We all crave connection, but forming new friendships and nurturing old ones isn't always simple: Nerves, stress, busyness and shyness can get in the way. Laura Tremaine, author of "The Life Council," and psychiatrist Dr. Judith Engelman share ways to recognize and value the friends in our life — and, if needed, make a few more.
We talked with:
We talked about:
In this episode, Dr. Millstine and her guests discuss:
Can't get enough?
Got feedback?
Dr. Denise Millstine: Welcome to the “Read. Talk. Grow.” podcast, inspired by my conversations with my own patients about what they are reading. On “Read. Talk. Grow.,” we discuss health by talking about books, especially fiction, memoir and creative nonfiction that portray or explore health topics. We use reading to better understand how it is to live with or navigate these conditions. In the same way that books can transport us to a different historical time or into a less familiar culture, they can draw readers into various health experiences. On the show, we connect authors and experts to talk about health issues, including those often considered intimate or hard to discuss.
I’m Dr. Denise Millstine. I’m an assistant professor of medicine at Mayo Clinic, where I practice women’s health internal medicine and direct the section of Integrative Medicine and Health in Arizona. I‘m the host of “Read. Talk. Grow.” and the medical director for the women’s health blog through Mayo Clinic Press. I am always reading and love discussing books, so let’s get started.
Today we’ll be talking about friendship. Listeners might think friendship is not exactly a health issue, but I am going to argue otherwise. In fact, in an academic publication by the evolutionary psychologist, Dr. Robin Dunbar, he states there is now extensive evidence that having friends protects you against both mental and physical illness, helps you recover quicker when you fall sick or have surgery and makes you feel happier and more contented with life. It’s possible that many of you have rarely paused to consider really, really consider friendship, which is why we are here today.
Our book is “The Life Council: Ten Friends Every Woman Needs” by Laura Tremaine, released in 2023 by Zondervan. Laura Tremaine is a writer, speaker, podcaster and influencer who launched the “Ten Things to Tell You” podcast in 2019, a show born out from her realization that sharing herself online and in person pulled her out of a long season of loneliness.
From there, her first book was born, “Share Your Stuff. I’ll Go First: Ten Questions to Take Your Friendships to the Next Level” in 2021. Laura lives in L.A. with her husband, Jeff, and their two children. She’s passionate about 20-minute reading timers, bold lipstick, Stephen King and chicken wings. Her second book is “The Life Council,” which we’ll be talking about today. Laura, welcome to the show.
Laura Tremaine: Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited to talk about friendship with you today.
Dr. Denise Millstine: Our second guest is Dr. Judith Engelman, who is a board-certified psychiatrist, first in practice in the Phoenix-Scottsdale area for the last 40 years. She has vast experience in running therapy and support groups and was a collaborator in the Authentic Connection Study, a research study with the Mayo Clinic Department of Psychiatry and the Arizona State University Department of Psychology, where she and I crossed paths for the first time. Blending her interests in individual group and family therapy, psychopharmacology, yoga and spirituality, Dr. Engelman has always advocated for an integrated approach to healing. Judy, welcome to the show.
Dr. Judith Engelman: Thank you, Denise. It’s great to see you. It’s great to be back, and it is very exciting to meet Laura, having read this wonderful book.
Dr. Denise Millstine: Laura, I can’t wait to talk about how much this book made me think, even before I read it, just the concept of it. I saw you talk about in an interview on “What Should I Read Next” or “Modern Mrs. Darcy Book Club,” and I was talking to my friends about the concept. It led to some really curious conversations, and I’m sure as you’ve been promoting the book and the book has finally released, you’ve had some curious conversations. What’s been most surprising in that feedback?
Laura Tremaine: Well, most surprising for me has been that people are reading the title and the subtitle and get very nervous about the book. “Ten Friends Every Woman Needs” puts a lot of people back on their heels and they think: “I don’t have 10 friends. I’ve never had 10 friends.”
That has been something that I didn’t think all the way through; that it would bring up a scarcity mindset and make people feel bad about themselves, when I really want the book to make people see the abundance of people in their life and how much we are bringing to one another’s lives, and we can elevate all of our friendships, not just like our lifelong ones, our very deep ones.
Can I also just say that we’re all here together, and I’m so glad to be speaking with actual experts because I did not write this book from a place of academic research or anything like that. This book is fully about lived experience and all of these conversations I’ve had on my podcast and online over the years about friendship. Speaking with both of you today here with actual credentials behind your name, it’s a joy. So thank you for inviting me to be among you.
