There are often challenges, even in good relationships, and there can be times when people take advantage of you. They break boundaries and becoming controlling, sometimes without really realising that they’re doing so.

This can be the case whether it’s with friends, family, a partner or online but if you depend on these people for emotional support, it can be very hard, chipping away at your self-esteem. Maybe a recent event or holiday has highlighted how your own feelings and needs don’t seem to matter and you realise that you don’t want to carry on like this. If you’re asked to do something that you’re not keen on you and then feel pressurised to agree with whoever’s asking you, and particularly if this happens on a regular basis, then chances are that you’re being emotionally blackmailed. In other words, emotional blackmail often means that someone who’s close to you uses any feelings you have about obligation and guilt to get their own way.

This can include:

• You feeling as if you’re tip-toeing around them – if you try to reason with them, it causes friction and you start to cave in and agree to whatever they’re demanding.
• They’re manipulative and although they can appear charming so that you’ll comply with whatever they want, they’re actually quite threatening and you feel as if you’ll be punished if you don’t go along with what they want.
• Them guilt-tripping you – if you have a healthy relationship there’s give and take but with emotional blackmail it’s different.  They take advantage of your generosity and good nature, saying things like “Is it so unreasonable that I want you to do this for me?” or “You obviously don’t think as much of me as I thought”. You then feel that their demands are almost reasonable and that you’re being selfish.
• Them never seeming to give up – it happens a lot and they keep repeating their behaviour until your own self-esteem is at an all-time low.

So, if you’ve started to recognise this pattern and want to make changes, how can you go about it? Changing patterns of your own behaviour isn’t easy but this is what it will take because the person or people who are using this tactic will rarely stop of their own accord. So, here are a few strategies to start you off:

1. Begin by putting down some boundaries – recognise that you’re good enough as you are without complying with every unreasonable demand made of you. Practise assertive responses such as “I can’t do that this time” and keep repeating it to yourself before trying it out when people are pressurising you.
2. Explain that they’re not taking you seriously and that you need to be treated with respect.
3. Find supportive friends that you can confide in, telling them how you feel pressurised, and work towards feeling stronger and more confident.
4. If trying to reason with them doesn’t seem to be working, try to distance yourself from them so that you’re no longer in a vulnerable position.
5. Recognise that things will only improve if you continue to be assertive and be consistent in this new approach. Don’t allow yourself to be worn down.

Hopefully after a few months (or even weeks!), you’ll feel a lot more confident in yourself and able to recognise and deal with any emotional bullies in your life.

Hopefully you’ve found this blog helpful and interesting – if so, I’d love it if you bought me a coffee ☕ (see tab at top of page). Thank you so much.

You can see my blogs as soon as they are published (usually on Wednesdays) by pressing the ‘follow’ button and you can share them with your friends. You can also find me on LinkedIn, Instagram (samebutdifferent) and read my FB posts every week at Same But Different #samebutdifferent #relationships # issues #bloggerforever #lovewriting #livingchange #makeitcount #canidothis #canyoudothis #ukblogger #femaleblogger #irishblogger

In my last blog, I wrote about high-maintenance friends and, if you read that, you might have decided to draw back from some of the people in your life. If that’s the case, perhaps you found things a bit odd because you’re lonely, missing them (even if they were a negative influence!) and would like to make new friends to fill the space that’s left in your life.

Research shows that happiness and mental health are closely linked to friendships, but as I explored in my last blog, some friends are just too high-maintenance to continue going along with the same old patterns.

So, how to go about making new friends in the coming months?

It starts with making the decision to change – contrary to what a lot of us like to believe, good friendships don’t always ‘just happen’ so sometimes we have to change what we do and how we do it to make more successful friendships.

Next, think about the people that you work with; sometimes you have more in common with them than your working environment and you can take that further. If you find someone else shares your love of dancing, workouts or walking, invite them to join you in one of these. The advantage of working with someone is that you’ve had a chance to get to know them, albeit in a working environment, so you have a heads-up about whether they’re kind, principled or moody at times. If you find them difficult to work with, don’t pursue a friendship with them though!

Even if you start bonding with some of your colleagues, try something outside of work too: join a group of some kind. This could be a book group, a badminton or squash club or a running group. Try to join a group that meets regularly – weekly or monthly contact is important so that you can get to know the other group members really well.

