I have a friend who I’m spending a lot of time with because I’m staying with her right now. She’s always been the same way so this is nothing new when I bring this up. She yells at her kids all the time and she complains and badmouths everybody all of the time. I feel like I really people please her because if I tell her how I truly feel or think I usually get yelled at. I have accepted all of this because I don’t want to stop being friends with her.

I really understand she’s in a lot of pain mentally and I want to support her and not invalidate her feelings, but I also physically struggle with the yelling it makes my whole body tense up all the time.

Also, I don’t want to talk bad about other people. But this seems to be what comes up all the time and I don’t know how to console her without just agreeing with her, because I don’t want her to feel bad for being herself around me.

I can see that I’m trying to hard to control circumstances, but I don’t know what other way. I guess I’m afraid of her yelling at me or not being in my life if I don’t love that that’s what she thinks.

I love her and have a good time with her and I want to be there for her but these things are really getting to me. I hear how much she bad mouths everybody including one of her other best friends and then I hear her on the phone with her best friend talking to the her the same way she does to me, which ends up in me thinking about how she’s always judging me and I know she’s crap talking me.

I’m feeling like a victim as if I have no choice or something, when I know that’s not true.

I see myself getting annoyed all of the time by how my friends don’t take any responsibility for their emotions ever because I feel like an adult around a bunch of toddlers, although I know that’s probably me not managing my mind. The majority of our planet doesn’t manage their minds so how am I to not expect this to happen?

I’m just irritated because I don’t know how to show up why I’m so in my head like this. It feels very pressing because staying with her is what I need to do right now to get a break from staying with my dad who is very critical of me.

I started my business and put myself in a lot of debt so I can’t afford to live on my own right now. I just see me blaming everybody, but I do know it’s me putting myself around these kind of people. It feels like it’s all I have or what’s comfortable for me.