Dr. Denise Millstine: We are so glad you’re here because the work that you’re doing is so important. It’s really a “don’t judge a book by its title or its cover” because you make that point that these are the 10 seats at your life council, which can challenge your readers to think about similar seats or what their life council looks like. It’s possible for a friend to hold both roles. Your daily duty friend could also be your business bestie. Maybe, maybe not. But Judy, what was so surprising to you about the book?
Dr. Judith Engelman: Well, the whole thing was surprising because, first of all, I thought your anecdotes, your stories were so great. But one of the things I loved the most, which you start out with these five friendship philosophies. I loved “friendship is to do.” I have always said that love is a verb.
Laura Tremaine: Yes.
Dr. Judith Engelman: You have to believe the best in your friend. That has a lot to do, to me, with the brain. The brain has a tendency to go to the negative in any situation. We’re so self-critical, and we do a lot of thinking about what somebody else is thinking or what their motives are. So we have a choice about thinking. Asking people when they don’t show up, when they cancel plans.
“Just go.” I loved that. Number three, just go. Just do it. Number four, “Like every selfie.” That was really cute because somebody had some reason they’re taking a selfie. You might think it’s stupid or you don’t even want to put a heart by it or thumbs up, but they did it, and it’s an acknowledgment that they matter to you. That you’ll take the time to do that.
Again, love is an action. But the best one I loved was that your spouse is not your best friend. That was the best thing in the whole book, in my opinion.
Laura Tremaine: Well, thank you for saying that, because people really react to that friendship philosophy that your partner is not your best friend. People immediately kind of raise their eyebrows that I’m saying that out loud because I’m in a marriage of 17 years, I speak very highly of my husband, I love him very much, and people immediately jump to this conclusion that our marriage is in trouble, that I don’t call him my best friend because it has become this modern concept. This is a modern concept, as I’m sure you know, that your spouse would be your best friend.
That’s considered so romantic now. That is not the history of marriage at all, and I think that it puts these relationships up with a lot of pressure on them, a lot of strain on them, and then we end up disappointed when one person, especially the person that we share a bathroom with and children with and all of these things, can’t match up to the fulfillment that we can feel after an evening out with friends, a great conversation with someone, a weekend away with people who know us well but don’t share responsibilities with us.
It’s too much on my marriage. I wrote about that because I felt like in my own marriage I put that stress on it in the beginning. But most people do not want to hear that friendship philosophy.
Dr. Denise Millstine: I was going to comment that leave it to the psychiatrist in the group to take us to the most controversial point right away out of the gates, Judy, with the controversial friend philosophy. But I think you’re right, and you portray it beautifully, that it doesn’t mean you’re not close to your spouse or your partner. It doesn’t mean you don’t love that person.
They have a very important role in your life, of course. But they don’t need to be that everything. You do this beautiful job of portraying, in the book, how when you get out with friends, you actually come back energized and fulfilled in a different way and then can be even a better partner when you build that circle around you.
It’s good when people say things that make us think and stop. My parents had a sign that said “Happiness Is Being Married To Your Best Friend” and you were the first person to challenge that, and I love it. I think it’s important. Let’s go back on some of those friendship philosophies because I think these are really important and we are definitely going to talk about those 10 friends or some of those 10 friends on the Life Council.
But the friendship is a to-do. In an interview, I heard with you, Laura, you said that that has not always been something that your friends appreciate, to know that you literally start the day with a work, home and connection to do list and sometimes your friend is on your to do list. Talk about that a bit.
Laura Tremaine: Well, that is the number one friendship philosophy that I write about in the book, because that was where I was misstepping in friendship. I start the book off with a friendship rift that came about in the pandemic when emotions were heightened. I said something sort of snide, sort of a slight on a group text and accidentally very much hurt a friend.
I start the book off with that story because I want people to know that we all misstep in friendship. We’re all doing our best. No one’s perfect, especially not me. Even though I talk about this professionally, I still mess up in friendship, and the number one way I was messing up was I just would let weeks go by, I wouldn’t check in with friends, I wouldn’t return their texts. I felt like my actions were not matching up with how I felt about people in my heart. Because I’m busy, because I have kids, because I have a very inconsistent job schedule.
I’m not busier than anyone else. It just did not cross my mind that I needed to check in regularly until weeks, sometimes literally months went by, and I would have friends that would tell me that that was hurting their feelings.
They were feeling disconnected from me and they felt like they weren’t important to me and they were. So for me, I had to make a fix to that. It was the same misstep over and over for me that I was making, and so I started making my friends, friendships and connections part of my to do list.
