Toxic Friendships: Dive Deeper

Do you know them when you see them? Do you believe it when you feel it? When you do, it’s a breakthrough moment. Then you can begin to do something about it.

There were five of us – four clinical social workers, members of the Staten Island Society, and a philosopher who was training in psychoanalysis, all of us at one stage or another of building private psychotherapy practices. I was the least far along on this path. I’d had a small practice in Brooklyn for more than ten years – it never grew beyond half a dozen hours a week – and had just started seeing patients on Staten Island as well. Joining the Staten Island Society of Clinical Social Workers was part of my networking. I was flattered that I was invited to join this monthly lunch. These were interesting people.

I’d probably been having lunch with them for a year before I realized that, after each monthly luncheon, I was depressed for days, really bummed out. It took me a while longer to realize that there was something toxic in the luncheons, although I never could quite put my finger on the trigger. I enjoyed the lunches, but almost immediately afterwards, I was feeling bad about myself. It was a big step, paying attention to my feelings, identifying the toxicity, labeling it.

But then what? I was conditioned to tough it out, to ignore pain, to push through. I went to summer camp one year with Jackie Robinson Jr. Jackie Robinson was one of the great heroes of my childhood. Jackie must have known as much about toxic relationships as anyone. Jackie said, “Don’t let them see you hurt.”

Jackie and Rachel were there on parent visiting day. I played in the softball game that afternoon with all the parents watching. I stole second base and got hit in the back of the neck by the throw from the catcher, but I was safe. I stood up. I hurt, but I wasn’t going to rub my neck, not with Jackie Robinson watching.

Against my will, I’d admired John Mitchell, Nixon’s attorney general. I was finishing my dissertation, watching the Watergate Hearings. Mitchell’s “When the going gets tough, the tough get going,” stuck in my memory.

Zen practice reinforced these lessons. What do you do with pain? Zen pushed me to plunge deeper into these moments, to become the pain in knee as I meditated, to gassho to my toxic friends, to say aloud or subverbally, “Thank you for the teaching.” Pain was the signal: there was something here that I was supposed to learn. I kept going to the lunches. It might help me build my psychotherapy practice. It might help me learn about myself. The post-luncheon depressions continued. Was the learning worth the pain?

Was there another way? One of the great Zen lessons is that there’s always another way. Want to know what it is? Hang on. Give me two days. We’ll get to it on Thursday.