January 28, 2024 • 25 mins
In this episode of Inner Healing Intelligence, clinical psychologist and mindfulness coach, Dr. Laurie Little, explores the essence and benefits of being your own best friend. Drawing from personal experiences and professional insights, she navigates the complexities of self-friendship and shares essential self-growth practices to help listeners foster a healthy relationship with themselves.
The discussion delves deep into Dr. Little's three criteria of authenticity, trust, and enjoying each other's company that shape her friendships and ultimately her relationship with herself. She emphasizes the importance of self-authenticity, embracing flaws and cherishing the true self. Putting a spotlight on the crucial role of trust, she offers insights into the careful handling of trust in all relationships, including the one with ourselves.
Dr. Little further explores the enriching aspect of laughter and joy, underlining that the company you keep should bring you happiness and intellectual stimulation. Ultimately, she highlights the importance of being your own sector of joy, authenticity, and trust.
She stresses the power of independence, advocating that each individual is responsible for their own happiness. By building a strong friendship with yourself, an empowering belief system can be created. Listeners are encouraged to take a leap of faith, try new things, welcome fresh experiences and embrace opportunities for self-discovery.
With this episode, become equipped to undertake the journey of self-discovery and cultivate a powerful inner healing intelligence. Begin your transformative journey towards self-love and acceptance, and join others as they share their experiences on laurielittle.com or the Inner Healing Intelligence private Facebook group.
Want to find more ways to reduce stress, anxiety and perfectionism?
Get my free guide: “Five Steps to Finding Calm in the Chaos”
Join my tribe at www.laurielittle.com OR Inner Healing Intelligence Private Facebook Group to connect, ask questions or suggest topics.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome back to Inner Healing Intelligence. I'm your host, Dr. Laurie Little.
Today I'd like to talk about the concept of how to be your own best friend.
When you think about what it means to have a best friend, what thoughts or images come to your mind?
To me, a best friend is that person who is always there for you no matter what.
(00:26):
They stand by you even on your really shitty days when you're grumpy and overwhelmed
and you can't see anything positive about anything.
Best friends also celebrate with you when you've reached a goal or whenever
you have some really good news that you want to share.
(00:48):
Best friends are the people who you listen to and who you trust and know that
they only have your best interest at heart, even if sometimes they even have
to tell you some difficult truths.
Today we're going to dive into what it means to be a good friend to others and
(01:10):
more importantly, how to be the best friend that you can be to yourself. So stay tuned.
Welcome, everyone. My name is Dr. Lori Little, and I'm a clinical psychologist,
mindfulness coach, psychedelic therapist, wife, and mom.
(01:30):
My passion is helping people learn to listen to and trust their inner healing
intelligence, that part of us that is always moving towards health and growth.
Ultimately, when we allow our inner healing intelligence to be our guide,
we can stop looking outside of ourselves for answers.
(01:52):
We can experience more joy, more peace, and more connection with others than
we may have ever thought possible.
Although it may sound simple, it is by no means easy.
Join me as we discuss the many challenges and opportunities that listening to
your inner healing intelligence can bring to your life.
(02:15):
In episode 13, we talked about five key areas of having a healthy relationship
as well as the red flags to look out for if you suspect that your relationship
needs a little bit of work.
If you haven't heard that episode, then I would encourage you to check that
(02:35):
out after listening to this.
Today we're going to expand a little bit more on the idea of what it means to
be a good friend to others,
but mostly we're going to talk about how can we translate that into being a
good friend for ourselves.
Who do you think of when you you think of your best friend?
(03:00):
Do certain faces or names come to your mind?
When I use the term best friend, it actually conjures up within me a bit of
a childlike or teenage part of me, that idea of who's your BFF.
And so one of the questions is, do we still have BFFs even as I would say that
(03:24):
some people really do, but for me personally,
I don't think so much anymore about the idea of having a best friend, singular,
but really think more about the idea of my best friends, plural. Right.
