not it is entirely true. I can imagine this sort of thing really stressing me out otherwise.
What do you guys think about all this? Any similar experiences?