A Guide to Finding, Making and Keeping Friendships at AnB

A Simple GuidE To Finding, making, and keeping (Be more concerned about you being there for them than vice versa)

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Wise Friendships

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Hitting below the belt by saying exactly what you know will hurt your partner

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Ignoring a person's personal boundaries that have been made clear

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Violating someone else's privacy by checking their cell phone, email or other private information

Final Thoughts Every relationship needs boundaries. Without them, healthy communication and self-care are harder to maintain. Also, remember that respecting someone else's boundaries is just as important as them respecting yours. You cannot demand what you aren't willing to give. By advocating for yourself, you are teaching others how to treat you and that changes everything.

The opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is Connection.

Johann Hari There are many types of connections which develop between people when they get to know each other. There are different levels, which have the potential to increase as each gets to know each other better. The first step is usually to become acquaintances, which can then develop into friendship, then best friends and further moving onto relationship and love. Two of these, friendship and relationship are obviously not the same and have different limitations and freedoms of themselves and if they are confused with each other, as happens, many stress producing problems can arise. So, for the purposes of writing a little booklet on friends and friendship, we are going to advise the reader to stick with friendship and stop short of relationship until we have written another booklet about that.

Defining the term friendship can be easy and challenging at the same time. It is the relationship between two people who appreciate each other but do not depend on each other for making decisions and can be available for each other in hours of need, depending on the level of the friendship. We view our friends as extensions of ourselves, people we can confide in, laugh with, and cry with. We trust our friends with our deepest, darkest secrets, and we try to listen more than we talk; we trust our friends not to hurt us, and to share in our happiness with us.

We may not always get what we expect out of our friends, but we work to provide what we, ourselves, would want to our friends.

Friendship is more than just a regular acquaintanceship with the other person and involves both a deeper interest in each other

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and some level of increased commitment. Relationships, on the other hand, are built on intimacy where two people get involved with each other's stories, psychologies, and sometimes bodies and start depending on each other for different matters than friendships do. It is more than just friendship but may nor may not be as profound as expected and can involve tremendous levels of volatility amongst the newly sober or those in recovery.

It can, therefore, be said that a friendship can last for a long time, which is why we are advocating it, while a relationship is not assured to last long because of the potentially high risk involved, and which has been known to blow long-term sobriety sky high in nanoseconds. It is possible to have a friendship without a relationship, but relationships which are not based on friendships do not last for a long time and can be quite painful.

amount of space makes it easier to stay focused during conflict.

Example of Physical Boundaries: •

Getting in someone's face when angry

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Blocking exits or preventing someone from leaving

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Using threatening gestures to intimidate others

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Not respecting someone else's need for space

Without good boundaries, a person can react quickly and experience a fight, flight or freeze response. Once that physiological reaction starts, you're less likely to control your emotions and behavior. When personal space isn't respected, abuse is more likely to happen.

Let's be clear, then: This booklet is about friends and friendships and stops short on the doorstep of relationships with the advice to not ring that doorbell without the advice and consent of a friend, which is the subject matter of this booklet.

When an appropriate distance is set, both people feel safe. Without it, people will often avoid eye contact and not participate in conflict. The rule is: whoever needs the most physical space gets it. That's why arguing in a car escalates so fast. You feel trapped and it's too close for comfort.

In order to stick with the stated subject matter, then, there are only a couple of simple rules: 1) Stay away from friendships/ relationships with blurry lines between them (or from "friends with benefits", which there is no such thing) and 2) Don't date people that you are in recovery with.

Once you've established your physical boundary, it's time to look at emotional boundaries. These boundaries separate your thoughts and feelings from someone else's. They help you not take things personally or get lost in someone else's reaction.

There is not a lot of mystery regarding the importance that friendships play in our existence. We all know the truth of their lure and importance, but for some reason, we do not have a very good handle on what they are, how to get them, how to hold onto them, and what to do with them.

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Emotional boundaries also include how you let others treat you, and in turn, how you will treat others. These boundaries dictate how to take care of yourself in relationships.

Common Emotional Boundary Violations: •

Destructive anger; screaming, name-calling, purposely making others feel less than 29

someone else.

Also, boundaries don't include making demands. While you can make requests, that doesn't mean others are obligated to say yes. Even when what you're asking for seems "right and fair" the other person still has the right to say no. Setting boundaries dictates what you do, not what others do.

Boundaries can be expressed in different ways. They can be spoken directly or carried out silently. With unspoken boundaries, limits get enforced without speaking them aloud. Boundaries don't necessarily depend on what other people are doing.

Examples of Spoken Boundaries: •

I'm not willing to drive with you because I'm uncomfortable with how fast you drive. I'll meet you there.

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This conversation isn't going anywhere, I'm going to take a break.

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Examples of Unspoken Boundaries:

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You politely decline hanging out with people who drink too much.

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You decide to take a time-out instead of getting defensive.

Physical Boundaries The most important boundary you have is your physical boundary. Without this, you can't protect yourself or feel safe in the world. You will feel more vulnerable and unsure of yourself in certain situations.

A physical boundary is the amount of space needed between you and other people. This varies depending on several factors.

When there is a history of distrust or abuse, more space is needed. With people you trust, you might need less. Having the right 28

That’s what this little booklet is about . . . how to navigate friends and friendships in a healthy manner that will support our sobriety and bring us the healing that we so long for.

It’s important that we establish what friendships aren’t. They are NOT acquaintances, which they’re frequently mistaken for, because friendships run a little deeper than acquaintances. It’s more than just remembering your name or knowing a few details about you that makes someone a friend and, the truth is, most everyone you know will qualify as an acquaintance upon deeper analysis. There is nothing wrong with having a lot of relationships, but some of us try to misappropriate acquaintances into friendships when we begin comparisons or quantifications that seek to build us up egotistically.

The truth of the matter is that ONE true friendship is worth more than any number of acquaintances! Quality trumps quantity when it comes to friendships and how to discern what a friendship is will make or break the relationship.

The way that AnB uses the word friendship is moored in your ability to go to higher-than-normal or higher-than-expected levels of annoyance or difficulty in order to help another human being. This means YOU helping THEM, not THEM helping YOU, got it?

With it comes intimacy, deeper appreciation of who your potential friend candidate is and what makes them “tick”. That type of special sharing grows with familiarity and us usually, but not always, mimicked by the other and as long as each party is working to give more than to take, the balance is maintained and a lasting foundation of mutual appreciation is formed that can last, potentially, a lifetime.

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Many of us who misappropriate the word friendship and throw it around inappropriately do not realized that friendship is actually stronger, and best measured by how much you GIVE to the friendship than by how much to TAKE from the friendship.

So those of us who might be heard bragging about, “my friends would help me no matter what even if they had to come out in the middle of the night” might be referring more to acquaintances instead of friends. One of us who uses the AnB connotation of the word friends might say, “I would do anything for my friends, not matter what time of night or day, whether they would do the same for me or not!”

to change.

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Remove yourself when situations aren't healthy for you.

biggest misconception around boundaries is that they get someone else to change. Healthy boundaries are never about control.

Trying to change someone else's behavior doesn't end well. It erodes your sense of personal power because you are looking to others for the solution. As a result, relationships become strained. It's a lose lose.

Healthy boundaries are not...

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Forcing someone else to change their behavior.

The Above and Beyond Environment is PERFECT for Friendships

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Making demands that must be followed "or else".

The founder, visionary, management and staff of Above and Beyond are convinced that healing is facilitated through connection to self and to each other. That’s what underlies all of the amazing social architecture that the environment is built upon.

So, while you are in Above and Beyond’s unique and wonderful environment, you are in the most fertile territory to find, nurture, establish and build friendship of just about anywhere in the country.

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Manipulating outcomes of what happens in the future.

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Getting others to adopt to our own beliefs or attitudes.

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Making anyone get sober, seek therapy or change who they are.

Think about it. You are in a building of broken people who are united in their brokenness, and who are, almost universally, seeking to find themselves, improve themselves, diminish the bad parts and amplify the good parts. Most other collective spaces of people like us are punitive and have bars on the windows, so this is a remarkable space filled with remarkable people with remarkable stories and whom are all seeking the same thing as you are . . . connection and friendship!

