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When looking at those we surround ourselves with on a regular basis, who are the top 5 people that we are in contact with the most? After taking a minute to come to this conclusion, take a second or two to reflect on the following question: Are those people you seem to be spending most of your time with enabling you or holding you back?
When I do a self-examination, I would first list off the top 5 people I spend my time with as being my boyfriend, coworkers and family. It has been a long road of recovery and having to alter many relationships, but now I can proudly say that none of the relationships in my top five fall under the category of holding me back. I am now able to identify first and foremost if a situation or relationship is harmful to my growth, and I feel like that is very vital to my transformation as my recovery journey as a whole.
I urge you to take the time to perform a self-evaluation. Are the people closest to you hurting you or helping you grow? Do you need to let some of those people go or perhaps learn to rearrange your circle of contacts?
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This is such an important topic! I definitely learned about this the hard way when I first began college, I would hang around many people who were unproductive and negative. I’m grateful I’ve managed to distance myself from people who didn’t appreciate me and only held me back. Now, the people I hang out with the most are my partner, a close friend of mine, my coworkers, my family on occasion, and acquaintances at school. My family isn’t always the healthiest to be around so I try to keep a safe distance from them. Besides that, everyone else in my life is encouraging and motivating and make my life so much better.
All relationships are difficult and can be messy. Learning how to be a friend and a daughter has been one of my biggest challenges. When I think of the top 5 people I have, I realize how lucky I am to have few that have never left my side through a lot of shit. Fortunately, my choices weeded out a lot of people and once I got clean, I walked away from all active addicts..some who I was very close with. It’s important to me to be surrounded by those in recovery or at least have a goal of living a healthy, loving life. I learn from them and they learn from me. It’s difficult to make the decision to stay away from someone or rather even love them from a distance. I am a very loyal friend and struggle with letting people go.
I’ve had to re evaluate a lot of my relationships over my lifetime, especially when I was in college. I was exposed to so many different people and had to make so many different decisions… and believe me when I say, it was so hard. I still struggle sometime with telling myself that I need to separate from certain people and things bc it will effect my image in the long run… but its so hard to when these people and these things are who and what you’ve known for all of your life.
Some people and things never change… and for me, its been okay to accept that. I’ve learned to move on from things and to accept them for who and what they are… rather than trying to fit myself into that picture. For me, I’ve had to find myself… I’ve had to be comfortable with who I am and what I wanted before I could indulge in dangerous relationships that could possibly take me off track. I’ve found the balance.. in knowing what’s good for me and what’s not… you have to pick you first.
I’m SO blessed and grateful to have a whole new set of people that I surround myself with than I did before! The people I used to believe were my true friends, ended up either betraying me or leaving me when I needed their friendship the most. Also, with my active drug use days, I only hung out with people that were using and getting into trouble. Now, I hang out with people that support my recovery. I spend most of my time with my family, my three best friends, and people from work. I’m grateful that my family stayed by my side through everything, but now we are much closer
I wrote this post a long time ago, but this truly goes to show the value of really evaluating the people we surround ourselves with. In my original post, I had listed my boyfriend as being one of my top supporters when in reality I just included him in here as more of a reminder to myself that he was an important and positive part of my life. I was holding up such a mask, pretending he was one way when he was the complete opposite when we were alone. I am glad he is no longer a part of my life and I was able to TRULY reevaluate those who were bringing me down and those in my circle who are here to help me progress. It did not feel good to have to hide the truth from all my loved ones about the way he treated me and the things he did, so much so that I was trying to convince myself-even with this original post it seems. But I am glad it is over and I took my own advice instead of being blinded.
Luz, I’m glad to hear you have removed those blinders around the ex-bf of yours. 🙂
This is something I will actually write down and explore. I have a hunch that none of them are fully, effectively supportive of my well-being. The person I feel closest to is not even physically here. The person most physically close to withiun my environment is killing my sanity when my boundaries get unfortunate leaks. …Great…I got a lot of work to do…