SUMMARY KEYWORDS

drinking, stop drinking, friends, matter, for life, support, grow, friendship, sobriety, mental health, social life, human health, behavior change, addiction, recovery, science, compassionate, building friendships, research, family, connections, wellbeing, transient society, impacted, health, human connection, boost our mood, feel-good hormones, dopamine, serotonin, reduces the stress hormones, cortisol, good for our brain health, mental acuity, reduce anxiety and depression, good for our heart health, benefits, social connection, overall health, biological imperative, a vital sign, phase, phases in life, values, women, stopping drinking, online, Facebook groups, social, meaningful interaction, exhale, let go, shame, doubt, toolkit, evaluate friendships, journey, communicate our boundaries, find our way to keep the relationships that are important to us, boundaries as bridges to self-preservation, healing rather than barriers, 8 foundational tenets, recognizing, communicating, accepting, social tenets, blending, safeguarding, reciprocating, growth tenets, recalibrating our friendships, becoming the best friend to ourselves, align, alignment, self-talk, taking a break from alcohol, self-friending, heal, recovery

SPEAKERS: Casey McGuire Davidson + Dr. Kimberly Horn

00:02

Welcome to the Hello Someday Podcast, the podcast for busy women who are ready to drink less and live more. I’m Casey McGuire Davidson, ex-red wine girl turned life coach helping women create lives they love without alcohol. But it wasn’t that long ago that I was anxious, overwhelmed, and drinking a bottle of wine and night to unwind. I thought that wine was the glue, holding my life together, helping me cope with my kids, my stressful job and my busy life. I didn’t realize that my love affair with drinking was making me more anxious and less able to manage my responsibilities.

In this podcast, my goal is to teach you the tried and true secrets of creating and living a life you don’t want to escape from.

Each week, I’ll bring you tools, lessons and conversations to help you drink less and live more. I’ll teach you how to navigate our drinking obsessed culture without a bus, how to sit with your emotions, when you’re lonely or angry, frustrated or overwhelmed, how to self soothe without a drink, and how to turn the decision to stop drinking from your worst case scenario to the best decision of your life.

I am so glad you’re here. Now let’s get started.

 

Hey there. Welcome back to the Hello Someday podcast.

If you’ve ever wondered what happens to your friendships when you stop drinking, this episode is for you.

 

Because when alcohol has been the glue holding your social life together, stepping away from it can feel like pulling a thread that unravels everything. You might be wondering if you can still connect with your friends in sobriety, whether you’re going to lose people who matter to you. Or wonder about how you can even make new friends who get what you’re going through.

So my guest today is Dr. Kimberly Horn. She’s the author of Friends Matter for Life. She’s a professor and a research psychologist who spent nearly. 30 years studying human health, behavior change, addiction and recovery. She’s worked with major universities like Virginia Tech and George Washington, and she’s known for making science accessible, compassionate, and actually useful in real life.

 

Dr. Horn’s new book, Friends Matter for Life is a deeply compassionate and research backed guide to building friendships that actually support who you are and the life you want to live.

 

So welcome. I’m glad you’re here.

I’m honored to be here, Casey. Thank you.

Yeah. And will you tell me a little bit about why you wrote this book to begin with?

Yeah, sure. I wrote Friends Matter for Life because I’ve seen not only in my research but in, lived experience with my own friends and family, just how powerful connection is in our overall wellbeing.

 

[00:03:00]

And I really wanted to give people. A framework on how to build those kinds of connections and how we can build relationships and friendships in particular that help us thrive as human beings.

 

And I really think about it as a, like soul meets science on how we can help people grow those friendships that really support our mental health, our emotional and physical health, and especially during the tough seasons in life. I’ve heard the phrase like friendship in the age of loneliness.

 

Do you see from research that a lot of people today, even though they have a million connections online, feel deeply lonely or that they don’t have someone to talk to? It’s one of our loneliest times in history. It has been termed a loneliness epidemic and it is escalating. What do you think causes that?

What is making us so lonely? I think it’s a few things.

[00:04:00]

One, we’ve become a more transient society. We, it, it’s, when we think about back when, our grandparents and their grandparents, they oftentimes lived in the same community for most of their lives, and they had deep roots.

We are more transient. We move more frequently. We change jobs more often even though we have more technology that, that technology has actually created less communication in some ways and more distance with people. I also think that we have a society that has become more based in independence and self-reliance than reaching out to our neighbors to ask for help.

