Beyond Toxic or Supportive and Understanding the People We Turn To
Leonie Blackwell is the founder of Empowered Tapping® and a naturopath with over 30 years' experience in emotional wellbeing. She trains practitioners globally and empowers individuals through her Bwell Institute and personal growth community, the Tappers Tribe.
When something happens that leaves us feeling uncomfortable, disrespected or unsafe, we often turn to someone we trust. We might tell a partner, a parent or a friend. We might ask for their perspective, hope they will stand beside us or simply expect them to take our experience seriously.
Sometimes they do. Sometimes they listen kindly but take no action. Sometimes they tell us we are overreacting. Sometimes the person who helped us later makes it clear that their support came with an expectation.
These experiences can be confusing, particularly when we care about the person involved.
How can someone be loving and yet leave us feeling unprotected? Why does a friend support us in one situation and dismiss us in another? Why can we feel close to someone until we make a choice they don’t agree with?
The answer isn’t always found by deciding whether someone is a good or bad person. It can be more useful to look at the patterns in their behaviour, the impact of those patterns and the beliefs that may be guiding them.
Understanding a pattern doesn’t excuse harm. It gives us a clearer view of what is happening and what might need to change.
When desire becomes entitlement
Some people behave as though wanting something gives them a right to it.
A man may be attracted to a woman and assume that his interest entitles him to her attention, her time or her body. A parent may believe that providing for a child gives them ownership over the child’s choices. A partner may confuse love with the right to control.
The circumstances differ, but the underlying belief is similar: what I want matters more than your needs.
When a boundary is expressed, it may be challenged, ignored or treated as an inconvenience. The person setting it is then described as difficult, rude or ungrateful.
This can be particularly confusing when the person also shows affection or generosity. Someone can be charming in one moment and dismissive of another person’s autonomy in the next.
A respectful relationship allows both people’s wishes to matter. Attraction, love, authority or past generosity do not create ownership.
Kindness without protection
Some people are genuinely warm, kind and well liked, but struggle to act when doing so might create conflict.
You tell them about an experience that upset you. They listen sympathetically, perhaps even agree the behaviour was wrong, but they do not speak up, offer practical help or take any action.
They may say, “That’s just how he is,” or “It’s best not to make trouble.” They may have learned that keeping the peace is safer than challenging someone.
Their fear of conflict may explain their response. It doesn’t erase the impact on the person left carrying the experience alone.
I learnt this distinction when I was fifteen and experienced sexual harassment. My father was a kind man, loved by many, but his response was, ‘I had better get used to it because it happened all the time!’
He was describing a reality he believed I would re-encounter. He was preparing me for life. What I needed was someone to recognise that I shouldn’t have to accept it.
The same pattern can occur between women. A friend may sympathise after another woman has been mistreated, even though she knew beforehand that the person involved had a history of inappropriate behaviour.
Sharing what we know can allow someone to make an informed choice, bring another person to a meeting or decide how she wants to respond. It does not make us responsible for another person’s behaviour. It means we are willing to help someone else navigate a situation with knowledge we already possess.
Help that comes with a price
Not all help is freely given.
Someone may step in when you are uncomfortable, offer protection or come to your aid. At first, you feel relieved and grateful. Later, you discover they expect something in return.
It might be affection, loyalty, access to your time or sexual attention. When you hesitate, they remind you of what they have done for you. “After everything I did for you…”
In friendship, the expectation can be less obvious. Closeness may appear to depend on agreement, emotional availability or staying the same person your friend expects you to be. When you change your mind, make a different choice or become more independent, you feel their disappointment or withdrawal.
Sometimes these expectations are openly expressed. Sometimes they remain an unspoken contract that only becomes visible when you don’t fulfil it.
Healthy support allows gratitude and freedom to exist together. You can appreciate someone’s help without owing them access to your body, agreement with their views or control over your choices.
The uncertainty of inconsistent support
One of the hardest patterns to recognise is inconsistent support.
Sometimes the person listens, believes you and stands beside you. At other times, they dismiss your concern, defend the person who hurt you or suggest that you caused the problem.
You remember the times they were there for you. Those experiences matter. Yet you may also find yourself wondering which response you will receive today.
You might begin to study their mood before raising a concern. You may rehearse what you are going to say or decide that some subjects are safer left alone.
Inconsistency can have many causes. A person may be confident challenging behaviour in one setting but uncomfortable when the person responsible is a friend, colleague or family member.
Whatever the reason, the impact is uncertainty. It is difficult to feel secure in support you cannot reliably access.
Dependability doesn’t mean someone always knows the perfect thing to say. It means they are willing to listen, take your experience seriously and stay engaged even when the conversation is uncomfortable.
