The Pros and Cons of Being The Emotional Support Friend

This week we were talking about family systems. It was interesting because your role
in your family system bleeds out into other relationships in your life. It works in our
families so it should work in our relationships with our friends and acquaintances,
right? I think it's kind of funny that we refer to family dynamics as family “systems”.
Almost like they are machines. Some machines are well functioning and efficient
some have some broken parts that for the most part go unnoticed. Every machine is
different and works and accomplishes things in different ways. Each member of the
machine is a different part and they perform different functions. In trying to understand
your own family machine it's important to find out what part and function you play.

For me, I’ve always been the emotional support, the hub, the jokester, the glue and
so on. People come to me when they have problems because I’m always willing to
listen. I hate conflict so they turn to me when conflict arises to ease it or fix it. I hate
tension so I joke and laugh a lot. I want everybody to be friends so I hang out with two
people together to get them more comfortable together. I didn’t really realize that I
was playing these parts until an old friend pointed out to me that I did this in our old
friend group. Once I knew that I found myself repeating those patterns in almost every
situation I found myself in.

For the most part I love the roles I play in my relationships. I love being there for
people and listening to their problems and helping them through it. I love feeling
needed in that way. I love being the jokester and pulling people together through
laughs and good times. I love being the glue that keeps a group of people together.
I love it. It makes me so happy.

I’ve had a lot of times where I got to really help people out of a hard time. Just the
other night my friend was having a really hard time with making some serious decisions
about her future. Even though it was late I stayed up with her and let her talk and
gave her advice the best way I knew how to do. I love moments like these. Deep
conversations with people are my favorite thing and it's very easy for emotional
support friends to expose this side of people. I love this role I play but sometimes
there are some downsides to it.

I get used to people needing me for emotional support. I like being in that role and
people like me in that role. Sometimes people just move on. They get significant
others and they don’t need me in that role anymore and it hurts more than it should.
I always understand why it happens. It makes sense that a significant other would take
on the roles of an emotional support friend. I also realize i'm sensitive and that probably
effects it as well. Its just not to fun.

Another con is that I get so frustrated when I can’t control negative situations.
There are some things I just can’t fix. Things that have nothing to do with me but affect
me and I want to fix in some way but can’t. It's hard to realize that I can’t fix everything
even though I feel like I need to.

A common problem for emotional support friends that I’ve found is that sometimes we
are overloaded with everybody's emotions and problems. It's sometimes hard to
juggle everybody's issues. Also, on top of that you have your own stresses and
anxieties to deal with. We get overwhelmed and it's hard to know what to do because
we just want to help people. Its important to take a step back sometimes and realize
we shouldn't feel the need to carry people's burdens. You can be a support to people
but you shouldn't feel obligated to fix them.

Overall, even though being the emotional support friend is hard sometimes, it's a
great role to play. I love my part in my family machine its led me to a major I know I’ll
love and a future career I’ll be happy to be in.  I have deep lasting friendships with
people I care about and people that care about me. I'll gladly except the challenges
of my role because in my opinion? The pros outweigh the cons.