Yeah. That’s really interesting. Especially the idea of we’re so connected, but also like communicate less. I feel like just being on social media these days, it’s almost more of a broadcast network. Like you put out whatever you’re saying and then people choose to respond or not. But it’s not really two-way communication.

It’s not particularly engaging. No. One of the things that surprised me in your research was how friendships actually impacted your health. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

 

The research is really indisputable now. We know that human connection it not only boost our mood and gives us those feel-good hormones, like dopamine and serotonin, but it reduces the stress hormones like cortisol.

It’s also good for our brain health and our mental acuity. It’s good for reducing anxiety and depression. It’s good for our heart health. There are so many benefits. I could go on and on naming them, but the research is more clear than it’s ever been that we need to look at social connection. As part of our overall health, and I really like to think about it as a biological imperative, a vital sign.

 

Just like we think about thirsty or hunger or fatigue, we need to monitor and take care of our connect our connectedness.

Yeah. If a woman’s listening to this and say she has a ton of connections online and people in her life, but she’s still lonely even though she’s surrounded by people, what would you say are the first steps she should take, whether it’s assessing whether her friendships are fulfilling or looking at who she can connect with more deeply? Where should people start?

 

Yeah, I think there are layers to that and I think, when someone’s going through the process of drinking less or abstaining or in recovery, that there are layers and steps that might happen along the way. For someone who is in the process of wanting to reconnect with others or form new friendships, I think it’s really important to start small and not in ways that feel overwhelming. Saying yes to low pressure things like, grabbing a cup of coffee or taking a walk. Those things are easier to do than saying yes to the bigger things, the big parties, the big events, those sorts of things that, that could be, create trips and triggers.

 

One good friend during these vulnerable, very scary, early times in particular can be far more powerful than a crowd, I would say that engaging in really like healthy, low stress environments you think about there are all sorts of classes and sorts of things that I re I consider recovery friendly, like yoga or walking groups because they’re more focused on wellness and health that, so you’re more likely to be around those people who are also prioritizing those sorts of things.

[00:08:00]

I know people, and I don’t want to overuse this, but I really can’t overemphasize the importance of thinking about a cause that is important to you. Whether it’s, working at a food bank or just doing something that makes you feel important that you’re making a contribution. And again, that depends on where a woman in is her season of life, too. In her, the time that, that she might have a right. I’m not trying to put one more thing on the plate, what I’m offering. I may be small things that could create waste, interact with even one or two people that might provide some support that you need at the time.

And there are all sorts of other, I think, smaller ways that we can ease into those low pressure interactions. We put so much pressure on ourselves.

[00:09:00]

Yeah. Yeah. I know when I was thinking about stopping drinking, I had a ton of friends. I was really social and yet, not drinking, or the thought of it, was really terrifying to say out loud to anyone who I interacted with in regular life, who knew me pretty well because I didn’t know if I’d stick with it.

 

I didn’t want to say anything that might have them judge me. What was funny about that is, I joined these online, private Facebook groups, online groups, and shared with these strangers in the group way more than my very best friend from when I was 15, knew about me. Or the person I went walking with every week, just because it was almost easier to be vulnerable and honest with strangers than the people in my lives.

Yeah. And that’s where the, I think the low key, low stress entry points can be useful. It doesn’t, you have to be in a group of people that, you know, in order to find that one or two people that empowers you to overcome some of that shame and self-doubt.

[00:10:00]

And we think the science shows us that even small, like I call like microburst of a positive, meaningful interaction with someone can significantly impact our health and reduce our anxiety and our mood.

 

They don’t have to be big moments. They can be the micro moments that just allow us to exhale and let go of some of that shame and doubt.

 

Yeah. One of the things you wrote about was talking about using a toolkit to evaluate your friendships. Do they energize you? Do they drain you? Can you tell about that? because I feel like a lot of us have relationships that may not be the healthiest or the safest ones to dive into.

 

Yeah. So, I think, and particularly in these early phases that that we’re talking about now, that it can be really hard to let go of some friends and to decide whether or not that person is toxic right now for you and or is in some way impeding your growth or your health journey.

So, I think you have to ask yourself that, is this person a part of my healing journey? Are they got to help me reach my goals in that journey? Are they impeding me? Example might be, that person who says, come on just one glass of wine, that’s, that’s not got to hurt you.