When women reinforce the rules
Women can also reinforce the social expectations that constrain other women. We may have grown up hearing messages such as:
Be polite.
Don’t make a scene.
Nice girls don’t get angry.
Take it as a compliment.
That’s just how men are.
These messages can become so familiar that we no longer recognise them as beliefs. They begin to feel like facts about how life works.
A woman who has accepted a particular experience may encourage another woman to accept it too. She may believe she is being practical or helping her friend avoid disappointment. She may also feel uncomfortable when another woman challenges a rule she has spent years following.
The pressure to conform can extend beyond relationships with men. It can appear in how women dress, work, parent, express anger, pursue independence or define a fulfilling life.
When a woman chooses differently, others may label her intimidating, selfish or difficult. The question becomes what is wrong with her rather than whether the expectation itself deserves examination.
We can care for one another without requiring the same choices. Another woman’s decision to accept something in her life does not create an obligation for us to accept it in ours.
Why a good friend may not understand every issue
Most of us have experienced this: a friend is wonderful to talk to about one subject but dismisses our concerns about another.
She may understand a workplace problem because she has experienced something similar. Yet when you describe a partner ignoring your wishes, she may say, “That’s just relationships.”
Her response may reflect what she has learned to accept. She can care about you and still have blind spots. I have a saying: we talk to the friend who will understand our interpretation.
That doesn’t necessarily mean our other friends are bad friends. It may mean they see the situation differently or have accepted things we don’t want to accept.
There is value in recognising where someone can support us and where their perspective has limits. There is also value in asking ourselves whether we only seek out people who will agree with us.
Understanding and agreement are not always the same thing. Sometimes we need to feel heard. Sometimes we also need a trusted person to help us examine the whole story.
What dependable support looks like
Dependable support is not simply telling someone they are right.
A trusted friend can listen carefully, take our experience seriously and help us consider the situation from different angles. She can recognise where someone else is responsible while helping us identify where we have room to grow.
For example, a woman may ask a friend to explain the circumstances that led to a man touching her inappropriately. The friend can listen to the full account and help her examine it without making her responsible for his choice.
They might also discuss what support she needed from the people around her, whether she felt able to speak up and what she would like to strengthen for the future.
Those are different questions. Exploring how we might respond differently in future does not transfer responsibility for someone else’s behaviour onto us.
Dependable support gives us care, honesty and the freedom to find our own way. It respects our ability to make decisions and offers help without taking control.
Can we stay connected without being the same?
Many friendships begin because we share a phase of life, a workplace, a community or an interest. Over time, those shared experiences can become an expectation that we will continue to think and choose alike.
But people grow in different directions. We may develop different beliefs, set different boundaries or discover that what once suited us no longer does.
A healthy connection has room for those changes. It can accommodate disagreement without treating difference as disloyalty.
This doesn’t mean every relationship will remain close forever, or that every disagreement can be resolved. It does mean we can become more aware of the expectations we bring to our friendships, and the pressure another person may feel to meet them.
We can ask ourselves:
Do I listen when her experience is different from mine?
Do I respect a boundary I wouldn’t necessarily set for myself?
Am I withholding information that could help her make a choice?
Can I offer an honest perspective without dismissing her feelings?
Do I remain connected when she chooses differently?
These questions are not an invitation to shame ourselves or each other. They are an opportunity to understand the beliefs and habits shaping our relationships.
When we recognise a pattern, we can decide whether it reflects the kind of person we want to be, and whether we want to respond differently.
A more honest conversation about support
The people around us will not always respond perfectly. We won’t either.
But we can become more thoughtful about what our care looks like in practice. We can share information, challenge inappropriate behaviour, respect boundaries and remain open when another person sees the world differently.
We can also recognise when someone’s support is conditional, inconsistent or limited, without reducing the whole person to a single label.
Understanding the reasons behind a behaviour can create compassion. It does not remove responsibility for its impact.
When we are the person who has been hurt, another person’s discomfort with conflict, need for agreement or acceptance of mistreatment does not make our experience less real.
We all have the capacity to examine what we have learned, and to offer one another a more respectful, dependable kind of support.
Read more from Leonie Blackwell
Leonie Blackwell, Naturopath, Author & Teacher
Leonie Blackwell is a leader in emotional wellness, with over 30 years of experience as a naturopath and educator. She is the creator of Empowered Tapping® and founder of the Bwell Institute, offering accredited practitioner training and transformational personal development. Leonie has worked with thousands of clients, trained hundreds of students, and taught internationally, including trauma recovery programs for refugees. Her published works include Making Sense of the Insensible, The Box of Inner Secrets, and Accessing Your Inner Secrets. She is passionate about helping others live with authenticity, purpose, and joy.