I still keep an old school to-do list like on notebook paper with, like you said, a work sort of section, a personal family life kind of section, and then a connection section. I thought that this was brilliant. Like I was really solving this problem. It’s still one of my core friendship philosophies how I solved this problem for myself. However, I had some friends, one in particular, who felt that she was a chore, that I was having to put her on my to do list because I don’t think of her naturally or because I wouldn’t text her back out of like some unspoken motivation or something, which was not happening at all.
She did not want to feel like a chore on my to do list. And so even though I explained to her that for me this was a way to fix connection, to her it felt like she was a drudgery. She didn’t feel like that she was coming to mind naturally. So we kind of had to agree to disagree, like we kind of had to meet in the middle on it.
I was like, I will just try and make it not look like a chore. Meaning if I set an alarm in my phone, which I also do, I will set an alarm in my phone like “check in on someone.” If they have a big event, a work promotion, a surgery, some kind of thing, I put it in my phone and I set an alarm there.
I will try not to make it look like I’m just taking things off on my to do list and that they are part of that. I try to make it look like genuine connection. If she would just accept that that’s how I was fixing this problem. That’s kind of how we met in the middle. But I was surprised by her reaction actually, to the friendship is a to-do and maybe this is just personality types.
Dr. Denise Millstine: I could see that though. Also, what’s the alternative is to say: “Oh, didn’t you have surgery a week ago? How are you doing?” Then you miss this opportunity to show up or to support or even to be helpful, whatever that might look like given the circumstances. Judy, do you find this lack of communication to be a common source of rift among friends?
Dr. Judith Engelman: As you were talking more I was thinking about couples and so much of what happens is “he should know,” you know, especially sexually or gift giving, “he should know what I want.” The same is true for friends, for any relationship. When you assume that somebody thinks the same way you do, that’s a real pitfall.
Accepting that people have different styles is really important. What you were saying to her is: “This is me. This is how I operate. Oh, apparently you operate differently. We know that about each other now. We’re a little closer because we know that difference.” It kind of relates to your first book, which was called “Share Your Stuff. I’ll Go First.”
Which is exactly what I have said to people and Denise, that was the group, basically. That’s the great thing. I’ve always run groups. I’ve done individual therapy. A lot of it. But then I would put people in a group and they would say to me: “What am I going to get out of being with a bunch of other crazy people?”
I would say to them: “No, you don’t get it. Group is a higher form of therapy than individual therapy because you can get a clear picture of how you come across. You can change behaviors, you can improve your social skills, and the group really helps you. It can be an emotionally corrective family-of-origin experience.” So learning how to say those things, and what somebody shares in a group or shares in a friendship, if it’s a healthy friendship, it goes deeper and you get closer.
George Bach, he is, I think, a psychologist, psychiatrist. He wrote a book called “The Intimate Enemy: How To Fight Fair In Love and Marriage,” and what he talks about is that people fight for two reasons: they fight to win, in which case they both lose, or they fight to understand each other, in which case they both win.
Dr. Denise Millstine: Probably in friendship, you sometimes see those same dynamics. Let’s talk a little bit about that Authentic Connections study, Judy. So that was published in the journal Women’s Health in April of 2017, and the study results showed that there were positive effects by bringing together women and fostering resilience among these women healthcare professionals who had children. I think you have a lot of overlapping friendship philosophies with Laura, but from that study, were there other philosophies you want to toss out there?
Dr. Judith Engelman: One of the big things is that we women go through life a lot of times, especially professional women, having what the book called “The Imposter Syndrome.” Many professions have been historically male dominated, patriarchal in nature. So women, no matter how extraordinary they are, and Denise is a perfect example of an absolutely extraordinary woman. On some level, we feel that shame. Like, quote, “If they really knew, they wouldn’t respect me, they wouldn’t like me.” That was a big thing that group dissipates because people admitted that, or they admitted that Mayo is tough. You have to publish. You have to teach and you have to do the three shields extraordinary. I teach at Mayo Clinic medical school, and I’ve stayed connected with Mayo Clinic, so I know it well.
There is so much pressure in your raising children, and for women, it’s ridiculous because statistics show if you don’t publish, then you’re five years behind in terms of getting professorships and promotion.
Women are just buried, and to talk to other women who are experiencing exactly the same things, who have a child who’s challenging, who have a husband who’s out of work. To realize you’re not alone, which is what you talk about in everything that you say and write, it just makes the world safer, it improves your endorphins.
In this study we had a control group that didn’t meet for one hour a week in this manualized group that I ran, and what we found was that the people in the active groups felt they enjoyed work or they had less burnout. They felt better about being parents, their marriages were better, they felt seen. It’s things that you probably can’t get from your husband, even though he can be a friend in a different way. There’s nothing like a close girlfriend, nothing.
