PART 2: Navigating friendship through different life stages - Uncut with Dr Hannah Korrel

abortion bands that are happening in the US. Laura and Britt sat down with Sam Kazlowski, the co founder of The Daily Odz, to explain what is going on and kind of all the legal jargon and what it means for these women in America and for Part two of this episode, Britain Laura were joined by neuropsychologists doctor Hannah Corral to talk about navigating friendships throughout different stages of your life.

about on today's episode is something slightly different. We're talking about how do you navigate friendships when you enter into extremely different life stages than your friends. And we're talking, for example, what if your friends start having babies, or they're getting married, or even if they're studying for something really important but you're off traveling, how do you maintain that close connection. So doctor Hannah, we are so excited to have you here today. Welcome back to the podcast.

Oh so good to be here. Now, Hannah.

he'd be like a little balloon. But he's very cute, super cute cat anyway, like a bloated round hat full of potter. So I was dating a guy. I quite liked him actually, And I have you guys ever seen singing bowls? You know, singing bowls? Yeah, yeah, band therapy and stuff I love. I've got the two beautiful singing bowls. And so we were on the floor like I'm about to start this incredible sound therapy session for him with

this beautiful singing. I'm like, this is your heart chakra and this is your throat chakra, explaining all the like quantum mechanics to him and he's like, oh wow. And then Jeff bless his little soul comes and sits right beside him, and I'm like, I'll just move him out the way. As I push him away, he deflats. Just oh, the most rape you should smell, and then bless this guy's soul. We sat there and were like, just pretended

we couldn't smell this hideous fart well whilst you did sing. Anyway, I don't recommend it as the first day guys.

rare specialty. I think there's like seven thousand all of Australia. So neuropsychology is a type of psychology where we assess brain disorders. So we do the pen and paper testing to figure out what part of your brain is working well and what part of your brain isn't working so well. So you can put someone in a scanner like an MRI or a CT scanner and you can find out what the structure of their brain looks like and maybe even a little bit about the functional imaging of their brain.

But most of those scans just show you a picture like an X ray of a break in your arm. It doesn't actually tell you what it functionally can do. So it doesn't tell you what your brain can do in terms of attention, speed, executive function, memory. We come in and we test those parts of your brain so that we can tell the doctors. Okay, this part of Laura's brain's working amazingly and this other part might need more help. I mean, maybe I should get the test down.

Need the test. So I basically do a lot of diagnosis, so things like autism, ADHD, dementia, intellectual disabilities, things like that. But you have written a book and that's what we discussed last time you joined us on how to break up with friends? Correct? What was it about friendships that was a real driving force view that made you want to have a greater and broader conversation around it. I think from my background so I'm like, I've done a

PhD in neuroscience, I'm a neuropsychologist obviously my background. I was a psychologist first, and I specialized love the science of relationships and the actual the science on toxic relationships is fascinating. We have a lot of data on what it does to your body when you're in a chronic toxic relationship, whether that's domestic or friendship or work related, it has a serious physiological effect on your body. And even though we have all this incredible data, we don't

really talk about it very much. When it comes to friendship. I don't know. I just found it really fascinating and I just started writing one day and yeah, a year later it was a manuscript, so I got it publish.

friendship can end after any time? Do you think you could be best friends with someone for twenty years and then all of a sudden you're like, oh, you're not my person anymore.

and things happen in life especially. I don't know about you guys, but decades are passing very quickly for me at the moment.

They certainly give you a better buffer in case something goes wrong, so you've got a little wider I don't like to use the analogy of pac Man, and I'm eating away at that buffer, and so you've got a wider buffer that might be eaten through before your friendship would be at risk of ending. But I don't think that time is the only thing that predicts the quality of friendship. And I guess one of the things as well, Like when we think about these our friendship's changing over

the years. It's definitely happened to me since I've had kids in terms of like your priority shift, not just your priorities, but like the physical amount of time that you have to invest in the things that you used to be able to invest in, and one of those

being friendships. You know, I used to be able to go out for dinners on it whatever night I wanted to, and see my friends on the weekends, and those things don't happen with the same frequency anymore, especially because a lot of them I don't have children, and so you know, they don't want to come to the park and hang out at the park on a Sunday morning at nine am, and I don't want to go out on a Friday night at ten o'clock. So like the things kind of

shift in that way. But I mean this is probably a big question to throw out you from the very start, But how do you think when you hit those really different milestones, how do you think that you can maintain a quality amount of friendship or how do you maintain sort of the same level of intensity or if it's even possible. I mean, this is a great question. I think.

