Hey everyone, welcome to Being Well, I'm Forest Hanson.

If you're new to the podcast, thanks for joining us today and if you've listened before,

welcome back.

If you're the kind of person who listens to a podcast like ours, my guess is that you're

more likely than average to get pulled into a impromptu helping role with your family

and friends.

This can range from being asked your advice about a friend's relationship to answering

some questions related to mental health to maybe just being a shoulder to cry on.

And healthy relationships absolutely include offering our emotional support and attentive

listening when it's requested and appropriate.

So this is all really normal.

But sometimes what happens is we find ourselves getting sucked into relationships where

this helping role begins to feel a bit more uncomfortable or one-sided.

Maybe a friend's unhealthy relationship is starting to spiral to a place where you're

functioning as their impromptu therapist or serving as a regular mediator between the parties.

And maybe you even start to feel like you've gotten sucked into playing a kind of role

in someone else's play that you never really wanted in the first place.

Today we're going to be focusing on how we can handle situations like this, including

getting better at recognizing when you've gotten pulled into one of these systems, how

to navigate them carefully and how to get yourself out, and along the way we'll explore

some ideas from psychology that have been really, really useful for me personally, even

as a non-clinician.

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