Healthy friend group scale
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The 0 to 10 "healthy friend group scale" scale below is a slightly funny, but also very real prompt to assess what is good about your social group and where you might improve. If your group is more like an organization than peer group then my "Toxic Organization Scale" might resonate more, but if it's just a few peers, like a group of high school friends, or a little group of girl friends or drinking buddies then this is the right page for you. How supportive are you when times get though? Are you fair weather friends, or all weather survivors?
My Graphical Representation of the "Healthy Friend Group Scale" (0-10)
How to Use This Scale
First of all you should think about your own group of friends and consider where you fall on the scale. It might be a pleasant surprise or a nasty revelation. Next, send this scale to other friends to make them either smile or have a moment of revelation. I hope this causes some nice insights. If you peer group is small, remember you are a huge part of the equation, and you can help influence how healthy things are. Sometimes it just takes that first person to speak up and show a little vulnerability. Start light with your suggestions and see where it takes you. Conversely, if it's not broken, don't try to fix it. If you get more love and support from your friends than the little things that annoy you, then it's still pretty terrific!
Read the scale and still not sure where your group stands. Well it's not black and white - you might be an amazing little crew in every way, but drink excessively. Maybe you're functional alcoholics. Let's start with some red flags to watch out for:
- Feels a little incestuous with the dating.
- Sleaziness.
- One person insists on making all the decisions, dictatorship style.
- Gaslighting.
- Excessive and irresponsible drug use.
- You and your friends are rarely sober together.
- Huge egos.
- Gossip based conversation.
- Clicky and exclusive.
- You feel like you can't be yourself around these so-called friends.
- Your peers will shun you if you show emotion or ask for support.
- Never entering drama.
- People get kicked out of your little group.
- Emotional draining.
- Anxiety levels are always high.
- Flakey and fair weather friends.
And here's some green flags to indicate that you lucked out and your friend group is awesome!
- All weather friends - supportive when someone is going through a crisis.
- Supportive structure.
- A feeling of love for the whole group.
- Big decisions are run past everyone.
- Kind and welcoming to strangers.
- Kindness based conversation.
- Not reliant on alcohol to have fun.
- Zero or minimal drugs.
- Drama free.
- Sweet farewells for anyone who leaves the group.
- Members have only good things to say about each other.
So there you go. This is a pretty long article, but hopefully you read all this and are feeling lucky! Remember it can be an interesting mix of good and bad. Maybe you're all very loving, but you party just a little bit too often and you all slept with the same guy. Which got weird. Sometimes decisions should be made to put the group ahead of yourself to make sure you keep a good thing going. Girl code. Or guy code. For a small group of friends, it's often not a bad idea to establish a few rules to keep the peace. Maybe a safe word for when you are making too much fun of someone and actually making them feel small.
Sincerely,
Andrew Noske
See Also
- Toxic Organization Scale - similar, but think more team organization.
