[00:00:00] Nina: Welcome to Dear Nina, Conversations About Friendship, or Welcome Back if you’ve been here before. I’m your host, Nina Badzin. If you have been here before, and you’ve been enjoying the podcast, I would love if you would share an episode with a friend.

Maybe there’s an episode that’s a subtopic you’ve already been talking about with a friend and this is just a way to further the conversation.

Today I have a fantastic therapist to talk about some of the patterns I’m seeing in the questions that I often get. I’ve been writing about friendship since 2014 and there are definitely patterns in the kind of questions I get even just the other things I see out in the world about friendship. I am a lot more active on social media than I used to be. I mean on TikTok and Instagram, making videos and also seeing just regular people talking about their friendship issues. And it’s so interesting what is coming out there. And I talk about that a little bit with today’s guest. Roxanne Francis.

She is an award winning registered social worker and psychotherapist. In Toronto. Roxanne supports and mentors other therapists in the field and is also the media’s go to mental health expert, providing answers to many of life’s difficult questions. The questions we tackle today are related entirely to friendship.

[00:01:22] Nina: And so I bring you the wonderful Roxanne who had some honest, direct words. Things that you might want to go to a therapist for, frankly. Here she is Welcome, Roxanne. I’m so glad to have a real therapist on the show.

[00:01:36] Roxanne: you so much for having me, Nina. It’s my absolute pleasure to be here.

[00:01:39] Nina: people come to me, Roxanne, for therapy. Things that are therapy esque. I’ve been writing about friendship for 10 years. I’ve been doing the podcast for two and a half, but really I’m a writer and I never call myself a friendship expert on purpose. I mean, there are people who do, and they have different qualifications for that.

I’m an enthusiast. I’m deeply into the topic of friendship, really from a curiosity and a writer point of view in a way. But because I’ve been writing about it for a decade now, I do get a lot of really personal questions and I find that they fall into certain buckets. And sometimes at the end of those questions, I think to myself, is this something somebody should be working on in therapy?

And the first example would be when somebody explains that making friends is so hard. And we both know that’s true, right? It’s hard. even just looking at little videos on TikTok and Instagram, you see really authentic people just like sitting in their cars, talking about it’s so hard, it’s so hard. If you’re working with a client, how do you know when it’s too hard? Like when it’s not, it shouldn’t be this hard.

[00:02:39] Roxanne: I often ask my clients, are you in? a space where you’re available to receive friendship, if you are going for years without making any meaningful connection, sometimes we have to turn the mirror to ourselves and go, what is actually going on here? I talk to people often about, you know, as a therapist, at some point, we’re going to get back to your childhood, honey.

We’re going to talk about what you’ve been through. many of us just have walls up. we, we don’t really know that, right? To look at ourselves, we believe that we’re fine for the most part, Sometimes we need someone else to give us that kind of outside perspective to say, you actually have a wall up here and you may need to consider what it might be like to take that down.

Many times we have these walls up to protect ourselves. So people have heard us people have miscategorized us, or we’ve had shameful experiences, um, people have said things over our lives when we were children and we’ve taken those things as fact when in fact, they’re not.

If you find that you are indeed without friends, and that’s another question. Uh, when people come to me and say, well, I don’t have any friends. Well, is that actually true? Let’s really look at your life and say, that, what does that mean? Are you looking for a BFF? or are you not taking into consideration the actual people that you have in your life and the fact that they, they might actually be friends.

So take a, take stock really of who you have in your life and what those relationships look like. And if it is in fact that you don’t have friends, you want to take a look at how long this has been the case. When was the last time you had someone that you considered a friend? What happened around that season?

It’s time to do some self inquiry. Let’s really unpack this friendship bag and talk about who’s in your life. How long you haven’t had people in your life. What it was that closed the door to some of those friendships? Did you move and suddenly you have no one? Did people pass away? Was there a significant incident in your life where you got hurt and you said I’m not doing that anymore?

What is actually happening that’s closing the door? if someone says well, you know, I don’t have any friends, in order for us to think about whether or not we need therapy, I would say how much is that impacting your life? And how long has that been the case? And if it’s been, a significant number of months, eight months, seven months, a year, a year and a half, where it’s just been me, then I would say, maybe you should take a look at potentially talking to a professional to unpack that, to say, why that is and what we need to do in order to get past that.

