For a long time, I told myself that it was ok when close friends would belittle my choices and commitments. Oftentimes, these put-downs came in the form of jokes about how no one cares about my work. I didn’t really think twice about their behaviors because I’ve learned through my work that people are often flippant about mental health — it’s part of what it means to work with topics and concerns that are associated with significant societal stigmatization.
My “friends” never went out of their way to make jabs at my work or mental health. It was convenient for them to put me down, so they did. Even when I told them that I didn’t appreciate these jokes, they would laugh off what I said and continue to make the jokes in the next conversation. The ease with which they did it almost made it harder for me to recognize it in the moment, because it would be a quick jab, a chuckle, and then the conversation would move on. Because these little digs at mental health happened so quickly, I didn’t realize how big of an impact they had on me until the pandemic, when I stopped seeing these friends regularly, or simply fell out of touch altogether.
Not keeping in touch actually felt more like a relief. It wasn’t even that all of our conversations had to do with mental health and therefore were fraught with landmines. They were usually fun. Obviously, we had become friends for a reason: perhaps we had other similar interests, or a similar sense of humor, or generally got along with each other. Oftentimes they had helped me out in various ways, and I had done the same for them.
But no matter how much fun I was having during those conversations or how helpful we were to each other, I realized that I was subconsciously dreading the inevitable next jab at my work — a feeling that kept me in a constant state of alert. The unpredictability of it was the worst. It was like having a great time at a party, but with the knowledge that you’re going to get slapped in the face at some point and not knowing when that slap would come.
The pandemic and time away from these relationships made me realize that mental health was a non-negotiable for me in friendships. Non-negotiables are essentially values, and the thing about values is that you can’t make someone have the same values as you do. I can’t make someone respect mental health, at least not immediately enough to continue being friends with them.
Everyone has different non-negotiables. What’s non-negotiable for me may not be non-negotiable for you, and vice versa. Mental health is a salient example for me because it has been such a big part of my life over the past year. I personally only have about three non-negotiables: three values or aspects of my identity that are so important to me that I absolutely cannot give them up in a friendship. I imagine that others have a similar number, give or take a few.
You’ll know when something is a non-negotiable for you because when people violate it, you feel unsafe. For me, I felt unsafe because when they cracked jokes about my work or mental health in general, they were essentially communicating that they didn’t respect my ambitions and the ways that I spend my time. As a result, I felt like I had to hide a huge chunk of my life from them just to keep the peace.
Sometimes, in the moment, it was hard to realize that I felt unsafe. Instead, I felt a vague sense of discomfort, and this, for me, always led to feelings of confusion. Discomfort can be ambiguous. It can signal something bad, like harm, or it can signal something good, like learning or growth (think growing pains).
What I wish I had learned earlier was how to differentiate between good discomfort — the kind that opens your eyes to a different perspective and makes you want to learn more about something — and bad discomfort. Bad discomfort is the kind that makes you feel unsafe, mentally and emotionally. Bad discomfort is the kind that happens when someone has violated one of your non-negotiables.
I believe that friendships should be safe spaces. Maintaining a friendship with someone who does some good things for you but ultimately violates your values would be like having a beautiful mansion where the roof could cave in any second.
Some aspects of Dartmouth culture can make it a little difficult to stick to your non-negotiables, or make you question your right to have non-negotiables to begin with. For example, the Facetime-y culture puts pressure on students to constantly expand their circle of friends. Also, Dartmouth students are generally pretty nice and forgiving and never really want to drop a friend.
But non-negotiables are important, and labels matter. When someone you call your friend is actually acting in an unfriendly or even harmful manner, it invites you to accept or explain away these actions, ultimately incorporating them into your personal definition of friendship. Your personal definition of friendship is now tainted. You begin to tolerate disrespectful behavior from people in your inner circle, the people who have the most influence on you. The disrespect slowly seeps into your own view of yourself. At least, it did for me.
It would only be fair to mention that sometimes a friend doesn’t know that they’re violating your non-negotiable(s). No friend is perfect and no friendship is perfect. What matters is whether they actually listen to you when you express discomfort and how they respond. If they don’t care enough about your discomfort to take you seriously and change, then it may be time to question whether it is worth considering them a friend.
I still maintain friendly acquaintances with people who do not share my non-negotiables. I feel comfortable working with them and interacting with them in social spaces, but I’m not going to call them up on a Friday night.
Spending time with people who didn’t share my non-negotiables held me back from finding people who did. The best part about finally figuring out my non-negotiables is that I was able to become really close to people who share similar values. They showed me that I can learn and grow in a friendship without feeling disrespected in the process.
~Amanda V. Chen ‘21
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