Be careful who you open up to about your problems. Only a few people actually care, the rest are just curious. They may pretend they care but deep within, they’re happy you’re in mess.

As Bestselling Author, Brian Tracy rightfully said in his book “Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time”,

“It’s been said that you should never share your problems with others because 80 percent of people don’t care about your problems anyway, and the other 20 percent are kind of glad that you’ve got them in the first place’.”

You have to study your friends closely to know if you can share your deep problems with them or not.

There are some friends that you just need to have normal discussions with — discussions like talking about the latest gadgets, food, soccer, and other normal discussions. It ends there.

But there are some that you can go deeper with by sharing your troubles, struggles, failure etc. with them and they’ll help you on how to get through it as if your problem was theirs. Those are the ones you should open up to.

Now, let’s look at the attributes of some friends you should never ever open up to:

1. People who always want to be right.

There are some friends who always want to be right no matter what. They do not accept their wrongs but are quick to highlight your wrong-doings.

They always say words like ‘I told you so.’ ‘You should have listened to me.’ ‘I’m always right.’

Don’t trust this kind of friend. They’ll only listen to your problems and in the end, the aforementioned words will make you feel bad.

2. People who want to feel superior

Some friends are always found of showing an overly high opinion of themselves.

I had this friend back in College that I told that I had fornicated and that I was feeling so bad about it. I expected him to encourage me in a possible way. But all he could say was “I am a good Christian, I have maximum self-control. A lot of girls came my way but I never touched them or went to bed with them. That’s why God keeps blessing me”

He said all these to feel superior over me. Avoid telling your problem to these types of friends.

3. People who like to pass judgments

We can all be judgmental. I think small levels of judgment are part of being human. Emphasis on the small levels. Being too judgmental generally makes us difficult to be around.

Some friends always act like they’re ‘holier than thou’. Tell them about a problem you encountered and they’ll be quick to judge you. They have no empathy at all.

Avoid confiding in friends like this. They don’t really care about you.

4. Friends who gossip behind your back

There are some friends who’ll discuss anything you tell them behind your back to other friends of theirs.

Avoid these people.

The bottom line of everything is, PICK YOUR CONFIDANTS WISELY.

Sometimes it might feel that certain people don’t care about what is troubling us.

If this is the case, don’t confide your deepest thoughts and feelings to these people. Keep conversations about more general topics of interest.

Sometimes it feels like we are only there to listen to other people’s problems and they would prefer we keep quiet about our own.

While relationships involve give and take, some can survive on the balance being uneven. This comes down to each individual and what they need from the relationship.

One of my girlfriends and I discuss everything. I know she genuinely cares about me and I love and care for her. I want to hear about any problems she is facing. I want her to open up and share her thoughts and feelings with me and I know that feeling is reciprocated.

I think the part that makes sharing our problems work is that we share both the light and the dark in our lives. It’s not always about what is going wrong.

Even if we do talk about our problems for a long period of time, we can still manage to find joy or at least a sense of humor in there somewhere.

One minute we could be crying together and five minutes later laughing our heads off.

References

1. writechangegrow.com