I have my oldest and dearest friend who's been in my life since we were seven
(03:47):
years old, and I value her so much because we have a shared history together.
She knows me from as long as I can remember, and I think that is just such a
gift to know someone for that long. It's almost like having a sibling.
You just can't remember a time when they weren't in your life.
(04:11):
So if you have a person like that, consider yourself very lucky and blessed.
I also have friends that have been my friends for over 20 years now since I
moved to Cincinnati, and they have been what I think of as my tribe.
We have shared raising children together from infancy to those impossible teen
(04:37):
years and now going off to college years, dealing with empty nest.
So those friends to me
are so valuable because again that
shared history we know so much
about each other's lives and care about each other deeply but
I also have a handful of really close co-workers who I've really truly only
(05:01):
known for the last five years or so but they are so valuable to me I can't imagine
a life without them when I think about my friends my friend groups,
what do all of these friends for me share in common?
And I can think of three ways in particular in which a friend for me moves from
(05:23):
the category of being just a friend to really being one of my best friends.
The first area is what I'll call authenticity.
The older I get, the more more important I realize it is to be authentic,
to be fully and truly myself, flaws and all.
(05:48):
When I was younger, I spent a lot of time worrying about what other people thought of me.
And as time has gone on, it's not that I don't worry about that at all.
Of course, I will always worry to some extent what people think of me,
but there's definitely been a shift away from emphasizing what do they think to what do I think.
(06:14):
In my teens and even in my 20s, I definitely was desperate for people to like me,
and I probably would have molded myself into anything if I thought that it would
allow me to have more friends or get people to like me better.
The concept of being authentic at that phase of my life was just not even on the radar.
(06:38):
I didn't even know who I was as a person, so how could I even imagine the idea
of being being authentically me.
As time has gone on, however, with a lot of therapy.
A lot of psychedelic work, and probably just aging, I've come to finally see
more value in myself separate from whether people like me or not.
(07:04):
I truly believe that I would much rather have a very small circle circle of
friends that I can truly be myself with versus a huge group of people that I
feel like I have to be fake with.
I don't want to worry that I have to look a certain way or talk a certain way
or think a certain way in order to be liked and accepted.
(07:27):
If someone really does not like me as I am, then I'm more able to see now that it's not personal.
I don't like everyone. Everyone's not not going to like me.
But it's taken me a long time to get there and a lot of work.
Being able to be truly authentic is a key component of having a best friend.
(07:49):
And the reverse is true. My closest friends feel the same way.
I'm really sensitive to people being fake or not real or not honest,
and I really need someone to be honest with me, even if we disagree.
And that leads me into the second key for me, which is trust.
(08:12):
And by the way, just as an aside, these are all my needs.
These are all the things that are important to me. I'm not saying they should be important to you.
I'm just giving you some ideas and some thoughts to consider.
I really need my best friends to be trustworthy.
(08:33):
And in episode 13, when talking about healthy relationships.
I talk more about this concept of trust and what trust really means.
For me, trust is about believing that what my friends are telling me is true,
and it's also about feeling like I can rely on them.
It really is also a bit connected to authenticity in that I need my best friends
(08:59):
to tell me the truth no matter what.
I want and need my friends to tell me if I've done something wrong or said something
wrong or said something hurtful.
I, if you hadn't guessed, am a a big talker in my relationships,
and I really need the opportunity to talk things out if there's a conflict or an issue going on.
(09:23):
I don't want to have to doubt that my friend is being truthful when they say that they're okay.
I'm really super sensitive to lying. And in fact, I'm kind of overly sensitive.
I don't even like practical jokes because I feel like there's this element of lying with them.
I feel like April Fool's Day is my most hated day of the year.
(09:47):
So my value is tell me the truth, even if you know I'm not going to like it,
because I'm going to trust you and I'm going to respect you for that.
And that is a non-negotiable for me and my best friends.
Once that trust has been broken, for me, again, I'm not saying this this is
(10:09):
right, I'm just sharing honestly.
