It took me a long time to figure this out myself. I've always had friends, but like you described, the friendships always seemed to be about them. I don't think any of my friends really knew *me*. It always felt like there was this barrier that kept me from taking a friendship to a deeper level and letting others know the real me.

What I finally figured out is that I had to trust myself and be comfortable with myself and be authentic in my own thoughts before I could extend that to others. Once I started to trust myself just a tiny bit and started making an effort to really be myself rather than what I thought others wanted me to be, I was able to start extending that to my friendships. I am a very private person, and will probably never have a huge network of close friends. However, I do have two very close friends that are very supportive and that I trust enough to share the real me with. It was hard to extend that trust, and hard to allow myself to be authentic rather than just catering to their needs. I took a chance, though, and it worked out for the best. As one of my friends said recently..."you know you've reached best friend status when an invitation to Thanksgiving comes in the middle of a rant!" I was ranting to her about a conversation I'd had with family, and said "oh, speaking of Thanksgiving, wanna come over, " and then continued with my rant.

As far as family, sigh....I know my family supports me, because they are family, but they don't *know* me AT ALL! So, I always feel like their support is conditional on the fact that I continue to project the person they expect me to be rather than who I am. It's one of the things I'm working on in therapy, because I'd like to have a better relationship with my family, but there's so much history there that it's hard to change the relationship. Maybe once I have more experience in being authentic with my friends, I'll be able to take the risk with my family.