[00:05:01] Nina: Such a great answer. Yeah. Because sometimes, the things that make it hard to make friends should, I think should be some of those surface things. Like people aren’t making time in their schedule.

They don’t know how to prioritize, but when we’re talking about these deeper issues, like you said, having a wall up, something might’ve happened in your childhood that made it hard for you to get closer to somebody. That’s not something you can necessarily just work out by, continuing to practice making friends.

I mean, you, you actually have to sit and deal with those things with a professional. another one would be friendship breakups. There’s, I think there’s two places where I think a therapist maybe could help and you tell me if I’m right. One would be if you’re having a lot of friendship breakups, like if you’re somebody who has just a trail of ex close friends, it is normal, I want to say, to have friendships that end.

Not every friendship is forever. For lots of reasons, for tense reasons and also just for things like you said, you moved as a different stage of life. I mean, it doesn’t have to be personal, but I think if you have a huge string of like big dramatic friendship breakups, maybe it’s not everybody else and there’s something to deal with. Well, let’s start with that one

[00:06:07] Roxanne: Yeah, sometimes we need to take a look at, you know, is there actually a common denominator and is that actually me? then we need to take a look at that and be willing to really take a look at that. It doesn’t mean that you’re broken, but it means that, maybe there’s something going on for you that people might find off putting that you don’t recognize.

Maybe your way of joking around is a little bit too harsh and people don’t know how to say that. sometimes we really need to shine the light on ourselves and say what’s going on. So really take a look at, to your point, let’s take a look at, These friendships that you’ve had over, the course of your life and are all the people leaving you?

Are all the people breaking up? Have people giving you feedback? is it that everyone’s ghosted you? Or have people said, this has gotten in the way, I didn’t appreciate when you said that, that has hurt my feelings. And if those are the cases, then, have you apologized? Have you tried to make amends?

take a look at what do those things look like. you mentioned, life stages and that can be challenging as well. sometimes the trajectory of your life has changed and the friends that you have had were for a different season. And now you, you might be at a different level, a different season, a different time in your life.

Maybe now you are a caregiver to your parents and the friends that you’ve had are not there yet. Maybe you are the first in your friend group to get married and have children while the rest of your friends are still living it up in the club till 3am. you find that you may not have similar things in common anymore and it’s okay to grieve those things, A friendship breakup is a significant relationship depending on the depth of the connection with that friend in the same way, when people lose marriages or they lose loved ones to, a death or an illness or people move away, it’s something to mourn and it’s okay to feel this sense of grief over someone that you’ve had in your life.

Who’s no longer there.

[00:07:57] Nina: Oh, for sure. I hear from so many people who really are grieving and I think they’re looking for an answer, which leads me to my next question is I oftentimes get an anonymous letter. So it’s not like I have the whole story about whether they should, So the letter that comes from someone who wants to end a friendship. they are wondering if they should tell the person what’s going on or if they should just. Kind of ghost. And people don’t necessarily use the word ghost when they’re asking the question ’cause I think they know that that can be so cruel.

And if you’ve ever been ghosted, you know not having the answer can be so hard. But one thing I’ve told people is, if you’re the one who’s been ghosted and you’re like demanding an answer, I’m not sure what makes people think they’re gonna get an honest answer. You certainly have a right to like. Get in touch with your friend and say, I really want to know, but I don’t know that most people unfortunately will tell the truth, So let’s say you have a client who wants to end a friendship and they ask you, should I talk to my friend or should I just , let it drift away?

[00:08:55] Roxanne: the compassionate and the adult thing to do is to actually say, you know, I think our lives are going in different directions or, there’s a thing that’s happening that’s making me uncomfortable. And I don’t think, that us maintaining this level of friendship is going to be, possible for me at this time, things might change later, but they might not.

And I’m just going to have to hang back for now. Those conversations are very difficult, which is why a lot of people don’t have them, we can do hard things. And so the responsible, the compassionate, the adult thing to do is to just have the hard conversation.

that being said, there are people who just prefer to create distance, to allow time to do its thing where people just drift apart. Right. people will say, you know, I don’t have enough time anymore or I’m doing a different kind of job now. And, my life is in a different season. And so I don’t have the space and time for all those things.

