They Liked You Better When You Were Struggling
You came away from coffee with her feeling smaller than when you arrived.
You came away from coffee with her feeling smaller than when you arrived.
Let me tell you why I can say that with such certainty. I’ve spent the best part of twenty years working with women, the last few of them coaching one to one, and what I’ve found again and again is that they feel the thing draining them long before they have the words for it.
That’s what I do, I give them the language they were never handed. I know it because I lived it. I grew up in Ireland in the eighties and nineties, where children were seen and not heard and a good girl didn’t rock the boat, raised, like a lot of us, in a family system where comparison did the talking and nobody meant any harm by it. That’s not a complaint about the people who raised me, they did their best with what they had. But it’s where I learned that my instincts were wrong, that what I was feeling couldn’t be trusted. And it’s why I now spend my days teaching women the opposite.
Everything I’m about to tell you, I’ve lived.
You can’t quite say why you feel smaller. She didn’t shout, she didn’t insult you. She told you your big news was “lovely,” and then she changed the subject.
She mentioned, while stirring her flat white and not looking up, that someone else got the promotion you’ve been chasing. She laughed at the thing you were nervous about, and you couldn’t tell if she was laughing with you or at you.
And here you are three days later, still turning it over. I want you to know something. That coffee didn’t happen to you. It happened at you. And the reason it’s still rattling around your head is not because you’re too sensitive, or dramatic, or difficult, no matter who told you that you were.
It’s because some part of you clocked it in the room and you talked yourself out of it. The thing is, you have a bullshit radar for these types of people. You’ve always had it.
You could read a room before you could read a book.
You knew, a few moments after meeting someone, the ones who would go on to mess with you in some nasty way.
And then you were raised to be a good girl who doesn’t rock the boat, so you learned to doubt the very thing that was trying to protect you.
We don’t talk about this enough, especially for women like you. Successful. Capable. Well able to invest in yourself. You’ve done the work on your career, your business, your body, and yet there is this one friendship, or this one woman at work, or this one person in your own family, who can undo you in thirty seconds flat. And the better you do, the worse it seems to get.
The higher you climb, the more inconvenient your boundaries become to certain people. The ones most threatened by your growth are the ones who’ll challenge it the hardest. The colleague who used to be your equal and now reports to you. The one above you who needs you small. The friend who liked you better when you were struggling alongside her. They’ll throw everything at you to keep you in your lane.
So let’s do the work, right now, in three parts.
- Recognise it. The toxic friend rarely announces herself. It’s death by a thousand cuts, those small insidious jabs nobody else sees but you feel deeply. “That style does nothing for you, I’m only looking out for you.” “That’s not how I remember it, you’re reading into it.” If you continually come away from time with someone feeling awful about yourself, that is your sign. Not proof for a courtroom. A sign. And you’re allowed to trust it.
- Notice the deflection too, because this is the sneaky one. You finally say the true thing, the thing that’s been bothering you, and instead of hearing you, she turns it back on you. She uses your tone, your timing, or she drags up something you did two years ago, all to make you feel silly for ever opening your mouth. “Here you go again, after everything I’ve done for you.” And just like that the power stays with her and you’re apologising for raising it at all.
- Express it. And before you panic, I’m not sending you into battle. Expressing it does not mean a big confrontation, a speech, a showdown in the staff kitchen. It means you stop swallowing it.
- Get your journal, nobody else needs to see this, ever. Write down exactly what happened. Not your interpretation, not what you think you should have felt, what actually happened and how you actually felt.
- Then write down what they said back when you flinched. Did they deny it? Minimise it? Turn it on you? Their exact words if you can remember them.
Now here’s the gold. Think of your person, the one who drains you, and write down their top three moves. The phrases they pull every single time without fail. Then beside each one, write what you usually do. Go quiet? Apologise? Start explaining yourself? No judgement, just notice it. And then, beside that, write one sentence you’ll say instead. Not a paragraph. One line that keeps you in control and refuses the bait. Their move, “you’re being so sensitive.” Your line, “do you hear what I’m saying?” Say it out loud three times in your kitchen until it feels like you. Because the only reason deflection works is that you weren’t ready for it. Now you are.
Third, deal with it. And this is where I need you to hear me, because it’s the part most women fall down on.
Stop measuring your progress by whether they change. They might not. Your work was never about fixing them, it was about trusting yourself enough to believe your own memory of what happened. That is how you take your power back. You don’t have to announce your boundaries at people, you don’t owe anyone a presentation. The ones who love and respect you won’t need the explanation. They’ll just say, “that’s what you need? Okay.” That’s love. That’s respect. Everyone else can get on their bike.
And that voice in your head, the one that’s been telling you all this is your fault, that you’re imagining it, that you should keep the peace? She is not your bestie. She’s been in there so long you think she’s on your side, but she’s a toxic best friend, holding you in your lane. She has to go too.
You already knew, girl. You felt it in your body at that coffee, days before your head caught up. The only thing that’s changed is now you have the language for it.
And by God, that’s a great skill to have.
With love,
Jennifer xoxo
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