Dr. Denise Millstine: In creating these books in a scientific study is sort of what Laura has proposed that women do in their friendships. Laura, let’s talk about some of the seats at the Life Council, because I think it’s true that when Judy’s talking about the imposter syndrome, for example, there might be types of friends that you have at the Life Council that don’t need to see into your soul as long as you also have those friends who see you authentically down to your soul. Which friend type do you want to start with?
Laura Tremaine: Well, one thing I want to say about the friend types, I have a couple of things I want to say about the general friend types. Of the 10 friends that I write about in the Life Council, these are friends that you’re going to have over the course of your life. You are not going to have a stocked Life Council.Most of us are not going to have a fully seated Life Council all the time in every season. You’re not always going to have a mentor. You’re not always going to have a new friend, sort of just depending on what your life looks like. Like you mentioned earlier, some friends might overlap and that makes a lot of sense.
The book is not about lacking these 10 friends or having to really seat them as much as it is thinking about the people in your life and where they would fit with these different strengths. Then also, of course, the other side of where you might fit on other people’s Life Council, like what your strengths are in friendship, and so that’s the general overview of the different friends and then also the 10 that I write about.
I tried to make them as universal as possible. I tried to incorporate things that I’ve heard from other women, speaking with them over the years. Then, of course, my own friends that I write about. But also if there’s a seat or two as you’re reading it or hearing us talk about it, that doesn’t totally resonate with you, like that’s just not going to ever fit your life for some reason, that’s not your personality, that’s OK.
These are not like such a directive that you’re going to have these exact seats. You’re going to fit what makes sense for your life. I hope that reading about mine gets your own wheels turning for the different types of friends that you might have in your life that don’t apply to me.
It’s a brainstorming exercise in a certain way as you’re reading along. But like I said, I try to make universal types of friends that a lot of us could relate to. We can start with the deeper friendships like the soul sister that a lot of us crave. Or we can start with some of the friendships I write about that are specifically not as deep because I wanted to kind of elevate some of those friendships in our life that we think: “Well, I like her, but we’re just coworkers, or we’re just neighbors, or we’re just a fellow sports mom. She’s not a friend friend.”
I wanted us to look at those women in our life and be like, “No, no, there is an intimacy to someone that you see every single day. Your coworker knows you in a way that some of your best friends might not because she understands your workday. She understands your role, she understands what you are like for eight hours plus of every single day, and your girlfriends, your other longtime childhood friend, she doesn’t know that about you.”
So I wanted to sort of elevate these people that we think, “Well, they’re this, but they’re not my friend.” I want us to see that if you’re feeling lonely, you do have people in your life that know you, that see you and that you could forge a deeper connection with, or on the shallower side of it, they might not know your deepest hearts and dreams.
They might not know your trauma, but they’re really fun. Or they understand something about your community because they’re your neighbor. That, again, a different person in your life might not understand. I really wanted to bring up all of the different types of people in our life, but where I think women get trapped is thinking that adult friendship looks a certain way. Like you have one bestie who is a soul sister and is also fun and will also bring you soup when you’re sick and also can pick up your kids at carpool. We think that’s what a best friend looks like. We have this idea of that because maybe when we were younger, the best friends that we made, they were all encompassing. We had 10 things in common with our best friends when we were younger. But in adulthood, that is not what most of our lives look like. We have a work best friend and we have a church best friend, and we have a mom friend that we always sit with in the bleachers. Those are different people. That’s not all just one person.
That’s why I wrote about the different types of friends. I don’t know where you all want to start because I can talk about all 10 of them at length.
Dr. Denise Millstine: Well, I want to talk about the business bestie, I think, and again, these are your names for these, but like you said, it’s a work friend. I’ve heard that, “It’s not a real friend,” and maybe it feels that way because you know that it is a friendship based on a shared experience, and when you lose that shared experience, it may not be a relationship that you then continue forward into whatever your next phase is, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a valuable relationship. So can you talk a little bit more about that particular friend?
Laura Tremaine: I think that a business bestie, like I said, understands a different side of your life and your personality maybe than other people do, and that is so valuable that you can just be your work self with that friend. So for me, I work online. My work is a little bit weird. My husband doesn’t understand it. My mom friends don’t understand podcasting and social media.
They’re like: “How do you fill your day that way?” They actually don’t understand it. So when I had work friends who are doing similar things on the internet and we could just talk about work, we could talk about how to grow our podcast, like strategy or the struggles or all of the different things that you talk about with whatever your work is. That’s all we talked about. My best work friend never asks about my kids. Now she knows I have kids.