Another great way of meeting like-minded people, who have the potential to become friends, is to volunteer locally. There are lots of volunteering opportunities – it could be working at a dog-rescue centre, litter-picking or visiting older people in a Care Home. Whatever you choose, there will almost certainly be at least one person that you ‘click’ with.

Take some responsibility for organising get-togethers and, if you say you’ll text someone about meeting up, make sure that you do it.

Friendships change and grow and it’s important to remember that all sorts of different friendships can brighten up our lives.

Lastly, don’t take it personally if some new friendships don’t really take off – people are busy and sometimes have things going on in their lives that we know nothing about.

Hopefully you’ve found this blog helpful and interesting – if so, I’d love it if you bought me a coffee ☕ (see tab at top of page). Thank you so much.

You can see my blogs as soon as they are published (usually on Wednesdays) by pressing the ‘follow’ button and you can share them with your friends. You can also find me on LinkedIn, Instagram (samebutdifferent) and read my FB posts every week at Same But Different #samebutdifferent #relationships # issues #bloggerforever #lovewriting #livingchange #makeitcount #canidothis #canyoudothis #ukblogger #femaleblogger #irishblogger

I think that most of us have, or have had, a high-maintenance friend – the person, male or female, who calls several times each day, texts you and expects a reply within the hour and doesn’t seem to realise that you need some time with your partner and family or just want some down time on your own.

Although they can be a huge amount of fun at times and you feel that they add something to your life that no-one else does, you might have got to the point where you feel that all the drama of long phone calls and even longer meet-ups isn’t worth it after all.

If you want to carry on the friendship though, you’ll need to develop some firm boundaries and ideally these need to be sooner rather than later, otherwise you’ll get the almost inevitable response “but you’ve never minded before”.

Before you make any sort of decision think about whether you haven’t said something before because you were scared of saying “no” to them, especially if they’ve been going through a tough time. There’s also the fear of offending them – they might simply be vulnerable although there’s also the possibility that their vulnerability can make them manipulative too. There’s something else too -maybe you get lonely and their friendship with all of its demands makes you feel needed and useful.

If you decide that you do want to carry on seeing them, despite some drawbacks, then try the following:

• Remember everything that’s good about them – it will be easier to set some boundaries if you can remind yourself about all the good things that you’re trying to preserve.
• If you don’t want to meet up or it’s simply not convenient, trying suggesting an alternative like “I’m hoping to go out to the pub with Emma and Joe next week – could you come along too?”.
• Set your boundaries whilst safeguarding other friendships – try saying firmly something along the lines of “I love spending time with you but this time I’m seeing Jenny alone. You and I can go out together another time”.
• If you’re finding it hard, practice before talking to your (high maintenance) friend.
• They almost certainly won’t like it – a lot of people won’t stand up to  high-maintenance friends, instead ignoring them and going out of their way to avoid them. Be prepared for even more drama whilst you’re setting these new boundaries.
• Most of all, be consistent as well as firm and patient. It will take time but hopefully your friend will eventually accept these new boundaries.  If not, maybe it’s time to come to terms with it and let the friendship go.

Hopefully you’ve found this blog helpful and interesting – if so, I’d love it if you bought me a coffee ☕ (see tab at top of page). Thank you so much.

You can see my blogs as soon as they are published (usually on Wednesdays) by pressing the ‘follow’ button and you can share them with your friends. You can also find me on LinkedIn, Instagram (samebutdifferent) and read my FB posts every week at Same But Different #samebutdifferent #relationships # issues #bloggerforever #lovewriting #livingchange #makeitcount #canidothis #canyoudothis #ukblogger #femaleblogger #irishblogger

If you’re interested in this question, it’s quite possible that someone (a partner or friend) has disappointed you and, yet again, you feel disappointed. A lot of us pride ourselves on not settling for less than we feel we deserve but does that mean that we end up too ‘picky’?

Having high expectations is often seen as a negative, as if you’re selfish, unbending or someone who takes too much. There’s always a context to this though and it may be that you have reasonable requests but a manipulative person twists these, making out that you’re needy or expecting too much from them. Still, if you often feel alone and misunderstood, it’s a good time to look at your needs and how they fit into your relationships.