In order to facilitate this process of healing through connection, 6

Sometimes, taking an indirect action can be a powerful boundary too. For instance, when someone is intoxicated, violent, or mentally unstable, setting a boundary could escalate the situation. In these situations, practicing detachment may be a healthier choice for keeping everyone safe.

Practicing detachment lets another person experience their consequences instead of taking responsibility for them. This can preserve the relationship and avoid the chaos. You still care, but you stop trying to control the outcome.

Healthy Boundaries aren't Complicated Boundaries don't need to be complicated. When boundaries are healthy, they guide what you're going to do next. They are never attempts to control 27

around us to understand what is ok and what is not.

Although boundaries are critical for healthy relationships, it can be challenging to understand how they work. Maybe you've tried to set a boundary but didn't get the results you wanted. Or, you can't figure out what a healthy boundary is and you're not sure where to start.

To begin with, having realistic expectations of how boundaries work will help you be more successful. For example, expecting boundaries to change other people will leave you forever frustrated. You can't demand that others change but you can learn how to protect yourself.

Healthy boundaries are the limits you set for yourself that determine what to participate in and when to remove yourself. They dictate your choices. For instance, you can choose to stay in a relationship or a friendship when certain conditions are met or you could remove yourself from a potentially hurtful situation.

Both are considered healthy boundaries.

Think of it this way, any action that honors your physical and emotional safety can be considered a boundary. They protect you from staying in abusive situations. For instance, behaviors like name-calling, screaming, or unwanted physical touch are all situations where setting boundaries keeps you safe.

Here are some examples of healthy boundaries to get you started: •

Instead of staying quiet, speak up for what's important to you.

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Say no when you need to take care of yourself.

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State what you are going to do, rather than expecting others 26

Above and Beyond believes there needs to be plenty of forced community involvements which they accomplish by having one of the largest, most diverse selection of groups that exists in the recovery world.

Where better do you think you can find multiple candidates for friendship than in such an environment? So, take advantage of it while you are able to!

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Go up and introduce yourself.

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Wear your name tag out where people can see it and read it.

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Smile more and try to look less menacing than you do on the street (that was useful when you needed to isolate in order to protect your addiction, but now it is not. Now it is just a bad habit that you need to replace with something that lets your light shine).

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Ask someone how their day is going and wait while they answer. Then ask them a good question, not too personal, about why they said that.

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Each day say hello to someone you’ve never said hello to and hover with your friendly gaze for a moment afterwards, in order to show that you were paying attention and you acknowledge them.

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Be a Boy or Girls Scout and do, at least, one Good Deed a day.

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Ask Eileen Owen about afternoon social activities and participate in a few of them.

You are not going to be here forever, so take advantage of one 7

of the most remarkable places for you to pick up the skill set of meeting people. This ability will be with you for the rest of your life and you learn it best by doing it . . . in the hallways, lines, group rooms and tables.

How Many Friends Do You Need?

There is a minimum, and that is 1 . . . you must befriend yourself before you can truly engage in offering yourself up to a healthy friendship with another. You must consider yourself worthwhile enough to matter to another human being and be willing to do the work on yourself to be so.

Does this mean that you have to own a heavy inventory of benefits that you can provide before you can be a good friend?

No, please don’t be ridiculous. It means simply that you should be better equipped to give than to take and that you consider yourself worthy of doing so. Believe us when we say that it is not hard and the barrier to being a good friend is very low.

Plus you have the added advantage of allowing your fledgling “friend” to do all the heaving lifting in the relationship. Meaning, they talk, you listen (it takes very little energy and work to listen attentively and with interest).

What you’ll find is that the more acquaintances you are able to listen to, and help, the more candidates for friendship will appear and make themselves known to you. You will be able to judge with your heart and instinct who is good for you and who is not, staying away from brain analysis and overthinking.

You will “feel” who will make a good friend to you by thinking with your heart rather than with your brain.

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fessional therapists and those that are employed or volunteer for the wellbeing of our recovery are off-limits to friendship.

They should not even be attempted because doing so will put the professional in a tough place of having to decline while, at the same time, torn between the damage that can be done in doing so improperly. The risk of running aground is high and so the best advice that can be given is to stay away from the prospect of it totally.

Readers of this booklet need to know that relationships between patients and professional staff are not only prohibited by the licensing agencies that govern the good standing of their licensure but also by us, their employer.

It’s best to see a prohibitive boundary around this that you should not cross even if your brain is sending you messages to move past it. Those messages are false and should be disregarded before your standing as a patient at Above and Beyond is closed due to involuntary discharge.

Does this mean that we cannot be open and honest in our disclosures even if the subjects include arousal and intimacy? No, not exactly, but be warned that you are treading on dangerous ground here, full of landmines that could go off unexpectedly if you wander into an area that is over the “boundary” of the AnB counselor.

Boundaries Boundaries create an appropriate distance between yourself and others and the art at setting them here, at AnB, is to get them right . . . not too distancing and not too open. They provide a powerful way to advocate for ourselves because setting and declaring boundaries builds confidence while helping us those 25

a step back and remember to take time for ourselves as well.

The Fight-Picker Can't we all just get along? If that question could be your squad's tagline, consider seeking one with a more positive motto. Relationships that produce a high level of conflict are associated with increased depression and decreased self-esteem. That hit to psychological health weighs heavier when the problem is between close friends or spouses than between colleagues, neighbors or more distant pairs. But unlike those relationships, you do have control over who's in your crew. Friends are the one place where we can choose to surround ourselves with the people who bring us the most meaning and happiness. Stick with the ones that work and get rid of the ones that don’t, that’s the morale.

The Back-Stabber Most people don't need prompting to dump a friend who's dumped on them. It's clearly established in studies that friendships are likely to end when there's been a betrayal of trust Transgressions like spilling your secrets, keeping mum when you need someone to come to your defense or flirting with your significant other are big reasons for these supposed betrayals of trust. Friendships have a hard time surviving these kinds of events and that's OK: Friends who try to harm our relationships with others - be it through taunts, insults, intimidation or withholding affection - are displaying the type of "relational aggression" characteristic of a toxic friendship. In other words: Move on.

This means learning how not to nag, judge, ask for things, talk “at”, bitch, control, go “on and on” about yourself, belittle yourself and others, and make everything about yourself. People who will tolerate this kind of behavior are NOT friends and are NOT useful to your sustained recovery.

A true friend is somebody who has revealed who they are to you because they’ve learned to trust you. They can count on you to be there for them, and as a result of them thinking this about you, you have come to think this about them.

Did you get that subtle reference to them thinking you’re a friend first? That’s a key.

Then, once your technique is formatted and you’ve done some practicing, you will find that a few friends are enough to sustain even the heaviest of demand. It does not take many, but it takes a chosen few with relationships built of caring, compassion, curiosity, and trust in order to give us the ‘connection’ we need to sustain ourselves in a world of ‘self’.

Transactional Friendships are Fake and Dangerous It is a sad reality for many of us that the relationships that we once considered friendships are actually a toxic form of relationship called “transactional friendships” that are not actually friendships at all. They can be quite problematic when they’re mistaken for the real thing because they don't add any value to our lives but they can easily make us think we have something we do not have and set us up for big-time disappointment.

Why do transactional friendships occur? There are two common scenarios around which transactional friendships form.

Therapeutic Friendships () The time that we spend with our counselors, social workers, pro24

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Transactional friendships occur because people don't want to 9

be alone. They don't want to be seen as a loner, so they hang around with whoever they can get.

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Transactional friendships occur because someone wants to use another person to get ahead. People use such 'friendships' for clout, money, fame.

Do you know the most interesting thing about transactional friendships? It is a very interesting dynamic, because at the end of the day both parties essentially know what is going on and agree to it anyway. Transactional friendships are a form of toxic friendship, yet, it's a bit more than a one-sided thing where one party is abusing the other.

