Radical Healing for the Strong Friend, Part 1

Hi, and thanks for joining us. Dr. Jameca Cooper Cooper, we are doing still our 30 Days of Radical Healing because this year you're going to be radically healed. We don't want you to be dealing with the same issues, the same struggles, the same toxic people that you were dealing with in 2021. We're going to move on, move past, and break through some of that shit, right? So today we are doing Radical Healing for the Strong Friend. Make sure before you do anything, you like this video and subscribe to this channel. And the reason I decided to do Radical Healing for the Strong Friend is because over the years I've realized with my patients in therapy, there are a lot of people who either are the strong friend in the group or they look to the strong friend in the group. And I've seen both sides of it in therapy. The one thing I can tell you is there are struggles and challenges on each side. So if you are the strong friend, and I'm sure everyone has probably been the strong friend at some point in their life, some people more than others, and if you are the friend that looks to the strong friend, then either way, there are going to be challenges on both ends. So today I'm going to talk about what those challenges are and how you can heal from them, how you can move past some of the issues that have kept you stuck in either position. Today we are specifically going to focus first— this is going to be part 1— today we're going to focus first on what you feel and how to break through the challenges if you are in fact the strong friend, right? I can definitely say, not that I am the strong friend, but there are times in my life when I have been the strong friend. And I think there are reasons why people end up in that role, that category of being the strong friend. Lots of times it is how they're raised, their background, how they've been modeled, what their childhood is. Maybe they're the oldest child in the family, maybe they're the one that's most responsible or conscientious. Maybe it's just their rigid personality, Type A personality, that makes them want to kind of shepherd and take care of everyone else. But whatever the case, if you are the strong friend, there are going to be some things that you're going to feel. And one of those things is you're going to likely feel tired, sometimes exhausted, after not just dealing with your own life but dealing with sometimes the problems that other people bring to you They call you, tell you about their girlfriend, their boyfriend, what happened at work, did this, did that. Sometimes they usually don't ask you if you're busy or if you have time. They just kind of jump right into it, right? So you're probably going to feel, feel tired, exhausted. You're probably also going to feel neglect sometimes because when you are the strong friend, sometimes people dump on you and share things with you, and they often don't realize or acknowledge that you might have your own issues and struggles that you might need to talk to. Someone about. So you could feel exhausted, you could feel neglected. You also could feel as though no one cares or no one is checking on you, because if you're the person that's always checking on everyone, you're always calling, you're sending text messages, you're sending emails, you're sending cards, whatever the case is, you're reaching out to other people to see how they are because you genuinely want to, to know how they are. You want to check on them and make sure people are good. But when that doesn't happen for you You can feel rejected, you can feel neglected, you can feel minimized, dismissed, ignored, all of that. And that could come with being in that strong friend category. Another thing you can feel is you can sometimes feel projected on. So what does projected on mean? It means that let's say you're friends with someone who may be insecure or have low self-esteem, they're going to see things through the lens of a person who has insecurities and has low self-esteem. So they could assume or project onto you that you are making fun of them, or you are ignoring them, or that you don't think, um, that they're good enough. So that could look like them taking some— a break from you, getting away from you at times when maybe you're doing more things in life and becoming more successful. That could feel threatening to them, or in their mind they could feel like, hey, this person is too good for me now, they don't have time for me now, they have all these things going on. Or it could look like, um, you not calling them back quickly enough. And in their mind, that could be because like, oh, she doesn't care what I'm going through, or he doesn't care what I'm going through, so I'll just sit over here in my little rut and deal with it on my own. Um, it just could be lots of things. They could be looking at some of your other friends and comparing themselves to, uh, to them. Maybe your other friends are successful, are doing well, and they could be like, well, you know, I'm not really like that. So a lot of self-sabotage and projection could be going on with the other person. You could feel those things sometimes if you're the strong friend and not understand them. And it could be really challenging and difficult to understand because you're like, why would anyone say that? If you're friends with someone, you're friends with them. So it could be difficult to see how they could see themselves or your relationship in any different way. So again, I would say you would experience, uh, neglect, loneliness, exhaustion, and sometimes be projected on, right? So the things that I want you to remember today if you are the strong friend couple of things, 3 things, 3 most important things. First thing is to be more real. Be more real. Be more real