With friends like these, who needs therapy? (you do.)
Say you’re enjoying a relaxing Sunday morning, drinking a perfectly brewed cup of coffee in bed and catching up on your favorite read of the moment when your phone buzzes. It’s a novel-length text from your bestie detailing her divorced parents’ fight that they’ve pulled her into—and it’s pretty heavy. Suddenly, it feels like you’re expected to be her virtual therapist, and you don’t know how to respond. While you genuinely want to support her, she did just kill your blissful vibe with an impromptu trauma dump.
Like, imagine if you were getting lunch with said friend and, before saying 'Hi, how are you?,' they immediately dumped this news on you. It’d be pretty jarring—even though you’d already set aside a dedicated time to catch up. In both scenarios, one person is hard-launching into a heavy topic without giving the other an opportunity to consent to this convo.
It’s not that you don’t want to help your friend talk through a tough time—you do. But just because they need to get something off their chest ASAP doesn’t mean that you can automatically snap into the right mental headspace to provide adequate support, especially when one text can easily lead into an hours-long back-and-forth. (Those self-care Sunday plans? Poof.)
Truth is, the way everyone has instant access to one another through cell phones is a 'double-edged sword,' says Suzanne Degges-White, PhD, a licensed counsellor specialising in women's relationships and developmental transitions at Northern Illinois University. On one hand, it provides a sense of safety and security. (You can always see where your contacts are via Find My Friends, for example.)
On the other, this access has initiated the expectation that just because you can reach someone 24/7, they should be available to respond 24/7, says Degges-White. It’s easy to update the group chat with every single detail of your day as if you’re live streaming it on Instagram—and expect an instant reply. Heck, with the rise in teletherapists who are also easily accessible via your phone, the lines between friend and therapist can sometimes blur.
This is especially true for those who don’t have access to a therapist for financial reasons—you might feel like your friends are your only sounding board when you need to vent. The urge to reach out to friends for mental health support is understandable, but it's not 'necessarily healthy for us to have unrealistic expectations as far as responding,' says Melanie Ross Mills, PhD, a temperament therapist and author of The Friendship Bond.
So, what should we expect from our friends? When should we turn to them for spur-of-the-moment advice, and when is something better saved for a therapy session? And what can our friends expect from us when responding to these messages? Ahead, therapists share their thoughts.
For starters, sharing too much information with friends has more cons than pros.
Let’s start with a pro: If something bad happens to you and you share the news right afterwards with friends, you’ll be able to access your raw, unfiltered thoughts easily and explain everything you feel, says Chloe Carmichael, PhD, a clinical psychologist and Women's Health advisor based in New York City. Whereas if you wait a week or so to talk about it with your therapist, you might repress or suppress those thoughts and have a hard time remembering them later. You may even forget to bring it up in the session, which means the material might not get dealt with at all, she says.
Still, you can try solving this issue of time sensitivity by keeping a therapy journal, which may be as simple as a page in your Notes app, where you jot down everything you want to go over in a session as things come up. Unlike a traditional journal, this doesn’t have to be a place where you process your emotions all by yourself; it simply provides a way to plan out the topics you want to discuss with your therapist. Plus, it can help you hold yourself accountable and have the courage to say what you’re feeling out loud, Carmichael says.
It's a self-help technique worth considering because, unfortunately, there are plenty of cons to these convos. The biggie: If you put all of the responsibility of your mental health on one person, it can cause pressure, resentment, and unhealthy balance patterns, says Mills. But that’s far from the only potential pitfall.
Obviously, your friends aren’t licensed therapists.
They don’t have the education or experience required to really help people with trauma. Plus, they might give you advice based on their own life experiences, which may have worked for them, but won’t necessarily work for you, Carmichael says. It’s like in Sex and the City when Carrie Bradshaw said, 'Why should I pay someone when we can talk for free and then go get a drink or whatever? I don’t need professional help, I’ve got you guys,' and Samantha Jones replied: 'We’re as f*cked up as you are, it’s like the blind leading the blind.' (Think about it—how many times have you turned to a friend for their tried-and-true dating advice only to regret the outcome?)
'Our friends aren't equipped to teach us about these underlying roots that could be causing us to respond the way we're responding,' Mills says. A therapist, however, can draw on their years of education and experience serving multiple clients to identify certain behavioural patterns. They’ve seen enough to know what works, what doesn’t, and can tailor their advice specifically to you, Carmichael adds.
Plus, there’s a chance that when you discuss heavy topics with your friends, 'it might change the balance of the friendship,' Degges-White says. For instance, if your friend is experiencing any type of abuse, that might put you in a caregiver role. In this case, it’s best to help them reach out to a therapist for their own safety, as well as the sake of your ‘ship.
You might play the blame game.
If you asked your friend for advice on a sensitive topic and you followed it, but the situation didn’t go the way you wanted, you might blame them. However, you usually won’t blame your therapist when they give you advice because they purposefully use conversation techniques to guide you through the situation in a way that lets you think for yourself, leads you to the solution, and critically think and problem solve, says Mills.
