💚 Friendship Green Flags 💚

Have you seen the Freedom Movement support roadmap?

It highlights the ways we are equipped to help support you on your journey to healing and wholeness. First-up on the roadmap is finding a safe community. Finding and participating in community is admittedly difficult after you’ve experienced harm in relationships. In these situations, we often recoil and avoid out of protection or become overbearing because of distrust - neither reaction serves us well for the long-term. For me, personally, being wounded in close friendships felt like an assault from the enemy - keeping me from fully trusting the GOOD communities that God was providing and intending me to HEAL in. Even long after the harmful environments and manipulative relationships were no longer present, I STILL have a hard time trusting others, especially in conflict. And conflict is a really integral part of healthy relationships, btw. 

But we KNOW that what is harmed in community will need to be healed in community. Biblically speaking, we serve a relational God who created us by relationship and for relationship. Basically, belonging is your birthright; it's why we yearn to be known and loved.

So. How do we trust again? How do we become trustworthy again? And how do we find trustworthy people to join us on this journey of healing and wholeness? 

Here are some friendship green flags that I look out for when choosing people who will be able to bear the pain of my story. This list is both non-exhaustive and not exclusionary; I haven’t met a human on this whole earth who practices every one of these qualities with perfection. This isn’t a pass or fail checklist - we are ALL works in progress. Use this list to help you identify people who might be safe enough to share the parts of your story that need to be held and tended to in community and feel free to add in other green flags that feel important to YOU.

If you already have a friend or acquaintance in your life that you want to experience more authentic connection with - sharing parts of your pain and your joy with them - allow these green flags to serve as markers to indicate signs of trustworthiness. It might be safe and wise for you to invest more into this friendship!

Likewise, it’s a good idea to take a personal inventory and get honest with yourself about the places you would like to grow to become a better, safer, more freedom oriented friend. How many of these green flags would YOUR FRIENDS say that you exemplify in relationship? There’s no shame in naming our areas of potential and opportunity. It’s in these spaces of judgement-free truth telling that we can learn our own unhealthy patterns, be curious about where they’ve come from, and allow ourselves the space and good care from the Holy Spirit to empower us to choose better.

Basically, we want to be asking ouselves, "How can I BE a GOOD FRIEND?" and "How can I SEE a GOOD FRIEND?" 

Rebuilding community is an important part of growth and healing for those who have been harmed in relationships. And it is NO EASY TASK to trust after you've been hurt! I am SO PROUD of you for even being willing to desire good connection, again.

Mallory Albrecht
FREEDOM MOVEMENT
 

P.S. - I KNOW you hear us talk about the Freedom Cohort often, and that's becuase it's not JUST a great place for resources and tools for your spirtual growth and emotional health, it's ALSO a great place to find SAFE, like-minded friends who are on similar journeys. Come check it out for a 14-day trial and join us for a LIVE EVENT! 

Click on the photo below and see for yourself!