You can have one. And I don’t, I typically don’t think that kind of person. Is intentionally being toxic, but they also are reflecting and part of their history with you. Yeah. One, I think there are a couple things in those sorts of scenarios because I think that’s, it’s highly unlikely that you won’t experience something like that along the way.

[00:12:00]

So, I think you have to decide whether or not that person and that’s on you, creating your own boundaries to say. Here’s what I need right now in, in this friendship, and to be very clear and open and honest and communicating. I can meet you here, for an hour. I can have breakfast with you here.

I can grab lunch with you here, but I cannot go here right now. I do not want to go to this place A, B, C right now. I don’t want to meet up after work for drinks. Those are, there are some things that you have to communicate very clearly to people to see how they, and if they’re able to respond to those boundaries and respect those boundaries, then you can probably keep them in your life right now.

But if they don’t, there’s some reevaluation points and recalibration points that might need to take place. Maybe it’s a pause. Maybe you just can’t spend time with them right now. Maybe you can just talk to them on the phone right now.

[00:13:00]

Maybe it’s just a text right now. In some cases you don’t go back to those relationships.

But I would say, in many cases in these scenarios, that if we can communicate our boundaries. That we can find our way to keep the relationships that are important to us. I like to think about boundaries as bridges to self-preservation and healing rather than barriers.

I like that. That’s nice. And I think you’re right.

Basically what I did and what I advise women to do if they’re open to it, is just to tell all their friends that they’re doing, for example, a hundred day not drinking challenge, like a health kick. And so using that information to be like, Hey, I’m not drinking for the next three months.

Let’s go on a walk, or let’s go out to breakfast, or whatever it is. That, things that you were suggesting as opposed to, I don’t want to go to the bar and hang out. And just put it out there easily and try to navigate around that until they found their footing in sobriety. And I don’t know about your experience, but I would think that there, it wouldn’t be that uncommon that sometimes people might want to join you in that.

Yeah. I think it’s changing a lot in the last five years. The sober curious movement has just exploded and taking breaks from alcohol or reevaluating your relationship with it. Is much more common and more accepted. It’s amazing. A decade ago when I was starting on my, I’m not drinking.

I’m like 9 and a half years in now. Anytime you told someone you weren’t drinking, they would say, why did you have a problem? Just have one. What’s going on? Now people are like, oh, good for you. I should do that too. Yeah, I just was chatting with friends of mine who’ve had a longstanding wine and dinner club.

And they shared with me that they have taken off the wine part of their wine and dinner club because so many.

[00:15:00]

That’s amazing. People have made the choice just to, they just don’t want real alcohol in their life anymore. Not that they necessarily felt like, there were big issues, they just didn’t want it in their life anymore.

And I think and this is, I don’t want to get off the subject too much, but. I’ve been following a lot of the research lately. I you’ve seen this, you may have seen this big menopause movement. Yeah. With women for women, which is just so powerful. And I think that with more of the research that’s come with around menopause, that the impact of alcohol on women in particular of a certain age as getting increased attention as well.

I applaud that and it’s, and I’m so happy to see the science coming out as well. Yeah, no, I think the science information is really helpful and I love the idea that your friends literally had a wine and dinner club and people within the group as they stop drinking. They decided the name didn’t apply anymore.

[00:16:00]

I remember, when I was in my early days, there was a woman and I’m only bringing this up because it’s so common for these things to feel completely overwhelming when you’re on shaky ground with not drinking. A friend from the neighborhood whose son was my son’s age invited me to be part of her book club.

And she was like, you’re got to love these women. They’re smart, they’re awesome, they’re fun, they work and we drink a ton of wine. And I just suddenly was like a deer in the headlights. because I was maybe two months sober. Just, and I was like. Oh my God, I can’t go. And went to my husband and was like, what do I tell them?

Do I tell them like, I don’t read books, like I’m not good at book clubs. Do I tell them I’m going running those nights? And my husband’s tell her you don’t drink. You don’t drink. And I was just like so terrified about that. And I finally told her, I was like, would love to meet your friends.

[00:17:00]

I actually am taking a break from alcohol. I just started two months ago, probably not a great time to join your book club. And she was amazing about it. She was just like, oh, I totally get it. I have to watch my drinking too, take breaks. But it is just this thing that you’re terrified to, to not be accepted or to be rejected based on that.