If you’re debating unloading family drama on a friend, play out the scenario in your head. Mills recommends asking yourself: If this advice doesn’t pan out, will I blame my friend? If yes, save it for your therapist’s office.
They might not support your decisions.
Say you’re venting to your friend about how you want to break up with your partner and you give them all of the nitty-gritty details and ask them to side with you. Then, you pull the Uno Reverse card and get back together with your ex later on. Your friend will be less likely to support your choice to resume this relationship because they know all the dirt on your ex-turned-current partner, Degges-White says.
Your friend may not come in with a neutral stance.
Everyone brings their own baggage and their own bias—unconscious or conscious—into a situation. For instance, if you’re freaking out about a guy not calling you back after he said he would, your friend might tell you to just block him because she subconsciously wants you to stay single with her, or she’s projecting how she would handle the situation onto you. Unlike a therapist, she wouldn’t explore the meaning behind your reaction and if you’ve ever felt this way before, Carmichael says. And even if she did, she wouldn’t be able to do so objectively. 'Talking with your therapist is going to be just more of a pure interaction,' adds Carmichael.
They may not keep your secrets.
If you’re wrestling with a moral or ethical issue—like you cheated on your partner, for example—those topics are best shared in a therapist’s office because they’ll be objective and they’re legally bound to stay confidential. 'Once you share something with a friend, there's a risk that it will be known by more than that one person,' Degges-White says. Plus, while some friends can be trusted and will hold your intimate information with care, others might misuse it or hold it against you, Mills adds. Basically, if you can’t deal with anyone else finding out your news, keep it between you and your therapist.
There’s a risk of trauma bonding.
Say you’re always having heavy emotional conversations with a friend, and after a year of it, they finally feel better and don’t need to talk about their trauma anymore. They might not know how to hang out with you anymore—if at all—because they associate you with negative emotions. But with a therapist, you’ll get support as long as you need it and be able to healthily terminate the relationship when you’re feeling better.
You might create a sense of codependency.
If you call or text a friend immediately after something bad happens to you, 'you could potentially be communicating to yourself that you can't handle this material on your own,' Carmichael says.
This tendency can undermine your sense of autonomy and self-efficacy, as well as cause fear and anxiety if you start to wonder what would happen to you if your friends weren’t there. This codependency may also cause your friendship to become one-sided, where one person is always listening and helping the other, and there’s no reciprocated efforts, Mills says. That can be exhausting for the listener and dysfunctional for both parties.
If you’ve read all of this and decided to talk to a therapist, just make the appointment (if it’s not already on the books). Having a scheduled session 'diffuses some of that negative energy associated with the [incident] because you've got a plan,' Degges-White says. That said, if you have financial concerns, you can search for free or low-cost therapy options online.
And if therapy really isn’t a possibility for you right now, journaling is a solid substitute for the time being, Carmichael says. After all, it’s pretty similar to therapy: In both situations, you take your interior life, create a narrative around it, and then reflect on what happened and how you felt—either by yourself or with a professional.
Carmichael suggests journaling your everyday life events, and when you’re having trouble in a situation, reflecting on the events that led up to it. That’ll help you analyse your own thought patterns, and seeing the trajectory of events down on paper will help you be more objective when it comes to handling the situation, which is why therapists are helpful.
What to do when you’re the one who needs to rant
Text yourself.
First, resist the immediate urge to text your friends by giving your fingers something else to do. Whatever the situation you’re reeling from, grab a journal and write out what happened, including what you said, what everyone else involved said, and how you felt in the moment. Putting together a narrative about what happened can help you process the experience and consider what you learned about yourself from it, Degges-White says. Plus, this exercise can serve as a self gut-check and help you organise your thoughts so they’re more streamlined if you ultimately do end up reaching out to a friend.
For example, if you went through a bad breakup, write everything you can remember that was important about the breakup itself, then write about how you’ll fill your time now. (Maybe they didn’t like bowling, so you want to join a bowling league.)
Then, bring the notepad to your therapy session so you can still access the thoughts you were having in the moment when you felt your worst, Carmichael says. She also recommends trying mind-mapping, a technique where you draw clusters about the event and then draw lines out from them that point to what the event makes you think of and how it makes you feel. In your session, discuss those reactions with your therapist.
Test the waters.
The minute something bad happens and you’re in the thick of feeling sad or anxious, it’s easy to immediately unload on your friends, Degges-White says. But it’s not necessarily healthy to text your friends every detail of your life without some kind of warning, Degges-White says, and it’s asking too much of your friend to carry the weight of your problem.
However, if you’ve tried these exercises and if you don’t have a therapy session for a few more weeks, you haven’t found one you like yet, or you can’t afford one, you may feel like a friend is your only option. If you have a friend in mind to reach out to, consider their capacity to handle that kind of information. 'Some people are more empathetic and impasse and might absorb it and have a harder time where another friend might be a little better with boundaries,' and therefore won’t take it on, which makes them better to give you neutral advice, Mills says.
