Do you worry about having 'enough' friends?

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0:40Kimberley Wilson:Hello and welcome. I'm Kimberly Wilson. I'm a counseling psychologist. And this is Complex. The psychology podcast that I hope can help you wend a clearer way to the hills and valleys of information and misinformation that are out there about our mental health. In today's episode, I'm exploring friendship.

1:09Kimberley Wilson:And I am very excited about it because friendship is a lovely thing. But it causes a lot of problems for us. People ask themselves, do I have enough friends? Are my friendships good enough? Do people really like me? Has everyone got more friends than I do? We all see the photos posted online of hen nights of 57 friends all in matching pyjamas having a wonderful time And it can be really intimidating, that hashtag girl gang thing And I do worry sometimes that friendship has become a little bit performative Whatever happened to that old-fashioned hang where we would just go to our friend's house, order pizza and watch rubbish TV on a Saturday Well, as usual, to help us weave our way through this more complicated landscape, I've invited an expert guest to join me and together we'll also be digging into a listener's dilemma.

2:06Kimberley Wilson:So let me be your guide from the bitter lemons of misinformation to the refreshing lemonade of understanding.

2:18Kimberley Wilson:and so to my guest clinical psychologist dr marta de roscollado she's come back to the complex studio marta i'm very pleased to have you back here with us i'm pleased to be back thank you and you recorded the episode on empathy with us and listeners if you want to find out about what it means to have too much or too little empathy you can find that episode in the complex feed on BBC Sounds. But Marta, as someone who has a lot of experience working with difficult relationships and family dynamics, how do you see friendships showing up in your work?

2:53Dr Martha Deiros Collado:Friends really stand out in my clinical work as relationships that people want to make well and hold on to. I think that comes out a lot. And then the importance of friendships and helping people move through big life events comes out a lot when we're talking.

3:10Kimberley Wilson:One of the things I certainly see in the therapy room is this difficulty with friendships, you know, the misconceptions, the misunderstandings, the expectations and how people really struggle with where they fit in. So it feels like a really good topic for us to be putting under the microscope. And so with that, let's get into the complexity.

3:35Kimberley Wilson:okay Marta so let's start with a definition how do we define human friendships a relationship

3:44Dr Martha Deiros Collado:between people of trust and mutual respect and joy it's about feeling seen heard valued the core of what we need as humans so I think a good friend accepts you with the good and the bad in a way that's very different from family or from people you might be biologically related to

4:07Kimberley Wilson:and if we flip that then and I really do want to come back and talk about frenemies in a separate episode but if we were thinking about what a bad friend might be what would we say someone who

4:23Dr Martha Deiros Collado:is manipulative or harms you, somebody who excludes you, who mocks you, who puts you down, who makes you feel less than them.

4:32Kimberley Wilson:I'm sure there's like a hundred ways of thinking about a bad friend, but it's getting away from that kindness, that mutuality, that mutual respect. Yes, I think so. So with that in mind, I'm going to share a story that's coming to us from a listener. I'm going to call her Zainab to protect her identity. So I would love you to have a listen and then tell me what you think. So Zainab says, I've worked hard through my education and early career to get a good job but the focus on my work has meant that I've not formed strong friendships. I moved home and school a lot as a child due to my parents changing location.

5:08Kimberley Wilson:I do feel that these factors have impacted my ability to make friends, break into groups and view new friendships positively. I often feel people don't like me and shut off from taking relationships further. I also find online chats like WhatsApp groups are a huge cause of anxiety when trying to break into a new group. When you're new and you're brave enough to post a message, but then you're left on read and no one replies. I know you should just try and be yourself, but the fear of rejection is huge. And then she asks, is this a common experience? What do you think? What do you think of her story and of her final question?

5:49Oh, it's such a touching story.

5:51Dr Martha Deiros Collado:I think Zainab's experience is probably more common than we know or we think about. I think lots of people dedicate time to their careers and then wake up one day and go, oh my gosh, I didn't have the time, the space or the opportunity to make close friendships and I want that for myself. and I think in this digital age it looks like people have hundreds of friends when actually having a meaningful friendship is very different to all those numbers it takes time it takes effort and I think lots of people will resonate with what Zainab has said and especially that fear of how do I make a new friend and I'm scared that I'll be rejected if I put myself out there

6:33Kimberley Wilson:I feel like her question, is this a common experience, is a very touching and tender one because she seems to be asking, am I unusual? Is it strange for me to feel like this? And I'm sure she'll hear across the rest of this episode is this question about how we navigate friendships, how we make friends as adults is a really complicated one. And we constantly just as humans carry this fear of rejection around with us.

7:01Dr Martha Deiros Collado:Yeah, I think lots of people do when they're very committed to their career, their jobs are very time consuming, you know, energy consuming. It's very easy to kind of wake up one day and go, oh.

7:13Kimberley Wilson:And look around.

7:14Dr Martha Deiros Collado:I didn't make those relationships.

7:17Kimberley Wilson:I think it's easy to assume, especially if you think back to your childhood experience, that it's easy to make friends because it seems to happen automatically in those contexts. But as adults, it's not necessarily easy.

