Audacious Asks: How to Help a Friend Who Won’t Stop Venting

(00:00) hi and welcome back to Reclamation radio I am Dr Kelly Brogan and what I love about my containers is that the women I attract always have some audacious questions to ask me so it’s my intention for the musings that I share on these topics to grow the permission field of what’s possible and also to offer relatable reframes that can Jailbreak you from your victim stories so you might notice that I’m a bit more familiar and free when I’m answering these questions to me in my membership vital life project today’s question

(00:32) what’s the best way to support a friend who is in a victim drama do you have sort of an agreement or understanding with your friends right now me and my friends have I would say like two primary agreements in terms of our Communications so me and my friends have an agreement that we will not speak ill of men any longer period And I shared with them my perspective on all this and they completely got it and they agreed you know also because we no longer want to be the women who just come from this long line of toxic relationships and all

(01:10) of this abuse by men and all of these horrible experiences like what does that say about me as a woman I’m not that woman right like I am a woman who’s had extraordinary huge love in my life I a woman who’s been on like a Magic Carpet Ride of experience and like milk it for every drop right and I also have a very big victim story trust me and what woman do I want to be right so they get it that’s our agreement and we’ll like kind of tease each other if we’re moving into that space or like I’ll say something

(01:41) that I want to share and I’ll be like hold on a minute let me try again so that’s like a big thing with us is like hold on a minute let me try again I’m gonna say that a different way and we we choke like it’s funny like we’re we’re just trying and the other agreement is around the the victim story right so and the repeated patterns right so a lot of us have repeated patterns of victim stories and you know the other day I got long messages from my friend about a pattern that she’s struggling with in her life that she’s been struggling with

(02:11) as long as I’ve known her which is many years and I reflected to her I said you know what I’m feeling as I am listening to you now some of my friends need consent meaning some of my friends want me to say hey can I share with you my feedback can I share with you what I’m feeling I don’t need that at all in fact quite the opposite some of my um friends need that so you’ll want to sort of know your friends and know which ones want to be asked before you give feedback and which ones are sort of like hey bring it

(02:40) on so whatever I brought it on in this Dynamic and I said hey can I tell you I didn’t say I said let me tell you what I’m feeling I’m feeling that you are really loving this story of your difficult childhood because I know all the details and you’re telling me again as if I didn’t know and it must be because you really love this story it’s the erotic caress of your attention on your horrible childhood story and there is a time where validating the part of you that never got to speak never got to feel seen heard or recognized in all of

(03:16) that trauma is super important but when we are doing it without a framework of this is what I’m doing right now like like often if I need to just like vent and I need to feel somebody on my side which is not infrequent I’ll say hey can you get me right now right uh or if I you know get feedback that is something other than that I’ll say like I really I really want to feel like you get me like you see me you know like you understand what I’m saying and you condition each other like that’s what we’re doing right

(03:45) so so in time your friends will know like hey I’m going to offer her validation and then I’m going to ask if I can present to her like another perspective or look for the meaning in this or ask her what she what like you know whatever you want to call it her higher self really thinks about what is going on or ask why she thinks this might be happening and why it might need to happen in exactly this way right so there’s almost like a wink that is like okay you can do the victim thing that’s cool and we both know that it’s not the

(04:19) it’s not the story you you actually want right so there is another story so I think these kinds of meta conversations between friends are so important because then we can show up for each other in exactly the way that our caregivers did not show up could not have shown up and will not to show up for us we get to have these healing experiences of just the right ingredients that allow us to feel support and love because those ingredients are going to be different and I for one am done with the sister woundology contract that says we are

(04:55) just here to complain about our powerlessness that with that and it takes practice to move Beyond it so that’s what you can do together is is practice that so people love to ask me questions and I love to ask questions of others because inquiry is play but some of my interviews and answers are too hot to handle for Reclamation radio so in my membership vital life project I have created a private podcast that gets delivered to wherever you listen to podcasts where I answer your questions that arise because of my provocative

(05:29) subject matter and I also share interviews that might otherwise be censored that I call the sovereignty Series so you’ll get access to these private podcasts and a private chat by joining my membership vital life project I’ll see you in there [Music]