There might be subconscious insecurities going on which lead you to have a long list of criteria that other people have to meet. This can lead to you being overly critical of people and if there was a need that wasn’t met in your childhood, this can be projected into your adult relationships. This shows up in your choice of partners or friends – subconsciously you want them to make up the shortfall that you experienced as a child. This is a negative self-fulfilling prophecy because it’s unlikely that anyone will be able to fulfil this for you.

Having done some soul-searching and you think that this might be the case, it’s time to try to look at things in a different way. This doesn’t mean lowering your standards so that you’re often put-upon and disrespected, but having less expectations of others might well prove a positive experience for you and them!

Try to forgive people when you feel let down by them – everyone is busy with their own lives and don’t always sense what we need at a particular time. If they’re usually there for you, recognise that they too are human and have their ‘off days’

Let yourself be more vulnerable without letting people take advantage of you. This doesn’t mean that someone has to ‘fix’ things for you, more that you’re open about some of your feelings and thoughts.

Think about the intimacy in your relationships and ask yourself if there could be more mutual sharing of confidences and feelings – open up and encourage the other person to open up too.

Do your best and hope that other people will too but try to be flexible if they can’t sometimes.

If you do all of the above and mostly it works well plus you can honestly say that you don’t expect too much, then stick with your relationship-expectations and don’t settle for less than you really want.

Hopefully you’ve found this blog helpful and interesting – if so, I’d love it if you bought me a coffee ☕ (see tab at top of page). Thank you so much. You can see my blogs as soon as they are published (usually on Wednesdays) by pressing the ‘follow’ button and you can share them with your friends. You can also find me on LinkedIn, Instagram (samebutdifferent) and read my FB posts every week at Same But Different #samebutdifferent #relationshi

It’s an interesting question but what is resilience? The Oxford Languages definition says that ‘it’s the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness’. Even that is subjective though because what counts as ‘quickly’ can differ from person to person.

Another way of putting it is that mentally resilient people have certain traits that help them to cope with adversity; maybe it’s about learning valuable lessons from what seem like impossible setbacks and finding ways to get on with life despite problems and issues along the way.

Still, we all have bad days when things seem to get on top of us but if you often wish that you could ‘ride the storm’ when you face obstacles rather than feel anxious and depressed, how can you change that?

• One way is to self-monitor, meaning that you have an awareness of your feelings and thoughts. It’s possible to regulate your feelings according to whatever the situation demands but this means being proactive about issues, reaching out for help – in other words, taking responsibility for your actions and seeing how what you do affects other people too.
• So this is about accepting the consequences of your actions and choices, rather than adopting a victim role, blaming others for problems that you may have caused yourself. Sounds harsh? Well, it’s also about being self-compassionate during hard times whilst knowing that you’ve made an effort and done your best in often difficult circumstances.
• Another way to change things is to try to see things from other peoples’ perspective and deal with what is actual reality rather than what we speculate is the case but has no substance. In other words, recognising the difference between internal feelings and what’s happening in the outside world.
• This means adjusting your responses to the particular situation, looking for the more positive consequences rather than the negative ones. Not easy, but also not impossible.
• Another part of becoming more resilient is dealing with the past and recognising that some situations and feelings that you’re experiencing now might stem from years ago. Maybe one of your parents often viewed things negatively or and this is what you learnt to do to. There may have been life events that affected your family in a very difficult way and these have meant that you now expect the worst outcome in situations that arise. Being able to process these events means that they don’t accumulate into disappointments and trauma and you can start seeing life from a new perspective.

As I’ve said before, changing things isn’t easy and takes determination and in the case of resilience and feeling more positive, learning different ways of coping can make a real difference.

Hopefully you’ve found this blog helpful and interesting – if so, I’d love it if you bought me a coffee ☕ (see tab at top of page). Thank you so much.

You can see my blogs as soon as they are published (usually on Wednesdays) by pressing the ‘follow’ button and you can share them with your friends. You can also find me on LinkedIn, Instagram (samebutdifferent) and read my FB posts every week at Same But Different #samebutdifferent #relationships # issues #bloggerforever #lovewriting #livingchange #makeitcount #canidothis #canyoudothis #ukblogger #femaleblogger #irishblogger