Last time was on the podcast, we talked a little bit about the Dunbar number, which is how many friends, how many really really really close friends your brain can actually handle. So looking at that from a different lens, if you guys, remember you know Dunbar is like this great sociologist who kind of mapped on the cortex of our brain with how many friends we could potentially handle. So it's a complex relationship. The closer the friendship, the

more complex the relationship is. The closer any relationship is to you, whether it's a husband, a mother, a child, the more intimate the relationship, the more complexity is in your brain. So it takes up cognitive real estate in your brain. So they say about five people is how many we can handle on a really really close intimate level, and that includes your partner, your family, and your friends. And if you think about that, time wise, Laura, what

you just said, you know, it makes sense. You've only got so much real estate in your brain and you've only got so many hours in your day. So I think firstly, being a little bit forgiving to yourself if you don't have an abundance of time, because you are giving it to people who you love and people who are important, like your children and your husband, and you know, maybe your family, seeing your mom, seeing your dad, those

things are really important. I think women in society have a real problem with holding a lot of guilt that we have to do it all, we have to be there for everyone and taking on board, you know, if my friend was having a hard time and I needed to commit to, you know, going home and making Loly bags for my three year old's birthday because I've got to do so much work because you know, you're an

amazing mum. And then we hold onto that guilt of like maybe I wasn't I wasn't as available because I had to take care of this little person, this little human being. But it's interesting that you say this idea of this dunbar being five people, because I don't think and I think a lot of mums would be thinking this. You never intentionally put your children into the same bracket as being your friends. You don't go, oh, I want to be friends with my three year old, you know,

of course you become friends with them, you know. And it's funny because like I'll say to Maley, like, you're my best friend, and then some days I'm like, no, really, you're actually my best friend because I spend all my time with you. But like, there truly isn't enough space sometimes. And I don't think that there's ever an intentional thought of pushing people out of your life, but sometimes there is a type of erosion that happens to friendships when

you don't get to be as intentional with them. I guess. Yeah, But when you.

do we know when we can cut that off? How do we know when it's way more important then maybe a friend that needs us at that time.

So there's all these different identities in your life as you go through different stages of your life, and they change and shift as new parts of your life. Being a mother, being a wife, being a parent, being I don't know, a business person. All of those things are a didactic profile for you. There's a lot of energy that goes into those things, and everyone has that regardless of who you are, whatever thing it is that you are throwing yourself into that is part of profiling who

you are. Yeah, that's exactly right. And then as things change in your life, as you get married, become a wife, become a mother, you have didactic withdrawals and didactic shifts, which means that you're taking energy from one part of your identity and putting into forming a new part of your identity. And it's quite well established in the literature that we know. For example, parents is a great example.

They do have a contraction of their relationships in the first two years of bringing up children, where their friendship networks do shrink as they have to become quite a bit more insular to survive that period. You know, probably remember Laura, where you're not sleeping, you're not eating, you're

barely going to the toilet yourself, let alone. Yeah, and so there's a huge amount of energy that's going into being a mom, surviving this new part of your life, which means that you don't have the same energy that you can put into other parts in your life. And it's not because you're a bad person, it's not because

you don't care about your friends. It's because that energy has changed and you need to feel a different part of your identity, and there's not as much I suppose, cognitive real estate, emotional energy, and physical time to put into friendships at that point in your life. So what tends to happen in friendships when we hit these different stages, Because it's nice and ideal world to think, like, you know, you're going to be best friends with the same best

friend throughout all of your life. I mean that Netflix series that everyone got into last year, which was Firefly Lane, and it was following these two young girls through their teenageyers, through their adulthood, through these all these different phases, and how they held onto this incredible friendship. And then obviously something happened at the end of the season. I was fall it for but it made me think in that time,