Yeah. Our society has put so much shame around, around recovery of any, whatever we want to call it, however we define it for ourselves. There is so much stigma around that. And I think the story that you tell is probably a story of many. Who feel that they will be judged and who feel, some sense of self doubt or shame in their decisions.

And yeah. That’s when one and we touched on this just briefly, but this whole notion around the toolkit that comes with the, my book and one of the tenets is, self-friending. Yeah. And that is, can you tell us about that?

[00:18:00]

That is standing up for yourself and giving yourself the same care and attention and concern that you would give a close friend. You are your most important ally and all that. The ways in which we treat and love and take care of ourself, I feel like are in many ways how we mirror ourselves to the world and. And when we think about this in terms of reducing drinking or recovery journey for whatever it looks like to you, that’s really treating yourself with patients and encouragement and being very in tune to that self-talk that we can go down the rabbit hole so quickly with especially women.

 

But that also includes forgiving yourself, for maybe mistakes that you’ve made in the past or maybe the slipup that you’ve made. And we, we can’t, when we are self-compassionate that is the basis of how we form other relationships. So, when we talk about the importance of connection. A lot of it begins with how we treat ourselves.

Yeah. I love that. You were talking about self-friending and it reminded me around the concept of re-parenting yourself, right?

 

Yeah. And the reason I like that is the idea of anytime you are. Afraid to say something or do something just because of how people are got to react to you.

Say, what would I say if my best friend told me this? And we’re so hard on ourselves. It’s incredible. You are we really are. And one of the things I guess I want to mention too is that we talk about. How friend forming new friendships especially is difficult when you make the choices to cut back on your drinking.

[00:20:00]

You do, you can change your circle a bit. But one of the things I want to point out too is that this may come at a, having difficulty making new friends or reconnecting with existing friends is something that happens at this point in life anyway, regardless. Regardless. So, I hear this question time and time again.

When I hit my thirties, my friendships change. When I hit my forties, my friendship change. Now I’m, I’m thinking about retirement or I’m empty nesting. My whole circle has changing. How do I, why is it so hard to make new friends? And so I guess what I want to say is that don’t put all of this on yourself because you’ve made the choice to reduce your drinking.

Some of this happens naturally. Maybe you have an extra layer, but there again, I’m trying to reduce this self-doubt and the blade, the blame, and the guilt around this because these are things that happen to women at a certain age in life, in a certain season, in life. Anyway. And oftentimes during this point in life, we are faced with deciding whether or not we want to keep certain people in our lives.

And that is a difficult decision, whether by choice or consequence, whether it’s their decision or yours. It is painful and it is a grieving process that is real. And so I would say that if you are faced with making these kinds of decisions, whether it has to do with your drinking or not, to give yourself allow yourself the time to grieve, to be, to have the pain that comes with letting someone go and to know that it’s okay to let someone go, that a friendship that served you 15 years ago might not serve you now.

[00:22:00]

And that doesn’t mean that friendship was never important to you. It was, and it brought you gifts perhaps at a certain point in your time, a time, certain time in your life, and you can hold onto those gifts because they were given to you, you received them, and they had an impact on your life in some way.

And now you can move on. But that doesn’t mean that you forget them. That doesn’t mean you, you didn’t have those gifts. So what served you then doesn’t serve you now, and you can move on and make space for new people to come into your life. So, will you start us with the eight tenets of dynamic friendship? Will you take us through those?

We talked about a few of them. Yeah, I can take you to a couple of them. All right, so the book is broken up into eight. 8 tenets and I would like to think about it as so the first part is they’re really like foundational tenets.

So, I think about recognizing, communicating, accepting. Those are the first three. The next two are what I consider more social tenets. They’re like a blending, safeguarding, reciprocating. And then the final two are what I consider growth tenets. And that’s when we really think about recalibrating our friendships and becoming the best friend to ourselves that we can be.

Just to give you one example maybe in the context of this, I think we’ve talked about a little bit, is recalibrating. And that is when we check in. To see. It goes back to the point that it was a nice segue to the last point, which is checking in on the health of your friendships.

It recognizing when a friendship feels draining to you, when you feel like you’re not showing up in it in your authentic self. When it, it might create some trips or triggers or some slips for you that just don’t, you don’t want to be a part of your journey anymore.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson 

Hi there. If you’re listening to this episode, and have been trying to take a break from drinking, but keep starting and stopping and starting again, I want to invite you to take a look at my on demand coaching course, The Sobriety Starter Kit®.

