Toxic Ties: The Impact of Our Friends

Join us for a reflective conversation on the critical importance of the friends we choose to keep in our lives. We dive deep into how friendships can impact our decisions—positively or negatively—and the ways they shape our well-being. The discussion unfolds through personal stories and examples, such as the consequences of hanging out with individuals who frequently engage in reckless behavior. We highlight the need for mindfulness in relationships, stressing that the company we keep not only reflects our values but also influences our behaviors and decisions. 

A telling narrative about a potential friendship becomes a catalyst for a broader exploration of the implications of social circles. As the host recounts experiences of contemplating friendships with individuals embroiled in risky habits, the message becomes crystal clear: the people we associate with can have a significant influence on our life paths. 

We also talk about the positive turnaround sparked by surrounding oneself with motivated individuals aiming for personal growth, drawing on past experiences to underscore this point. In addition, there's insight into maintaining boundaries with toxic family members and how such dynamics can affect our mental health. 

Ultimately, this episode serves as a gentle reminder for you to reflect on your relationships, encouraging engagements that foster positivity and well-being. Tune in for engaging stories, thought-provoking insights, and advice on navigating your social circles wisely! Don’t forget to subscribe, share, and check out our website for more resources!

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Chapters

• 19:17 Exploring Risky Friendships
• 4:32:05 The Importance of Positive Influences
• 11:38:49 Relationships and Personal Growth

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:10

Hi everyone. Is it weird that I'm going to be looking at you sideways if you're hanging out with some weird friends or characters? Welcome back to Mental Health-ish. So I was recently talking to someone who I won't say any names, but obviously, but you know, you have acquaintances, sometimes people that you talk to online or people that you just kind of know in a way. But anywho, I was talking to someone that I kind of I wouldn't say considered a friend, but someone that maybe I had thought about maybe being friends with. Like you know, when you meet someone and you're kind of like this person's pretty cool or like I could see myself being friends with this person, or whatever that kind of thing. So we're not at the friendship level yet, but you're kind of just like, oh, I like this person.

Speaker 1: 0:58

But anyhow, upon talking to this person for like a few times, obviously we've talked about stories, things come up right or whatever, and I noticed that she's always talking about this one friend that she hangs out with whatever. And I noticed that she's always talking about this one friend that she hangs out with whatever. And usually all of the stories that are told when she's talking about this friend involve either like party drinking, like getting super, super drunk, like had me kind of thinking a bit like does her friend have a drinking problem? Like just because she puts herself in these situations, right, where she's just like constantly drinking a lot and, um, things are happening to like, you know, she'll wake up with bruises or you, you know almost being kidnapped, robbed, like that kind of stuff, that kind of situation. So we're not just talking about, okay, you go out and you go to a bar or whatever, like partying, you go have a few drinks, like which is fine, like there's nothing wrong with that. I'm talking about just constant like shit happening, if you know what I mean, like next level type of stuff, and obviously like sometimes, like this person that I'm talking to will be involved in these things right to like just getting drunk and like not making the best decisions, things like that. And, mind you, these people, people are like in their fifties, like mid to late forties, so they're older, you older, things like that.

Speaker 1: 2:37

Not to judge, obviously, this is just my thoughts, not trying to judge anyone or anything, and so, yeah, the last time that I kind of heard his story, it just really had me thinking and thinking about this person kind of differently, because I'm like why are you hanging out with this type of person and getting yourself into these sticky situations and like making bad decisions? Like I've never heard a positive story from you being around this person, like it's usually okay, you guys are drunk and then something bad happens, or you guys are kind of putting yourself in these bad situations, right. So I had me thinking. At that point I was like I don't know if I would want to be friends with this person anymore or if I'm interested in being friends with this person Like number one. Like I just can't relate. Like I guess I don't really drink as much anymore, like I'm not a party person, I'm a mom, maybe I'm just boring, I don't know. But even if I was, I don't know that I would want to be associated or be doing that type of stuff. I don't know. Let me know what your thoughts are on this or like if you kind of understand where I'm kind of getting at.

