Signs you are a 'crisis friend' as expert explains red flag behavior
Britt Jones
Featured Image Credit: Getty Stock Images
Do you ever look at a text from a friend and get that same feeling of: “What now?” They might be your ‘crisis friend’. However, you could be that person to someone else, too.
Friendships aren’t always easy to maintain, and the problem doesn’t have to be due to distance or losing interest in one another.
Oftentimes, two people can be very happy to be around one another, until a specific type of dynamic starts to occur which throws everything off balance.
This dynamic could see you having a different reaction to one person than you would another, even if they sent you the same text message.
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Because for one of those buddies, it’s an everyday occurrence.
That person will be your ‘crisis friend’, a term that has been created on TikTok.
This friendship is basically defined by one crisis after another, and even if you don’t realize it, you could even be that friend to someone.
According to Shasta Nelson, a social relationships expert, the friend in question feels like they ‘are in a crisis all the time’ and will only reach out to their friends with a problem.
She said per USA Today: "(A) crisis friend is basically somebody who is feeling like they are in crisis all the time and only reaching out to their friends when they are in crisis.”
But this isn’t to be confused with a person who is going through a crisis for a period of time.
"And then there's also, in many of the cases, what I would call a 'crisis season.' And I would want to separate those two out, because we all go through crisis seasons and have terrible things happen and have loss and grief,” Nelson explained.
But if you’re the friend that’s only calling your pals when you have an issue, and not when you want to just hang out and talk about other things – you're the one these signs are referring to.
What healthy friendships need is reciprocation, says Nelson.
"I can measure the health of any relationship between two people when we can basically look at the relational bank account, if you will," Nelson says. "One of the things that's really important is, if you have a friendship that has been making enough deposits, so to speak, then you can handle that season of withdrawals, because the ratio is in check and you're not in debt."
But if you’ve not been paying into it, so to speak, and are constantly withdrawing that time for just your issues, then it leaves the friendship bank in a deficit.
Nelson says we’re currently living in a time where being a crisis friend could stem from external factors.
Like not having many other friends to turn to due to a ‘lonely epidemic’.
According to the US Public Health Service, around one in two people report feeling lonely.
"We are dealing with a culture that is trending lonely, and most of us are expecting from a couple of friends what we used to expect from that village," Nelson explained.