Do you overthink friendships? Maybe obsessing over unanswered texts or a night out posted on insta that you weren’t invited to? Or do you wonder if you have enough friends and think everyone else seems to have cracked the friendship thing and you haven’t? Perhaps the more you think about it the worse you feel about yourself? You want to switch your brain off and chill but just can’t!
Before I trained as a therapist and mindfulness teacher I found the world of friendships hard to navigate which caused me lots of anxiety. After understanding the reasons why and working on myself, I now help clients to feel more secure and show them how to stop overthinking friendships. Keep reading to learn all about it.
Does overthinking friendships mean there's something wrong with me?
Friends are often cited as the ‘family you get to choose’ and popular culture tells us everyone has a BFF or the ultimate gang for nights out, weekends away or afternoons hanging out in coffee shops.
So if you struggle to navigate the world of friendships we can end up thinking we’re the only ones and feel ashamed.
It should be helpful to hear that if you often worry what your friends think of you, you’re not alone. As a therapist that specialises in low self esteem, friendship anxiety is one of the most common issues clients bring to sessions.
Feeling insecure and anxious about friends can be a natural part of being human. And whilst not everybody may do it, many people do and there are good reasons.
To understand why lies in a combination of how our human brains have evolved and (usually) stressful childhood experiences.
Lets start with the nature of our evolved brains. I find that learning this always helps people feel better about why they do things!
We may think we are advanced modern humans but a lot of what we do is determined by what helped us survive 100,000s of years ago.
The ‘fight and flight’ system is involuntary and inbuilt in all humans (and all mammals for that matter). It sits in a particular part of the brain (The ‘old’ brain) and has a role to alert us too, and make us act, at the sight of potential danger. For example, running or fighting as a sabre tooth tiger approaches. i.e. our hearts beat faster, our muscles tense, our breath quickens.
So far, so obvious maybe. But the thing is, our fight or flight system is also activated for social interactions because from a survival point of view we needed other people to survive. Whether we lived or not would depend on successful coperation with our peers for resources and shelter. Therefore being rejected by our social group would have been dangerous. In modern life we know we can just nip to tesco ourselves for resources we need. But our evolved brain think otherwise and makes us go into a spin at the thought of rejection. Therefore, on some level we all need love and approval from others because it makes us feel safe.
The difficult thing is that, for some people, this part of the brain is “over active” and therefore will be more prone to finding situations very stressful if they think they are being rejected or criticised.
Whatsmore, the very physical responses caused by the old brain interacts with a newer part of our brain which analyses, plans, imagines and worries. It is also makes us have better safe than sorry thoughts because thats more protective. For example, if we thought “Oh that tiger probably won’t eat me…..I’ll just wait and see” we would not survive.
So if you feel insecure with your friends its easy to get triggered and experience anxiety which you feel in the mind and body. Such as overthinking, assuming the worst, dread in the stomach and tense muscles.
So why do I overthink friendships?
If you feel your threat system is over active when it comes to friends then it might be due to past experiences.
That said, I have worked with lots of clients where we have trawled through their past and cannot find clues. In those cases it might be down to a biological disposition or sometimes learnt behavour i.e a parent who had the same tendancy.
But in many cases the old brain is on high alert for a reason and thats normally because of a stressful childhood in one form or another. This can be anything from a critical but loving parent to a emotionally neglectful or abusive one. It could be being bullied at school or having to move schools at a crucial period and struggling to make new friends.
Somewhere along the line though a person has experienced something where they felt unsafe due to being unloved or not accepted by others. These experiences affect our self esteem which has manifested into friendship anxiety. To read more about self esteem on its own click here. On a very simple level the old brain stores this memory as one that threatened survival. Its better safe than sorry tendancy will put it on high alert and interpret anything similar as a sign the original stressful experience may happen again.
Why don't I think I have enough friends?
But worrying what our friends think of us isn’t the only way that our old brain can make friendships difficult to navigate. Along with the fight and flight system we also have a drive system which was also responsible for helping us survive but in a different way. Its role is to make us seek pleasure from achieving things by releasing dopamine which helps us get the resources we need. But it also makes us compete for those resources, which includes being concerned with how popular we feel compared to others. Again, from a survival point of view the more friends we have the more likely we would be to survive.
But in modern life this also causes havoc with our wellbeing because it will make compare ourselves to others. We might desire the love of new friends to get that dopamine hit or think we should have a bigger crowd. Like the ‘better safe than sorry’ approach of the fight and flight system, it also has a negative bias so we will focus on the evidence we don’t compare favourably because that will motivate us. The effect of this is the nagging feeling that other people have more friends than us and a constant need to prove how popular we are.
It doesn’t take a genius to work out how social media has exacerbated this natural tendacy! The explicit friends race, likes count and photos of everyone else with their perfect gang can make us miserable as soon as we log on.
Bear in mind though that if you are feeling isolated, lonely and struggling to make friends due to lack of confidence or because you believe you are not worthy of friends then this is a different issues. This is another example of the old brain trying to protect you but will be dealt with in another article coming soon.
How to stop overthinking friendships
The good news is that, since we have this in-built mechanism that make us feel insecure with friendships, we also have mechanisms to balance this. This is known as the ‘Soothing System‘ and a person prone to doubting friendships will find theirs is under developed.
The soothing system also has a job in our survival as it helps us rest and digest which is important for our physical functioning. But it also enables us to give and recieve love in order to forge the relationships that would have kept us safe. Therefore in this mode we feel calm, contented, unguarded and crucially loved enough. The more threat we encounter the smaller this will be because we need to act on the feelings of not being loved and safe.
Fortunately evidence shows we can activate the soothing system ourselves and the more we do the bigger it gets, like a muscle.
Here is a list of ways you can start activating the soothing system spend less time worrying about your friendships
Awareness
Recognising that your threat system has been activated which is causing you to be overthinking friendships is key. If you are in a situation with a friend which is causing you anxiety pause and notice the effect it is having on your mind and body. Tune into this and say “I am noticing that I am overthinking” or “I am aware that I am in my threat system”
Take a breath
If a situation has triggered our threat system then it is likely we are feeling anxious and breathing rapidly. Making a conscious effort to slow your breathing down will help you move into a calmer state of mind from which to approach the situation.
Challenge your thoughts
Once you are feeling calmer now you can weight up your thoughts. What are you assuming about the situation? What evidence do you have for and against? Almost always unhelpful thoughts are based on feelings not facts so its important to look rationally and explore alternative explanations. i.e have I not heard back from a friend because they don’t like me or because they are busy?
Cultivate self compassion
When we are caught up in a threat response we are usually lacking in self compassion. We might judge ourselves for struggling and be prone to self criticism which means we are less likely to be able to move towards behaviour which is helpful. Self compassion can be hard to it can be developed with practice and there it lots of evidence that it reduces stress, anxiety and increases self esteem. To find out more about practicing self compassion read here.
Practice Mindfulness
One of the most effective tools for managing overthinking is mindfulness which helps to stop thoughts from spiralling as well as observe that a thought it just a thought. You can read more about mindfulness by clicking the link above or accessing my free overthinking guide below.