Hi everyone new here and need some feedback

[kelleyb227]

I have a friend that I have been acquaintances with for over a year. Recently (last 2.5 months) our teenage children have become involved in a sport together. The person that I thought I knew, has become someone I'm not sure I want to be around. It takes only the thought that someone is slighting her 15 year old daughter for her to explode into a rage, accuse everyone of being out to get her and I end up in tears defending myself for no reason. This has happened three times in the last 2 months. She becomes irrational and I end up an emotional wreck for a week. The first two times this has happened, she called me crying and apologized profusely. She had another incident last night and I was carpooling 8 teenagers in a car and she called and unleashed. She doesn't ask what happened or try to talk. She become accusatory and won't let me speak. I ended up crying for 15 minutes of the car ride. She didn't call me and apologize, she text messaged and said "sorry, we have been burned and lied to by other people.."

I know she is going through a difficult time and I don't want to add to her load, however today I am feeling as if this is a very toxic relationship. I don't want it to affect the kids and am confused as to how to handle it. Does anyone have any words of wisdom or advice???????

[Mark]

This is an interpersonal boundary issue - your friend is acting aggressively, and you are (it would seem) ending up taking on her rage and paranoia somewhat passively, and then absorbing the emotion which is depressing and upsetting and frightening. So you need to learn how to defend yourself. Just because this woman is going through some hard times doesn't mean she gets a license to dump her toxic stuff into your lap. So - you don't need to yell back at her but you do need to defend your boundaries so that you don't get dumped on or abused. That is called acting assertively, and you can read some about assertiveness in our online self-help book.