That for me, it's really almost impossible to get myself to feel safe,
to open myself up back to trusting someone again if that person has breached my trust.
I'm not saying that's right. I'm just saying that's how it is for me.
So authenticity and trust are absolutely essential, non-negotiables.
(10:35):
The last thing that I need for my relationship with my best friends is that
we laugh and we truly enjoy spending time with each other.
I love to laugh and
to be honest my genuine laugh the
one that is just pops out of me is can be a little bit loud and even potentially
(10:59):
slightly annoying to others I totally recognize that within myself but I laugh
a lot I've always been very attracted to funny and to smart people So to me,
laughing is just the best feeling in the entire world.
Laughter is the sound of joy.
(11:20):
So if you are smart and you're funny and you're authentic and you're trustworthy.
Then come sit next to me because this is who I need in my life.
We have so little time on this planet and so many responsibilities,
so many things that we feel like we have to do that I really feel like at this
(11:44):
stage of my life, I'm going to be a little bit more choosy about who I'm going to spend my time with.
Do I want to spend time with people that I find boring or they want to talk
about or do things that I don't have any interest in?
Probably not. At this point, I want to be with people where I feel joy and I
(12:08):
feel energized after having spent time together.
As we start to now transition to thinking about this as being your own best friend.
A precursor to this idea is another belief or another idea that has really rung
(12:29):
true for me that has come again, either with age or therapy,
is the idea that all of my emotional needs cannot nor should be met by other people.
One of the most empowering beliefs that I have come to to embrace over time
is that I am responsible for my own happiness.
(12:51):
Only I can create the life that I want to live.
So there's no prince charming, there's no fairy godmother that's going to come
along and bippity boppity, they're going to make all my dreams come true.
I wish that were in the case, but reality has set in.
And the truth is, if I want something, I have to be the one to go get it.
(13:15):
I've also come to see that one person cannot be your everything.
I would absolutely say with 100% certainty that my husband is really truly my
bestest, best friend, my bestest BFF, but even he can't meet every single one of my needs.
(13:36):
So not one person can be your everything.
And if you do do find yourself in a position where you really only have one true good friend.
I would say that's better than nothing, but I absolutely would encourage you
to be open to the idea that your life would be so much fuller with more than one best friend.
(14:00):
In the end, in order to really have good friends, however, you really do need
to know how to be friends with yourself. So let's start with these concepts
of authenticity and trust.
Becoming your own best friend means that you have to start by getting really
(14:22):
honest and real with yourself about who you are in this moment,
not the who you want to be or who you think you should be, who other people
want you to be, but really, truly, who are you?
And I think this can be actually a very, very difficult question,
(14:45):
particularly if you are someone who has spent your life really working as a
people pleaser or a caretaker.
It can be very difficult to start to reverse that and shift away from what can
I do for you or who do you want me to be to who am I really.
(15:08):
In order to do that, we have to practice reducing those self judgments.
How are you going to figure out who you are if you are very mean and judgmental
to yourself? It's going to make it that much more difficult.
If you can learn how to be kind and self-compassionate, you will embrace more
(15:34):
honest and real aspects of yourself.
For example, when I was a kid in the 70s and 80s, the term nerd was an insult.
This was a very mean term back in the day.
I know now people say it, and it's not that big of a deal, but back then to
call someone a nerd was really hurtful.
(15:57):
And I was so a nerd.
I had the glasses and the braces, and I was really academic and studious.
And so what I have come to realize, however, is that I am still such a nerd.
Even today, 51 years old, I can say wholeheartedly, I am a nerd and whatever that means today.
(16:21):
So I love Marvel Marvel and superhero movies. I love video games.
I love science. I love learning.
Like, this is just what I think of in my own mind about what it means to be a nerd.
But I'm not ashamed about that anymore. I now just see these parts of myself as who I am.
(16:44):
Now, yes, of course, some of my friends tease me about the Marvel stuff in particular,
but I also don't feel like I have to justify or pretend that I don't love it when I do.
