It's Kristina Driscoll, host of the She's Brave podcast. I'm so glad you're here with me. I did not start out brave at all, but I learned that we can do brave things one small step at a time. at a time. After caregiving for my husband and young son for 12 years, it was definitely time for my next chapter.
I want to get brave women's voices out there in the world and inspire women to find their own bravery within themselves. A year later, I'm in the top 2 percent of All podcasts globally, I've interviewed amazing women who have overcome and accomplished so much to live the life of their dreams. If they can do it, you can do it too.
And so can I let's go. Hey everyone, it's Kristina with the She's Brave Podcast. I want to talk to you guys today about being brave enough to limit your access to certain people in your life. Yes, I said it. Yes, I know. It sounds pretty harsh, right? But. I was a huge people pleaser pretty much my whole life. Then I hit my fifties and I got really busy with my podcast and I started growing.
I realized that there were people in my life that I didn't enjoy being around. I've come up with this list because I want to help you guys. I want you guys to know this information before I did. I don't want you to figure it out in your fifties. I've come up with these eight types of people that you may want to reevaluate your relationship with
I'm not saying you need to cut them off completely. I'm just saying you may want to spend less time with them. You may want them to have less access to you and that's totally okay. There's actually nine of them on the list and here's what they are.
I made them all up. The first one is called the show off. Number two is the one upper. Number three is the smooth talker. Four is called the keeper. Five, the taker. Six, the vampire. Seven, the negative Nelly, eight, the gossiper, and lastly, number nine, the victim.
So let's start off with the show off. The show off is that person who is just all about how perfect their life is. And let me tell you this one I actually did learn about 20 years ago. See, I had this friend who I thought. Her life was perfect in every single way, but she was a new friend. And let me tell you, friends, her life was far from perfect. It did appear perfect from the outside, but. Just a reminder to all of you, especially in the age of social media, nobody's life is perfect. Even if they're presenting as perfect, trust me, there's things going on in their life.
And here's an example of that. I was just at a luncheon with a group of girlfriends a couple of months back, and some of them were friends and some of them were friends of friends. Some were like acquaintances. And so one acquaintance, basically all she talked about was, how perfect her family was, how perfect her kids were, how perfect her grandkids were how she had friends who owned, multi, multi million dollar homes all over the world.
10 houses worth 10 million each all over the world and name dropping that she was friends with, famous people and, showing pictures of her brand new BMW and talking about her designer clothes. After I left that lunch, I didn't feel so good about myself.
So I checked in with myself and I realized that it was because this particular person was trying so hard. To, for lack of a word, show off and then I just had to remind myself that if you're around somebody who is constantly showing off like that, and it makes you feel bad about yourself, then maybe you need to think about limiting access them, like not spending as much time with them. It's totally okay. Totally okay to do that.
Number two is the one upper.
This is the friend where you go to your friend. You're so excited. You say, my son just got into. XYZ university. It's a really good school. Like you're really excited about it. And they just say my kid just got into Yale or you have a new purse and it's really cute.
And you really like it. And you're like, Hey, I just wanted to let you know, like I rewarded myself with a Kate Spade, and maybe that Kate Spade costs you a couple hundred bucks or something. Maybe you got it used. It's on Pinterest or something, but you're really happy about it. You really like it.
And your friend's look at my new Prada, right? We all have that friend where they have to like one up you. They're really competitive. They have to one up you on everything. Again, at the end of the hour or two hours that you spend with them, how do you feel about yourself? And if you don't feel very good about yourself, if you feel less confident, less good about yourself, maybe you should be spending less time with them.
Number three. I like to call the smooth talker. They are that person that just lavishes compliment after compliment to you, right? Like they're telling you, you're so great. You're so wonderful. You're so beautiful. You're so fabulous. Okay. But when. It comes time where you need some help. Like you're in the hospital, they're nowhere to be found, right?
What have I learned about this? What I've learned is that actions speak so much louder than words, my friends. So that person who, has all these beautiful words to say about you and how great you are. And every time you see them, they're just like that. But then when it comes to them actually helping you in some way, they are no hair.
You can't find them. That's not such a good balance of a relationship, I would say. So again, maybe limited access there.
