Are Your Toxic Friendships Making You Insecure About Yourself?

Good morning everybody. You are currently listening to a Tall Girls podcast hosted by a tall girl named India. I hope everyone who's tuning in today is doing super fantastic. Before I get into this episode, I do want to say, make sure you're following me on my socials at a Tall Girls podcast on Instagram, TikTok, and pincher, so that you could stay up to day on all of the latest podcast episodes and catch a glimpse of my every day life. Also, feel freeomly my review and let me know how tall you are. I'm genuinely curious. Everything is going to be linked in the description Welcome to the first episode of twenty twenty four. I hope that your New Year's celebration was fantastic. Whether you went out and went to a party with your friends or had a party with your family, or even if you just ring in the new year by yourself. You know, sometimes that's what you gotta do, or even if you want to sleep before the new year even started. We got to get our sleeps sleeve needs to be our number one priority for twenty twenty four. And if you are a new or a returning listener, Hi, I hope that you also set some nice goals, as I was speaking about in my previous episode, my last episode of pod Miss, whether or not you set goals for the new year specifically, I just hope that you have goals in general that you could begin working towards in the new year. And on top of that, I hope that you lest all of the things that are no longer serving you behind in twenty twenty three. I'm talking about bad habits, old lifestyles that are boring or just not giving you what you need, and toxic people talxic people, speaking of which this was actually a request from last year. Yep, last year, even though last year was basically last week, I did get this request last year, So I'm sorry. Hopefully you're tuning in now. I'm sorry that I'm just now getting to it. Pod Miss kind of distracted me a little bit in a good way, but I figured it would be a great topic to start off with for the new year, especially if you were looking to just leave some people behind in twenty twenty three, especially the toxic ones, because let's face it, one of the main reasons a tall women may feel insecure about her height is because of the people she is surrounded by and the things that they say too and about her, whether it's big or small, the toxic things that people say can have a negative effect on your self confidence. And it's tricky because some of these people confront as though that they care about you and they want what's best for you and they're just being honest, when in reality, they're just doing these little things to bring you down, whether they are conscious or unconscious about it. And this could take a lot of different forms. It could be toxic friendships, it could be toxic relationships with a significant other. It can or even like a boss or a coworker, or it could be like toxic family members, but those have completely different relationship dynamics. My opinion, it's all gonna look different. But a lot of them, whether or not they are aware of it, like to mask it as though they're just trying to do something good for you, and they try to convince you of that, and of course you're gonna believe them because they're your friend or your significant other, or you're maybe your coworker or a family member. You have this relationship with them and you have this level of trust in them, so you're going to believe that, but those are the things that can also be making you feel insecure. And a lot of times it's not really anything major. It's the little things. It's the little things like the name calling like Sasquatch or bigfoot or daddy long legs, or the body shaming where they're like, oh, your legs are a little too long for that dress, or the sly remarks. Sure they may seem small, but the small things do add up over time. Just as an example, when I was younger, like nine or ten, I used to wear clothes that were meant for adult women and shop at places like JC Penny and such. And I have this one friend friend who would say to my face and go around to other people saying that I wear grandma clothes. She already knew the situation that I couldn't wear clothes that her or my peers were able to wear it because of my long lives, and she still went around saying those types of things. And yeah, right now, it sounds like a little bit ridiculous, but as a child, like especially just in general, as a human being, you want to be accepted by your peers, You want to be accepted by other people. You want to be accepted by people who you care about. And when things like that were said about me to my peers and other people, I felt really really bad. And that's not the only thing that she would do. She would do a lot of other smaller things, nothing too crazy. But I just want to say, it can be hard to just up and leave because we, like I said before, we have this relationship, We have this bond with this person, and well, this bond that we believe is actually there, and you know, we actually do care about these people and want to believe that these people care about us, like there's some type of emotional connection there, and even if we do notice that it's with a toxic person or that person is toxic, we tend to stay. Also for other reasons such as past traumas, anxiety, and attachment issues, and it could really just be hard to leave that situation overall. But the thing is, it's not their fault. It's not like people are born with these ideas or these standards