If you don't want to hang out with me because I like Marvel stuff,
then I'm probably not going to care.
It's totally okay. okay, then obviously we're just not a good fit for each other.
(17:08):
So to come to this place of self-acceptance,
I had to first reduce those inner judgments about what that means to be a nerd
and just trust in the fact that I'm either going to find my nerd tribe or my
less than nerdy friends are going to love me even despite my nerdiness.
(17:31):
So as you are answering the question, who am I?
Notice if there are any judgments associated with the thoughts or images that come up.
What would happen if you could reduce that judging even just by a tiny little
bit to also really get to know Know yourself deeply and authentically.
(17:56):
You have to be open to trying new things.
In total honesty, this is still not an area where I excel because I know myself
to be what I'll call a recovering perfectionist.
Being a perfectionist makes it really hard to try new things because we know
(18:16):
that we're not going to be good at them at first. and experiencing that period
of time when we're doing something that we're not really good at.
It's really hard to tolerate that for us fellow recovering perfectionists.
But how can I know what I love and what I value in my life if I live a very
(18:38):
closed off and restricted life?
I can, I suppose, know myself as a closed-off person who is really,
really fearful, but that may not be my real self.
That may be the self that has been changed by outside judgments or external
(18:59):
criticisms and expectations from others.
What if the real you is actually really good at pottery or singing? Singing.
Or a hundred other possible things that you could be good at or even not good at, but just enjoy.
To really discover the real authentic you, it takes a tremendous amount of courage
(19:25):
to drop those old messages, those old expectations,
those old stories, and to learn how to be compassionate and kind to ourselves. selves.
That's the only way that we're going to have the courage to get out there,
experiment, and try new things.
Lastly, it is so essential to learn how to be alone.
(19:51):
I have worked with so many patients, I would say women in particular,
who are very fearful of just being alone.
Sometimes that can be a result of trauma that they have experienced that leads
them to feel feel unsafe when they're alone.
And sometimes it's actually not a result of trauma. It's really just a result
(20:14):
of never learning how to be alone.
Maybe they moved from their parents' house straight into their married house,
and they never lived in their own apartment or lived independently.
Whatever the reason, in order to really, truly become your best friend,
it is crucial to your own self-discovery to be able to be alone.
(20:39):
There is so much that we can discover about ourselves when we really take the
time to just sit and go inside our minds.
If we are constantly, constantly distracted by being with other people or watching
TV or keeping keeping ourselves busy,
we're never really going to get the time to know and get comfortable with our own inner world.
(21:06):
Learning how to find joy when you're alone is so empowering.
You don't need to rely on anyone to help you feel safe or to feel joy or to be entertained.
You learn that that you can trust yourself to be able to do that for yourself whenever you need to.
(21:29):
For my patients that have difficulty being alone, I usually encourage them to start small.
So maybe that just looks like taking 10 minutes out of each day to practice
sitting with your own thoughts, not distracted by any media or your phone or
anything else, just sitting and thinking.
(21:51):
And also ideally thinking without judgments towards whatever comes up.
Over time, you can graduate to expanding the length of time that you're just
sitting and being and non-judging.
Maybe you can even get up to a whole 30 minutes of just being inside your own inner world.
(22:12):
You can also practice by going out alone, going to the movies alone,
or eating at a restaurant alone.
I I have so many patients that look at me like I have six heads when I suggest
this. What do you mean go to the movies alone?
I promise you, nobody is looking at you.
Nobody gives a shit that you are alone at the movies or in a restaurant.
(22:37):
Everybody is focused on themselves and what they are doing.
We often believe that people are thinking bad things about us when we're alone.
But really, truly, that's just our own voice.
That's our own judgments towards ourself.
When you start to be kinder to yourself and to reduce those judgments,
(23:00):
I promise you, you're going to realize that no one was ever giving you a second thought.
As you practice reducing your self-judgments, spending time alone.
Trying new things, reducing your perfectionism, you will absolutely learn more
how to answer the question, who am I?