 

The Sobriety Starter Kit® is an online self study sober coaching course that will help you quit drinking and build a life you love without alcohol without white knuckling it or hating the process. The course includes the exact step by step coaching framework I work through with my private coaching clients, but at a much more affordable price than one on one coaching. And the sobriety starter kit is ready, waiting and available to support you anytime you need it. And when it fits into your schedule. You don’t need to work your life around group meetings or classes at a specific day or time.

This course is not a 30 day challenge, or a one day at a time approach. Instead, it’s a step by step formula for changing your relationship with alcohol. The course will help you turn the decision to stop drinking, from your worst case scenario to the best decision of your life.

You will sleep better and have more energy, you’ll look better and feel better. You’ll have more patience and less anxiety. And with my approach, you won’t feel deprived or isolated in the process. So if you’re interested in learning more about all the details, please go to www.sobrietystarterkit.com. You can start at any time and I would love to see you in the course. 

 

 

[00:24:00]

So, I think that we have to, in those situations, we have to think about how much time and energy. That we want to put into certain relationships. If we’ve done an inventory and we think, okay, this, I haven’t seen this person in a really long time, and I’m, I still want this person to be in my life.

I, I feel like I need to reach out. I’m a little embarrassed because I haven’t reached out for a long time and I’m feeling a little guilty about that.

Yeah. But I really care about this person and I want to make an effort. And so I say, do you know if that feel, you, feel that strongly about that? Do the reach out and see where it goes?

[00:25:00]

Sometimes friendships just naturally fade. That’s how friendships mainly disappear as they just fade. And some of them we can just let move on. As I said, they served us, there was no big event, there was no explosion, there was no fight. It just faded. And that’s okay, too.

We don’t, I. All friendships aren’t meant to be deep and long lasting. People come and go in our lives at different points of time and bring us different types of gifts, and I really truly believe that. So that’s really what recalibrating is about. In the book I talk about a series of questions we can ask ourselves.

Okay what do I need to reflect on? What kind of questions do I need to ask of myself? And then what series of actions might help me recalibrate these in my life a little bit? And certainly I talk some about how people that, that pain of letting someone, of deciding to let someone go or be the one who got let go of, because that happens too.

[00:26:00]

So, the idea then, if I’m hearing you correctly, is to is it to take an inventory of your friendships and ask some questions about who is supporting you in your life and who you want to keep and grow friendships with versus the ones that aren’t? That aren’t the right fit for you? Or what’s the process of recalibrating?

Again, I think you can and some of this goes back to the first tenet too, which is recognizing. Okay. So, when you think about all the different types of people in your life, okay, so you have people that, as you said before, that you’ve been friends with for 15 years, right? So you have that bucket of people.

You might have some people that you go to church or synagogue with. Maybe you have some people that you or you regularly meet up in your neighborhood. Even some family members can be friends. So I think that it’s important to, it is a part of that inventory to think about the people that you have in certain slots in your life that are important to you and are you feeling fulfilled by them.

[00:27:00]

Are there places in your life where you feel a gap or deficiency? Do you not have people that you can really go deep with and talk, have spiritual talks with? Do you not have people in your life that bring diverse. Opinions and more intense dialogue to the table. Do you not have friends you can just go for a hike with or so just really thinking about what’s important to you in your life and your health journey and your spiritual growth and your wellness, and where are the gaps and if you have gaps, because loneliness lives in.

The delta between where you want to be emotionally with your friends and where you are. And if you have a big gap between where you are and where you want to be with your friends and your social life and your connectedness, then that’s the area that you need to work on to fill that gap of loneliness. Does that make sense?

Yeah. It does. It does. And I’m wondering too, it’s, so in your book, you have a framework of different things that friendship could bring to you or what areas you’re missing in your life. Is that right? Yeah. And again, I, that’s a part of the of recognizing and seeing, okay, like who is a friend in my life that when I’m with them, I just, I laugh.

Yeah, they make me laugh. Who’s that friend in my life that I know it is spontaneous that I can just have an extra, 30 minutes on a Saturday afternoon because my kids are, don’t have a million practices going different directions. Who’s that person that I know I can call and say hey, you want to meet for a cup of coffee?