People really do have to, decide what makes best sense for them. But I do think that having the difficult conversation is compassionate because it’s giving the other person the opportunity to understand how they’re What has happened? Instead of, I don’t understand, we used to be good friends.

They don’t call me anymore. They don’t take my phone calls anymore. They’re not texting back. They’re not emailing me. I don’t know what happened. I’m not sure what I did. Those things are harmful to people when people just kind of fall off and they have no idea what it was. They don’t know if their friends are well.

They don’t know if they did something. So I think that it’s the compassionate thing to do is to say we have to move on.

[00:10:27] Nina: it is hard and it does crush people when they don’t have those answers and it’s kind of like you said earlier when you’re talking to somebody who maybe has had a lot of friendships that have ended and you ask. Well, what kind of feedback have you received? It is actually helpful to have had some feedback.

I wonder if part of what keeps people from wanting to tell the truth is that maybe they’re afraid the other friend is going to say like, well, I’ll work on those things. And they’ve already decided in their mind, the person who wants to end the friendship has already decided I’m done.

sometimes you just know, I just want to be done. I like the one about being too harsh you have a friend because by the way, that’s something just like personal to me. I hate being endlessly teased It’s just like not my thing that just wasn’t the vibe of my family and so I am extremely sensitive to teasing where other people You Really see that as a show of love.

It’s not necessarily right or wrong I wouldn’t be able to stay close to someone who was constantly being sarcastic and teasing now if I were to bring that up with somebody and they were like, well, I really will work on that what if I’m just don’t think they can and I’m done I can see anyway What I’m saying is I can see why someone maybe would be nervous To express it and then kind of be still stuck in this friendship that maybe

[00:11:36] Roxanne: Yep. And I think, these things are very difficult. I’m not suggesting that, it’s something that can be easily done, I would encourage people to be very careful about their wording because when you say something like, I can’t do this right now, or, at this time, it sounds like we can actually make an effort to make this better, But if you say something like, I’m going to have to close the door on this, or I’m unable to move forward, you want to use language that suggests that we’re done.

Some people will just come out and say, we’re done, sometimes we try to be so gentle and kind around it gives the idea that if you work on this, there’s a chance here, but you want to be mindful of the language, that says, I’m unable to move forward that says, come to the end of the road with this. And not, necessarily have the person feel that if they work on that thing, then we can get better.

[00:12:29] Nina: that’s really good advice. I think that will help people. Okay, next one. I know I have so many for you. Next one is if you have a client who spends a lot of their social time With online friends. I do get things that are defensive about that. I get notes from people that are kind of defensive because

I do do a lot of little videos on social media, really encouraging people to see their friends in real life and to even at least talk on the phone. Not everybody has time to be running around having lunch and coffee. I’m like, pick up the phone. You have to talk to people in person, I think.

And then they’ll kind of come back a little bit and be like, my online friends are real friends. By the way, I don’t disagree with that. I have a lot of online friends, people that I have only spoken to online. Eventually there have been some over the years that I have met in person, but some of these relationships do exist online.

So I’m not denying that, My non professional opinion is that it’s not healthy to have no people to do things with in real life.

[00:13:27] Roxanne: I have to professionally agree with you.

[00:13:29] Nina: Yay, I like when I say the right thing.

[00:13:33] Roxanne: It’s great to have online friends. I have online friends, people who have never met who I feel quite close to, if we are careful, I’m not sure if you remember the pandemic seems like so long ago yet, yet it still feels like it was yesterday. But during that season where we could not see people in real life, a lot of people started to develop mental health challenges, right?

It can create a lot of anxiety. it is really important for the development of your own empathy to be able to see in real life and in real time how your words impact other people, Whether your words bring people joy or whether your words bring people disappointment, it is important that we are able to see that in the flesh.

It’s one of the reasons why, right? online bullying is taking off, so, so rapidly is because people stay behind the screen and they don’t see the harm that their words are having on someone in the flesh. you can stay behind the screen and say all kinds of mean things about someone, but if you are with them face to face, that is less likely, The other thing is that if we only have online relationships, then we don’t get to exercise our social graces. We don’t exercise what it feels like to, uh, speak to our friends, to have a meal together, to, um, extend compassion, to give someone a physical hug, to speak to a room full of people.