(23:20):
You're going to be able to answer some of the questions of what do I like?
What is important to me? What are my values?
What are my priorities? What are my goals?
And most importantly, how do I just enjoy spending my time?
And as you start to better be able to answer those questions,
(23:41):
you are following your inner wisdom.
Your inner wisdom is guiding you all along the way to make sense of these experiences.
And over time, you will learn how to be your own best friend.
I hope this episode has been helpful to you. As always, I would love to hear your story.
(24:04):
I'd love to hear what has helped you on your journey to becoming your own best friend.
What are the characteristics in a friend that are absolutely essential for you or non-negotiables?
You can connect with me at laurielittle.com or please consider joining my private
Facebook group, Inner Healing Intelligence, so that you can connect and share with others.
(24:30):
In the meantime, I hope you have a wonderful week and I will see you in the next episode.
(24:52):
Music.
Welcome back to Inner Healing Intelligence. I'm your host, Dr. Laurie Little.
Today I'd like to talk about the concept of how to be your own best friend.
When you think about what it means to have a best friend, what thoughts or images come to your mind?
To me, a best friend is that person who is always there for you no matter what.
(00:26):
They stand by you even on your really shitty days when you're grumpy and overwhelmed
and you can't see anything positive about anything.
Best friends also celebrate with you when you've reached a goal or whenever
you have some really good news that you want to share.
(00:48):
Best friends are the people who you listen to and who you trust and know that
they only have your best interest at heart, even if sometimes they even have
to tell you some difficult truths.
Today we're going to dive into what it means to be a good friend to others and
(01:10):
more importantly, how to be the best friend that you can be to yourself. So stay tuned.
Welcome, everyone. My name is Dr. Lori Little, and I'm a clinical psychologist,
mindfulness coach, psychedelic therapist, wife, and mom.
(01:30):
My passion is helping people learn to listen to and trust their inner healing
intelligence, that part of us that is always moving towards health and growth.
Ultimately, when we allow our inner healing intelligence to be our guide,
we can stop looking outside of ourselves for answers.
(01:52):
We can experience more joy, more peace, and more connection with others than
we may have ever thought possible.
Although it may sound simple, it is by no means easy.
Join me as we discuss the many challenges and opportunities that listening to
your inner healing intelligence can bring to your life.
(02:15):
In episode 13, we talked about five key areas of having a healthy relationship
as well as the red flags to look out for if you suspect that your relationship
needs a little bit of work.
If you haven't heard that episode, then I would encourage you to check that
(02:35):
out after listening to this.
Today we're going to expand a little bit more on the idea of what it means to
be a good friend to others,
but mostly we're going to talk about how can we translate that into being a
good friend for ourselves.
Who do you think of when you you think of your best friend?
(03:00):
Do certain faces or names come to your mind?
When I use the term best friend, it actually conjures up within me a bit of
a childlike or teenage part of me, that idea of who's your BFF.
And so one of the questions is, do we still have BFFs even as I would say that
(03:24):
some people really do, but for me personally,
I don't think so much anymore about the idea of having a best friend, singular,
but really think more about the idea of my best friends, plural. Right.
I have my oldest and dearest friend who's been in my life since we were seven
(03:47):
years old, and I value her so much because we have a shared history together.
She knows me from as long as I can remember, and I think that is just such a
gift to know someone for that long. It's almost like having a sibling.
You just can't remember a time when they weren't in your life.
(04:11):
So if you have a person like that, consider yourself very lucky and blessed.
I also have friends that have been my friends for over 20 years now since I
moved to Cincinnati, and they have been what I think of as my tribe.
We have shared raising children together from infancy to those impossible teen
(04:37):
years and now going off to college years, dealing with empty nest.
So those friends to me
are so valuable because again that
shared history we know so much
about each other's lives and care about each other deeply but
I also have a handful of really close co-workers who I've really truly only
(05:01):
known for the last five years or so but they are so valuable to me I can't imagine
a life without them when I think about my friends my friend groups,
what do all of these friends for me share in common?