Who’s that person that brings that just brings that depth or just makes you feel like you’re just the most important person in the world.

[00:29:00]

We all need different kinds of people in our lives. That’s why I say you just have to really go through a series of questions and asking yourself, where, what am I missing?

Because I sometimes when people say I don’t I don’t know how to make friends. I don’t know where to go to meet friends and. I’m lonely. So what I try to get people to do is to be more specific for me about that. What, where are you lonely? What parts of your life do you feel like you’re missing something?

Yeah. Because you can be surrounded by people but still feel really lonely, yeah. And I think when I think back to a lot of the women I know, I think. Their lives are so filled with sometimes obligations or scheduling that they’ve lost time to. Have real friends. You have a lot of acquaintances between work and kids’ sports practices and your spouse’s dinner event or whatever it is, your last time you had a real close friendship might’ve been before kids or in college or when you were truly just supporting each other and talking.

Yeah. And I think that sometimes when women who are in that season of life that you just described that you just described so well, that the interactions that they have are built in sometimes just to their kids’ activities and not that those aren’t important. Because those, even if those are quick, like I call the micro moments of connecting, like they’re still important.

Yeah. But sometimes they stay at the surface because of the focus on the kids and the focus on other things and the focus on other people, and then there’s just very little time to go deeper with someone for you.

Yeah. Yeah. So it, and again, I don’t intend this to pile on to the plates of women who already have very full plates. At the same time, I think it’s essential to really think about this concept of self-friending and to prioritize and carve out. That time for connection, not only with yourself, but with other people, even if they’re, even if it’s coffee, even if it’s lunch, even if it’s a walk, even if it’s, just, sometimes I’ll get on a text thread with, friends of mine who live from out of town and before I know, we’re, we’ve texted for 20 minutes, just catching up on things.

And I, it’s satisfying because it gave me some depth with them. But it, I did it with intention. Tell me what’s going on in your life right now. How such and such, how are you, what’s on your mind right day? What do your days look like? That friendship, curiosity is, I think, really essential for helping us connect even in brief moments with people.

And you have to model that back too. If you want, if you really want to have a, an in-depth briefer interaction with someone, model that. Back of how you would like to hear back from them because, sometimes you get these sort of what, cold text, it’s like, how are you, I’m okay.

Okay. I’m, I want to connect with you. Let’s go a little, let, what can I do for, to help this go a little bit deeper? Yeah. And I think, you mentioned not wanting to add more things onto someone’s plate, but. One of the things I’ve found is that when you stop drinking, you have to fill this time that you used to have when you were drinking and zoning out on TV or recovering or playing catch up.

And so you do actually. Have more time. You just need to fill it with things that are satisfying and nurturing and feel like a treat for yourself. Sitting and having coffee with someone or reading or spending time reflecting on the people who light you up and reaching out to them.

[00:33:00]

Those are actually fantastic things to do in early sobriety because you’re expanding your mind beyond.

Drinks and happy hours and, doing whatever. You’re actually reflecting on what lifts you up. And stillness is good to a certain point, right? Yeah. We all need that time for stillness and quiet, but when I think you’re in the process of trying to quit or cut back, that extra time can be a little slippery.

Yes, because we know that, the research is a very strong that people with significant and meaningful social support have a significantly higher likelihood of having and achieving their sobriety goals a year later. Yeah, you need to feel supported and like you’re not alone.

When you’re taking and taking the change. Think that’s part of, I, sorry, I didn’t mean to step on you there. No, go. I think one of the things that, that I wanted to do with my book is take us back to some of the basic social skills, because as adults we get a little rusty. With our social skills, right?

Yes. And I think, not to bring up the sore subject, the pandemic just made it worse. We all got a little awkward with social interaction after that. And so I really think that some of what the, why the book is resonating with people is because it goes back to some of those basic relational skills that are just, are so important for connection and we need to tune up every now and then.

I do. Social skills are like any skill and they rip our practice. Okay, so take us through some of those basic social and relational skills that we need to know about for connection, because I think I could probably use a refresher as well. Some of it is just basic communication, right?

[00:35:00]

Knowing how to let people know what you want or what you need. I’m using iMessages, using, I feel, I think, and, not making assumptions with people and the example I gave just a minute ago of. Trying to create a text conversation with someone. It’s, it, you can do it in a text or you can do it when you’re just standing in a room with someone.