7:29Dr Martha Deiros Collado:no it's not I think the opportunity to make friends can be really limited when you're an adult you've got responsibilities you've got work you might have a family you might live outside of like a big city and then that makes it really hard to go places to meet people to do activities

7:47Kimberley Wilson:we have fear of those third spaces so we have home and then work and then we used to have youth clubs or maybe church or maybe other community groups and spaces where we would spend more of our leisure time and get to meet the people in our immediate vicinity, our neighbours and the people in our towns and cities. And we have fewer and fewer of those. And there might be other cultural reasons why it's difficult. Someone from an immigrant family, there are different social norms about how we make friends and how open we are, how vulnerable we are, where we make friends, the types of friends we have, that can make it difficult to make that transition, that leap.

8:26Kimberley Wilson:It's not always obvious.

8:27Dr Martha Deiros Collado:No, it's not obvious. And I guess also, if you're neurodivergent, there might be reasons why making a friend is hard or maintaining friendships becomes quite hard. If you feel quite distressed in big groups, for example, you might not want to put yourself out there to meet people in that way. And so meeting people might feel a little bit more harder. And finding that courage might also be, how do you emotionally cope with that situation to show your best side? So it is really challenging.

8:55Kimberley Wilson:And I think social media can give the illusion that we can move from one position to another very, very quickly from acquaintance to close friend in one short hop. Yes.

9:06Dr Martha Deiros Collado:And I think for some, that might be helpful. You know, it might build your confidence and I'm having a conversation with someone and building something with them but it can become a barrier I think if it stays online only because I think that the real true connection that moving from an acquaintance into you know my close circle of friends happens when you meet in person and you share those like real life moments together

9:36Kimberley Wilson:you mentioned earlier that friendships are effortful can you say a little bit more about what you meant.

9:41Dr Martha Deiros Collado:Yeah, I don't mean like they're a burden. Good friendship doesn't feel like a burden. But they take effort in terms of you need to put yourself out there. You need to, you know, protect time for your friends. You need to show up, show up. Yeah, you can't just be a passive friend. You know, it's like playing ping pong. And we're doing that. And there's this beautiful exchange and it feels reciprocated at every level. And that's what makes me feel very secure in that relationship.

10:10Kimberley Wilson:I think that's such a good point because one of the things I do really worry about is this idea of your friends telling you their problems is trauma dumping and that you don't have to deal with that and you have to kind of put up a boundary and it's too much but the nature of a friendship is that we share each other's burdens and today it might be me sharing mine with you but in six months time that will be reversed and it's that reciprocity and that

10:39Dr Martha Deiros Collado:kind of seesawing which is the nature of these relationships. Some of my friends they've gone through absolute horrors just because life happens to you whether it's illness whether it's bereavement you know shocking really distressing events and you think I want to be there for them that's not trauma dumping on me. Life's just happened to you and I want to be one of those people that's by your side. But it's my choice. That's what a good friendship is about.

11:08Kimberley Wilson:There is actually some lovely science on friendships. So for example, we know that having friends by your side makes difficult tasks seem easier. So there's one quite well known study where they had people look at a hill and to estimate kind of how steep it was, how much effort it would be to get up that hill. And they found that when people had a friend alongside them, the estimates of the steepness were reduced. So the ability to get up that hill, the effort required felt reduced when you had someone alongside you. That's beautiful. And we see really similar things with pain perception. So people going to dentists, if you have a friend with you, that perception of the pain is reduced as well.

11:51Kimberley Wilson:So there are real ways in which these friendships both in terms of how hard life feels but also about as you say longevity and blood pressure and stress and inflammation and friendships are really good for you that's so lovely isn't it so if we think about Zainab what is it that's hard about making friends?

12:18Dr Martha Deiros Collado:I think in her position, it's hard to put yourself out there and take that risk and feel possibly rejected by others. I also think perhaps she's a bit lost about where even to begin. Like, where do I seek out my friendships outside of my work and my career? Because as an adult, it's really hard.

12:38Kimberley Wilson:It sounds as though she's kind of lost her confidence with it because she describes a history of moving around a lot. You may be constantly in the position of being the new person. And I think that can become an aspect of your identity that you carry forward. I'm always slightly on the outside looking in and I've got to try to kind of shoehorn my way into an already established group.

13:02Dr Martha Deiros Collado:Yeah. And I think finding that confidence, you know, maybe Zainab feels, I haven't got those long-term social skills. I've never had the opportunity to

13:10Kimberley Wilson:build them. I think we are seeing this slightly changing profile of friendships. There's data indicating that nearly four times as many people describe themselves as having no friends now than they did in the 90s. And also we're seeing a response to that with things like specialist friend meetup groups and apps designed to make friends. So there's something happening in the culture that's saying actually Zainab and anybody listening who feels in that similar position it's not just you.

13:42Dr Martha Deiros Collado:I think it's such a paradox in the digital world I think it can look like people have hundreds thousands of friends but actually I think there is a bit of a loneliness epidemic.

13:54Kimberley Wilson:Yeah you can look online and see people hanging out with lots of different people but are they the people that you would call at two in the morning if there was an emergency?