Feature image credit: Ketut Subiyanto @ pexels
Do you have a friend who constantly makes you feel bad? This person might be a co-worker, gym buddy, or even your best friend.
Maybe this person isn’t in-your-face. They don’t outright say nasty things to you, but you always leave conversations with them feeling awful.
If a friend continuously makes you feel terrible, it is a giant red flag that something is wrong. Trust your instincts. Do not ignore the red flag!
These are not okay:
1. Making jokes about your perceived shortcomings and inadequacies
Say Ah Chong isn’t a great dancer. Ah Chong’s friend constantly teases him about his lack of finesse. This happens once, it happens twice, and Ah Chong is starting to feel uncomfortable about it. Yet Ah Chong’s friend continues to jab at his dancing skills. “Hahaha, Ah Chong, come show off your dancing.”
This borders on emotional abuse.
2. Patronising you about your naivety, lack of awareness, or outlook
Everybody has their own way of looking at the world. A person’s worldview is a product of their individual experiences.
Thus to put down another person’s point of view (especially repetitively) is disrespectful. Having an adult conversation about different perspectives is one thing, but if somebody blatantly sh*ts on your worldview, don’t let them.
3. Belittling your opinions and achievements
“You think we should tax the rich? You yourself so much money. You don’t talk lah.”
“So what if you got promoted? Everybody in your department gets a promotion sooner or later.”
At the very core of it, to play down someone’s opinions is to invalidate their thought process, and to trivialise their achievements is to disrespect their hard work.
Don’t let anyone do this to you either.
4. Undermining you by frequently contradicting or responding negatively to your opinions and feelings
Have you ever met one of those people who love disagreeing with everybody? After a while, you find yourself on high alert every time you speak to them, like an inner mechanism preparing to be discredited.
Subjecting a person to continuous negativity like that is unhealthy.
Sometimes, people slip up. We accidentally make remarks that are abusive. Once is chance, twice is a coincidence. But if it happens over and over again, it’s a toxic pattern.
And if your friend treats you this way on a regular basis, it’s a sign that your friendship is turning toxic. Run!
Chow Ping Lee is a content writer under Headliner by Newswav, a programme where content creators get to tell their unique stories through articles and at the same time monetize their content within the Newswav app.
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