But just the basics of, hi, how are you? How’s your day? Tell me a little bit about your day. What was exciting about your day? And sometimes someone will reach out to me and just say, Hey. I’m like, Hey and then you got to just keep, taking it a little bit further. As I said, some of it’s just practice, but yeah, starting a conversation.

Ending a conversation. We’ve all gotten very lazy with ending conversations. It’s, you might be in the middle of a, a message with someone and. They’re just gone. That’s what’s hard about texting, right? Because you text and then you don’t know if someone’s coming to a three hour meeting or something.

[00:36:00]

Just back to some of the basics. Anyway, I, sometimes it seems very elementary, but I, it’s important figuring out how to. Connect with people and make them feel valued and listen to what they’re saying and make time for them. That those kinds of things, we all want to feel seen and valued and heard, and it’s very important to think about ways that you present that in the world.

 

One of the things that I think is a, is hard for a lot of us to wrap our heads around it, but you mentioned that this happens to women at every stage in their lives. I’m turning 50 in August, so I’m feeling this was the idea that it’s never too late to find and make new friends, but then the question is.

How do you do it? Do you have any practical ideas for people if they’re like, okay, my son’s 17, so he’s got to go off to college soon. So a lot of those friendships with the moms I saw at basketball or ultimate Frisbee or baseball or something are got to fade away. Like, how do you seek out new friends and connect with people?

[00:37:00]

I think one of the most important things is to follow your passions, because if you follow your passions, you’re more, you’re likely to find like-minded people. And people that you have something in common with in terms of conversation, in terms of the kind of experience you want. Again, maybe it’s a yoga class, maybe it’s a, maybe it’s a book club.

I don’t know. Maybe it’s something through an activity through a church. Going back to what I said earlier about starting small. Starting familiar something in your community, something in your church, something in you, perhaps you’ve connected with some of the moms that you used to do soccer with who are maybe they’re starting a walking club.

There are meetups that, are for hiking and all sorts of things, for all sorts of crafting.

[00:38:00]

So I think. Start small, start familiar, follow your passions. Think about what something that might help you, give you purpose or cause. I think that’s very important. And the other thing that, that I think is interesting is intergenerational friendships.

Whether they be someone older than you or younger than you. I think there’s a lot for the exchange of wisdom and new perspective. And there are certain groups that are popping up now that are trying to populate these sorts of intergenerational friendships because you think about someone like you, you’re turning 50 and you know all of the lived experience that you have.

And all the wisdom that you could provide for mentoring. I think that those are critically important relationships in both ways because our society has really pushed away from those sort of interactions. And, I think they’re beautiful, important, and I would love to see us m move back to a place where we had more opportunity for those sorts of intergenerational relationships.

[00:39:00]

Yeah. Oh, that’s really interesting. I was smiling because completely and totally randomly. Last week I had a call with my boss, my very first boss that I worked for when I was 22 to 24. And we had been Facebook friends for years . And something came up where I had to reach out to him for his opinion and we talked on the phone and both of us had been smiling for days afterwards.

because I loved him and loved working for him. And it was just such a long time ago. And of course now I’m almost 50. And anyway, it was just really fun to connect with him again. And he was definitely my mentor. Yeah. And I’m seeing the smile on your face. And just the pure delight that I’m observing on you right now, and it that, to me, that just demonstrates that even those micro moments, can give us those boosts that we need.

[00:40:00]

Yeah. And don’t underestimate the value of reconnecting with someone who is important to you. No, I that, it just made me smile. because I, it was such a long ago connection. But when you were talking to mentoring It did. It did come back to me. because I was like, yeah, that made a huge difference in my life.

I told him, I’m like, you’re still my favorite boss. And it was 25 years ago. I bet that made his day too. Yeah. So what has been most surprising to you in all your research about friendships? Surprising. One of the things that I’m pleased about is that there’s an increasing amount of research that shows how important social health is and that I.

People are talking about it, it seems like almost every week now, I see an article in some major media outlet about the importance of a friendship to our health and longevity. So, I’m not necessarily surprised about that, but I am very pleased about that. And I guess I wish that, as we start to have this dialogue around more around friendship, that one of the things I would hope for is that there’s more discussion about how our friendships.