People use transactional friendships to advance their careers, keep themselves in dope or alcohol, pay the rent, gain access to someone else's social circles, and to boost their own self-esteem and ego.

Have you ever had a friend who only wants to hang out with you when everyone else is busy or unavailable? Perhaps deep down you know what's going on, but you enjoy the attention, even if it's momentary. This is what a transactional friendship looks like.

Believe us, this is NOT a friendship!

A person who is interested only in a transactional friendship may act like the sweetest person you've ever met. But they'll forget about you and ditch you when something they consider better comes along.

They may only be associating with us because they have conflict with another friend, and so they need somewhere to be in the meantime. If someone is only trying to be our friend to advance their career or expand their social circle, they'll disappear as 10

people's chances of becoming obese increased by 57 percent if they had a friend who became obese during a given time period.

They speculate that surrounding yourself with overweight people can make it more acceptable for us to gain weight, too. The same rule applies to bad behavior and the old adage that “you are who you hang with” turns out to be true. Make healthy behavioral patterns the norm in your social circle instead. One of the best ways true ‘friends’ can help is by reinforcing good habits and supporting each other in difficult decisions that go against the grain of misbehaving ‘friends”.

The Dead Weight What harm is a peripheral friend who doesn't bring much to the table but doesn't take much away either? Potentially a lot, since he or she may be holding us back from the type of growing and learning good friends encourage. If we ditch this type of pal, "we're opening up new opportunities" for friendships that expand - not inhibit - us. But we don't have to "replace" the not-sogreat friend to benefit from cutting ties; research suggests quality matters more than quantity when it comes to reaping friendships' psychological and health benefits. Prioritize some of the friendships that come most naturally and that bring the most joy.

The Friend Who Needs Constant Saving If we spend time with friends because they make us laugh, share our love of yoga or offer sage advice, they're keepers. But if we spend time with friends because they make us feel needed, be careful. Some people can develop a savior complex where they get a boost of energy and joy from helping others, but this also needs to be balanced by an awareness of when this is done to an unhealthy degree. If we're beginning to feel weighed down by the responsibility of caring for our friends, we might need to take 23

who would be bad. Here are some examples of fake friendships candidates that would be best to steer clear of: The Taker When good friends lose jobs or lovers, you offer them an ear, a hug and maybe some chocolate - and expect nothing in return.

It's not the case that if one listens to the problems of a friend on Saturday, they have to listen to yours on Sunday because the giving and taking balances out over the long haul. Takers, on the other hand, drain you without replenishment, causing a lot of negative emotions that affect the whole tone of the relationship, including resentment and anger. Best to cut ties and invest in a more reciprocal relationship instead.

The Drama Queen (or King) Dramatic "friends" make for good reality TV, but not good reality. Stress and anxiety have negative effects on health, so any friendships that routinely create stress and anxiety can be harmful. Consider how messed up it is the friends who enjoy riling people up, like spreading rumors or believe themselves to be misunderstood and victimized. These friends can be engaging and entertaining, but also toxic and manipulative, which can be stressful. And who needs more stress? Move on to friends who ease - not add to - your problems. Life is too short to deal with more than one toxic ‘friend’ at a time. Hit the ‘eject’ button!

The Bad Influence Tight groups of friends risk spreading more than the common cold to one another. Research suggests they can also spread unwanted pounds. In one study of more than 12,000 people that analyzed data collected over 32 years, researchers found that 22

soon as they get what they want.

Sadly, people tend to cling onto transactional friendships because of insecurity. They don't want to be alone either. As bad as they are, transactional friendships might still give us a feeling of increased self-worth, because the person came up to us and wants to spend time with us. Even if we know why, or that it won't last, we might hold on. And so the transactional friendship continues to be kept alive...

The Difference Between Transactional Friendship and Real Friendship is Not Difficult to Spot So what makes real friendships so different from transactional friendships?

One thing we find a lot in transactional friendships is people keeping count.

“I did this for him/her, so I deserve this." "(S)he didn't do this for me, so I won't do it for him/her."

Transactional friendships keep score, with the aim of not ever giving too much to the other person. This is so far from what friendship should be.

Real friendships are based on love and long-term commitment.

You don't just keep a friendship for what you can get out of it.

When you truly love your friend, you give, give and give without keeping count of if they reciprocate each time.

The main difference between transactional friendships and genuine friendships is that transactional friendships are selfish and self-centered, whereas real friendships are selfless and unconditional.

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One thing about true friendships is they don't often start with symmetry. At the beginning of the friendship, one person usually puts in a bit more effort than the other. But then once this initial interest is shown, and the friendship develops, it become more balanced with both parties working hard. This goes back to where we started this booklet, with the idea of giving instead of taking.

Some people will never be ready to go back to being acquaintances with an ex-friends because of emotions, vulnerability, feelings, hurt, bad vibes, troubles, money issues - the list is endless.

On our end we can send out good positive energy because it all comes back to us.

If we try to start a friendship with a transactional mindset, it won't go well. We have to be willing to go the extra mile and show a self-sacrificing attitude.

Celebrate the journey, scars and all. If we learned something in our attempted relationship and from our rejection, then it was not a waste. Be sure to give thanks and be grateful for the wounds from which we will heal. It is better to have attempted a friendship and lost, than to never have attempted it at all. The latter is a very lonely place to be.

When we show a spirit of true giving kindness and have a real friendship, we get back, but not because of a sense of duty.

Celebrate the Scars

Transactional friendships are weak, whereas real friendships are strong and stand the test of time. People in a transactional relationship would turn on each other in a split-second and speak badly about their 'friend' behind their back. They just do what suits them at any given moment.

Friendship is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be themselves without any insistence that they satisfy you.

Real friendships are based on communication, and as any of us would expect, forgiveness. We don't give up on someone easily.

Real friendships are investments, and we spend time and effort to get to the root of any problems that may arise.

In rejection, someone left us or we left a situation that was not helping us grow. Have no shame or guilt for letting an unhealthy situation go, or for being the one to be rejected. Those of us who suffer shame have it harder, as shame keeps us isolated, making it so much more difficult to heal or seek help.

How Does One Avoid Transactional Friendships?

One of the first steps to avoid getting into transactional friendships is to develop self-respect and a healthy amount of independence. Remember how we began a few pages ago? By learning to be a friend to ourselves and to come to believe that we have something worth giving to someone else: our friendship.

Many of us need to learn to be comfortable being alone. This 12

No Guilt, No Shame

Awesomeness must hang out together. We are all awesome here and so are you - that is why we are together. We attract who we are, so let's be Powerfully Brilliant together!

Avoiding Failures One way to avoid certain friendship failures is the ability to make quick judgements on the fly regarding who would be good and 21

said no to us because we were no longer a good fit. Wherever possible forgive ourselves and others for the hurt that was caused and it will be a little bit easier to move past what happened. We are, after all, too Powerfully Brilliant to use any negative words or thoughts directed at ourselves or others.

way, we’ll never need to seek out anyone to make us feel complete or to validate us (transactional ‘friends’ are always lurking on the sidelines, waiting to pounce on you with a fake favor or a simulated smile).We should have the confidence to do things alone even if it is uncomfortable to do so at the beginning.

Our Past is a Part of Our Future

In the same vein, we should be willing to put in the hard work to get things that we want. Don't step on other people or use them in a selfish way to get closer to others, or to advance in a job. Redirect that energy into improving ourselves and who we are.

Every partner, every relationship, is a mirror of what we needed at that point in our life. They are the reasons we are where we are. Be thankful for the lessons that our past has taught us and those rejections are part of our journey . . . detours that we needed to take even though we never quite know where the destination is.

Not Everyone We Lose is a Loss Some people are a small part of our life journey and there to teach us something important and then their part is finished . . . no need to hang on. One of the main reasons we get hurt is because we give our power away. Nobody else in the world has the power to hurt us unless we give them the power to do it. Let's just not do that then. Assholes do not deserve our power.

Just Because A Relationship Changes Does Not Mean It Ends The end of a friendship often results in an awkward change back to acquaintanceship, but the appreciation of the other that was built during the friendship can stay. If we carefully construct our friendships on giving, not taking, and respect (as we are advocating for in this booklet) our friendships won't suffer as badly when they transition back to what they were. Obviously it takes two to make a friendship work, even after a relationship ends, so why not be the one to initiate it?