To me this is freedom in a friendship. I like a place where I don’t have to give an update on my parents’ health and my home renovation. I don’t want to talk about all those things. I really want to talk about this work thing because she’s one of the few people in my life that understands it, and so I don’t want to spend time when I could talk about those other parts of my life with other friends.
That’s the value of it. So she’s not, quote-unquote, just a work friend, she’s like a business bestie. I know that that term might feel juvenile to a bunch of doctors, a business bestie, but it really is the best way to sort of incorporate it. Then, to your other point of work friends might not go the distance. They might not be for decades.
Your med school friends or whoever, that you’re in a really intense season with, and then you go on into life and your life might take different directions and you also might not have much in common outside of the workplace, you might have different belief systems, you might function really differently, have different personalities that really isn’t conducive outside of the workplace.
But that doesn’t mean that those few years that you had together and that you had companionship together didn’t mean anything. You helped each other through that really hard time.
That is so valuable and shouldn’t be dismissed like, “Oh yeah, they were just a med school friend back in the day.” No, I want us to think of it as: “Oh, thank goodness we had each other back then. Wasn’t that amazing? It’s OK that we’re not in touch anymore or that we don’t seem to be aligned so much anymore. I’m just going to feel gratitude that we had each other then.”
Dr. Denise Millstine: You brought up another really important point, which is that many people don’t work in a traditional situation where they go to the office and they sit at a desk next to another person, that your business bestie might be somebody who is in the same field as you, or has the same professional training, or has a similar interest. It doesn’t have to be the person you eat lunch with in the breakroom.
Laura Tremaine: Right. Right.
Dr. Denise Millstine: Judy, what sort of insights do you have about friends from work, employment, professional activities?
Dr. Judith Engelman: I think that it is incredibly valuable when somebody understands what you do. There’s a shorthand. I have one. I was thinking about her a lot. She crosses many of the categories that you have, and she is a psychiatrist. She’s a child psychiatrist. We’ve been close friends for 30 years, and we talk about everything. But we will consult with each other about patients, “What would you do about it” I’ll ask her questions about how she would recommend I deal with these parents around their child. It’s incredibly important to have people at the workplace, and that’s what our Authentic Connections Group was based on. They were all women: physicians, nurse practitioners, and PAs. We had one psychologist in one of our groups who worked together and nobody could understand that specific place and the pressures of working except moms with children under the age of 18 at Mayo Clinic in that setting. I think it’s incredibly important.
The other thing I liked about it was that there’s friends of different times and this gets into your last chapter, your later chapters about letting go of friends, ending friendships and how you do that. Somebody once described to me that life is a bunch of intersecting lines and people come together, then they go out and may come together again up here. They may just go their separate ways and we tend to feel like we have to cling to people. If the friendship moves apart, there’s something wrong.
That idea of seasons of friends and letting friends fade and sometimes actually formally ending a friendship like when I end a marriage, but doing it with grace and respect, I think you make some terrific and really important points when you wrote about that.
Laura Tremaine: I’m just going to say this again because that really matters to me. I feel so validated that you like this book because I have imposter syndrome writing about something that I don’t have a deep background in academically or whatever, so it is wonderful to hear your thoughts on it. Thank you so much.
Dr. Judith Engelman: You have a deep background incidentally. You have friends. Your anecdotes and talking about yourself was spectacular. It was so permission-giving, and it’s exactly what we tried to do in these authentic connection groups and I think succeeded. There was one other point I wanted to make, and you mentioned your tribe, Denise, at the beginning, and one of the assignments in this group was for people to find one person that they formalized the connection with, that they actually asked to be their bestie, their soul sister, that they could call in the middle of the night.
They had to say that to a person and say in turn that they would do that for that person, and that seemed to many of the women, taking a huge risk to be that overt. Inevitably they came back and said that person was so flattered and they wanted to have me in that same position for them.
It was like when somebody is in a love relationship, the first person says, “I love you.” “Oh, I’m so relieved that you said that because I love you too.” So taking those risks pay off big time.
Dr. Denise Millstine: But it’s not until you stop and think about these friendships and the importance of these people in your life that you can have those conversations, however you phrase them, it might just be that one of the friend types is the password protector. You have a friend that you say trust you so implicitly that should I need this logistical help, I know you would never use this against me.
That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s your soul sister. That’s the person who will handle that information in a way that’s trustworthy. I think there’s so much in stories, in books and in movies about these deep, lifelong friendships, and I really appreciate, Laura, that you spent so much time talking about the friendships that we don’t think about as much that the one I wanted to talk about is the fellow obsessive.