with yourself. So what does that mean? It can mean there are some days when you maybe have the urge to check on someone else, and maybe what that urge inside you means is that you in fact need a hug. You in fact need someone to hold your hand or to rub your back and to tell you that things are going to be okay. Okay, because sometimes what I see in my patients is the urge for them to take care of other people sometimes is them saying in a different way that they in fact need some nurturing, they need some hugs, they need to talk to someone, they need to be around people. Because sometimes a strong friend is doing all the strong friend stuff just as a way to not be by themselves or to be silent or to sit with themselves for a long time. Um, so that could be something that you could be struggling with. So again, be real is my number one. My number two Number 2 is to express emotion. Express your emotion. Express your emotions. So if you're having a bad day, what the strong friend is usually, um, kind of built to do is to just minimize it and say, oh, it's fine, I didn't have a bad day, it was just a long day, just like any other day, right? But what I want you to do and what I challenge you to do if you're the strong friend is to not just say the day was fine, but to say, you know what, today was hard. Today was long. I'm tired. I didn't like when such-and-such said whatever to me. I'm angry. I need more rest. I need to just sit by myself for a minute. All those things. You have to be able to express your emotions. Express your emotions so that you, more than anyone, you can acknowledge to yourself that you do in fact have feelings, although you might try to minimize them and push them away. So that's going to do two things. It's going to let you know and acknowledge to you that you have feelings, and also it's going to let the people around you know that you have feelings, right? Because they often see you as a superwoman. You can do everything, you can do everything well. Maybe you do a lot of things, maybe you're quite productive, successful, and you make it look easy even though it's not. So one of the things you can do is to start to express your emotions, like tell people how it really feels, not how it should look here, but how it maybe feels here. So, and then my third tip for you if you're on the strong friend is to Admit that you have struggles. Admit frustrations. Admit failures. That's very important for the strong friend. And what I've found through, through my, my therapy, working with patients and even with myself— I told you I've been a strong friend before, not always, but I have been at some time. So what I found is that you have to be able, as a strong friend, to verbalize, to acknowledge your failures. Because I think people on the outside looking at you as a strong friend don't think you have failures. And it could be that you just kind of get half a failure and move on. Maybe your mind doesn't even register it as a failure. And I can give you some examples for me, like, um, when I was doing a lot of writing and research, I would submit journal articles for publication and there it's very tedious to go through a peer-reviewed journal. And usually it's a lot of edits, a lot of talk about what's not good. Why did you include this in the study? And lots of times it can be rejected. So rejection after rejection. Hardly anyone I know, unless they're really good writers who've been doing this for a long time, only those people kind of get like accept with revisions or accepted flat out. Most people get those really kind of, kind of nasty edits or rejections, right? So as a strong friend, I'm sure I didn't even discuss those failures. Oh, I didn't say, oh, I got rejected from struggle, why this happened, because my mind doesn't register it as such. I just keep going into the next thing. I just submit again, I revise it, I submit, I do something else. And so what people around me would see are the wins and only the wins, right? And that gives a false sense of who you are and what your struggles are. So to people around you, it makes you not look real. So you have to be able to express and acknowledge your own challenges and failures, which can be hard if really you don't register challenges and failures in the same way that other people do, right? So I want you to get in the habit of doing that. So begin to talk more about what it's like, what it's like, right? I did, I did try to do this, this didn't work. I tried to do this, this didn't work. I failed. I didn't, I didn't win this contest or I didn't make this deadline. You have to talk real talk to your friends so that they understand not just who you want to show them that you are, but who you really are. Because everyone has struggles, everyone has failures. That's going to help you, and it's going to help your friends, those friends around you, to get to see like you really are not Superwoman. You're real, you got real shit going on, and they need to see what that is so that they can start to identify with who you are inside. And hopefully these are things and tips you can do. I've given you 3 really good tips on what you can do if you are the strong friend. I want you to make sure you tune in for part 2 of the Radical Healing for the Strong Friend, because in part 2 I'm going to talk about how you can help your strong friend. I'm sure all of us have one of those that we know or used to know in our circle, and that person needs some help too. Going through 2022, and we're trying to be better, we're trying to do better, and we're trying to live lives more fully And like I said, be radically healed to not do the same shit. That's what I'm talking about. Thanks for joining us. Like this video, love this channel, and subscribe for more on radical healing. I'm Dr. Jameca Cooper.