Speaker 1: 3:52

But yeah, I guess what I'm trying to say is like be careful who you surround yourself with and who you have in your social circles, because you just never know the collateral or secondhand damage that can come with that and if you have someone in mind as you're listening to this, or you kind of have a friend where you're just kind of questioning, sometimes, like the things that they're doing or the situations that you're being put into and things like that, maybe it's time to reconsider the friendship or maybe talking, talk to that person about the things that they're doing. But, yeah, just be mindful of who you're spending your time with, because the people that we spend most of our time with and our friends or whatever, like they, could have a big influence on our own thoughts and our own behaviors and our own well being, right, especially, if we're putting ourselves in these like dangerous situations, then that and this is just one example, obviously like the story that I'm sharing, but there's so many other things, right, but yeah, we're putting ourselves constantly in these situations where we're maybe drinking a lot and then we're not remembering the next day, and like we're putting ourselves in dangerous situations where we're just not fully aware what's going on and it's just constantly Like you got to kind of question your relationships at that point, like, is this a positive, healthy relationship for me or is it not? You know, but that just had me thinking of this person differently. So now it had me thinking about myself like and just in general.

Speaker 1: 5:31

Like whoever you hang out with, like people are going to associate you with that type of person and that person's behaviors, that person's everything you know, like motivation levels, whatever. If someone asks you for a reference, are you going to provide a reference for someone that maybe isn't a good worker or you know there's just something that they wouldn't be, you know, compatible with, with wherever you work or whatever you know, like I don't know if that makes sense, but even with that, like you're not going to refer someone to your job that isn't going to make you look good, right, like you're not going to want someone that's going to make you look bad. So I think, with friendships and the people that we surround ourselves, like it's the same exact thing is, people are going to judge you or look at you differently based on who you surround yourself with, and so, yeah, I think that was just something that I started thinking about this week and, yeah, like just trying to be more cautious with I guess. So, yeah, the people that you hang out with, the people that are in your circle, are going to have an impact on yourself as well and the things that you do so obviously, like if you're hanging out with someone that likes to party and it's just drinking every day and you consider that person a friend, is that going to influence you, you know, to start drinking more or whatever the case may be? And so sometimes the people that we surround ourselves can influence the things that we do without even realizing it, while at the same time, on the other side of things, like if we surround ourselves with positive people in our lives, then that can also influence our life in a positive way as well. So encouraging growth right, making healthy choices, things like that, which reminds me.

Speaker 1: 7:33

So going related to the story that I just remembered and I always think about this is when I was going to college, I never crossed my mind to get a master's degree, to go to graduate school. I was just going to get my bachelor's degree. I got my bachelor's degree in sociology and then that's it. I really didn't have any plans on what I was going to do after getting my degree or going to college. I just kind of started going, I guess, to college. I started off with community college and then I transferred over to get a four-year university to get my degree, and so I never even thought about graduate school or anything or my master's.

Speaker 1: 8:18

But when I was at Cal Poly, which is where I got my bachelor's degree in sociology, like I said, I decided to join the sociology club, not thinking much of it, like I said, because I didn't plan on going to graduate school. I didn't know what I was going to do. I think I just kind of joined like just because I was so interested in sociology and the classes were just so good and so interesting and I really enjoyed learning about it. So I think that's really what motivated me to join this club. So once I was in that club I started meeting other students right that were in the club too, and talking to people and making friends.

Speaker 1: 9:07

A lot of the students that were in that club joined the club because they wanted to go to graduate school after receiving their bachelor's, like when they graduated. They wanted to go to get their master's after. And so when you're trying to apply to get your master's degree and go on to, you know, a graduate school program, you usually want to make your application look good and you want to make yourself stand out right. And so a lot of times people will join clubs and sometimes even like join the club's board right, like become maybe like club president, vice president, you know, etc. So people do a lot of extracurricular activities because they want to go to graduate school after and they want their application to look good, they want to stand out and things like that. And so I started meeting a lot of people that were going to go to graduate school after, which was something that I never thought about. And so halfway into my bachelor's degree program, I started looking into and being part of this club as well. We had people come on, professionals, come in and speak to us, right, like what are things you could do with this degree, etc.

Speaker 1: 10:19

My horizons started kind of expanding. I was kind of becoming curious. I started becoming interested, like okay, like what am I going to do after graduation? Like what do I want to do? And I started thinking about that and I decided that I wanted to go to graduate school and get my master's degree in social work. And at that time I was doing it because I was like I want to help other people, like that's the type of work that I want to do, and getting my master's in social work is going to just like open up so many doors and there's going to be so many opportunities. You know things like that. So I decided that I was going to apply to graduate school.

Speaker 1: 10:53

So, yeah, I started hanging out with, like these people. We had common goals, you know, we were all working towards something. We all wanted to go to graduate school. I ended up, like, applying to graduate school and whatever you know, if you follow me, you know I ended up going to USC and I got my, my master's degree and even through that, through that whole process of applying to graduate school, I talked to a lot of friends about it. I had people to look over my application, things like that. And so that's just another example of what I'm talking about.