All of these things are things that we need to practice in our day to day lives. And if we are not, Uh, face to face with people, then we can wind up with anxiety around being in public. And many people develop agoraphobia, which is the fear of being in public spaces and become reclusive and we don’t want a society filled with inclusive people.

[00:15:22] Nina: when you only have the online practice it’s a different kind of friendship, even though it is friendship. I have a very close writer friend who has also been on the podcast. We have known each other for, I don’t know, eight, nine years online. We finally got together in person I was going with other friends to Boulder and she lives in Boulder.

Hi, Pam. Shout out to Pam. And we got together in person for the first time for several days. We spent days together and it took us a little bit to get used to being in the same physical space because we leave a lot of WhatsApp voice memos. we’re an hour apart in time and so sometimes I’ll leave her one.

She may still be sleeping or something and then she’ll listen when she can and she’ll we have this understanding in our. virtual friendship you’ll respond when you can. And sometimes we leave long things. It’s like a mini podcast. You can’t do that in person. In person, you got to take a breath.

You got to let the next person respond. You can’t just leave a soliloquy or a monologue, I should say. that’s a different kind of communication. Took us not long, took us probably an hour or two to kind of adjust. Even to each other’s height. she’s much shorter than me.

[00:16:25] Roxanne: And that’s what happens, right? When you take the relationships offline and you’re in front of people and you’re like, Oh my goodness, I can’t believe you’re so tall. I didn’t realize you were so short. And you know, sometimes we have these preconceived notions, even with our online friends and when we meet them in person it’s almost as though those things become a little bit larger than life.

They become unpacked and you really get to understand the depth. of an individual when you see them in person. And so it’s a beautiful thing. And for people, if you can take your friendships offline, I would suggest it.

[00:16:59] Nina: Okay, next one. So this is a big one for me. I have to imagine you notice this, but I will not speak for you. there’s so much therapy speak online. from non therapists, right? So this is not on video Roxanne kind of rolled her eyes in agreement. It is, it’s everywhere. I really try to stay away from it because I’m so actively out there trying to say that I am not a therapist. one topic where it comes up a lot is boundaries. And so all over the internet, it’s boundaries, boundaries, boundaries, and my whole thing is like practical takes.

I’m just like a regular person with a practical take. And my practical take on friendship is if everything is about your boundaries, you’re going to have a really tough time making friends. Like sometimes to be part of a community, to be in a friendship, just one to one, but then even to be in a larger community, like you kind of have to do stuff. Sometimes you don’t feel like doing it’s not always about. Protecting your boundaries. How do you, what do you think

[00:17:51] Roxanne: I agree with you, first of all, that there is a lot of therapy speak online from people who are not therapists. it’s all over. But to your point around boundaries, boundaries have their place, That being said, part of the mental health epidemic that we are seeing in the western world is a result of individualism. As a result of everyone just being alone. It’s just me. I can do this by myself.

I don’t need anybody else. I’m just going to go into my apartment and close my door. I don’t need anybody. That’s a problem. We need to live in community. That’s how people find healing. That’s how people, understand who they are. You understand who you are in relation to other people, someone says, Oh, you tease me too much.

Well, I didn’t realize that I had that thing until you actually told me, It’s within community that we find out about ourselves. But to your point around friendships, and I see this a lot, particularly in my work with couples, people talk a lot about boundaries, but I think the important trait is vulnerability.

We have to take our walls down and lead with open hearts, have some vulnerability. And that’s how we end up with depth of relationship. That is where the beauty in relationships lie. When I take a risk and I tell you something about myself and I’m not sure how you’re going to respond, and you respond with grace.

You respond with acceptance and then you share something with me that’s a little bit of a risk for you and I respond in kind that creates a bond that is not easily broken. And so, yes, everyone’s talking about boundaries and so on and they do have their place, but you can have so many boundaries up that you effectively keep everyone out because then you’re alone. Where’s the beauty in that? There is no beauty in that. So people have to be careful.