Once you’ve decided you want to contact, briefly tell them how you’re feeling and see if they’re currently in a space to hear something heavy. (It’s like when you call someone and ask if now is a good time to talk—same kind of vibe check here, just over text.)
It’s as simple as sending a text that says:, Hi, I’m going through something tough at the moment. Would it be okay if I told you what happened? It helps me to put it into words and share it to feel seen, but there’s no need to read all of this or respond. This is called narrating your experience, or 'taking your internal life and putting it into words,' i.e., just stating what you’re going through, Carmichael says. That helps you become more aware of your experience and helps you process it. However, you can also make the message more casual, like: Hey, I’m going through it right now—can I vent to you for a second? It’s kind of a heavy topic.
Don’t put all of your metaphorical eggs in one basket.
Instead, turn to multiple friends for support. 'There's wisdom in the council of many,' Mills says. 'Everyone has different gifts, skill sets, and experiences.' It might be most beneficial to reach out to one person when you’re in need of advice on family issues because you two have had similar upbringings, and then another for relationship advice because they have more dating experience.
Temper your expectations.
When you share intimate info—whether it’s sexual, spiritual, family-related, or trauma-related—'don't go so deep that your friend feels pressured to try to solve your problems,' she adds. Think through whether what you’re placing on your friends is something they can handle. Think about their feelings too, and how they might process it.
If you’re really considering telling a friend something of this nature rather than a therapist, Degges-White recommends asking yourself: What am I hoping this friend will say? What am I hoping to get from revealing this? Remember, 'we should never ask more [from] friends than we'd be willing to give them,' Degges-White says. 'There's a limit to how much of another person's stuff you should be expected to carry.'
How to reply when you’re the one that gets the text
Take your time.
Real talk: You don’t have to respond right away—you can wait a few minutes or even a few hours to text back, Carmichael says. 'Even a professional therapist is not expected to reply within minutes to anyone's text messages,' she adds.
Because everyone communicates differently, there’s no set amount of time in which someone should text or call back. However, there should be a sense of understanding and acceptance around different communication styles. So, it’s fine to give yourself time to process their text and think about what to reply, unless there’s an immediate request for assistance in it, Degges-White adds. In fact, 'it's good to get out of a habit of responding all the time,' Mills says, because you shouldn’t have to pause what you’re doing IRL to focus all your attention on answering texts.
Consider your friendship history.
If this person leans on you this way once in a while, you might write back and say: Hey, I’m so sorry to hear about this. It sounds like more than we could discuss over text—can we plan a time to talk on the phone or in person? (BTW, if you took a bit to reply to their message, you can always start it with: I’m so sorry I just saw this message, I’m a bit tied up at work or I’m a bit emotionally drained.)
The goal here is to comfort the person in as few words as possible, Mills says. 'Sometimes, people just want to be acknowledged,' Carmichael adds. 'It doesn't mean that you have to go into a full on therapy session over text with them.'
Communicate your boundaries.
The nex time you see or call this person, Degges-White recommends using 'I' statements to preserve the friendship while resetting expectations for what that friendship entails. Try: I appreciate how much you value our friendship and how you trust me, but it’s hard for me to keep getting these long texts. I feel like more is expected of me than I can give. You can also mention the frequency with which they send these texts, Carmichael adds—they might not even know how often they’re doing it. Hopefully, they’ll understand, and you can start having a more reciprocal friendship.
If they don’t understand and get mad at you, know that you didn’t do anything wrong. Their response may even have you questioning whether this is an authentic friendship, or if they’re using you for your listening ear, Carmichael says, and that’s okay. You can respond by distancing yourself from them, or texting the same thing every time they ask you for help in hopes they’ll get the message—literally. This text could say something like: I'm sorry, this seems like more than what I can respond to and help you with. I think you deserve support and that you should reach out to a therapist because they can help you better than I can.
If they continue to be angry and disrespectful, feel free to end the friendship by saying something like: It seems like our interactions are only upsetting you—and honestly, they're upsetting me too. I think it would be best for both of us if we moved on from this friendship, because it doesn't seem to be serving either one of us.
The bottom line: 'It's not our place to expect our friends to be our therapist,' Degges-White says. So, next time you're hanging out with your friends and think 'With besties like these, who needs therapy?', remember this answer: Literally everyone.
Meet the Experts: Suzanne Degges-White, PhD, is a licensed counsellor specialising in women's relationships and developmental transitions at Northern Illinois University. Melanie Ross Mills, PhD, is a temperament therapist and author of The Friendship Bond. Chloe Carmichael, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and Women's Health advisor based in New York City.
More resources for healthy relationships...
Cut through the noise and get practical, expert advice, home workouts, easy nutrition and more direct to your inbox. Sign up to the WOMEN'S HEALTH NEWSLETTER
You Might Also Like