I was like, that is so unique. I don't like and I'm sure that there are people out there who have managed to and have like lifelong thirty year old friends. I know there are so many of those people, but I would find it interesting if those people have never gone through periods where they've seen less of each other or had less of an intensity to the friendship. That's not to say that you're not friends with people for thirty years, of course you're going to be, but that

relationship hasn't changed at all over those thirty years. Seems like a really unreasonable or like almost fantastical thing to be able to hold onto. Yeah, a bit unrealistic. I sort of like to think of it like orbiting planets, right, So we're sort of like planets orbiting around each other. So in the literature, again it's well established that you do have normal ebbs and flows of friendship as you

go through those different life stages. So what we tend to align with people who have the same values as us at a particular time in our life. So it might have been at Uni, we really enjoyed going out together, we really enjoyed studding together. And then something happened and I started a family and that person started a business, and our priorities at that time shifted a little bit.

So we're still friends, we still can chat with each other, we can still spend beautiful time together, but our planets have kind of just moved a little bit further apart in our orbits. And then one day they may come back together again as we move forward, and maybe they become a parent and they seek advice from our experience as a parent, and we start a business and we seek advice from them how they found, you know, being

a soul trader. So it's a little bit like your orbiting planets that are sometimes coming together and then sometimes moving away. Think what changes is the amount of energy. So I talk in the book about the different types of energy that we can give. So you have time, you've got energy, and you've got money that you can give to another person. So it might just be that at that time in your life there's less physical time in your schedule, in your calendar that you can spend

with this individual. But we've all got those friends that you see and you know it's like no time has passed. It feels like you've just been speaking with them. You can have an amazing friendship with someone that you only see maybe once every three months or once every six months, or it's an occasional text message and then a proper catch up. You can't have friendships like that.

She got married years ago. We took very different paths, but that didn't change the friendship at all in terms of how much we care for each other and how much we do for each other. What it did change is the physical time that you spend together. But I think that's a part of growing up as well. She's in a different state. The way that we catch up now is very, very different, and that is something that

was it's a really hard adjustment. There definitely has a level of adaptations that you have to do as individuals and a level of understanding, and there's a lot of emotions that come with this. There's a lot of jealousy that comes along with for both parties. But I think the number one thing is that you have to be able to adapt to your your friend's situation. At the end of the day, I couldn't just call her whenever

I want. She's not gonna be on the phone anymore whenever I want, because she's looking after two children, she's running a school. I can't just turn up and say, hey, let's go and hang out for the weekend, much like

I do with Laura now. But I think if you are really conscious of each other's friendships, and you check in with yourself about where your friends are at, and you're really honest and you're okay with it, I think that friendships can last this time, They can last the distance, but you both have to be very very conscious of

where your other person is at. When friendships, I mean, you're I'm going to ask you in a second, but I think where the friendships go wrong is where there's no level of communication and there is a level of selfishness, like I'm not okay with the fact that you're out partying all the time when I'm stuck at home with kids, or I'm not okay with the fact that you get to have this love life and I'm alone on my own all the time. So I think it's this level of like just having open communication.

they used to. And that's nothing to do with the quality of our friendship or how much they like me. So it involves a level of maturity which you would hope someone would have at that age when you're starting to have children, to understand, this is not a reflection of our friendship. This is a reflection of the fact that I just lack the time that are used to have to go and do the same things that we

used to do. I guess the big thing in that though, is just because it's not necessarily a reflection of the relationship. So like I mean, and there's a big conversation around here that it's not always a relationship. It can be the circumstances, right, and they're two very different things to try and identify. That doesn't mean that it doesn't hurt less.

And for the person who feels left behind in that friendship or the person who feels like, well, my life hasn't changed, but I've lost that person who was my go to. It can be really, really hard, and yes, it takes a level of maturity, but I don't think that we can completely discount that. Like, it's still okay to have feelings of jealousy or have feelings of warning a relationship, because it can feel like a breakup, even

if it's not a breakup, it's just a shift. Oh, bang on the nail on the head, head on the nail on the nail, whatever it was you hit it, Flora, that is exactly right. And the different types of jealousy, you know, like that you mentioned that word because I think people can kind of tap into that feeling and there's a bit of shame associated with that. We don't necessarily want to acknowledge it. We can feel really hurt, we can feel left out, excluded, and those emotions really hurts.

