All My Friends Hate Me

Sep 1

Note: I’m positive some of my very best friends opened this up in horror. I love you. These are simply thoughts from the dark corners of my brain transformed into tangible thoughts and actions.

I have a small handful of very close friendships in my life. I’m not a “one big friend group” kinda gal. Instead, I have a few select humans on this rotating rock who I consider friends turned family.

Very occasionally (but clearly often enough for me to write about it), I have this dreadful thought: my friends must f*ckin’ hate me.

Big or small things trigger this thought:

Plans are made and I’m not invited.
I share something on social media or with the world and don’t feel any sort of recognition from my closest friends.
There’s an imbalance of effort for some period of time and I spiral to the worst case scenario.
I literally make it up in my head that they’ve outgrown our friendship. Literally make it up, as in I have no evidence to back up my assumption.

All my friends hate me.

It’s almost comical to write out now, while I’m in a better state of mind. But I cannot deny that the thought does cross my mind every so often.

I’ve reached a point where I

am publicizing this for no reason other than to share the inner-workings of my mind
feel the need to look deeper into this very specific thought

So, I googled “why do all of my friends hate me?”

And here’s what Google told me:

I participate in the cognitive distortion of personalization.
Personalization is the most common cognitive distortion our amazing brains can whip up. It works like this—a situation happens and you relate it to yourself in some way, even if it doesn’t involve you at all. And usually, it doesn’t.
In one of the trio friendships in my life (side note/hot take: trio friendships aren’t fun), we consistently hang out as a trio unless someone’s truly unavailable. Very recently, the other two in our trio started hanging out without me. Instead of chatting it out with either of them, I assumed their decision to hang out without me was because they collectively decided to hate me. Yup. That’s my mighty brain logic.
A little entitled, huh? Give me a break. I’m putting in the work to understand more.
I may have a mental health disorder.
Please. Of course I have a mental health disorder. And as it turns out, anxiety, social anxiety, depression, and mood disorders in particular can lead to persistent negative thoughts around whether or not people like you.
My scroll time is getting me down
I already know what you’re thinking. Shocker, social media is bad for you.
As much as I like to admit I’ve worked through the tendency to compare myself to others on social media, I can’t help it sometimes. Reviewing everyone’s highlight reel does horrible things to the mind; usually if I’m living a highlight-reel-worthy moment, I’m not looking at my phone. It’s when I’m not showered, in sweats, trying to get a few minutes of mind-numbing scrolling after a long work day that I see the highlight reels of social media. What good does that do?
And there’s an ultra-weird feeling when I see my friends having fun. A part of me says YES, friend. Have fun with your life! And another part of me is sad I couldn’t join in.
Perhaps contrary to what you may be thinking, I do not think the answer is deleting social media forever. Limiting access, sure. But depriving myself from it? I’ve tried to deprive myself from dessert in an attempt to eat a little cleaner. And I can confirm, deprivation does not work for me.
*Cue Lonely by Akon*
It feels a little silly that I didn’t think of this one before reading it online.
I’ve been working remotely from the top of my castle for 3.5 years now, and so I’m not able to connect with people as easily. Which is quite literally the formula to reduce loneliness—✨ connection ✨.
Loneliness is not always an easy fix, but I do know for a fact that I feel better when I spend quality time with friends and when we spend a long time without communicating, I feel lonely and unsure about our relationship.
In the wise words of 1D, “You’re insecure / Don’t know what for”
In this particular case, I could be insecure about rejection. If I’m drifting apart from friends or believe that they’d rather spend their time elsewhere, I feel a sense of rejection and to a degree, a sense of failure toward our friendship. These insecure thoughts can ferment in my mind and lead me to assume my friend just doesn’t like me.
This Reddit user chats about how their low self-esteem pushes them to pull away from friendships because they don’t believe they’re worthy of their friends. And folks in the comments fully agree and experience the same. Perhaps this is all a bit more common than I expected.
I’m a recovering perfectionist
I’ve reflected with my therapist about my people-pleasing and perfectionist tendencies. When I feel less-than-perfect, I assume others see me that way too. Which, for some reason, I’ve grown to overthink about and even fear the idea that others may see me as something less than perfect.
It’s reached an interesting and sad point where I may say a joke that doesn’t land or have a moment of awkwardness with a friend, and feel like I messed up. If we don’t see each other for a while after that, I sometimes assume they don’t like me anymore because I haven’t been given the opportunity to redeem myself.
I’m in need of a change in life
And telling myself that everyone hates me supports my need to change my oh-so negative environment.
This one was especially interesting to me, since usually when I need a change in life, I dye my hair or get a tattoo (sorry, Mom). To think that my brain may be coming up with scenarios (such as all my friends hate me) to support my need for a change is honestly just rude and feels a little extreme. Like, chill, brain.

What to do next

Reviewing this list of what may be triggering these thoughts for me was humbling, to say the least. There were actually more potential triggers amidst my Google search, but I related to the lucky seven above the most.

If you know me, I’m all about actionable next steps or at least some sort of resolution. I wouldn’t actually leave us all here with nothing more to say about the topic. The big question now is—how the heck do you deal with these thoughts when they come? And if you’ve made it this far, perhaps you’ve related to something and you’re curious as well.