I’m a hockey mom. I have hockey mom friends, and the hosts can be very seasonal. I’m also a reader. I call my book nerd friends. They don’t mind being called that, and those are the people that, whether they have kids or not, I know what they do for their work, and I might ask after their families, but then I’m like: “What are you reading?” and let’s jump in because it’s good to know that that’s what you connect with some people. If you have a fellow obsessive in your life, talk more about that chair.
Laura Tremaine: The fellow obsessive seat on the Life Council has easily been the most popular one since I’ve started talking about this book. People really connect with that idea, which is funny because I almost didn’t include that one in the book. I sort of snagged on the word obsessive, literally. I was worried that it had a kind of a negative connotation when this friend is really fun. It’s really fun to have a friend who is obsessed with the same thing that you are obsessed with.
Also it was really an apt thing in this internet moment where we might have friends that are obsessed with something similar to us and we are connecting online over that thing. So maybe it’s a band, maybe it’s a certain workout, maybe it’s a TV show, and we again dismiss some of those friendships even as we’re spending hours talking to these people about the thing we’re obsessed with, we dismiss it. Similar to the work friend, “it’s not a real friend.”
They might not be a real friend in that you’re not having deep heart to hearts, but when you are having a long, lengthy discussion about something you’re obsessed with, that is sharing a piece of yourself. That is absolutely revealing parts of you to that person, and also it’s just fun.
Not all of our deepest friendships have to be these really lengthy heart to heart, trauma-filled moments. They’re also fun. But a fellow obsessive isn’t necessarily like girls trip fun. It’s like, I just really want to talk about this thing I’m really interested in, that you are also really interested in.
It can be a steppingstone to a deeper friendship or a more encompassing friendship, but it could also not be, and that’s OK too. I really wanted to talk about the internet piece of this. Of course your fellow obsessive does not have to be on the internet. It can be, like you said, a hockey friend, a book club friend.
But I guess I wanted to validate that a lot of us fall down the rabbit hole of something on the Internet and we’re really interested in it and hopefully it’s something healthy and not dark, or I guess, on one hand.
Dr. Denise Millstine: Or it could be. Stephen King It’s all right.
Laura Tremaine: But a lot of us find ourselves like in Facebook groups of something that we’re obsessed with, and I wanted to sort of validate that that does feed a little bit of our soul. I came out of my whole lonely period that I write about, and I’ve written about for years. I went through a really lonely season in Los Angeles, city of millions of people, where there should have been friends on every corner.
I struggled to make friends when I had a baby, when I was in a new marriage during that season of my life, and what pulled me out of it was fellow obsessives that I met online. They were fellow bloggers. They were also trying to get a writing career going online. So was I, and having that in common, the fact that we were all trying to be writers online, but we were also on our screens all day long. My other friends were not back then, but I just felt like we cannot dismiss friends that start through a screen. That can be a wonderful way to connect. I mean, that is one of the upsides to the internet.
We talk a lot about the downsides to online connections and there can be great upsides to them, and so I placed a lot of my thoughts about that in the fellow obsessive section because I feel like that might be where those friendships are born sometimes. I feel really passionately about it, obviously.
Dr. Denise Millstine: It’s important to take geography because there are a lot of people who are isolated or their lifestyle keeps them from being able to just pop to somebody’s house. Here you have a platform where if you have access to Wi-Fi and a device, you can find people who are interested in things that you’re interested in.
I was thinking about if I’m considering my fellow obsessive readers, when I close a book that I loved, I want to talk to those friends. I don’t necessarily want to tell my husband first or my best friend first unless I know it’s a book she would also like. It’s nice to know, “Oh, who can I share this with?” and you know who that person is or that group of people are.
Laura Tremaine: Also, I want to say that I wanted to make it not lame. If your favorite connections live online right now in whatever this season is of your life. In the pandemic we all had to connect online. We all had to figure out a way to do it.
But even if whatever it is that is keeping you making your primary connections on a screen in this moment of your life, I wanted that to be not uncool. I wanted that to be OK in certain situations because women have said to me, “I only have friends online” and that that makes them feel like a loser or something.
I wanted to say, “Look, if that’s what your life looks like right now, if you’re feeling connected, if you’re able to share some of yourself, if you’re able to be a good listener to someone else through a screen, that it’s not nothing. That is still valuable.” I really highly, of course, value, in-person connection and all of that. But we can get out of our loneliness through our screens. I’ve done it myself and I wanted to sort of validate that for others.
Dr. Denise Millstine: Judy, what do you think about these connections that are not in the same space, person-to-person, have you seen that be beneficial for people?
