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

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, 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 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'm a woman who's been on like a magic carpet ride of experience and like milked 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 our agreement And we like kind of tease each other if we're moving into that space or like, I'll say something 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. It's like, hold on a minute. Let me try again. I'm going to say that a different way. And we joke, like, it's funny. Like we're just trying. And the other agreement is around 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 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 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 on. So whatever. I brought it on in this dynamic. 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 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 that trauma is super important. But when we are doing it without a framework of this is what I'm doing right now, 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. 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 her 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, it's not the story you let 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 just 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 just here to complain about our powerlessness with that. And it takes practice to move beyond it. So that's what you can do together 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 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. Jifff