How do you go about breaking the cycle of treading on egg shells with your friends?

New friends would probably solve that.

Um, no..I don’t have any friends like that. I probably wouldn’t have stuck around if they had personalities like that.

New friends might be an excellent idea.

Friends are the people you should be able to be yourself with. If that’s not the case, I’d look for some new friends. Now, don’t get me wrong… if this is an occasional thing, it’s ok to be sensitive to a friend’s sore spots. But if you find you are constantly censoring yourself in order to stay on his/her good side, it’s time to stop riding the drama llama!

You shouldn’t have to tread on eggshells with friends. You can’t control how other people will behave. You can take care of yourself and associate with people who are going to respect you and your feelings.

I’ve had friends like this and ultimately, I had to move on. Everyone has problems. Not everyone takes their problems out on the ones closest to them.

I would stomp on said eggshells! It’s one thing to do it out of courtesy, but when it gets to the point where they maybe taking advantage of their situation or it begins to interfere with you or the friendship, then it’s time to take a step back and either confront them or let them go. The choice is yours though.

@ saraaaaaa: The one issue that no one yet has addressed refers to this:

“So many of my friends are like this that its making me weary…maybe I should just get some new friends.”

You might consider contemplating why so many of your friends are super moody or sensitive. Have those choices fed into some need of yours that you ought to examine?
Just an idea.

What @gailcalled said.

To avoid passive aggressive crap, you have to learn to state yourself clearly in terms of what you want, and how you feel about the other person’s behavior. This can be learned in workshops, or therapy, or other places, I suppose. Maybe you can read a book about it and teach yourself.

The other thing that will help, which is what Gail alluded to, is working on the confidence and self-esteem necessary to be able to speak clearly, and not try to say your stuff in a back door kind of way. Some people choose friends who are mean to them because they don’t think they are worthy of having friends who respect them. You may need to work on that, if that is an issue for you, in order to be able to speak your desires and feeling in a straight-forward way.

Break the eggs, Make an omelet and find new friends to share it with.

If you are willing to deal with the aftermath, and you really care about these people, talk to them privately and tell them that you care and respect them enough to be honest. Then objectively describe what you witness. Sometimes habits become almost reflexive, and people don’t realize how ridiculous they are acting.

Another way to open their eyes might be to secretly record them, and let them watch… an audio or videotape will be an objective record, so they can’t take it as a personal attack. A friends father did this when we were teenagers to show us how stupid we acted at times. It was quite effective.

Please remove yourself..you can’t change people but you can change yourself..situation and environment..drop them before you start to get comfortable with this behavior and start to act that way yourself

Your friends couldn’t act this way around you didn’t somehow let them. By being sensitive to them for so long, they’ve gotten into the habit of always acting however they want around you without consideration for your feelings. Tell them that you won’t put up with that crap any more, then stop putting up with it.