Dr. Judith Engelman: I’ve seen that and I’ve done it. My whole career was online from March of 2019 until probably until two weeks from now. I do what’s called locum tenens. I work as a physician in Juneau, Alaska, which is a nice place to go in the summers from Phoenix, Arizona, and I’ve been going there since 2010. When COVID hit, I started doing telemedicine, which you’ve probably done, Denise, and I met all my patients online.
They’ve never met me in person, and it was a lifeline to a lot of them. I’m actually going up in June to meet them in person. I think they’re going to have a party. Everybody’s so excited. The other thing that happened was I’ve had staffings with the entire staff on Tuesdays and Thursdays for an hour and out of that staffing have grown deep friendships.
There’s, for example, another physician from Vermont who was doing a rotation for six months in Juneau, and she and I connected. She’s a researcher at University of Vermont. She’s kind of a renaissance woman, and we really connected and she came to visit me.
I’m going to go to Vermont. So I think it’s a great way, and I think it was a lifeline not just for adults but for youth during COVID. What would kids have done if they didn’t have the ability to see other kids online? You know?
Dr. Denise Millstine: So Laura, you start the book with your friendship philosophies. You have your seats at the Life Council, and the last section is about some ideas and strategies for making friends.
We so often hear it’s so hard to make friends as adults, but you really throw down and challenge people to reconsider whether that is true or whether it just takes some reframing. I don’t want to spoil the book for any listeners that haven’t read it yet, but can you share some of those strategies?
Laura Tremaine: I want to start by saying that I love a new friend, OK? I feel like old friends get all the glory. That’s what all the songs are written about. Movies are made about old friends, and I love old friends. I write extensively about my old friends in the book, but new friends I love because they are meeting you.They’re getting to know you in the most current version of yourself. Most of us have fought really long and hard to become who we are right now. So when you make a friend then, who doesn’t know all your baggage, who doesn’t know your past mistakes, who doesn’t know how you used to be, they see you as exactly this person that you have become and they like you and they want to spend more time with you.
That is the most amazing feeling, and so we don’t write all the songs about new friends. And I feel like making new friends can be so liberating. It can be so empowering to feel like, OK, I am likable or this new version of me is attractive in some way.
That can feel really good. I don’t want people to shy away from making new friends. Now, a lot of times our plate is full, but a lot of times we don’t have a choice. We’ve moved to a new place. We’re kind of forced to make new friends, and I really wanted to reframe that — instead of being like, “Oh, more to do,” it’s, “OK, this is exciting. I get to make friends and be this best version of myself with them.” So I really wanted to reframe making new friends that way.
Then I talk in this third section of the book and it doesn’t spoil it at all. I have no problem talking about every part of the book, but thank you for saying that. I talk about holding it all a little more loosely. We are not friendship dating for friendship marriage.
When you are making new friends, you are not looking for your soulmate, bestie that will be there on your deathbed. You are just looking for a little connection. You’re looking for a little fun, a great conversation. Holding it all a little more loosely as opposed to what, I have done in the past that I think is common, gripping it so tightly. We have this desperation that comes off of us like, “Please be friends with me,” you know? “Please say yes to my coffee invitation” or whatever. We’re just so nervous and we hold it so tightly as if we’re dating. No. Just hold it loosely. If they aren’t able to reciprocate your invitation or they don’t take you back immediately, they’re just busy. It’s probably not personal. If we hold it all a lot more loosely when we’re looking for new friends, I think we will end up being more satisfied with the connections that we are making.
I had to tell myself if I go to a party or something like that, and when I was writing this book, my daughter started a new school and so I was around a whole new community of people, that if I go to this social gathering or whatever it is, I’m not looking to come home with three phone numbers of new besties. That’s like way too high of a bar. That’s a lot. I’m just looking to have one great conversation. That’s it. If I get in the car after this social event and I felt like I had one great conversation, I was able to share a bit of myself. She or he was able to share a bit of themselves. That’s enough for one evening.
I think we’re trying too hard. We’re trying to make it all work. And if you just give yourself the assignment of one good conversation, one few minutes of connection. If I did that, I had a successful evening, I think it drops that sort of desperation that can come off of us. It drops us gripping it so tightly that we have to find a new circle of friends or we have to fit in or we have to have to have to, to just realize like one great connection, one great conversation, leads to two great conversations, leads to three leads to you sort of filtering through in figuring out who you really are connecting with or want to exchange phone numbers with or whatever.
We make it too hard on ourselves, and so I write through a lot of different variations of that in the third section of the book that I hope people take to heart, because I know people are lonely and I know people want to make new friends and they feel like there’s too many obstacles in the way. I wanted to remove these big obstacles that a lot of us share. To just make it a little less of a stressful thing and more of a fun thing.