And I can think of three ways in particular in which a friend for me moves from
(05:23):
the category of being just a friend to really being one of my best friends.
The first area is what I'll call authenticity.
The older I get, the more more important I realize it is to be authentic,
to be fully and truly myself, flaws and all.
(05:48):
When I was younger, I spent a lot of time worrying about what other people thought of me.
And as time has gone on, it's not that I don't worry about that at all.
Of course, I will always worry to some extent what people think of me,
but there's definitely been a shift away from emphasizing what do they think to what do I think.
(06:14):
In my teens and even in my 20s, I definitely was desperate for people to like me,
and I probably would have molded myself into anything if I thought that it would
allow me to have more friends or get people to like me better.
The concept of being authentic at that phase of my life was just not even on the radar.
(06:38):
I didn't even know who I was as a person, so how could I even imagine the idea
of being being authentically me.
As time has gone on, however, with a lot of therapy.
A lot of psychedelic work, and probably just aging, I've come to finally see
more value in myself separate from whether people like me or not.
(07:04):
I truly believe that I would much rather have a very small circle circle of
friends that I can truly be myself with versus a huge group of people that I
feel like I have to be fake with.
I don't want to worry that I have to look a certain way or talk a certain way
or think a certain way in order to be liked and accepted.
(07:27):
If someone really does not like me as I am, then I'm more able to see now that it's not personal.
I don't like everyone. Everyone's not not going to like me.
But it's taken me a long time to get there and a lot of work.
Being able to be truly authentic is a key component of having a best friend.
(07:49):
And the reverse is true. My closest friends feel the same way.
I'm really sensitive to people being fake or not real or not honest,
and I really need someone to be honest with me, even if we disagree.
And that leads me into the second key for me, which is trust.
(08:12):
And by the way, just as an aside, these are all my needs.
These are all the things that are important to me. I'm not saying they should be important to you.
I'm just giving you some ideas and some thoughts to consider.
I really need my best friends to be trustworthy.
(08:33):
And in episode 13, when talking about healthy relationships.
I talk more about this concept of trust and what trust really means.
For me, trust is about believing that what my friends are telling me is true,
and it's also about feeling like I can rely on them.
It really is also a bit connected to authenticity in that I need my best friends
(08:59):
to tell me the truth no matter what.
I want and need my friends to tell me if I've done something wrong or said something
wrong or said something hurtful.
I, if you hadn't guessed, am a a big talker in my relationships,
and I really need the opportunity to talk things out if there's a conflict or an issue going on.
(09:23):
I don't want to have to doubt that my friend is being truthful when they say that they're okay.
I'm really super sensitive to lying. And in fact, I'm kind of overly sensitive.
I don't even like practical jokes because I feel like there's this element of lying with them.
I feel like April Fool's Day is my most hated day of the year.
(09:47):
So my value is tell me the truth, even if you know I'm not going to like it,
because I'm going to trust you and I'm going to respect you for that.
And that is a non-negotiable for me and my best friends.
Once that trust has been broken, for me, again, I'm not saying this this is
(10:09):
right, I'm just sharing honestly.
That for me, it's really almost impossible to get myself to feel safe,
to open myself up back to trusting someone again if that person has breached my trust.
I'm not saying that's right. I'm just saying that's how it is for me.
So authenticity and trust are absolutely essential, non-negotiables.
(10:35):
The last thing that I need for my relationship with my best friends is that
we laugh and we truly enjoy spending time with each other.
I love to laugh and
to be honest my genuine laugh the
one that is just pops out of me is can be a little bit loud and even potentially
(10:59):
slightly annoying to others I totally recognize that within myself but I laugh
a lot I've always been very attracted to funny and to smart people So to me,
laughing is just the best feeling in the entire world.
Laughter is the sound of joy.
(11:20):
So if you are smart and you're funny and you're authentic and you're trustworthy.
Then come sit next to me because this is who I need in my life.