Speaker 1: 11:21

If you know, whoever you surround yourself with is going to have a big impact on yourself and on your own thoughts, on your own behaviors, on the things that you do like for yourself in your own life, whatever like that's going to have a really big impact. And so, yeah, just remembering to think about the people that you surround yourself with right now and are these, like you know, just kind of think about it, not saying, you know, cut people off and end friendships or whatever, but just kind of be mindful of the people that you consider friends or that you hang out with and how those friendships or those people affect you. And I think this also goes with family, right. Like if you have a family member or family members who are very toxic and very negative, like, how is that affecting you as a person? Because our relationships can affect our mood, our self-esteem, and so by surrounding ourselves with, like, supportive, uplifting individuals, like that's going to help also increase, like our happiness. Right, it's going to help us feel more positive, feel just good, right, when we're surrounding ourselves with good people, as compared to if you're surrounding yourself with negative people, or if you're surrounding yourself with negative people or if you're in toxic relationships, like that's going to lead to stress and anxiety.

Speaker 1: 12:46

Right, surrounding yourself with people that have similar goals and values can help you increase your motivation and accountability, can help you with reaching those goals, right, and my example, right, like going to graduate school and surrounding myself with people that had the same goal, like that kind of helped guide me and help get me to where I wanted to be, right, and yeah, so just I thought that was just something interesting that I noticed and wanted to talk about is kind of like be mindful of who you surround yourself with and surrounding yourself with positive friends, encouraging people just all the way around, just remembering how much our relationships affect our personal lives. On a more personal level, and I don't know, I'm in my mid 30s and I'm just not a party person either way, so I can't even imagine myself getting to that point where I'm just like partying every day, drinking whatever and I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it, because it is okay to go out sometimes and blow off some steam and be good, right, have fun with friends, but really think about if this is happening every day and if you're putting yourself in danger constantly with these persons or people or whatever like. Is that really a healthy relationship and is that good you know, know for you in general? Um, but yeah, I just thought it's something interesting and something that I wanted to remind you all of is just um, yeah, just be careful who you hang out with. Be careful and really think about it, and people might judge you. People might be looking at you sideways or just kind of thinking of you differently based on the people that you hang out with, and I am not judging, but it just made me look at this person differently, kind of you know, and, yeah, just started just made me question things right for real. So, yeah, let me know what you guys think and if you guys could relate to what I'm talking about, remember to like, subscribe and check out my website, mentalhealthishcom, where you could find all of my mental health blogs and all of the past podcast episodes.

Speaker 1: 15:10

Yeah, I'm really excited to just record today. I feel like it's if you follow me on Instagram, you've seen that I have not posted anything this week because I literally been so busy with work and yeah, I don't know if it's I don't know, I don't know what's going on, if it's like the weather changed but there has been just so many calls. It's been so busy at work. I've had to make like two CPS reports. I had to make one elder abuse report. Like it's just been crazy, and so I'm really happy that I'm finally sitting down recording this.

Speaker 1: 15:43

Also, I did upload the last episode on the Mental Healthish YouTube. So, yes, there is a YouTube for Mental Healthish. I've had some people request videos, which I thought was cool, because I actually like watching videos too and I do watch like a lot of podcast videos on YouTube and stuff. So I was like, oh, I didn like watching videos too and I do watch like a lot of podcast videos on YouTube and stuff. So I was like, oh, I didn't think of that, but I did upload a video for the last episode so you could search that. All the links for all of these things are in my bio on my Instagram. I think that's just the easiest way I could tell you guys where to find it. My Instagram is Zuppysue, so in my bio I have my all my links on there. So I think that would be the easiest way to find all of these links and websites that I'm talking about. But, yeah, I hope that everyone's been great.

Speaker 1: 16:30

Spring break is coming up and, after much planning, like, we're going to be going to Vegas, but no, not that kind of Vegas trip. I'm not going to be partying or drinking. I'm going to be going with Emma and we're going to be doing just a lot of fun family activities, and so I'm really excited for that and I'm excited I'm going to try to blog and record some videos so that you guys could see on our YouTube. But yeah, if you've listened up to this point, thank you so much. And, yeah, remember to like, subscribe and share this and let me know what your thoughts are on today's episode. And remember to surround yourself with good people. That's all I'm going to say, but thank you guys. Talk to you soon.