Dear Louise: I have many severed friendships, is it a good idea to reconnect with a couple?

Severed friendships, compromise and avoidant behaviour — can relationships be salvaged?

"No matter what happens, you have learned so much about yourself through this experience."

Dear Louise, I have a more extensive friend graveyard than most. It's very much related to my avoidant post-conflict nature. I've been in with my doctor and worked through a whole load of the childhood trauma-induced cycles that have led to this kind of cut-them-out behaviour.  Mostly though, a lot of these severed friendships actually freed me and were rooted in my compromising myself for the sake of a friendship till I couldn't any more. 90% of these people I didn't even think about, let alone miss.  But recently I've been dreaming about a couple I used to be very close with. We fell out because in a group setting, a third-party mutual friend of ours shouted at me and I had a PTSD flashback panic attack. Basically, I felt that no one helped or cared. So, I avoided the whole group for an extended period of time, somewhat unfairly, but I wasn’t yet in a place where I could feel safe with these people. Instead, I went hell for leather with another group of friends and plastered it on social media as a way of pretending I was thriving. A way of lying to myself — and I'm sure to them, though that was never the thought at the forefront of my mind. We had a massive WhatsApp Facebook chat fall-out as a result with everyone blocked all over the place. Which, considering we were between 26 and 32, was very much immature, but it is what happened. And we all moved on. Now here I am, four years later, having dreams about them almost constantly even though I live abroad now. I've tried writing out my feelings, I've tried telling my Significant Other about them (they never met). I've no shrink at the moment to puzzle it out with, and although other friends say to just reach out, I actually dunno how or what to say. Can you help?

I love when I get a letter from someone who is very clearly doing the work. Even if you hadn’t mentioned your ‘shrink’, as you put it, I would have known from the language you’ve used that you have been actively engaged in therapy. A quick explainer for other readers — being conflict avoidant can often be a form of people-pleasing, in which expressing ourselves in an honest, healthy way seems either terrifying or deeply uncomfortable.