What is up, daddy?
Gang?
It is your founding father, Alex Cooper, with call her daddy, doctor Kermire.
Welcome to call her daddy.
Hello.
Thanks for having me.
You are a clinical psychologist and a friend expert, and you are one of the few therapists who offers friendship therapy.
One of the most frequently asked questions and topics from my audience is how to maintain and navigate friendships.
And when we're kids, it seems pretty easy.
Is it normal to feel like friendships become more difficult to navigate in adulthood?
Yes.
I mean, the short answer is yes, definitely.
And I think that, you know, anyone who has had a friendship, been in a friendship, has a friendship right now, can relate to this to a certain degree.
And not only does it get more difficult, the older we get, our expectations for ourselves change.
And what can happen is there can be such a mismatch between what we think our friendships should be like or what we should be experiencing or who we should have in our lives and what that actually looks like.
So, I mean, we can go into all of this, but I do wanna normalize it, because one of the things that I see in my work is not only is it difficult, but there can be a real sense of loneliness and even shame that comes when we do experience a friendship challenge.
Whether it's difficulty making friends or maintaining friendships or going through a friendship breakup, which I know is something that you've spoken about, those types of experiences can be painful in and of themselves, and then even more so when we judge ourselves and feel like there's something wrong with us for going through that.
It's so helpful to just hear that and normalize that, because I think that probably every person listening, I know a lot of listeners are in their twenties, and that is a huge stressor.
Right.
I think some people think that the number of friends you have is synonymous with how likable you are and how great of a person you are, which we know isn't true.