Dr. Denise Millstine: I love that. It’s so powerful. My favorite tip — and then Judy, I’m going to ask you your favorite tip for making new friends — my favorite tip goes with that about looking at the people who are already in your life, asking yourself: “Is that person who walks her dog the same time I walk my dog, should I maybe walk with her and have a conversation, or write that colleague that you really enjoy when you’re in the meeting with them, should I try to connect with them.”
Even just starting with people that are in your life that you haven’t to that point, for whatever reason, labeled as friend or decided to take it a step further to get to know that person more deeply, not necessarily to be their best ever friend, but just to know them more. I think that’s a great piece of advice that we probably all can do, and we get so stuck in our business and in our lane that we forget to see who’s in that lane next to me. At the same time, there’s a lot of opportunity when we open our eyes.
Laura Tremaine: Yes.
Dr. Denise Millstine: All right, Judy, favorite making friends tip. Tell us.
Dr. Judith Engelman: When you were talking about talking to one person, social phobia is one of the most common phobias that people have, “Going to a party. What am I going to do? Who am I going to talk to?” It’s really common. One of the best ways to deal with social phobia, it’s exactly what you said, don’t worry about the party. Find one person that you’re interested in, or that you think looks friendly, or smile at you, and go talk to that person. That’s exactly what I say. If you walk away, having made one connection, it will help you to go to the next party because there’s somebody there that you can make a connection with. I have had the experience two different times.I was in groups for various things. One was at my place of worship. It was a middle-aged group of women, and we were going to see what the next chapter would be like. One of the women in the group, who I really admired, thought I’d love to be friends with her, but she’s busy and she’s this and she’s that.She called me after the group and she said, “Would you have lunch with me? I just didn’t get enough of you in that group,” and I thought that was so cool.
Dr. Denise Millstine: Yes.
Dr. Judith Engelman: This just happened yesterday. I have a friend who’s very ill and her niece is in town to visit her, and I happen to love her niece. I’ve seen her several times. I picked her up and she called me Auntie Judy. “Hi, Auntie Judy. It’s so good to see you.” I’ve known her since she was little. Now I know her kids. I was driving at the airport and she said, “There’s something I need to talk to you about.” It was really a personal issue that was really tough and she was dealing with. Suddenly she looked at me and she said: “You’re such a resource. Why don’t I realize that? I can call you.” And I said, “Yes. I’m a new friend group. And I told her about your book and I said, “I’m one of your 10 people. You probably have a lot more that can be in your committee, in your council, so that you can call me. You don’t have to wait when you come and visit your aunt, you can call me.
This idea of new friends is just spectacular. I have to tell you, you encouraged me to pick up the phone and call friends that I have had that I have been attentive enough to. I also called two people who are recent friends who I want to get to know. They’ve expressed an interest in knowing me, and right after this podcast is over, I’m having lunch with one.
Laura Tremaine: Oh, I love that! I also love the script where the woman said, “I didn’t get enough of you in the meeting. Can we have a one-on-one?” That is such an easy way to make the invitation. If you’re coming out of a colleague meeting, like you were saying, “Hey, I loved what you said in the meeting” or any version of that, like, “Hey, I would love more of that.”
That’s such a good script. That makes me want to go post about that on social media because sometimes we need literally the exact words to say. I don’t know how to invite a friend to lunch. I feel like it’s awkward. I don’t even know what to say in the text so I love those exact scripts like “I didn’t get enough of you at this event. Could I see you again?” It does almost sound romantic, but you know what works? Dating. Dating works. We can apply some of the same principles to making new friends.
Dr. Denise Millstine: This has been such a fabulous conversation about friendship. I want to thank you both for joining me and for being willing to have the conversation and encourage our listeners to take a deep dive into “The Life Council” by Laura Tremaine. Thank you.
Laura Tremaine: This was amazing. Thank you for having me here.
Dr. Judith Engelman: Thank you for having me. I loved meeting you, Laura, Denise. It’s a pleasure to see you again.
Dr. Denise Millstine: Thank you for joining us to talk books and health today on “Read. Talk. Grow.” To continue the conversation and send comments, visit the show notes or email us at readtalkgrow@mayo.edu.
“Read. Talk. Grow.” is a production of Mayo Clinic Press. Our producer is Lisa Speckhard Pasque and our recording engineer is Rick Andresen.
The podcast is for informational purposes only and is not designed to replace a physician’s medical assessment in judgment. Information presented is not intended as medical advice. Please contact a healthcare professional for medical assistance with specific questions pertaining to your own health if needed. Keep reading everyone.