A lot of friends are terrible therapists. They give bad advice, advice when you don't need it, victim-blame you (e.g. Job's friends from the Bible), etc. These can even be otherwise good friends.
> Do not, under any circumstances, bitch to your friends about your personal problems. That's not what friends are for, that's what you pay a shrink for.
There is some truth to this. Not everyone is equipped to help friends who are suffering from depression. Some may be too selfish, some may just not know how, and some may be dealing with too many issues of their own at the time. If one indiscriminately reaches out to "friends" for help with serious issues like this, one may come away more disappointed and discouraged than helped.
However, there are people who are able to help, and sometimes one is lucky enough to have one as a friend.
So I would recommend being careful which friends one reaches out to, but I would not say that one should never reach out to friends. :)
I completely disagree with #8. A bad friend can be a cancer in your life, and blaming yourself for their failures is an extremely common way of dragging yourself down. Assuming that it's usually something to do with yourself, or that it's better to forget the past is just asinine.
I've been that friend, and I have to say, people that have those kinds of problems tend to have them over and over again. Not being that kind of friend cuts those kinds of people out of your life, and that's a net plus.
This is so spot on. I feel like I am such a shitty friend especially after having witnessed my friends go above and beyond for when we needed their help without even being asked for it.
Sometimes you're depressed or lazy or for whatever reason consistently doing unproductive or annoying things. In this case, good friends might make you feel bad about yourself in the course of helping you improve your life. Not everything can be judged by how it makes you feel.
It is good to have friends who aren't quite like you. It is good to have friends who don't work in the same fields as you, or who aren't obsessed with chasing success. Why? Because, hopefully, they can call you out when you start handing yourself over to workaholism/bad relationships/excess drinking/etc. Ideally, you'd let these people stretch you so you can balance yourself out; even if it means part of your entrepreneurship neurosis is lost.
These sorts of articles disgust me; it's insane how much people value their career.
If your friend is screwing up their life and you are enabling them by validating their bad choices, you're not being a good friend to them. Close friends are pretty much the only ones who are in a position of trust to be able to deliver harsh truths to someone in a way that actually gets through (unlike internet strangers, media, authorities and in many cases also family), so it's the duty of friends to actually do so when needed.
I somewhat disagree with the idea that being friends with someone makes you more likely to look past their flaws. If anything, you are more aware of your friends flaws, and can plan accordingly. Hiring the wrong person for the job is obviously not productive, but not hiring the right person because you know them too well seems down right foolish.
What about my alcoholic friend I've known for 20 years that is destroying his life and lashing out at me right now because he is sick? Or my heavily depressed friend of 30 years who I sat with on the weekend? Not everything is about extracting maximum personal happiness. Friendship can also be about service.
The world has enough problems for you, you should be your own friend, not another source of abuse. Friend doesn't mean enabler, though. Good friends don't let their friends do bad things.
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