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At the end of the day, the biggest protection against transactional friendships is being a high-value individual ourself. Treat yourself and others with respect, and we'll find that a lot less people try to form transactional friendships with us. When people see the high standards in our life, they won't even try to be fake with us, and we will unknowingly resist opportunists.

Aim to be the best version of yourself and seek out those who are also doing the same. Seek out people you admire and would like to grow with long-term.

Remember that transactional friendships are based on necessity, while real friendships are based on desire.

Transactional friendships don't offer the same satisfaction as growing to actually love, respect and trust someone, because we chose to - not because we needed a friend for a quick minute.

So How Do We Improve Ourselves So That We Become Good Candidates for Friendship?

How exactly does one find friends in sobriety? Below are four key steps in taking action to find true, meaningful connections during and post-rehabilitation: 13

1. Determine the type of person you want to be.

When we take an honest inventory of yourselves, noting the positive characteristics we want to embody, we become more easily able to identify these qualities in others.

It’s important for us not to run, not to hide, and not to act weird when we feel that we are rejected. This is what chases us back to our addiction and, unfortunately, it is typically our dysfunctional way of handling rejection. REMEMBER: REBT teaches us the power of our own choices and we NEVER lose our power of choice even during a rejection. Choose to face it and you will find that it turns to dust in your hands. It has no power of its own, only the power you give it, and when you make the healthy choice to acknowledge it and react in a positive way, you are building yourself into the resilient, Powerfully Brilliant person that you always knew you were. A well-handled rejection gives you the practice to bring this person out into the open and display its incredible stability. It’s you, after all, and it deserves to be seen and given credit instead of the miscreant who runs, hides, and uses when rejected. That old version of yourself has only hurt itself in its unhealthy reactions.

Once again, improve ourselves first, and the law of attraction will draw to us those that we need to have in our lives.

Here's a partial list of some ways of thinking about rejection that we have found useful:

2. Listen to others when they speak.

Rejection is Never Personal

Addiction tends to bring selfishness and self-centeredness to the forefront of the addict's behaviors. This selfishness becomes a survival strategy, making it more difficult to give up when we try to live in sobriety.

Rejection is never personal. Our connotation of the word rejection has become negative but it can be turned upside down quite easily. Look at it as liberation from an untenable situation. This is absolutely true. Someone saying "no" means one hundred "yes" responses will be coming our way. Send happy thoughts, kindness and compassion to the naysayers because we do not want to pick up any of their negative juju. We have worked to hard for our positivity and joy just to let it go because someone wasn't in a mood to see how great we are.

Sobriety provides us with a fresh start. Though our loved ones may not as easily forget the up's and down's of addiction, we have an opportunity to set out on a journey of self-discovery that can lead to repairing these relationships. In order to differentiate a good friend from a bad friend, we must first determine our morals, our boundaries and the qualities on which we want to build our sobriety.

It may be easier to identify the qualities we exemplified in our addiction and ask ourselves the question: "Do I really want to live my life this way, now that I’m sober?"

The hardest, yet most powerful tool in sobriety is the act of listening. We can learn a lot when you listen to others; their goals, traits they hold near to their hearts, the quality of their sobriety and so on.

In breaking the habit of talking nonstop about ourselves and transitioning to listening to others, we have to be able to allow 14

Rejection is Not About Me Rejection is a life situation that happens to everyone. Someone 19

an outside source, it is always self-generated within which means there is always, every single time, a choice involved.

Choose forgiveness and see what happens, because we all know what happens when we choose the alternative, the easy way, the way of the animals who know no better.

Learn How to Take Rejection Every one of us has had so many rejections in our lives that rejection really shouldn't bother us anymore. The quicker we're able to reorient and get back on our feet, the quicker we can move on with our better lives. Some of us who have improved our choices about how to recover from rejections have assembled the list that follows. You can improve your reaction to rejections, too, and you can look at the rejections you run into while in recovery as "practice rounds" in which the people who reject you can be thanked for providing you with practice on how to respond in a healthy manner. Whether it's a friend who unfriended us on social media or a new job that we didn't get, take a few seconds to mourn the end of the relationship or partnership, and then move on. Remember that forgiveness, with practice, can become almost instantaneous and the faster we can let them go and move onto the next adventure, the better we are protecting our sobriety and all the hard work we have done to achieve it.

Remember: We are too Powerfully Brilliant to be anything but ourselves! It's much better to be 'rejected' than to be with someone who is not committed to the relationship and toxic to our wellbeing. Rejection usually means that we have been freed from a situation that was not a good fit for us and we can now prepare for one that is better. Well-handled rejection teaches us how to quit holding on to toxic material.

18

them to finish their sentences and perhaps even allow a moment of silence to exist at the end of their statements before we charge in with what we want to say.

In order to really test how strong of listeners we are, we may want to respond to their statements with a phrase like, “is there anything else you’d like to add?� Only the best listeners can do this with authenticity and the feeling of having overcome our addiction to talking about ourselves, that accompanies it, is powerful indeed!

Listening the best tool available in determining with whom we want to spend our time. When we listen, we give a person the opportunity to share a part of themselves, which is the only way to determine whether we want to invite this person into our sober tribe.

3. Watch their actions.

While listening is important, actions speak louder than words. As humans, we have the liberty to say anything we want about ourselves. We can fabricate stories or over-embellish parts of our lives for reasons only our ego knows. Living a sober lifestyle (treating the mind, body and spirit) on a daily basis is the only way an addict has the reprieve from alcohol and drugs. For this reason, it's crucial to ensure that our sober tribe not only talks about quality sobriety, but also pursues quality sobriety on a daily basis.

4. Accept that sober friendships are a case of trial-and-error.

As with everything in life, we have to live and learn. Sometimes, we can do all the right things in pursuit of friendship: determine the qualities you want to embody, listen to others, keep an eye 15

out for their actions and still end up in an emotionally draining friendship.

This has happened to everyone in sobriety at some point or another. It will probably continue to happen throughout your sobriety.

As we learn to live a sober life, we will encounter many things we don't know how to do, and only through patience, failure, and retrying, will we learn to how do them effectively and efficiently.

That is the beauty of sobriety: We have the world at our fingertips.

It’s unhelpful and serves no good purpose to overreact when we make bad judgements regarding relationships. It happens to everyone and those of us that are the most skillful with this most elusive of abilities, are the ones that can pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and get right back into the game.

Friends and Forgiveness The friendships with the most enduring, resilient duration qualities, the ones that last forever and barrel-age into mellowness, are the ones where anger comes slow and forgiveness fast.

first step in forgiving ourselves, learning from our mistakes, and helping to ensure that they aren't repeated, even if we were not at fault. Many times saying sorry can be nonspecific and can mean, in an undisclosed way, that we are sorry for the situation that we are in and want it to end. The word ‘sorry’ is a powerful antidote to needless heartache and the sacrifice of what could have developed into long-lasting friendship.

It's never too late to apologize to a friend. Holding on to the past and feeling a deep sense of regret only hurts us in the moment right up to, and including, the end. Many times, the inability to forgive becomes the end, ushering it in on a wave of false pride and leaving both parties injured and alone.

It’s also free. No cost. And much easier to give than expensive gifts, dinners, trips and jewelry which rarely work much longer than when the novelty wears off.

Forgiveness is not about reconciliation. It's about cleansing the soul of a toxin that never, and certainly no longer, serves us any benefit. Remember, love is not the absence of anger. Love is the desire to address the source of the anger and prevent its destructive force in the relationship. The anger never comes from

Forgiveness most times is not about the friend - it is about yourself and how you come around to accept and find a measure of inner peace within a difficult situation. Please take a moment and re-read that last sentence a couple of times and think about it as you re-read it. And true friendship is often about maintaining that inner peace with yourself when you are with that other person so that you both enjoy each other's company (this is a must for both people in order to work).

