Having a friend, especially a best friend, can bring positivity into life. Amazing friendships can last a lifetime. A 10-year Australian study demonstrated that people with strong friend groups typically live longer. It’s great to have a friend because you feel comfortable enough to confide in them. However, bad friends can stress you out and even bring your mental health down. They can also drain you of your emotions and cause you to be in a bad mood constantly. Here are some signs to figure out if your friend is actually toxic.

1. Harsh Criticism

Yes, criticism is okay from friends but not when they make you feel bad about yourself. A good friend would criticize you for you to better yourself but a toxic friend would criticize you to make themselves better. Honesty is important in any relationship but being kind is also important. A friend shouldn’t hurt your feelings while criticizing you. For instance, a good friend, when they feel like you’re being overbearing, they would say something like “I feel overwhelmed.”

2. Grudges

Friends argue all the time and people make mistakes constantly. It’s a part of being human. But have you ever had a friend that would continuously point out all the times you disappointed them? Especially during an argument? In any healthy relationship, there is communication about what upsets one another and address those issues. In any toxic relationship though, instead of communicating, the person would keep those feelings inside and when there’s an argument.

4. Feels One-Sided

You ever just tell your friend a whole lot of crap that happens in your life and you feel like they just never really care and tell you all their crap? Or maybe you try to tell them something important to you and they just don’t listen to you and tell you what’s important to them? Well, let me tell you, your friend is not that good of a friend then. Especially if you feel like they don’t care about your accomplishments. People who are toxic normally do not care about anything important to you unless it benefits them.

5. What A Wild Rollercoaster

Sometimes, your friend and you would have a great time and everything would be alright. After a few days, though, everything just goes down the drain because they just don’t contact you anymore for many days. Your self esteem would probably go down because you would feel like you did something wrong. It’s one thing to not contact someone because you either forgot to text back or you’re extremely busy and it’s another to know somebody texted you and ignoring them anyways.

There are many more signs to toxic friends but these are just some signs I see through Instagram posts and articles.