in their minds like they are taught this. We are taught by society and in our culture that people are supposed to look a certain way, and if they don't look that way, potential example, if you're a tall woman, you're made to feel like an alien or some sort of monster, like if you stand out and look different, you are ugly. And the truth is if people, if the people around you are making you feel that type of way, whether it's a friend or partner or whoever, even if they're saying it and they're trying to make it seem like, oh, yeah, that's what's best or oh that's the truth, and that's what other people are seeing and saying about you, and you still feel some sort of discomfort in your stomach or you feel some type of way about it. That's not good. That person doesn't truly care about you. Because if you think about it, if your friend named Sally is running around calling you a sasquatch or bigfoot, she's not your friend. Lead that girl alone. At a certain point in time, you just begin to realize, especially the older you get, that it's just better to be alone than surrounded by people who are making you feel like crap. If you're speaking to me horribly, whether it's something major or something small, calling me these names, and I tell you that's the other thing, Especially if you voiced this person that you don't like them speaking to you that way, or they don't you don't like them calling you these names, or you don't like them saying these things to you, and they still do it anyways. They're not listening to you, they don't care, They're still gonna do it anyways. Especially See, that's the thing. I feel like a lot of toxic people do that to feed their own ego. Like their ego is pretty shot in some ways. I don't I don't know, Like for whatever reason to them, they feel the need to bring other people down to their level or try to make other people feel bad about themselves as a way to as a way of control, as a way for them to be like I have this power over this person emotionally, and it makes them feel better about themselves. As gross as that sounds, it is really gross. But they do that as a ways if their ego and to make them feel better about themselves. That's essentially the case here. And as hard as it can be to drop this person or get rid of this person because you've known them for so long, or they have these relations with you, or they're a family member, sometimes it's just much better to just feel bad in the short term and be alone in the short term in order to find peace and trust me, I'm sure because I know that you are this amazing human being, I'm sure that you can find new friends. They don't even have to be tall. Let me tell you some of my closest friends and I are literally a foot apart. Like, the height difference is real, but this goes to show that even though you guys have your differences, they can still respect and care about you and not make you feel in to care about those differences. The truth of the matter is as tall women, we are made to be different. We are made to stand out, to stick out from the crowd, and people who try to make us feel bad for that don't deserve to be in our lives. I understand myself firsthand that it can be difficult to leave a toxic situation, especially if you've known this person for years. You've grown up with this person, and this person has seen you from day one and may have helped you get through so many things. But your good feeling is not gonna lie to you if the small things that they're saying are the big things, or anything that they're saying is making you feel bad about yourself and tearing you down and just making you feel insecure. It's time to really think this entire thing through and say why is it you or is it them? Because the likelihood of being them could be extremely high. Whether or not they actually mean it, it's still affecting and it's still hurting you. And especially at an age where people's opinions matter to you the most, or matter the most for your mental and emotional health, you should be surrounding yourself with people who are trying to lift you up. Yes, construct criticism is a real thing. There are people that will provide you with constructive criticism, but they're not going to make you feel bad about the things that you've done of the things that you're lacking in. Now, whether it's immediate or over time, even years, it's time to just start letting that toxic relationship go. This is my message to you. No matter how long it takes, just try to remove yourself from that situation, because I honestly believe that over time you will notice that it's going to get better. It may feel bad in the short term, but over time it will get better. And I firmly believe that you are strong enough and capable enough to get yourself out of that situation, and if you need help, ask for it. Don't be afraid to ask for it, because there are people out there that are willing to support you and want what's best for you. So I will leave you with that. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode. I really appreciate it, and I appreciate you as always. Feel free to hit me up on my socials and we could talk about toxic relationships, all of our all of our toxic relationships. Let's just lay our baggage out there. Okay, hit me up on my socials. They are all going to be linked in the description. And I am so excited to see what this new year has in store for you, what it has in store for me, and what it has in store for all of us. And I'll catch you in the next one. Good night and goodbye.