Empaths & Toxic Social Circles
If you’re an empath who went for decades without knowing about boundaries and without knowing you were people-pleasing, maybe you have a history of being the scapegoat in circles of “friends.”
If so, you didn’t know any better. Maybe you were so accustomed to being bullied and generally treated without respect that you resigned yourself to being stuck associating with assholes or being alone.
Those perpetual playground bullies (PPBs) aren’t your real friends. It’s better to be alone than to associate with people who bizarrely believe it’s your duty to be their verbal and psychological punching bag. (That not only applies to “friends” but also to relatives, by the way.)
Post-college in my twenties, I was part of a social circle that even then didn’t feel like a circle of friends to me — or more accurately, it felt like I was an outsider hanging out with a circle of empathy-challenged friends. I considered most of them “friends of a friend.” No matter how many years passed by, I continued to think of them as friends of a friend or acquaintances, not friends. In that social circle, I felt barely tolerated.
I’m not sure if I even admitted to myself that I disliked these friends-of-a-friend. It was common enough for them to verbally gang up on me. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have associated with them. I was trying to fit…