But first, what not to do next

Before we get to the good stuff, I want to reflect on what doesn’t work for me in terms of dealing with these thoughts. Whether from my experiences, assumptions, or research, I’d highly suggest not trying these at home:

Take it out on your friends

Imagine you’ve created a story in your own head, without any evidence, that your friends hate you. You feel a little spark within you that, with enough time, grows into a flame that continues to grow, fueled by your unresolved thoughts. And when you’ve reached a breaking point and the flame can grow no more, you send your friend a jarring, intense text message. Or maybe yell at them. Make cause a little scene.

What do you think your friend is thinking? If they’re an angel, they’ll chat things out with you to understand where these thoughts are coming from.

But perhaps a small part of them thinks what the hell just happened? Perhaps they don’t love that you made assumptions and let a fire grow within you without communicating earlier and letting them extinguish it. Perhaps you’ve created a self-fulfilling prophecy and they don’t want to spend as much time with you anymore.

This is projection. You’re projecting your insecurities onto your friend as a way to cope with your assumption that they don’t like you. When I say it like that, it makes you second guess this option, right? Good.

Drop all of your friends and start fresh with a new group

I came across a Reddit thread of a human exploring the same idea with the friendships in their life. More specifically, they asked the interwebs the following: Why do I feel like all my friends hate me behind my back? They're good friends, but sometimes I just feel like they don't like being around me.

A disturbing number of responses suggested that this person drop their friends and find ones that appreciate them. I disagree with that as a first step (unless your friends are horrible; then yes, drop them).

Before assuming your friends are the problem, perhaps identify the root of your feelings toward them. Did something actually happen to make you question your friendship, or are your accusations primarily based on assumptions?

This will be hard to hear, but you may be the root of your own negative thoughts.

Now, (science-backed) things to do instead

I had never heard the term friendship anxiety before today. Must everything be attached to some form of anxiety? In this journey to determine how to deal with the negative thoughts I have about the friendships around me, I unearthed the following tactics:

Become a cognitive reframing queen/king

Take a step back for a second. Cognitive reframing is understanding whether a thought is helpful or harmful. If it’s harmful (such as all of my friends hate me), consider a different perspective. If there’s a new way to look at the situation, consider it.

For instance, that friend may have been short with you over text because they were out and about and couldn’t write you a whole essay of a text with emojis and all.

Admit that it’s not all about you

Remember personalization from before? Sometimes people’s actions and various situations in life simply have nothing to do with you. This one was especially hard for me to put into practice because I try to be careful about my actions to not hurt anyone’s feelings and when mine are hurt, I assume it was intentional.

Turns out, it rarely is.

A good step here is when the negativity starts to roll in, remind yourself that other people’s behaviors likely have nothing to do with you.

Write a blog about it Journal like you mean it

Okay, perhaps the blogging piece was just for me.

Many professionals suggest journaling throughout or at the end of the day, but it’s not just about writing things down and then continuing to ruminate on your negative thoughts. Sometimes, we look for evidence behind our negative thoughts, and writing things down is a potential way to slow down and disprove yourself.

Write down the situation, how you feel about it, and how you responded. Then ask yourself, are my thoughts based on evidence or assumptions?

Remind yourself of why you became friends

Chances are, you have a fun, rom-com-like story for how you and your bestie became friends. Remember the good times to give yourself the boost you need to actually have a productive conversation with them about how you’re feeling. Communicating, thought important, can be ineffective with an angry mind. Reminisce to find peace before diving into a chat.

Flex that self-esteem muscle whenever you can

A strong self-esteem goes a very long way. Having this will prevent you from projecting any insecurities onto your friends when you’re feeling down. As cliché as this may sound, if you know your own worth, your friends will see it too. And if there’s something you want to improve about yourself, only you can control that.

Take friendships at face value

This is the one for me. Though all of the above does help shift my perspective back into a healthy place, understanding my friendships based on fact is helpful.

One very important lesson I’ve learned in life so far is that you shouldn’t need to question whether a good friend is a good friend. If their actions and words reflect what a good friend looks like to you, then take that as it is. And of course on the other end, if their actions and words could be kinder or don’t align with your version of a good friend, it’s okay to admit that you’ve outgrown that friendship and move on.

There’s no value in guessing what a friend thinks about you in their head. Their actions and words should speak for themselves. And if they’re being disrespectful, that’s honestly their problem. Not yours.

Consider—what do you have in your control?

We all deserve love and friendship. Approaching the important relationships in your life with strong communication, transparency, and good intentions is truly the most effective way to avoid the daunting negative thoughts around whether or not your friends like you.

I am certain that my closest friends will want to have a little chat with me after reading this article. But before you text, please know that this was the most empowering way for me to deal with my negative thoughts: to admit to them, understand them, and share them widely as a way to relate to the humans around me. If I’m lucky, we all learned a few things today.

I’ll leave you with some mantras around friendship from idontmind.com:

“I know who I am. I am kind. I am considerate. I am loveable. I am good enough. If anyone disagrees, then they don’t have to spend time with me.”
“My friends love me. I love them. I am safe with them.
“My friends will let me know how they really feel about me. If they don’t, their dishonesty is not my responsibility.”

A quick disclaimer, just in case: 1. I’m not a medical professional and 2. This article was written from the perspective that your friends very likely DO like you. If your friends actually dislike you and their actions reflect this, please consider new friends.