You know. In your brain, we have this thing called the anterior singular gyrus and that is the part of your brain that lights up when somebody I don't know kicks you in the shin. But it's also the same part of your brain that lights up when you have emotional pain. So your body actually your brain can't tell the difference between physical and emotional pain. It can hurt

just as much. So like when we have a breakup, like with a romantic partner, your body actually floods you with a bunch of hormones that are like physical pain receptors being turned on. It's so interesting that you say that, because I think anybody who has been through a bad breakup, anyone who has felt the pain of a bad breakup, knows that goes beyond just feeling like it's in your head or in your heart, like you really from anxiety to feeling physically sick. It has a real physiological impact

on you. Yes, and so literally saying things like when you have a partner or a friend who's gone through a breakup, telling them to actually have a panodol helps because their body their pain or Something'm not kidding.

jealousy and being envious. And sometimes that's the core of what's going on. When we've had a friend and you know, I'm there, My sisters are all married with children, and I'm you know, single and wanting those things, but I'm not there yet. There is a bit of envy there. There's a bit of like I want that for myself. And I think jealousy is a word that it's caught this negative connotation to it, and it's not necessarily a

bad thing. And in the book, if I can, I'll mention like we've got a questionnaire in the book which is about the different types of jealousy that you can feel, and the Dutch have really nailed the terminology. So there's two different types of jealousy. You can all envy that you can feel, which is really wanting something that someone else has achieved in their life, and that's not a bad thing. It can be a lovely thing. It's so interesting you say that, though, because you are so right.

We think of jealousy as being such a dirty emotion, but we all can feel it at different times, and it's how you react to a feeling. Having a feeling doesn't make you a bad person, nor should you feel guilty for it, but it's how do your actions then flow on from that? But what is the what is the Dutch the Dutch work? Yeah, so you've got beniagen. I'm probably butchering this beniegened, which is benign envy, and then you've got aft gunst, which is more of a

malicious intent. It's envy with a malicious intention to it. So benegened envy. And there's a questionnaire in the book where you can actually identify what type of envy are you feeling for your friend? Is it benegen? Is it a benign envy where you're just admiring what they've achieved in their life and you would like you aspire to

that as well, which is a beautiful quality. That's probably why you're friends with that person, because you admire what they've done with their life and you share the same values. I would like to be there too, one day, I would like to have a beautiful marriage with communication and an incredible partner and children one day. I think that's a beautiful thing that you've achieved, whereas aft gunst would

be we've probably all been there. That's the toxic type of relationship where you have that friend who's a bit more like the frenemy, who lacks that respect for you fundamentally, who maybe is passive aggressive, who's constantly undermining you, and the words that are coming out of their mouths are hurtful, and it causes you pain to hang out with that person because underneath the layers there's this really insidious, i suppose corrosive feeling going on where they're undermining you because

they've got that malicious feeling towards you. There's something that brit said earlier which I'd love to kind of go back to a little bit, and it's this idea that and I'm sure everybody has felt this in their friendships. Where we have so much going on in lives. We just survived a pandemic. People are busy with their jobs,

people are busy with their families. So many of us feel like in our own lives that we're up to our eyeballs with our own stress or our own anxiety, or our own feelings of overwhelm or whatever it is.

That then sometimes you feel like you're too at your limit to take on somebody else's And you know, I think a lot of us or at different times, may have experienced friendships where the friendships are quite demanding in that the other person's problem always seems like the bigger problem, which and this can happen a lot in friendships when one person has kids and the other person doesn't, it

can often feel one sided. Well, the person who has kids, their problems are always the bigger problem because they've always got something that's pressing in there. And now, how do you work through that or how do you find a good balance for yourself when you're at a point where you're like, I can't physically take on any more of other people's problems because I've got my own shit going on. How do you do that? But in a kind and