[00:19:45] Nina: I just had a episode the title was every friendship starts or deepens with an act of bravery. And I really believe that. , what you’re talking about is just as another example of that, just being vulnerable. is an act of bravery. even from the get go, like sending someone a text, let’s say your online friends, like we were talking about, and you say, Hey, can I have your phone number?

Let’s, why don’t we talk on the phone and not just text not just like DM, take it off Instagram, take it off Tik TOK or whatever. that’s an act of bravery because nobody wants to be rejected. I mean, there’s just so much fear, Of being rejected. And it does keep us, you lonelier than necessary. If

[00:20:20] Roxanne: 100%. 100%. It’s necessary. And then, rejection isn’t fun, but if something that you live through, then you realize I survived this. I’m still here and I can try this again next week.

[00:20:31] Nina: I love that. Is there any pattern or something you’re seeing a lot come up with clients? do you see a lot of friendship things that are just kind of the same, that you hear the same thing from different people?

[00:20:42] Roxanne: I cut them off. I cut people off. they were this and I cut them off. I challenged people on that. I mean, you certainly don’t want to expose yourself to undue harm day in and day out. There does come a time when you need to. to be a little bit of self preservation after a while, But you want to ask yourself, what is triggering me in such a way that I feel like I need to shut the door so abruptly, And pay attention to that thing that is triggering you. Let it speak to you. Let it say to you, Oh, you have a wound that has not been healed. And that person is causing you to pay attention to that.

what we believe is that that person is trying to harm us. And then we shut the door. I cut them off. So many people who are so, proud of that. where’s the grace in that, How can we build our relationships and our community and learn about ourselves if we immediately cut people off? So I would say, Even go so far as to speak to a professional and say I have this thing that’s coming up for me And I feel like I want to end the relationship and then start to process Why do you have that feeling? Is this person’s behavior reminding you of something else that was harmful for you? Is this?

Bringing up something that is unresolved in your life I see a lot in my practice where people become entrepreneurs, their former colleagues stop talking to them. what eventually people come to realize that is that those colleagues want to leave the job.They want to become entrepreneurs. you’re living the thing that I would love I can’t access that and I cannot bear to see it. And so I can no longer be friends with you. And so these are the things that we need to ask ourselves, what is actually going on here? and access the healing that you need.

So we can actually have whole relationships. You can have friends who are entrepreneurs while you’re still trying to figure out what to do with your nine to five. Maybe you see them less often. Maybe you’re honest with them and say, man, this is hard for me. I wish you the best, but I gotta take a break for a minute because it’s hard for me to see.

Or, can you tell me how you did that? Because this is something that I want from my life as well. I tell people all the time, pay attention to your emotions, particularly jealousy. It points to the thing that you want for your own life.

[00:22:52] Nina: Yeah, I’ve given that advice to friends, it has not come up in my work, but, friends who are kind of in between job stuff. And I’ve, said that I’m like, what are you jealous of? Cause it’s probably something you want to be doing.

Even if it’s not the job itself, you like the hours they keep Or you like that they don’t have a boss, it may not be the actual day to day stuff, that kind of thing. Oh my God. Roxanne. I’m so glad we got to meet. I mean, we just have so much in common. And by the way, I like, in terms of the way we think about friendship, I do encourage people to get therapy. I love my therapist, so shout out to her.

[00:23:22] Roxanne: ha! I have my own therapist and I tell everybody it’s so important. It helps keep me in check. It’s a place where I can go. I don’t have to worry about, judgment or anything like that. it can be a beautiful relationship.

[00:23:33] Nina: And different than friendship, you don’t have to take turns the same way, like we were talking about obviously you would listen to what your therapist says, but like you’re there to really express what’s going on, it is about you, it’s one of the very few places that you can go and just delve into your stuff and not You know, worry that you’re burdening someone or taking up their time.

I mean, it’s a professional experience. You’re paying for that advice. your clients are lucky to have you. So easy to talk to.

[00:23:58] Roxanne: you so much.

[00:23:59] Nina: Well, all right, everybody come back next week. I know Roxanne will agree with this with my tagline and every episode with, which is when our friendships are going well, we are happier all around.

[00:24:09] Roxanne: I agree with that wholeheartedly.

[00:24:11] Nina: All right. Thank you. Bye.