Number four is called, I like to call it the keeper. Okay. This is a person who keeps their approval from you. And this is the one where you go up to them and you say, you're not I'm not even going to believe this, but I just hit my book, hit the New York times bestseller list.
And all they do is they just pat you on the shoulder and they just say, that's nice, dear. And then they change the subject. And we all have people like that in our life. We were excited about some accomplishment we've made big or small. It doesn't matter. We just, and we present it to them and we're expecting them to
give us their approval a pat on the back, or actually I'm going to say more than a pat on the back, we want them to acknowledge that we, good job wow, I'm happy for you, but they don't do it. And I have news for you, my friends, they're not going to change.
They're never going to change. They're never going to give it to you because that's their game. There's something going on there. Maybe they don't feel good about themselves. If they can't give it to themselves, how can they give it to you?
Number five. I like to call the taker. The taker is that friend of yours who you have a potluck at your house. And by the way, it's always at your house. They never have a potluck at their house. You're having a potluck at your house and they bring the four buck Chuck. And if you don't know what four buck Chuck is, it's trader Joe's 4 bottles of wine.
They buy the absolute. Cheapest thing that they can possibly find and they bring it to your potluck, but it carries over into every part of your friendship. You go out to eat. They forgot their wallet. You are always paying the bill. You are always getting them a birthday present, but they always forget yours.
And sorry to break it to you. My friends, once again, guess what? They just don't value you. Ouch. That hurts so much, right? Oh my gosh. Ow, that hurts. But truly that's really what's going on. They don't value you as much as you value them. Do you really want to be in a relationship with somebody like that? I don't, I really don't.
Okay. Number six, the vampire. This one's kind of all over the internet, right? We call them emotional vampires. They're that person. You go out for coffee and after an hour with them, you go back to your car and you just feel. Completely emotionally, physically drained, right? You just feel like life has been sucked out of you.
And I learned this tip Probably five or six, seven years ago, and it has helped me so much. Whenever you meet somebody new, this applies for dating, friendships, business relationships, everything in life, every relationship.
When you meet somebody for the first time and you spend an hour with them and then you leave, say goodbye. Check in with yourself, ask yourself, how am I feeling right now? How do I feel? Do I feel good? Do I feel energized? If I feel energized, that's a great sign. That means that person's a very good fit for me to build a relationship with, to spend more time with, to hang out with, right?
If I feel drained and exhausted, guess what? Your energy levels are limited. You cannot just go on like the energizer bunny forever. And so somebody who really drains you, that is not going to serve you. You need to limit your time with someone like that.
Number seven is the negative Nelly. Now, this is an interesting one. I actually interviewed Nina So Smith Pogue yesterday. She was an Olympic athlete with Mary Lou Retton in the eighties and then busted out her knee and she's had several big rises in life where she was like a celebrity anchor woman and then like boom fired that kind of thing.
She's had like lots of ups and downs in her life and she talks about resiliency, but one of the things she talked about also was certain people in her life at that time During some of those times were negative Nelly's she'd get together with them and all they wanted to talk about was whatever negative things going on in her life.
It's terrible about the fact that you just got fired for somebody younger and prettier and whatever blonder as an anchor woman and. That's all they want to talk about is your problems. And when you try to turn around and say how are your kids doing? How's your life going?
They just talk a little bit, but then they're back to talking about you. And, there are ways in this episode, she talks about one way of dealing with it is just. Clip nipping into the bud and saying, you know what? I'm good at talking about that. Let's change the subject. And if you have to do that and you have to keep doing it over and over, guess what?
Maybe you should spend less time with that person.
eight, Is the gossiper. I have news for you friends. If they're gossiping to you, they're also gossiping about you. Let me say that again. If they're gossiping to you, they're also gossiping about you. Yes. Yes. I know. I know. We all do it.
In fact, there are even studies that say that gossiping can help relationships be closer. But it's not worth it. I gossip less and less in my life. I'm trying to get it down to zero. I don't know if I'll ever get it down to a zero but gossiping doesn't help any of us, right guys?
That friend that gossips about all of your other mutual friends, guess what? She's gossiping about you behind your back. You're back too.
And finally, number nine is the victim. That is the person who every time you meet up, it's just things couldn't be worse.
Things couldn't be worse. Everything's a mess in their life. And they're, every time we talk to them, their life is a mess and they feel like it's all happening to them. It's not happening for them. It's happening to them. They're a victim and they're stuck. Here's another thing.