compassionate way. It is tricky, and I've been there with my My sisters are like my best mates, and it is a little bit like that sometimes when there's a relativity to issues and we only have so much emotional capacity I don't know if you guys have heard with like emotional will power. You know, you think of Barack Obama or Mark Zuckerberg. They had this really nifty idea where they're basically limiting the amount of choices that they make in a day by wearing the same outfits again

and again and again. Because we have you know, it's a bit like the mental load, right, you only have so much emotional willpower. And we talk about this a lot with things like neurodiversity. Your emotional cup and how much you can carry in your emotional cup gets filled up really quickly. And if you throw children in the mix and a marriage in the mix, and you haven't got a lot of room leftover, you haven't got a

lot of buffer leftover to manage somebody else's emotions. So, you know, I think it's a little bit of patience with yourself and forgiveness with yourself, understanding what are your boundaries and what are your limits and how much have you got to give sometimes being realistic about that, and if it's stressing you out and running you ragged, to try to book in the coffee date and to be there for your friend when you're panicking about what's going

on at home, recognizing maybe you're just not in that place right at that moment to be able to give that emotional energy and that's okay. It's okay to have those days. And then the opposite of that, the flip side of that, is recognizing it's okay to carve out space in your life and time in your life to spend time with some friends and to have a break. And I think you know, we talked about this a

little earlier. Women sometimes have a real problem with being able to just give themselves the permission to continue to maintain other parts of their identity and go, yeah, I really I'm going to keep going to the gym, I'm going to keep dancing, I'm going to keep seeing my friends occasionally, and I'm going to carve out I'm going to give myself this emotional space, this guilt free time

to say, from this hour to this hour. It's a little bit like what we do sometimes in therapy is is just accept a little bit of acceptance acceptance commitment therapy where for this period of time, accepting that I'm here right now, there's nothing else I can do. I can't take care of the kids, I can't take care of the business. I'm just here right now, in this moment, and all I can do is be here with this person. I'm going to give myself the permission to not worry

about that right now I'm in a park. It leave that worry and concern over here, and it will be there when I'm ready to pick it back up. That worry will still be there. But here and now, in this moment, I can be present with my friend, and I can just be with this other soul.

I don't have any room for other people problems. They probably don't have room for mine either, And this is something I've navigated the last sort of six eight months. A lot of people in my life didn't know that I was having a really, really fucking hard time because I don't want to be that person where I'm like, everyone's already got their problems, like everyone already has. I

don't want to unload. I don't want to tell anyone that I'm struggling, or because you don't want to go and be that person to a friend that's already going through their own problems. How do you navigate that in a friendship? How do you decide because you've got to It's like the trickiest balance of any relationship of trying to be like I'm trying to be a good friend to you, but I need you now as well, but I don't have anyone else to go to, Like, how do you navigate these circumstances?

person or you've lost that. And I think that we plug into our friends in the same way that we when we're single, that we would plug into a romantic relationship. And so many of us have probably gone through when one of our friends have gotten into a romantic relationship and then we've lost them. They've just gone with their fucking smoke one, but they've gone to love, they've got they've got a boyfriend, and then we never saw them again.

so you brought me this. That's kind of a more immature understanding of reciprocity in a relationship, which is tit for tat, Whereas a reciprocal relationship is one where there's mutual interests, there's mutual caring, there's mutual empathy, and there's a back and forth flow and sometimes it's a little more from one person and sometimes it's a little less, but it's a constant flow, and it's a constant willingness and reaching out and a constant desire to be connected

with one another in whatever means that is. And I think the pillars of friendship underneath is affection, respect, trust, and support. So, brittany kind of what you're tapping into there is we all have our own insecurities. We all have our own core beliefs that sit deep down in our hearts about what the way we believe the world to be. These core beliefs, which are these filters that brainwash us from a very young age, that tell us

how to interpret our world. And if way deep down one of those triggers for you or those core beliefs are things like not good enough for this is I don't want to burden people. I'm a burden. My worries are concerns are burdening people, or I'm unlikable or unlovable in some way. The way in which we'll filter, we'll see our friendships is to go they don't want to hear about this, They're too busy to hear about this. I'm a burden, and we're looking through our issues through

this lens of maybe maybe I'm not good enough. Maybe a friend doesn't want to hear this. But I think if you really reached out and had that trust with your friend where you're like, hey, I'm actually having a really tough time. I'm not feeling good, mate, I'm not

feeling it. My heart's hurting. I'm hurting. This has been really hard for me, sort of almost that reaching out, that flow of friendship I was talking about before, where you reach out and say I'm not okay and trust that that friend is there to catch you and say, yep, I'm here for you. I'm going to sit with you.

