Is Your Mentor Real, Or Just Using You?

Let’s play a quick quiz. A survival guide for anyone who has ever entered a mentorship meeting feeling hopeful… and left feeling like someone drained their battery through Bluetooth.

Q1: When you meet your “mentor,” do they… A) Ask what you’re building, listen, take notes, think with you. B) Immediately take your phone, your idea, your energy, your time — and “demonstrate leadership” by rearranging all of it without your consent.

If you answered B: that’s not mentorship. That’s a dominance workshop you never signed up for.

Q2: How do they treat your time? A) With respect, clarity, and boundaries. B) Like an all-you-can-eat buffet of your emotional labor.

If you keep leaving meetings with the urge to nap for three days, they’re not a mentor, they’re a human USB charger that only works one direction.

Q3: How do they respond to conflict? A) “Let’s unpack that together.” B) Mood shifts, raised voices, strange power plays, or the classic: “The door is closed, so now I can really tell you what I think.”

If conflict turns them into someone you wouldn’t trust with your houseplants, run.

Q4: Is learning a two-way street? A) They evolve with you. B) You evolve them.

If every session feels like free consulting disguised as “feedback,” it’s not mentoring, it’s extraction with nice stationery.

Q5: After meeting them, do you feel… A) Expanded? B) Shrunk? Like your ideas got smaller, your confidence bent a little, and your soul whispered, “Is this… normal?”

Real mentors leave you taller. Users leave you trying to remember why you walked in with so much hope.

Q6: How do they see your glow? A) Glow-honoring mentors say: “Your potential is real. Let’s protect it.” B) Glow-siphoning mentors say: “Let me help you fix this,” while subtly draining your spark like an iPhone on 1% battery.

You always know the difference by how your nervous system reacts afterwards.

Q7: Does it feel strangely familiar? Like being a kid again, when your mother didn’t let you go anywhere because she sensed something you couldn’t see? Sometimes your body remembers what your mind forgot: who feels safe and who doesn’t. Trust that memory.

So how do you know if a mentor is real or exploitative? Here’s the simple version:

Real mentors multiply you. Users deplete you. Real mentors give clarity. Users give confusion. Real mentors hold space. Users take it. Real mentors see your fire. Users want to cook with it.

This quiz is for anyone who has walked out of a mentoring meeting feeling smaller than when they walked in. Trust what your body noticed first.