We have so little time on this planet and so many responsibilities,
so many things that we feel like we have to do that I really feel like at this
(11:44):
stage of my life, I'm going to be a little bit more choosy about who I'm going to spend my time with.
Do I want to spend time with people that I find boring or they want to talk
about or do things that I don't have any interest in?
Probably not. At this point, I want to be with people where I feel joy and I
(12:08):
feel energized after having spent time together.
As we start to now transition to thinking about this as being your own best friend.
A precursor to this idea is another belief or another idea that has really rung
(12:29):
true for me that has come again, either with age or therapy,
is the idea that all of my emotional needs cannot nor should be met by other people.
One of the most empowering beliefs that I have come to to embrace over time
is that I am responsible for my own happiness.
(12:51):
Only I can create the life that I want to live.
So there's no prince charming, there's no fairy godmother that's going to come
along and bippity boppity, they're going to make all my dreams come true.
I wish that were in the case, but reality has set in.
And the truth is, if I want something, I have to be the one to go get it.
(13:15):
I've also come to see that one person cannot be your everything.
I would absolutely say with 100% certainty that my husband is really truly my
bestest, best friend, my bestest BFF, but even he can't meet every single one of my needs.
(13:36):
So not one person can be your everything.
And if you do do find yourself in a position where you really only have one true good friend.
I would say that's better than nothing, but I absolutely would encourage you
to be open to the idea that your life would be so much fuller with more than one best friend.
(14:00):
In the end, in order to really have good friends, however, you really do need
to know how to be friends with yourself. So let's start with these concepts
of authenticity and trust.
Becoming your own best friend means that you have to start by getting really
(14:22):
honest and real with yourself about who you are in this moment,
not the who you want to be or who you think you should be, who other people
want you to be, but really, truly, who are you?
And I think this can be actually a very, very difficult question,
(14:45):
particularly if you are someone who has spent your life really working as a
people pleaser or a caretaker.
It can be very difficult to start to reverse that and shift away from what can
I do for you or who do you want me to be to who am I really.
(15:08):
In order to do that, we have to practice reducing those self judgments.
How are you going to figure out who you are if you are very mean and judgmental
to yourself? It's going to make it that much more difficult.
If you can learn how to be kind and self-compassionate, you will embrace more
(15:34):
honest and real aspects of yourself.
For example, when I was a kid in the 70s and 80s, the term nerd was an insult.
This was a very mean term back in the day.
I know now people say it, and it's not that big of a deal, but back then to
call someone a nerd was really hurtful.
(15:57):
And I was so a nerd.
I had the glasses and the braces, and I was really academic and studious.
And so what I have come to realize, however, is that I am still such a nerd.
Even today, 51 years old, I can say wholeheartedly, I am a nerd and whatever that means today.
(16:21):
So I love Marvel Marvel and superhero movies. I love video games.
I love science. I love learning.
Like, this is just what I think of in my own mind about what it means to be a nerd.
But I'm not ashamed about that anymore. I now just see these parts of myself as who I am.
(16:44):
Now, yes, of course, some of my friends tease me about the Marvel stuff in particular,
but I also don't feel like I have to justify or pretend that I don't love it when I do.
If you don't want to hang out with me because I like Marvel stuff,
then I'm probably not going to care.
It's totally okay. okay, then obviously we're just not a good fit for each other.
(17:08):
So to come to this place of self-acceptance,
I had to first reduce those inner judgments about what that means to be a nerd
and just trust in the fact that I'm either going to find my nerd tribe or my
less than nerdy friends are going to love me even despite my nerdiness.
(17:31):
So as you are answering the question, who am I?
Notice if there are any judgments associated with the thoughts or images that come up.
What would happen if you could reduce that judging even just by a tiny little
bit to also really get to know Know yourself deeply and authentically.
(17:56):
You have to be open to trying new things.
In total honesty, this is still not an area where I excel because I know myself
to be what I'll call a recovering perfectionist.
Being a perfectionist makes it really hard to try new things because we know
(18:16):
that we're not going to be good at them at first. and experiencing that period
of time when we're doing something that we're not really good at.