Are important for recovery, for sobriety, for harm, reduction, for all sorts of things around many types of substances. And as I’ve been in this business for nearly 30 years now, of studying addiction and recovery. And I guess I would want to a takeaway message to be that, that re recovery isn’t just the opposite of addiction. It’s the opposite of disconnection.

 

[00:42:00]

And I think that when at its heart that isolation is really what fuels a lot of the reasons that people turn to substances for myriad reasons and. Part of what I want to do is elevate that discussion of connection as integral to our whole health and our choices to, be it reduce you, abstain or whatever from myriad substances.

Yeah. And to see how healing real friendship can be in helping to people reframe their lives, rebuild their lives and really look at themselves in more loving ways. Yeah. I think that’s really interesting because not only is connection so important in recovery, and it just is.

[00:43:00]

You need people to support you and build you up and make you feel like everything’s okay, but also like when you do substances, when you drink, it actually is very isolating even when you’re surrounded. By people. I remember, sitting on my couch watching TV after the kids went to bed, drinking wine, and there was just this film around me, even though my husband was in the room with me, where I was just in my own little world.

 

And it also kept me isolated. The next morning when my husband would ask me how I was feeling or what was going on, I was just really defensive and irritated and closed off and didn’t want him to judge me. You’re very isolated and when you take that away, you feel vulnerable, but it also can give you the opportunity to actually connect with another person and feel that joy and support and openness that you might not have had in a really long time.

Yeah, in so many ways that’s when we’re feeling that way and we’re the least motivated to connect is when we most need to connect.

[00:44:00]

Yeah, and it’s hard to do that if you’re under the influence. It’s just, it’s not. It’s not real. It’s like substance induced, whatever your emotions are a lot of the time.

Yeah. And like you said, even when you do, there’s a there’s a wrapper, there’s a yeah. A feeling like you’re there, but you’re not truly connecting. Yeah. Because I think sometimes people are hiding and again, they’re hiding in that shame and self-doubt and fear and vulnerability.

But when some of that, I think connecting with truth and honesty is what helps us really start to form those deeper, more meaningful relationships in a different way. Not that you didn’t have or never had deep and meaningful relationship. It just, it shifts.

Yeah. One question I had, because it is scary to open up to someone.

[00:45:00]

How can you assess if that person is got to be a safe one for you to share with?

 

I think it’s important to pay attention to our, again, to our self-talk there in, in some ways and to trust your instincts. So, often we have these messages and we’re our self-talk is sending us the right messages and the reservations, but we don’t listen to ourselves.

 

So, I think if there’s a person in your life that you are trying to decide whether or not to share with and you have hesitation. And you have doubt to listen to that.

Yeah. Yeah. Trust your gut and trust yourself.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s really important. In terms of finding people or friendships that are aligned with who you want to be or where you want your life to go.

 

Are there any steps that typically look at because you have to choose where to invest your time and your energy and your outreach, right?

 

[00:46:00]

Yeah. I think that values alignment is really important. And so I would say one to think about. People that you know, whose values are where you are right now, and that, they’re, you’re trying to decide, is this person a temporary Phil right now, or is this someone whose values aligned?

 

And maybe, this. I want to take this friendship a little bit further, or maybe I need to split this friendship right now. So, I think it’s really important to ask yourself. If, do you like yourself more or less when you’re around this particular person? Is it energizing? Do I feel authentic or do I still feel like I’m hiding with this person?

So, again, different friends have filled different slots and different needs at different phases of your life. But, I think, especially when you’re in this new phase of cutting back, or trying to abstain from alcohol, it’s important to think about, especially now, if this person’s values aligned in your life.

 

Yeah. That’s a great place I think to leave us. Will you tell us about your book, what people should know about it, where they can find it, or where they can find you and learn more?

Yeah, I’m happy to. Again, the book is, Friends Matter for Life: Harnessing the 8 Tenets Dynamic Friendship, and I really feel like this is a soul meets science kind of blueprint to help us navigate the ins and outs. Outs, ups and downs of adult friendship.

 

You can find me on drkimberlyhorn.com. I’m on Instagram and Facebook, LinkedIn, and you can buy the book on Amazon or anywhere where books are sold.

Thank you so much for being here. I really love talking with you.

It is my pleasure, Casey, and again, I’m so happy for you and success of your show and keep doing what you’re doing.

Your message is so very important, and I appreciate you.

Oh, thank you. You keep doing what you’re doing too.