By saying sorry promptly and admitting that we were wrong is a 16

17

out for their actions and still end up in an emotionally draining friendship.

This has happened to everyone in sobriety at some point or another. It will probably continue to happen throughout your sobriety.

As we learn to live a sober life, we will encounter many things we don't know how to do, and only through patience, failure, and retrying, will we learn to how do them effectively and efficiently.

That is the beauty of sobriety: We have the world at our fingertips.

It’s unhelpful and serves no good purpose to overreact when we make bad judgements regarding relationships. It happens to everyone and those of us that are the most skillful with this most elusive of abilities, are the ones that can pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and get right back into the game.

Friends and Forgiveness The friendships with the most enduring, resilient duration qualities, the ones that last forever and barrel-age into mellowness, are the ones where anger comes slow and forgiveness fast.

first step in forgiving ourselves, learning from our mistakes, and helping to ensure that they aren't repeated, even if we were not at fault. Many times saying sorry can be nonspecific and can mean, in an undisclosed way, that we are sorry for the situation that we are in and want it to end. The word ‘sorry’ is a powerful antidote to needless heartache and the sacrifice of what could have developed into long-lasting friendship.

It's never too late to apologize to a friend. Holding on to the past and feeling a deep sense of regret only hurts us in the moment right up to, and including, the end. Many times, the inability to forgive becomes the end, ushering it in on a wave of false pride and leaving both parties injured and alone.

It’s also free. No cost. And much easier to give than expensive gifts, dinners, trips and jewelry which rarely work much longer than when the novelty wears off.

Forgiveness is not about reconciliation. It's about cleansing the soul of a toxin that never, and certainly no longer, serves us any benefit. Remember, love is not the absence of anger. Love is the desire to address the source of the anger and prevent its destructive force in the relationship. The anger never comes from

Forgiveness most times is not about the friend - it is about yourself and how you come around to accept and find a measure of inner peace within a difficult situation. Please take a moment and re-read that last sentence a couple of times and think about it as you re-read it. And true friendship is often about maintaining that inner peace with yourself when you are with that other person so that you both enjoy each other's company (this is a must for both people in order to work).

By saying sorry promptly and admitting that we were wrong is a 16

17

an outside source, it is always self-generated within which means there is always, every single time, a choice involved.

Choose forgiveness and see what happens, because we all know what happens when we choose the alternative, the easy way, the way of the animals who know no better.

Learn How to Take Rejection Every one of us has had so many rejections in our lives that rejection really shouldn't bother us anymore. The quicker we're able to reorient and get back on our feet, the quicker we can move on with our better lives. Some of us who have improved our choices about how to recover from rejections have assembled the list that follows. You can improve your reaction to rejections, too, and you can look at the rejections you run into while in recovery as "practice rounds" in which the people who reject you can be thanked for providing you with practice on how to respond in a healthy manner. Whether it's a friend who unfriended us on social media or a new job that we didn't get, take a few seconds to mourn the end of the relationship or partnership, and then move on. Remember that forgiveness, with practice, can become almost instantaneous and the faster we can let them go and move onto the next adventure, the better we are protecting our sobriety and all the hard work we have done to achieve it.

Remember: We are too Powerfully Brilliant to be anything but ourselves! It's much better to be 'rejected' than to be with someone who is not committed to the relationship and toxic to our wellbeing. Rejection usually means that we have been freed from a situation that was not a good fit for us and we can now prepare for one that is better. Well-handled rejection teaches us how to quit holding on to toxic material.

18

them to finish their sentences and perhaps even allow a moment of silence to exist at the end of their statements before we charge in with what we want to say.

In order to really test how strong of listeners we are, we may want to respond to their statements with a phrase like, “is there anything else you’d like to add?� Only the best listeners can do this with authenticity and the feeling of having overcome our addiction to talking about ourselves, that accompanies it, is powerful indeed!

Listening the best tool available in determining with whom we want to spend our time. When we listen, we give a person the opportunity to share a part of themselves, which is the only way to determine whether we want to invite this person into our sober tribe.

3. Watch their actions.

While listening is important, actions speak louder than words. As humans, we have the liberty to say anything we want about ourselves. We can fabricate stories or over-embellish parts of our lives for reasons only our ego knows. Living a sober lifestyle (treating the mind, body and spirit) on a daily basis is the only way an addict has the reprieve from alcohol and drugs. For this reason, it's crucial to ensure that our sober tribe not only talks about quality sobriety, but also pursues quality sobriety on a daily basis.

4. Accept that sober friendships are a case of trial-and-error.

As with everything in life, we have to live and learn. Sometimes, we can do all the right things in pursuit of friendship: determine the qualities you want to embody, listen to others, keep an eye 15

1. Determine the type of person you want to be.

When we take an honest inventory of yourselves, noting the positive characteristics we want to embody, we become more easily able to identify these qualities in others.

It’s important for us not to run, not to hide, and not to act weird when we feel that we are rejected. This is what chases us back to our addiction and, unfortunately, it is typically our dysfunctional way of handling rejection. REMEMBER: REBT teaches us the power of our own choices and we NEVER lose our power of choice even during a rejection. Choose to face it and you will find that it turns to dust in your hands. It has no power of its own, only the power you give it, and when you make the healthy choice to acknowledge it and react in a positive way, you are building yourself into the resilient, Powerfully Brilliant person that you always knew you were. A well-handled rejection gives you the practice to bring this person out into the open and display its incredible stability. It’s you, after all, and it deserves to be seen and given credit instead of the miscreant who runs, hides, and uses when rejected. That old version of yourself has only hurt itself in its unhealthy reactions.

Once again, improve ourselves first, and the law of attraction will draw to us those that we need to have in our lives.

Here's a partial list of some ways of thinking about rejection that we have found useful:

2. Listen to others when they speak.

Rejection is Never Personal

Addiction tends to bring selfishness and self-centeredness to the forefront of the addict's behaviors. This selfishness becomes a survival strategy, making it more difficult to give up when we try to live in sobriety.

Rejection is never personal. Our connotation of the word rejection has become negative but it can be turned upside down quite easily. Look at it as liberation from an untenable situation. This is absolutely true. Someone saying "no" means one hundred "yes" responses will be coming our way. Send happy thoughts, kindness and compassion to the naysayers because we do not want to pick up any of their negative juju. We have worked to hard for our positivity and joy just to let it go because someone wasn't in a mood to see how great we are.

Sobriety provides us with a fresh start. Though our loved ones may not as easily forget the up's and down's of addiction, we have an opportunity to set out on a journey of self-discovery that can lead to repairing these relationships. In order to differentiate a good friend from a bad friend, we must first determine our morals, our boundaries and the qualities on which we want to build our sobriety.

It may be easier to identify the qualities we exemplified in our addiction and ask ourselves the question: "Do I really want to live my life this way, now that I’m sober?"

The hardest, yet most powerful tool in sobriety is the act of listening. We can learn a lot when you listen to others; their goals, traits they hold near to their hearts, the quality of their sobriety and so on.

In breaking the habit of talking nonstop about ourselves and transitioning to listening to others, we have to be able to allow 14

Rejection is Not About Me Rejection is a life situation that happens to everyone. Someone 19

said no to us because we were no longer a good fit. Wherever possible forgive ourselves and others for the hurt that was caused and it will be a little bit easier to move past what happened. We are, after all, too Powerfully Brilliant to use any negative words or thoughts directed at ourselves or others.

way, we’ll never need to seek out anyone to make us feel complete or to validate us (transactional ‘friends’ are always lurking on the sidelines, waiting to pounce on you with a fake favor or a simulated smile).We should have the confidence to do things alone even if it is uncomfortable to do so at the beginning.

Our Past is a Part of Our Future

In the same vein, we should be willing to put in the hard work to get things that we want. Don't step on other people or use them in a selfish way to get closer to others, or to advance in a job. Redirect that energy into improving ourselves and who we are.

Every partner, every relationship, is a mirror of what we needed at that point in our life. They are the reasons we are where we are. Be thankful for the lessons that our past has taught us and those rejections are part of our journey . . . detours that we needed to take even though we never quite know where the destination is.

