The “strong personality” friend

I moved out to another place about 6 years ago and I had to start my life from zero. Because all that my mental health hasn’t been ok. I have been going to therapy and taking antidepressants.

My therapist always tells me the importance of being vulnerable and creating new connections to live the best of the relationships and feel part of the place.

I was going through a major depression episode and I made a new friend who seemed to be such a nice person. She listened to me, understood me (even thought she didn’t know I was depressed, I never told her but she knew something was not right and that’s why we got close).

But she has a very very “strong personality” and she is aggressive to other people sometimes , even in front of me.

A family member of mine when met her was concerned because they knew that this aggressive personality could be a problem to the mental situation I was in.

I decided to go ahead and cultivate the friendship because she was always there for me but she also was very anxious/she drinks and smokes a lot. Around her I felt anxious. I couldn’t be myself. I was afraid she would be aggressive like she was with others but I always told myself that she was such a good person but with some problems that I could even help her improve, because friends are for that.

She invited me to go to a trip with her friends. When we were there I felt her completely distant from me. She wouldn’t even look at me in

the face to talk. I started to feel very weird in that situation because she wasn’t “that friend I always knew”. I even doubted my feelings.

Then there was an episode where she shouts about something and I got scared.

The following day she treated me poorly and I decided to ask her what was going on. Unfortunately I got nervous and told her in her face all the things she had done in that last few hours that made me think she was acting weird. Then I left crying. I got my suitcase and left.

She tried calling me to talk but I was so desperate that I couldn’t talk.

I then explained to her that her aggressive traits were a trigger for the mental situation I was (which she should already know) but she told me that it was the way she was and she wouldn’t change.

She tried to manipulate me saying that my behavior was unacceptable when it was just a reaction from her acting weird during the trip.

She was so manipulative that I ended up saying “I’m sorry” and apologizing many times. When talking to me again about the episode she kept talking in an agressive way while I was in desperate tears. I cried so much while talking that I couldn’t even think properly. I felt no compassion from her side. While I cried and apologized for feeling bad about her cold/aggressive behoavior she kept saying that her friends told her “it was a mistake trying to integrate someone out of their friend groups” and that they saw no problem with her aggressive behavior because that’s just the way she is.

She is such a pick me and I always knew that.

I was so desperate to have a friend who would be close to me that I left someone completely different enter my life.I don’t even like to be close to people who smoke.

I put myself in extreme vulnerability with her and now I regret. I told her my problems, my secrets and she wasn’t able to understand my feelings when I tried to expose her that her behavior had hurt me.

And I’m feeling so bad right now. I have been crying so much because I have this tendency to invalidate my feelings. I need to level up to the point where I don’t feel desperate to find friends and besides finding friends who are similar to me. Not someone who is agressive and alcoholic.