The Unseen Toll of “Therapist Friends”

Focusing on our mental health is the most important thing we high schoolers need to do. Excessive workloads weigh us down, but we need to show up for class, or we will fail and let others down. Sometimes, however, school is not the only thing that weighs us down. Sure the heavy school books carried in our backpacks drain us, but carrying the weight of other people’s cries on our shoulders is much heavier. The “therapist friend” burdens the obstacles that others have to endure. At the end of the day, we have to ask ourselves this one question: when is it time to show up for ourselves?
Many people may not realize that they have never asked “How are you?”
We preach about how communication is the most important thing, but how is one supposed to communicate their emotions if they were never given the chance to? Living like dominoes, constantly having to sit up straight, but every day, piece by piece, we end up falling down. We are scared to set boundaries because we feel like we were born to fly in a world where people need our help to walk. When can we stop setting ourselves on fire just to keep others warm?
A student who chose to remain anonymous shared their feelings about being the therapist friend: “Of course I love being there for my friends, but at one point it gets exhausting. Time after time, it starts to feel like your friends only spend time with you to use you for advice. Slowly, all topics become about my friend’s troubles, and the ‘friendship’ starts losing the ‘friend’ aspect.”
Friendships can go downhill when it comes to having to navigate our lives based on other people’s moods. Only receiving messages when things get hard when in reality, the phone should work both ways.
Opening up about our issues creates stronger friendships, but that can’t always happen when other people’s obstacles make us repress our own issues. When things get hard, people should express how they feel. But we need to make sure that relying on others will never stop us from learning how to handle difficult situations.
School Psychologist intern and Learning Skills teacher Bryce Noble shared the effects of this role: “I’ve seen it where when you become the therapist friend, you almost put your needs and feelings and what you’re going through on the side and bury it to help. You become that friend people go seek out, and then you put yourself kind of on the side.” Noble makes a great point about how being the therapist friend may make one ignore their own emotions.
Certain people feel the need to help others before they help themselves, and Noble, being a psychologist, shared certain personality traits of what that person normally is like “Usually they are an empathetic person who becomes the therapist friend or the therapy friend, and that person who just really wants to help can kind of escalate into more.”
Noble furthers the expectations for therapist friends: “You’re not supposed to have problems; you’re the one who helps with everything.” Having the expectation to always show up for others can backfire. It may be hard to reach out if you are a therapist friend because your own emotions can be blown out of proportion to where people may look at you differently.
Junior Alexandra Becker has had some experiences where being the therapist friend has ended friendships. Becker shared, “I think that’s the main reason why we aren’t friends anymore is because it was constantly her problems. I never had an opportunity to talk about myself and what was going on with me, and anytime I would try to do that, it would somehow go back to her and her own issues in the moment.” It is so normalized for others to disregard their friends’ emotions, and for Becker, she never had the chance to express her feelings.
Becker has shared that being the therapist friend “is kind of like being a people pleaser.” However, Becker has been able to recognize that she doesn’t know all the answers, and that is okay. “I used to feel guilty about not knowing the answer and not being able to help, or maybe I give a piece of advice that’s not the best, but I feel like after going to therapy myself, I realized it’s not my job to know at all. It’s not my job to fix their issues and fix their problems; it’s something they have to deal with as well, and it’s kind of their own personal journey.”
“Even therapists need therapists. So even therapist friends need someone to confide in. Just know that it is very normal and human to need to have someone who you can talk to without feeling judged,” added Noble.
High school can be rough for all students. Whether one chooses to voice their emotions or not, students need to make sure that they check in with themselves and make sure that they can live their own life before living someone else’s. It is okay to lean on a friend’s shoulder and shed a tear, but make sure that friend has the opportunity to do the same. While it may be a cliché, it will all be okay in the end, and if it’s not okay now, then it is not the end.