Not Everyone We Lose is a Loss Some people are a small part of our life journey and there to teach us something important and then their part is finished . . . no need to hang on. One of the main reasons we get hurt is because we give our power away. Nobody else in the world has the power to hurt us unless we give them the power to do it. Let's just not do that then. Assholes do not deserve our power.

Just Because A Relationship Changes Does Not Mean It Ends The end of a friendship often results in an awkward change back to acquaintanceship, but the appreciation of the other that was built during the friendship can stay. If we carefully construct our friendships on giving, not taking, and respect (as we are advocating for in this booklet) our friendships won't suffer as badly when they transition back to what they were. Obviously it takes two to make a friendship work, even after a relationship ends, so why not be the one to initiate it?

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At the end of the day, the biggest protection against transactional friendships is being a high-value individual ourself. Treat yourself and others with respect, and we'll find that a lot less people try to form transactional friendships with us. When people see the high standards in our life, they won't even try to be fake with us, and we will unknowingly resist opportunists.

Aim to be the best version of yourself and seek out those who are also doing the same. Seek out people you admire and would like to grow with long-term.

Remember that transactional friendships are based on necessity, while real friendships are based on desire.

Transactional friendships don't offer the same satisfaction as growing to actually love, respect and trust someone, because we chose to - not because we needed a friend for a quick minute.

So How Do We Improve Ourselves So That We Become Good Candidates for Friendship?

How exactly does one find friends in sobriety? Below are four key steps in taking action to find true, meaningful connections during and post-rehabilitation: 13

One thing about true friendships is they don't often start with symmetry. At the beginning of the friendship, one person usually puts in a bit more effort than the other. But then once this initial interest is shown, and the friendship develops, it become more balanced with both parties working hard. This goes back to where we started this booklet, with the idea of giving instead of taking.

Some people will never be ready to go back to being acquaintances with an ex-friends because of emotions, vulnerability, feelings, hurt, bad vibes, troubles, money issues - the list is endless.

On our end we can send out good positive energy because it all comes back to us.

If we try to start a friendship with a transactional mindset, it won't go well. We have to be willing to go the extra mile and show a self-sacrificing attitude.

Celebrate the journey, scars and all. If we learned something in our attempted relationship and from our rejection, then it was not a waste. Be sure to give thanks and be grateful for the wounds from which we will heal. It is better to have attempted a friendship and lost, than to never have attempted it at all. The latter is a very lonely place to be.

When we show a spirit of true giving kindness and have a real friendship, we get back, but not because of a sense of duty.

Celebrate the Scars

Transactional friendships are weak, whereas real friendships are strong and stand the test of time. People in a transactional relationship would turn on each other in a split-second and speak badly about their 'friend' behind their back. They just do what suits them at any given moment.

Friendship is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be themselves without any insistence that they satisfy you.

Real friendships are based on communication, and as any of us would expect, forgiveness. We don't give up on someone easily.

Real friendships are investments, and we spend time and effort to get to the root of any problems that may arise.

In rejection, someone left us or we left a situation that was not helping us grow. Have no shame or guilt for letting an unhealthy situation go, or for being the one to be rejected. Those of us who suffer shame have it harder, as shame keeps us isolated, making it so much more difficult to heal or seek help.

How Does One Avoid Transactional Friendships?

One of the first steps to avoid getting into transactional friendships is to develop self-respect and a healthy amount of independence. Remember how we began a few pages ago? By learning to be a friend to ourselves and to come to believe that we have something worth giving to someone else: our friendship.

Many of us need to learn to be comfortable being alone. This 12

No Guilt, No Shame

Awesomeness must hang out together. We are all awesome here and so are you - that is why we are together. We attract who we are, so let's be Powerfully Brilliant together!

Avoiding Failures One way to avoid certain friendship failures is the ability to make quick judgements on the fly regarding who would be good and 21

who would be bad. Here are some examples of fake friendships candidates that would be best to steer clear of: The Taker When good friends lose jobs or lovers, you offer them an ear, a hug and maybe some chocolate - and expect nothing in return.

It's not the case that if one listens to the problems of a friend on Saturday, they have to listen to yours on Sunday because the giving and taking balances out over the long haul. Takers, on the other hand, drain you without replenishment, causing a lot of negative emotions that affect the whole tone of the relationship, including resentment and anger. Best to cut ties and invest in a more reciprocal relationship instead.

The Drama Queen (or King) Dramatic "friends" make for good reality TV, but not good reality. Stress and anxiety have negative effects on health, so any friendships that routinely create stress and anxiety can be harmful. Consider how messed up it is the friends who enjoy riling people up, like spreading rumors or believe themselves to be misunderstood and victimized. These friends can be engaging and entertaining, but also toxic and manipulative, which can be stressful. And who needs more stress? Move on to friends who ease - not add to - your problems. Life is too short to deal with more than one toxic ‘friend’ at a time. Hit the ‘eject’ button!

The Bad Influence Tight groups of friends risk spreading more than the common cold to one another. Research suggests they can also spread unwanted pounds. In one study of more than 12,000 people that analyzed data collected over 32 years, researchers found that 22

soon as they get what they want.

Sadly, people tend to cling onto transactional friendships because of insecurity. They don't want to be alone either. As bad as they are, transactional friendships might still give us a feeling of increased self-worth, because the person came up to us and wants to spend time with us. Even if we know why, or that it won't last, we might hold on. And so the transactional friendship continues to be kept alive...

The Difference Between Transactional Friendship and Real Friendship is Not Difficult to Spot So what makes real friendships so different from transactional friendships?

One thing we find a lot in transactional friendships is people keeping count.

“I did this for him/her, so I deserve this." "(S)he didn't do this for me, so I won't do it for him/her."

Transactional friendships keep score, with the aim of not ever giving too much to the other person. This is so far from what friendship should be.

Real friendships are based on love and long-term commitment.

You don't just keep a friendship for what you can get out of it.

When you truly love your friend, you give, give and give without keeping count of if they reciprocate each time.

The main difference between transactional friendships and genuine friendships is that transactional friendships are selfish and self-centered, whereas real friendships are selfless and unconditional.

11

be alone. They don't want to be seen as a loner, so they hang around with whoever they can get.

•

Transactional friendships occur because someone wants to use another person to get ahead. People use such 'friendships' for clout, money, fame.

Do you know the most interesting thing about transactional friendships? It is a very interesting dynamic, because at the end of the day both parties essentially know what is going on and agree to it anyway. Transactional friendships are a form of toxic friendship, yet, it's a bit more than a one-sided thing where one party is abusing the other.

People use transactional friendships to advance their careers, keep themselves in dope or alcohol, pay the rent, gain access to someone else's social circles, and to boost their own self-esteem and ego.

Have you ever had a friend who only wants to hang out with you when everyone else is busy or unavailable? Perhaps deep down you know what's going on, but you enjoy the attention, even if it's momentary. This is what a transactional friendship looks like.

Believe us, this is NOT a friendship!

A person who is interested only in a transactional friendship may act like the sweetest person you've ever met. But they'll forget about you and ditch you when something they consider better comes along.

They may only be associating with us because they have conflict with another friend, and so they need somewhere to be in the meantime. If someone is only trying to be our friend to advance their career or expand their social circle, they'll disappear as 10

people's chances of becoming obese increased by 57 percent if they had a friend who became obese during a given time period.

They speculate that surrounding yourself with overweight people can make it more acceptable for us to gain weight, too. The same rule applies to bad behavior and the old adage that “you are who you hang with” turns out to be true. Make healthy behavioral patterns the norm in your social circle instead. One of the best ways true ‘friends’ can help is by reinforcing good habits and supporting each other in difficult decisions that go against the grain of misbehaving ‘friends”.

The Dead Weight What harm is a peripheral friend who doesn't bring much to the table but doesn't take much away either? Potentially a lot, since he or she may be holding us back from the type of growing and learning good friends encourage. If we ditch this type of pal, "we're opening up new opportunities" for friendships that expand - not inhibit - us. But we don't have to "replace" the not-sogreat friend to benefit from cutting ties; research suggests quality matters more than quantity when it comes to reaping friendships' psychological and health benefits. Prioritize some of the friendships that come most naturally and that bring the most joy.

