Friends are the cornerstone of a fulfilling and happy life. They provide support that amplifies our joys and cushions our sorrows. However, not all friendships are created equal, and some can veer into toxicity, leaving us with emotional scars that make us want to withdraw from friendship altogether.
Knowing the signs of a toxic friend will help you avoid them, leaving you more room to find people you love who love you. But, as my fellow friendship expert Danielle Bayard-Jackson argues in her forthcoming book Fighting for our Friendships, toxic friends often use “sophisticated stealth,” crafty and underhanded forms of aggression. These 8 phrases will help you spot even these subtle signs of toxicity:
- “You’re too sensitive”
Psychologist Marsha Linehan defines validation as communicating to someone that “her [or his] responses make sense and are understandable within her [or his] current life context or situation.” Validation is an important component of a healthy relationship, with one study finding that people who were validated after being excluded then reported higher self-esteem, less aggression, and a better mood.
In another study, after people completed an impossible test in a lab, they shared their feeligns with an experimenter. When the experimenter invalidated their feelings, saying “I’m not sure why you are stressed,” their heart rate climbed and they felt worse. They also reported feeling less safe and showed greater signs of disengagement, less eye contact, more frowns.
When friends tell us “you’re too sensitive” they imply that our feelings aren’t valid and that there’s something wrong with us for having them. Expressing your emotions is a healthy part of a friendship, and being told you’re too sensitive may indicate your friend lacks empathy.
- “I was just joking, can’t you take a joke?”
One important part of a healthy friendship is responsiveness: our friends try to meet our needs. When we tell our friend we’re hurt, responsiveness looks like them trying to understand why and adjusting their behavior.
In a toxic friendship, our friend may instead say things like “can’t you take a joke” to camouflage hurtful comments. If your friend is consistently using this defense, they may be avoiding accountability for their insensitivity.
- “You’re lucky to have me as a friend”
Healthy friendships are built on equality. Your friend is invested and so are you and no friend is viewed as better than the other. If you constantly hear your friend asserting their superiority or suggesting that you should be grateful for their presence, it may be a sign of an imbalanced relationship, where you are not valued.
- “I miss the old you”
Friends should encourage us to change and grow. Friends that affirm our identity allow us to be who we are, whether or not it fits their personal values. New friendships were more likely to evolve into best friendships, one study found, when friends affirmed us in our evolving identities.
If your friend is expressing discomfort with your positive changes or, worse, undermines your progress, it could be a sign that you’ve outgrown the friendship or that your friend doesn’t have your best interests in mind.
- “You owe me”
While reciprocity is important in a friendship, if a friend expects you to repay everything they offer, this may mean they see the relationship as transactional. Healthy friendships are built on the free flow of support. As we get close to someone, we begin to include them in our sense of ourselves, so what hurts them hurts us and what makes them happy makes us happy. This is why good friends feel comfortable being generous.
- “I wonder why they would give you that promotion.”
Having a friend who downplays our accomplishments or tries to one up our success with their own, i.e “Well I just got a big raise” undercuts our confidence and joy. How others respond to our good news, one study found, more greatly predicted the quality of the relationship than even how they responded to our suffering. In healthy friendships, friends engage in something called capitalization, amplifying our joy by cheerfully exclaiming congratulations or taking us out to celebrate.
- “I’m sorry you feel that way.”
True reconciliation requires each party to recognize the the harm they caused. When we apologize because someone feels a certain way, we imply that the problem is their feelings rather than our behavior. If expressing your concerns or setting boundaries is met with dismissive comments like this one, your friend does not take accountability for their impact on you.
- {nothing} – They ghost you.
Losing a friendship often triggers disenfranchised grief, a complicated grief experience that occurs because society trivializes friendship and does not legitimize the gravity of the loss. And yet, grief in a friendship is compounded even further when we don’t know why a friend pulls away. Getting ghosted on, one study found, makes us feel hurt, sad, and lowers our self-esteem. Even if they want to end a friendship, friends show regard for us by telling us explicitly.
These 8 phrases are signs your friend may have toxic traits. However, no one phrase alone can be used to diagnose a friendship as toxic. Be sure to consider these phrases within the larger dynamics of the friendship, asking yourself questions like: do they show up when I’m in need? Do they want the best for me? Is there a balance of each of us getting our needs met in the friendship? If you find these phrases reflect a larger toxic dynamic, it is a sign to pull back, set boundaries, or have an honest conversation and move on.
This post originally appeared as a contribution for CNBC.
