Friend or Frenemy Podcast 2/2/25
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[00:00:00] Hi, brave friends, in today's Brave Girl Project Podcast, we're exploring whether your friend may actually, in fact, be your frenemy.
If you're new to me, my name is Laura Hayes. I'm the founder of the Brave Girl Project. I'm a life coach and school counselor that supports tween and teen girls and their parents in developing the skills they need to live life bravely. So let's dive in and figure out if your friend may in fact be your frenemy.
Friendships are so important to us, but I also know that friendships can produce a lot of pain and confusion. Exploring whether your friend may be displaying signs of a frenemy can help you explore how healthy your relationship is. Let's explore some of these signs together.
First, it's important to describe what a frenemy is in case this is a new [00:01:00] term for you. A frenemy is a friend who is exhibiting enemy like behaviors. These are behaviors that are often characterized by competition, jealousy, or distrust. Let's explore some of the competitive behaviors your friend may be doing that are signs they are your frenemy.
If they constantly compare themselves to you and view your achievements as a threat. If they struggle to genuinely celebrate your success or downplay your accomplishments. And if your relationship feels more like a rivalry than a supportive friendship, or if they're always trying to one up you. These are some signs of that competitive behavior.
Other signs to pay attention to are signs of betrayal or a two faced attitude. This may look like they're being supportive to your face, but behind your back they're talking negatively about you with other friends.
They may also share [00:02:00] personal stories or use confidential information about you, against you, or to benefit themselves.
This may be the friend that shares an embarrassing story about you with a group of people they know don't really like you.
And they do this to gain favoritism with this other group. You may start to feel uncomfortable or unable to fully trust them. They may start to intentionally exclude you from events with mutual friends. They may slip in brutal comments and act like it's a joke or that you are being too sensitive.
If you start to feel that their smiles feel a little fake and forced, or if they're discouraging your future goals or plans.
Frenemies often display an emotional manipulation, so their advice doesn't feel genuine or in your best interest. It may actually be an advantage to them. They try to make you feel small or insignificant. Maybe they subtly undermine your self improvement [00:03:00] efforts. Frenemies often have underlying motivations. They are more interested in what they can gain from being in a relationship with you. Often the relationship is situational. It's based on the friendship social circle that you can introduce them to, or the different connections you have.
If this friend is only interested in those connections, the parties you might be invited to, the other people that they can get to know through you, and they're not spending time with you. These are red flags to pay attention to.
Here are some of the psychological red flags that you may be experiencing internally that I want you to pay attention to and take note of. First, when you spend time together, do you feel consistently uncomfortable with them. Feeling like you can't be yourself or that if you are yourself, they're going to make fun of that or make you feel less than. [00:04:00] Second, do you feel that this friend does not want you to be happy, experience success, and that when you're struggling and going through a difficult time, they are in a better mood.
And do the interactions with this person cause you more stress or negative emotions. These are red flags that you might be experiencing internally that I really want you to start taking note of. And I know it can be upsetting and frustrating if you're realizing,
"my friend does a lot of these behaviors". There's a lot of red flags going off. I know how hard it is to make friends, especially genuine friendships. And you may be worried that you're surrounded by a lot of friends that may be more your frenemy than friend.
If that is the case, I want you to do some things to protect yourself. And these are some strategic steps that you can take. The first is keeping personal information private. [00:05:00] Limiting what you share with this friend. Second, I want you to start observing their behaviors carefully. If you've noticed some red flags, start observing when are these happening?
Get curious as to the "why" to this friend's behavior. And I want you to create a little emotional distance to protect your emotional and mental well being. So that may be taking a little step in terms of how much time you spend with this person, reminding yourself what they say about you is not true and beginning to look at who are some genuine friends that you spend time with that may be healthier for you,
more positive and more encouraging of you. So start to build other connections with new and different people. If you're struggling with connection, look at different places that you can get involved. It may be clubs at your school, outside community events, places where you can volunteer or classes that you [00:06:00] might be interested in.
You could meet like minded friends at different events like that.
if you choose to have a difficult conversation with this person, take some time before the conversation to write down the specific behaviors that you're noticing. In my How to Have a Difficult Conversation workbook, there are pages that can help you brainstorm and list out some of the specific behaviors you're having.
We wanna focus on the facts and not accuse this person using, "I feel" language is very important. We want to avoid certain words that may trigger your friend to shut down. When we say things like, "you always", " you never". These shut down our friends. They become defensive when they hear these words. And be prepared
for potential denial or deflection. Not everyone has the same perspective or understanding of how you may feel. That doesn't diminish what you're feeling . I know having friendship [00:07:00] problems can be frustrating and overwhelming. You are not alone. And I do have resources on my website to support you.
If you are a girl that's getting ready to go into middle school or is in middle school, I have the perfect course for you and it's called survive and thrive in middle school.
This is a course for both parents and daughters. It has a ton of information on how to survive difficult friendships.
I also have a course for parents and it's called Beyond The Dama: How To Support Your Daughter Through Challenging Friendships. This course helps you support your daughter through so many different frustrating problems with friends. There's eight videos plus five PDFs and different podcast episodes like this one that your daughter can listen to to help start conversations with her.
And there's a tool. I teach all of my clients how to use. The steer map is a way to help work through difficult.
And challenging emotions and would be a very helpful tool if you're experiencing friendship [00:08:00] problems or a frenemy. I also have 2 membership programs for girls. The brave girl tribe is my community for girls in 5th to 8th grade and for my high school girls, I have the high school girls support group.
These are safe places where your daughter can gain the skills she needs to live life bravely and have a safe place to talk about the issues that she's going through. I share lots of educational information and resources just like this that can help support your daughter in moving forward. I hope that this information has been helpful.
You can always reach me by sending an email to [email protected] Please continue to live life bravely, sweet friends,
take care.