The Friend Who Needs Constant Saving If we spend time with friends because they make us laugh, share our love of yoga or offer sage advice, they're keepers. But if we spend time with friends because they make us feel needed, be careful. Some people can develop a savior complex where they get a boost of energy and joy from helping others, but this also needs to be balanced by an awareness of when this is done to an unhealthy degree. If we're beginning to feel weighed down by the responsibility of caring for our friends, we might need to take 23

a step back and remember to take time for ourselves as well.

The Fight-Picker Can't we all just get along? If that question could be your squad's tagline, consider seeking one with a more positive motto. Relationships that produce a high level of conflict are associated with increased depression and decreased self-esteem. That hit to psychological health weighs heavier when the problem is between close friends or spouses than between colleagues, neighbors or more distant pairs. But unlike those relationships, you do have control over who's in your crew. Friends are the one place where we can choose to surround ourselves with the people who bring us the most meaning and happiness. Stick with the ones that work and get rid of the ones that don’t, that’s the morale.

The Back-Stabber Most people don't need prompting to dump a friend who's dumped on them. It's clearly established in studies that friendships are likely to end when there's been a betrayal of trust Transgressions like spilling your secrets, keeping mum when you need someone to come to your defense or flirting with your significant other are big reasons for these supposed betrayals of trust. Friendships have a hard time surviving these kinds of events and that's OK: Friends who try to harm our relationships with others - be it through taunts, insults, intimidation or withholding affection - are displaying the type of "relational aggression" characteristic of a toxic friendship. In other words: Move on.

This means learning how not to nag, judge, ask for things, talk “at”, bitch, control, go “on and on” about yourself, belittle yourself and others, and make everything about yourself. People who will tolerate this kind of behavior are NOT friends and are NOT useful to your sustained recovery.

A true friend is somebody who has revealed who they are to you because they’ve learned to trust you. They can count on you to be there for them, and as a result of them thinking this about you, you have come to think this about them.

Did you get that subtle reference to them thinking you’re a friend first? That’s a key.

Then, once your technique is formatted and you’ve done some practicing, you will find that a few friends are enough to sustain even the heaviest of demand. It does not take many, but it takes a chosen few with relationships built of caring, compassion, curiosity, and trust in order to give us the ‘connection’ we need to sustain ourselves in a world of ‘self’.

Transactional Friendships are Fake and Dangerous It is a sad reality for many of us that the relationships that we once considered friendships are actually a toxic form of relationship called “transactional friendships” that are not actually friendships at all. They can be quite problematic when they’re mistaken for the real thing because they don't add any value to our lives but they can easily make us think we have something we do not have and set us up for big-time disappointment.

Why do transactional friendships occur? There are two common scenarios around which transactional friendships form.

Therapeutic Friendships () The time that we spend with our counselors, social workers, pro24

•

Transactional friendships occur because people don't want to 9

of the most remarkable places for you to pick up the skill set of meeting people. This ability will be with you for the rest of your life and you learn it best by doing it . . . in the hallways, lines, group rooms and tables.

How Many Friends Do You Need?

There is a minimum, and that is 1 . . . you must befriend yourself before you can truly engage in offering yourself up to a healthy friendship with another. You must consider yourself worthwhile enough to matter to another human being and be willing to do the work on yourself to be so.

Does this mean that you have to own a heavy inventory of benefits that you can provide before you can be a good friend?

No, please don’t be ridiculous. It means simply that you should be better equipped to give than to take and that you consider yourself worthy of doing so. Believe us when we say that it is not hard and the barrier to being a good friend is very low.

Plus you have the added advantage of allowing your fledgling “friend” to do all the heaving lifting in the relationship. Meaning, they talk, you listen (it takes very little energy and work to listen attentively and with interest).

What you’ll find is that the more acquaintances you are able to listen to, and help, the more candidates for friendship will appear and make themselves known to you. You will be able to judge with your heart and instinct who is good for you and who is not, staying away from brain analysis and overthinking.

You will “feel” who will make a good friend to you by thinking with your heart rather than with your brain.

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fessional therapists and those that are employed or volunteer for the wellbeing of our recovery are off-limits to friendship.

They should not even be attempted because doing so will put the professional in a tough place of having to decline while, at the same time, torn between the damage that can be done in doing so improperly. The risk of running aground is high and so the best advice that can be given is to stay away from the prospect of it totally.

Readers of this booklet need to know that relationships between patients and professional staff are not only prohibited by the licensing agencies that govern the good standing of their licensure but also by us, their employer.

It’s best to see a prohibitive boundary around this that you should not cross even if your brain is sending you messages to move past it. Those messages are false and should be disregarded before your standing as a patient at Above and Beyond is closed due to involuntary discharge.

Does this mean that we cannot be open and honest in our disclosures even if the subjects include arousal and intimacy? No, not exactly, but be warned that you are treading on dangerous ground here, full of landmines that could go off unexpectedly if you wander into an area that is over the “boundary” of the AnB counselor.

Boundaries Boundaries create an appropriate distance between yourself and others and the art at setting them here, at AnB, is to get them right . . . not too distancing and not too open. They provide a powerful way to advocate for ourselves because setting and declaring boundaries builds confidence while helping us those 25

around us to understand what is ok and what is not.

Although boundaries are critical for healthy relationships, it can be challenging to understand how they work. Maybe you've tried to set a boundary but didn't get the results you wanted. Or, you can't figure out what a healthy boundary is and you're not sure where to start.

To begin with, having realistic expectations of how boundaries work will help you be more successful. For example, expecting boundaries to change other people will leave you forever frustrated. You can't demand that others change but you can learn how to protect yourself.

Healthy boundaries are the limits you set for yourself that determine what to participate in and when to remove yourself. They dictate your choices. For instance, you can choose to stay in a relationship or a friendship when certain conditions are met or you could remove yourself from a potentially hurtful situation.

Both are considered healthy boundaries.

Think of it this way, any action that honors your physical and emotional safety can be considered a boundary. They protect you from staying in abusive situations. For instance, behaviors like name-calling, screaming, or unwanted physical touch are all situations where setting boundaries keeps you safe.

Here are some examples of healthy boundaries to get you started: •

Instead of staying quiet, speak up for what's important to you.

•

Say no when you need to take care of yourself.

•

State what you are going to do, rather than expecting others 26

Above and Beyond believes there needs to be plenty of forced community involvements which they accomplish by having one of the largest, most diverse selection of groups that exists in the recovery world.

Where better do you think you can find multiple candidates for friendship than in such an environment? So, take advantage of it while you are able to!

•

Go up and introduce yourself.

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Wear your name tag out where people can see it and read it.

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Smile more and try to look less menacing than you do on the street (that was useful when you needed to isolate in order to protect your addiction, but now it is not. Now it is just a bad habit that you need to replace with something that lets your light shine).

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Ask someone how their day is going and wait while they answer. Then ask them a good question, not too personal, about why they said that.

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Each day say hello to someone you’ve never said hello to and hover with your friendly gaze for a moment afterwards, in order to show that you were paying attention and you acknowledge them.

•

Be a Boy or Girls Scout and do, at least, one Good Deed a day.

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Ask Eileen Owen about afternoon social activities and participate in a few of them.

You are not going to be here forever, so take advantage of one 7

Many of us who misappropriate the word friendship and throw it around inappropriately do not realized that friendship is actually stronger, and best measured by how much you GIVE to the friendship than by how much to TAKE from the friendship.

So those of us who might be heard bragging about, “my friends would help me no matter what even if they had to come out in the middle of the night” might be referring more to acquaintances instead of friends. One of us who uses the AnB connotation of the word friends might say, “I would do anything for my friends, not matter what time of night or day, whether they would do the same for me or not!”

to change.

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Remove yourself when situations aren't healthy for you.

biggest misconception around boundaries is that they get someone else to change. Healthy boundaries are never about control.