Maybe I don't know exactly what to say, but I can see you're in a dark place and I'm just going to sit beside you while you're here right now, do you think that there's links into how powerful vulnerability is, because when somebody is seemingly fine, and when we present that we're fine when we're not fine, that's not the person that gets tended to. You know, if you put on a hard exterior, people genuinely go, oh, they're right,

they're all right, move on with their day. But when you sort of show your softer underbelly or show what's happening in your life in a way of communicating that to people who care about you, that vulnerability strengthens friendships. It's strengthens bonds. Vulnerability is a great word because the fear of wanting to I don't know, I guess you know. I think in Australia we have and probably around the world. The concept of friendship is this idea of having lots

of friends is to be cool, to be popular. The essence of being cool is nonchalant, like too cool to care, cool as a cucumber, don't rock the boat, there's no issues. I'm the fun one. I'm the one who you know. I've never worked up, I never complain about anything, and I'm always positive. And you know, a lot of psychology is about being a positive presence when you're around other people,

and they'll want to be around you. More, and this fear that if I am real, if I say I'm having a hard day, if I'm down one day and I show this other I take my mask off and I show this other part of myself which is feeling really crummy and I'm feeling really low, that our friend might not want to hang out with us anymore, and

they might not lie hanging out with us. And there's a bit of a fear there where we're like, I don't want to unload my burden or I don't want to vent what's happening for me, because I don't want you to think I'm a buzzkill, Like God forbid, you're ever a buzzkill. And I guess that's where the trust part of the friendship and the support part of the

friendship comes in. Of a true friendship is where you can trust that that person has a safety net for you, They're okay to hear what you're talking about, and you feel the ability. And I think Brittany and Laura, you guys have a beautiful friendship where you can trust each other to say, like, hey, I having a tough day, I'm having a hard time, and know that that person is going to be able to support you in that moment and you can trust that they're not going to get annoyed. Oh yeah, we have.

obviously because that's where I'm at in my life. But we have had times where like I feel jealous of BRIT's ability to live her life without being tied down, you know, with her being able to go overseas or go out for dinner, or her and produce a Keisha have a really strong friendship because they can go out for dinners and do things together, whereas I don't have that freedom anymore. So I think it works both ways.

I think often we talk about how there's this want when there's like somebody who doesn't have children or hasn't isn't at that point in life. Yet we talk a lot about looking in on somebody's family and wanting what they have, whereas we never really also talk about the flip side of that of people going well, but my life has completely changed now and I miss some of those things from my old identity that I used to be able to do. So it works on both sides

of the spectrum. But the thing that's obviously kept our friendship together is that we had this thing that we work on that's our joint project that we always get to come back to, and which means we have to see each other multiple times a week, Whereas if we were just friends that didn't have the work to come back to, we wouldn't see each other as much as what we do, And that wouldn't be because we don't love each other, but it would be because this is

the thing that means that we have a responsibility and accountability. But kind of coming to that point, how can we be more intentional with our friendships? Yeah, that's actually really a beautiful model of friendship there. Because we talked earlier about that didactic profile of your identity and where you put your identity. If you guys have ever seen Ben diagrams overlapping circles, You've got that friendship circle overlapping with

our business circle. And in the middle is that this beautiful sweet spot where you get time together because you have over shared interests and you have a shared investment, which is a great nifty way. So I don't know if anyone's listening, start a podcast with your friend everyone podcast. You're double spoking if I may. In the book, I talk about friendships and how you can maintain a solid relationship with friendships, and it helps if your friends are

