Help! My Friends Don’t Want Me to Change: Building More Supportive Communities

Scott Mills, Ph.D.

    Our friends can be our greatest support in creating change in our lives or they can be our worst enemies.   Depending on their capacity to adapt and appreciate change, our efforts to expand our lives can be welcomed with open arms or rejected.   The incredible power of a strong group of supportive friends to make change possible for us makes this a hard dynamic to ignore.

    James Flaherty, President of New Ventures West, says that many people “feel sentenced to our friends.”   But relationships, just like people, grow and change over time.   When we are lucky and skillful, our groups of friend grow together and can support each other in that process.  If that isn't the case you might want to consider they ways you are relating to your friends and see if you can shift those patterns.