I know this may seem like an odd post, but there are many of us that have to deal with people on a daily basis, and some of those people could drive us crazy if we did not deal with them the correct way.
Imagine that you have taken someone under your wing. This certain someone has drug problems and they are professional manipulators. This may be extreme, but I have a friend dealing with this right now and it is so important to make sure you are handling this situation the correct way. She has some advice:
Hi everyone! I have quite possibly made the mistake of taking someone under my wing and I am feeling a little overwhelmed. However, throughout this process thus far I have figured out a few great tips and pointers to keep myself positive and handle my friend’s behavior better than I would have in the past.
My friend tends to change plans often and apologizes way too much about it. I know she does not feel bad, but she wants me to be okay with her behavior no matter what. The biggest issue with that is that I have a 15-month-old and when you have children, no matter how young or old, you cannot just change plans without getting stressed out. So, this morning when she sent me a text moving our plans back a couple of hours (mind you, I had already started driving the 1.5 hour trip to our destination) I calmly told her to just call me when she arrived, but I was already on my way and I would start without her. That might seem harsh, but I have to let her know early on that I am not going to change my life around to cater to hers.
Another tip I have is to be patient, but be yourself and do not dedicate more than a few hours of your day to these people. My friend is very needy and needs validation often, but I cannot allow myself to focus solely on her all day when I have my own little family to focus on. You will exhaust yourself and possibly have a complete meltdown in the parking lot of your church after another commitment you made but barely had the energy for…
My point is, help your friends out if you can, but do not do so much that you start to resent getting texts from them because you are already exhausted thinking about what you can do next to help fix their lives.
Photo Credit: inthespiritbookclub.com