also friends with each other. So we think of like a wheel and the spokes of a wheel connecting other friends to each other and not just to you. Then it's not just reliant on you to maintain that friendship. But if your friends also know each other, then they're gonna sort out occasions to get together too, and it takes the pressure off you. You're double spoking in the sense that's a double spoke friendship where your friends are

also friends with one another. What you've double spoked with is by having a friendship and a business together where you're overlapping in that sense too, So you're spending time together in that way too, And that's an awesome, nifty way of you know, solidify. Yeah, like let's go and learn SOLSA together. Let's do an eight week course of soulsa together, or let's go and do pottery together. Let's

commit to something. This is why people love their boot camps, you know, committing with a friend to six am boot camp because then you know, you have to get up at six am because someone's holding you to account. Can you carve out a time that you can commit to something that forces you guys to sit in the same room together and you have to be there at five o'clock on a Friday at whatever, you know, twice a month something like that, where you're going to see each other.

That's a that's a beautiful way of maintaining a friendship.

Keisha have created. I don't have the time to just drop everything and come out to the bar or come out to dinner. There's a few key moments in life that until you have been through it, you just don't get it, and we have to accept that. Like some formative ones are things like the first time you've had sex. You know, until you've done it, you don't get it.

you just don't really understand what it's about. And I think it can be it can be hard whatever stage you go through, whether it's traveling, whether it's partners, whether it's marriage, children, whatever it is, we have to kind of accept that there is unknown for one party compared to the other. We can't know exactly what it's like to walk a day in your shoes and to live

what you live. I really love that you said, and I think it's one that we absolutely haven't touched on it and really should have, is experiencing a death in the family, experiencing the magnitude of grief we struggle, and we've spoken about this on a past episode with Led

when we touched on grief. But I think as a society we avoid negative feelings, so we are often fearful of somebody who's experienced death, of asking like how they truly feel, for fear of triggering them being upset, not realizing that they're probably always thinking about it, especially in

those initial days and weeks. Anyway, But I mean I have spoken to people who have been through significant deaths and something that somebody close to them, and I'm thinking of one specific time close and it said, like, I understand how you feel because I've been through a really bad breakup and almost comparing a bad breakup where they felt like it was a death to them to an

actual death. And how hugely problematic sometimes trying to compare your circumstances because you want to relate, because you want to connect, but how that actually can be even more isolating, because there truly are some things in life that until you've lived it, you will not know, and a death and a breakup will never ever be the same. Sometimes just accepting I don't get this because I haven't experienced it,

and I'm not going to try. I think there's a risk of belittling the experience if we try to artificially empathize. I think that's exactly it. Like you completely hit the nail on the head, and it really just brings me back to that comparison. You're trying to connect by making well, somebody who might make that connection is trying to connect, But truly, all that's doing is minimizing that person's pain by connecting with your pain. One thing before we do

kind of wrap this up. How important do you think it is to have people in your life who are in the same phase of life, So for mums to be friends with mums, for people who are experiencing grief to connect with people who've experienced grief, for single people to have single friends. Whatever life looks like for you, how important is it for your community to reflect your phase of life. I think you're talking about having a tribe,

and I think it's so important. I think there is a lot of happiness derived from a sense of community and a sense of connectedness and having some spokes on your darn wheel where you feel connected to multiple people. More people you have, the bigger your net feels. If you fall, you've got someone there to catch you. And there can be a lot of pressure. It's easy to connect with someone who is the same place of life.

You know, the bonds that you would form in a mother's group, or the bonds you would form in an early business group, especially during COVID when you're worried you're going to lose the business. You're almost like forging through trauma. A bond with those people can be so very strong. But the pressure to find somebody who's in the same space of life might be hard, especially when we're adults,

it is hard to find time to make friends. But taking the pressure off and being able to say, like, I don't know exactly what you're going through, but I'm going to try and help you in other ways, and those other ways might be tell me what that feels like, tell me about it, what was it like for you? And putting the hand on the back. You know, the power of putting your hand on someone's back and rubbing circles on their back can be huge.