It's really hard to tolerate that for us fellow recovering perfectionists.
But how can I know what I love and what I value in my life if I live a very
(18:38):
closed off and restricted life?
I can, I suppose, know myself as a closed-off person who is really,
really fearful, but that may not be my real self.
That may be the self that has been changed by outside judgments or external
(18:59):
criticisms and expectations from others.
What if the real you is actually really good at pottery or singing? Singing.
Or a hundred other possible things that you could be good at or even not good at, but just enjoy.
To really discover the real authentic you, it takes a tremendous amount of courage
(19:25):
to drop those old messages, those old expectations,
those old stories, and to learn how to be compassionate and kind to ourselves. selves.
That's the only way that we're going to have the courage to get out there,
experiment, and try new things.
Lastly, it is so essential to learn how to be alone.
(19:51):
I have worked with so many patients, I would say women in particular,
who are very fearful of just being alone.
Sometimes that can be a result of trauma that they have experienced that leads
them to feel feel unsafe when they're alone.
And sometimes it's actually not a result of trauma. It's really just a result
(20:14):
of never learning how to be alone.
Maybe they moved from their parents' house straight into their married house,
and they never lived in their own apartment or lived independently.
Whatever the reason, in order to really, truly become your best friend,
it is crucial to your own self-discovery to be able to be alone.
(20:39):
There is so much that we can discover about ourselves when we really take the
time to just sit and go inside our minds.
If we are constantly, constantly distracted by being with other people or watching
TV or keeping keeping ourselves busy,
we're never really going to get the time to know and get comfortable with our own inner world.
(21:06):
Learning how to find joy when you're alone is so empowering.
You don't need to rely on anyone to help you feel safe or to feel joy or to be entertained.
You learn that that you can trust yourself to be able to do that for yourself whenever you need to.
(21:29):
For my patients that have difficulty being alone, I usually encourage them to start small.
So maybe that just looks like taking 10 minutes out of each day to practice
sitting with your own thoughts, not distracted by any media or your phone or
anything else, just sitting and thinking.
(21:51):
And also ideally thinking without judgments towards whatever comes up.
Over time, you can graduate to expanding the length of time that you're just
sitting and being and non-judging.
Maybe you can even get up to a whole 30 minutes of just being inside your own inner world.
(22:12):
You can also practice by going out alone, going to the movies alone,
or eating at a restaurant alone.
I I have so many patients that look at me like I have six heads when I suggest
this. What do you mean go to the movies alone?
I promise you, nobody is looking at you.
Nobody gives a shit that you are alone at the movies or in a restaurant.
(22:37):
Everybody is focused on themselves and what they are doing.
We often believe that people are thinking bad things about us when we're alone.
But really, truly, that's just our own voice.
That's our own judgments towards ourself.
When you start to be kinder to yourself and to reduce those judgments,
(23:00):
I promise you, you're going to realize that no one was ever giving you a second thought.
As you practice reducing your self-judgments, spending time alone.
Trying new things, reducing your perfectionism, you will absolutely learn more
how to answer the question, who am I?
(23:20):
You're going to be able to answer some of the questions of what do I like?
What is important to me? What are my values?
What are my priorities? What are my goals?
And most importantly, how do I just enjoy spending my time?
And as you start to better be able to answer those questions,
(23:41):
you are following your inner wisdom.
Your inner wisdom is guiding you all along the way to make sense of these experiences.
And over time, you will learn how to be your own best friend.
I hope this episode has been helpful to you. As always, I would love to hear your story.
(24:04):
I'd love to hear what has helped you on your journey to becoming your own best friend.
What are the characteristics in a friend that are absolutely essential for you or non-negotiables?
You can connect with me at laurielittle.com or please consider joining my private
Facebook group, Inner Healing Intelligence, so that you can connect and share with others.
(24:30):
In the meantime, I hope you have a wonderful week and I will see you in the next episode.
(24:52):
Music.
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