Cause we all get in victim mentality. Yes, we do. At certain times we get into the victim mentality, but we don't get stuck there, but if you have a friend or an acquaintance or somebody in life who is stuck there, where all they talk about is it's everybody else's fault. That's another example where it's like this thing.
I'm miserable because of this thing over here. It's their fault. It's this thing's fault. And they talk like that. Yeah, that's not somebody that you can really be around now. Wait a minute. Now I know some of you are saying there's nobody left. There's nobody left. Christina, after that long list, I'm not expecting you to, have friends that.
Don't have any of these calls. We all have some of them, some of the time. Okay. So we all have hard times, right guys, we all have hard times. And so I'm not saying don't support your friends. Okay. Cause you know what, we need to be there for our loved ones. And maturity is about us being able to maintain our energy and be the person that we want to be and to maintain our energy the way we want it to be. So that means all of us, even my BFF is going to call me and she's going to be in victim mode sometimes. And that's okay. Going to be there for her because she's not stuck there. She happens to be there today, but I am going to be there for her.
Okay. When somebody else is into their storm but it's just a temporary thing, you got to buck up, you got to buckle in, you got to sit down, you got to listen, you got to be there for your friends. And another really great example of that is addiction, which Pretty soon, there's going to be a new episode coming out with Lisa Smith.
She's pioneering, you guys, pioneering addiction. I think, don't quote me exactly, but it's around 44 million Americans are dealing with a substance abuse disorder. That's really high. And Lisa Smith talks all about how we as friends and family members
are also affected by addiction. So if 44 million Americans are addicted, that means we are all affected by addiction, whether even if it's not in your family, current cultural norms basically tell us, Hey, You know what just drop that person like a hot potato, right?
We just cut them out of your life, be done with them. They're never going to learn. They're gonna have to figure it out on their own. Lisa has been doing this work about, learning to support people from afar. So this is the last tool. , I want to leave you guys with, I don't want to overwhelm you with. You know, oh, my goodness, I don't have anyone left in my life, friends or family wise. You do. We all fall into these categories at one time or another. We all have, we all will to some extent in the future, but. What I'm saying is and I'll give an example with the addiction example.
Let's just say you have an uncle who's a raging alcoholic. So your cousin has everybody over for Thanksgiving, but she doesn't invite your uncle. Cause he's an alcoholic, so he doesn't get invited. How can you support your uncle? Like you tried to take him out to dinner and he just, he drank too much and he got verbally abusive, right?
Yes. You're going to have to scale back that relationship with him. It's not really good for you, but you also really want to support him in some way possible. There is there are different ways that we can still support people, even from a little bit of far. So one example would be day after Thanksgiving, Hey, Uncle Sam, would you like to grab coffee?
Grab coffee for 30 minutes in the morning before he starts drinking, right? You can still support him. You can still spend time with him, but not deal with the verbal abuse, not deal with it, drinking, not deal with that. You may have to scale it back even further. You may have to just limit it to texts.
Hey, Uncle Sam, happy Thanksgiving. I hope you're having a great day and let's chat on the phone soon. Something like that. I'm using that as an example, but literally you can use that example for any of these types of situations, right? Certain people in your life that I have labeled doesn't mean you have to just say, okay, I'm cutting them off.
I'm done with them forever. Sometimes you do have to do that. Sometimes you do. Sometimes people are in our lives for a reason. Okay. This is what I'm going to say. People definitely are in our lives for a reason. Like even those negative people, they're there to teach us something about ourselves to help us to become better.
Even if it's through them being not so good.
People come into our life for a reason, a season or a lifetime. And it's okay, whatever it is. Some people are only in and out of our life for a season and we have to be okay with that. That's okay too. And some people are in our life for a lifetime and that's the goal, right?
But it's not always possible. So you guys, I just felt so compelled to share this information with you because it took me 50 plus years to understand this and to cultivate my relationships in a better way. I hope that it helps you to cultivate your relationships in a better way as well.
I love you guys so much.
Hey, brave friends. Thanks so much for taking time out of your busy life to listen to today's episode. I love learning about what makes you brave. I'm here with you. I see you, I hear you, and I want to hear from you. I want to know how you are showing up as brave and resilient and authentic.