How do you go about figuring out when something's not serving you anymore to the point of maybe it's time to walk away?

a breakup with a friend? Yeah, you know, get the book, have a read through it, but maybe it's time to talk to the GP, get a mental health care plan and see a psychologist and have a few sessions where you can really do yourself the credit and the justice of talking this through with somebody in a dedicated space. I can't under emphasize how helpful those avenues are at the end of the day. A really quick and easy signpost is how do you feel? What is your gut

instinct telling you? And we get really good in modern society to push our gut instinct down. You know, the screams and the shouts of anxiety and stress and sadness are so loud, and the pressure that we feel to maintain something or do something or just say yes, commit more, do more, give more, be more, is huge, and we push down that tiny little whisper of your gut instinct that tells you what's right for you, what's actually working for you, and what's hurting you. It's a tiny little

whisper deep down. So you know, if you're walking away from a relationship or an interaction with friends or anyone and you're feeling crummy and crappy and drained and worse than before you entered the interaction, that's a pretty good sign post that something's not working for you in that relationship.

And if you've already exhausted all your avenues of talking, expectations, processing, jealousy, all of those things, that might be an indication that the friendship has come to a place where your orbits have gotten so far apart. Maybe they'll come together again one day, maybe they won't. But it's okay for you to adjust your effort levels in a really specful manner where you're just not putting in as much time or

energy because you simply don't have it anymore. Doctor Hannah, It is always an absolute joy having you on the podcast. We appreciate you taking the time so much, but just genuinely the way you speak about friendships, putting things that all of us feel, all of us navigate, all of us have to deal with in our day to day lives. So putting it in a way one that's very sciency but also very palatable and just makes a lot of sense. Is so it's so refreshing to have somebody break that

down for us. And we love speaking with you the first time. I think I've loved this one even more. But thank you so much for coming back and being part of the podcast. Thank you for having me guys, And if I can quickly tack on, I just wanted to say thank you so much for as if I can be like a community representative, thank you for everything you guys do. I've been watching your journey for a while now, and you guys bust your us all the community,

the amount of stuff you have done. And you know, last year I saw like all the different podcasts you were doing, and all of that emotional load that must have gone into helping all those people talking to all those people. You guys haven't had an easy run like I sometimes imagine I sit and imagine go I wonder how that affected them when that happened, or when that person said that thing, or when somebody heat this shit

on them about something so infuriatingly stupid. I'm like, you guys are just the most incredible community members who have done so much for literally thousands and thousands of people. I listened to your episodes and I'm like, feel like these guys are like sisters, you know, And there's so many women out there who would be like, you know, you don't know me, but I know you, and you've

helped me so much. You didn't have to do. I think this is being a creative, Like I never put anything out into the community before, and I've put a book out now and you don't realize you don't have to do this, And I just wanted to say thank you for doing that. It's hana, It has actually touched a We're so incredibly lucky. Like the community has created itself, Like the content created the content, and the community has

created itself. And that's the being the most powerful thing about Lafe fun Cut is we've been having the conversations, but the people who have, like all of you guys who listen, all of you guys who in the Facebook group, every single one of you who extend that conversation and have it in your own homes with your own friends or point more is towards episodes that you think might help someone. That's where this community has grown from, and

that is incredible. But speaking of your book, How to Break Up with Friends, if anybody wants to learn more about how to navigate friendships, how to maybe remove yourself from a toxic friendship, which we all know can be incredibly hard, we'll put the links to doctor Hannah's book and where you can find her on Instagram in the show notes.

We had pinadas, we had all the things. It was very, very lovely, and it's so nice, Like I mean, I feel like a lot of our friends are from all different little walks of life, Like we've got friends from work, we've got friends from daycare, we've got friends from the park, we've got work. Like it was weird, so she just put me in the word friend category for anyone wondering what happened. I said work twice, and then I pointed at you again. I was like, we've got friends and work,

and then I work and I work. Clearly I need some more friends after that episode. No, but it's nice to have everyone come together and for everyone to be able to meet each other before we have the wedding as well, because sometimes it's weird when you've got to do small talk and meet all these different people, and it just was just the most beautiful day. It was a great day, except that Mali was in a feral

mood from the first moment that we left. And usually when you do birthday parties or things like that, for a three year old birthday party, you just spend all your time chasing children around. But it actually felt like I got to have at least one or two semi decent conversations in there.