Trying to change someone else's behavior doesn't end well. It erodes your sense of personal power because you are looking to others for the solution. As a result, relationships become strained. It's a lose lose.

Healthy boundaries are not...

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Forcing someone else to change their behavior.

The Above and Beyond Environment is PERFECT for Friendships

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Making demands that must be followed "or else".

The founder, visionary, management and staff of Above and Beyond are convinced that healing is facilitated through connection to self and to each other. That’s what underlies all of the amazing social architecture that the environment is built upon.

So, while you are in Above and Beyond’s unique and wonderful environment, you are in the most fertile territory to find, nurture, establish and build friendship of just about anywhere in the country.

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Manipulating outcomes of what happens in the future.

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Getting others to adopt to our own beliefs or attitudes.

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Making anyone get sober, seek therapy or change who they are.

Think about it. You are in a building of broken people who are united in their brokenness, and who are, almost universally, seeking to find themselves, improve themselves, diminish the bad parts and amplify the good parts. Most other collective spaces of people like us are punitive and have bars on the windows, so this is a remarkable space filled with remarkable people with remarkable stories and whom are all seeking the same thing as you are . . . connection and friendship!

In order to facilitate this process of healing through connection, 6

Sometimes, taking an indirect action can be a powerful boundary too. For instance, when someone is intoxicated, violent, or mentally unstable, setting a boundary could escalate the situation. In these situations, practicing detachment may be a healthier choice for keeping everyone safe.

Practicing detachment lets another person experience their consequences instead of taking responsibility for them. This can preserve the relationship and avoid the chaos. You still care, but you stop trying to control the outcome.

Healthy Boundaries aren't Complicated Boundaries don't need to be complicated. When boundaries are healthy, they guide what you're going to do next. They are never attempts to control 27

someone else.

Also, boundaries don't include making demands. While you can make requests, that doesn't mean others are obligated to say yes. Even when what you're asking for seems "right and fair" the other person still has the right to say no. Setting boundaries dictates what you do, not what others do.

Boundaries can be expressed in different ways. They can be spoken directly or carried out silently. With unspoken boundaries, limits get enforced without speaking them aloud. Boundaries don't necessarily depend on what other people are doing.

Examples of Spoken Boundaries: •

I'm not willing to drive with you because I'm uncomfortable with how fast you drive. I'll meet you there.

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This conversation isn't going anywhere, I'm going to take a break.

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Examples of Unspoken Boundaries:

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You politely decline hanging out with people who drink too much.

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You decide to take a time-out instead of getting defensive.

Physical Boundaries The most important boundary you have is your physical boundary. Without this, you can't protect yourself or feel safe in the world. You will feel more vulnerable and unsure of yourself in certain situations.

A physical boundary is the amount of space needed between you and other people. This varies depending on several factors.

When there is a history of distrust or abuse, more space is needed. With people you trust, you might need less. Having the right 28

That’s what this little booklet is about . . . how to navigate friends and friendships in a healthy manner that will support our sobriety and bring us the healing that we so long for.

It’s important that we establish what friendships aren’t. They are NOT acquaintances, which they’re frequently mistaken for, because friendships run a little deeper than acquaintances. It’s more than just remembering your name or knowing a few details about you that makes someone a friend and, the truth is, most everyone you know will qualify as an acquaintance upon deeper analysis. There is nothing wrong with having a lot of relationships, but some of us try to misappropriate acquaintances into friendships when we begin comparisons or quantifications that seek to build us up egotistically.

The truth of the matter is that ONE true friendship is worth more than any number of acquaintances! Quality trumps quantity when it comes to friendships and how to discern what a friendship is will make or break the relationship.

The way that AnB uses the word friendship is moored in your ability to go to higher-than-normal or higher-than-expected levels of annoyance or difficulty in order to help another human being. This means YOU helping THEM, not THEM helping YOU, got it?

With it comes intimacy, deeper appreciation of who your potential friend candidate is and what makes them “tick”. That type of special sharing grows with familiarity and us usually, but not always, mimicked by the other and as long as each party is working to give more than to take, the balance is maintained and a lasting foundation of mutual appreciation is formed that can last, potentially, a lifetime.

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and some level of increased commitment. Relationships, on the other hand, are built on intimacy where two people get involved with each other's stories, psychologies, and sometimes bodies and start depending on each other for different matters than friendships do. It is more than just friendship but may nor may not be as profound as expected and can involve tremendous levels of volatility amongst the newly sober or those in recovery.

It can, therefore, be said that a friendship can last for a long time, which is why we are advocating it, while a relationship is not assured to last long because of the potentially high risk involved, and which has been known to blow long-term sobriety sky high in nanoseconds. It is possible to have a friendship without a relationship, but relationships which are not based on friendships do not last for a long time and can be quite painful.

amount of space makes it easier to stay focused during conflict.

Example of Physical Boundaries: •

Getting in someone's face when angry

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Blocking exits or preventing someone from leaving

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Using threatening gestures to intimidate others

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Not respecting someone else's need for space

Without good boundaries, a person can react quickly and experience a fight, flight or freeze response. Once that physiological reaction starts, you're less likely to control your emotions and behavior. When personal space isn't respected, abuse is more likely to happen.

Let's be clear, then: This booklet is about friends and friendships and stops short on the doorstep of relationships with the advice to not ring that doorbell without the advice and consent of a friend, which is the subject matter of this booklet.

When an appropriate distance is set, both people feel safe. Without it, people will often avoid eye contact and not participate in conflict. The rule is: whoever needs the most physical space gets it. That's why arguing in a car escalates so fast. You feel trapped and it's too close for comfort.

In order to stick with the stated subject matter, then, there are only a couple of simple rules: 1) Stay away from friendships/ relationships with blurry lines between them (or from "friends with benefits", which there is no such thing) and 2) Don't date people that you are in recovery with.

Once you've established your physical boundary, it's time to look at emotional boundaries. These boundaries separate your thoughts and feelings from someone else's. They help you not take things personally or get lost in someone else's reaction.

There is not a lot of mystery regarding the importance that friendships play in our existence. We all know the truth of their lure and importance, but for some reason, we do not have a very good handle on what they are, how to get them, how to hold onto them, and what to do with them.

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Emotional boundaries also include how you let others treat you, and in turn, how you will treat others. These boundaries dictate how to take care of yourself in relationships.

Common Emotional Boundary Violations: •

Destructive anger; screaming, name-calling, purposely making others feel less than 29

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Hitting below the belt by saying exactly what you know will hurt your partner

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Ignoring a person's personal boundaries that have been made clear

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Violating someone else's privacy by checking their cell phone, email or other private information

Final Thoughts Every relationship needs boundaries. Without them, healthy communication and self-care are harder to maintain. Also, remember that respecting someone else's boundaries is just as important as them respecting yours. You cannot demand what you aren't willing to give. By advocating for yourself, you are teaching others how to treat you and that changes everything.

The opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is Connection.

Johann Hari There are many types of connections which develop between people when they get to know each other. There are different levels, which have the potential to increase as each gets to know each other better. The first step is usually to become acquaintances, which can then develop into friendship, then best friends and further moving onto relationship and love. Two of these, friendship and relationship are obviously not the same and have different limitations and freedoms of themselves and if they are confused with each other, as happens, many stress producing problems can arise. So, for the purposes of writing a little booklet on friends and friendship, we are going to advise the reader to stick with friendship and stop short of relationship until we have written another booklet about that.

Defining the term friendship can be easy and challenging at the same time. It is the relationship between two people who appreciate each other but do not depend on each other for making decisions and can be available for each other in hours of need, depending on the level of the friendship. We view our friends as extensions of ourselves, people we can confide in, laugh with, and cry with. We trust our friends with our deepest, darkest secrets, and we try to listen more than we talk; we trust our friends not to hurt us, and to share in our happiness with us.

We may not always get what we expect out of our friends, but we work to provide what we, ourselves, would want to our friends.

Friendship is more than just a regular acquaintanceship with the other person and involves both a deeper interest in each other

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A Simple GuidE To Finding, making, and keeping (Be more concerned about you being there for them than vice versa)

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Wise Friendships

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