BEING 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. They stand by you even on your shitty days, when you are grumpy and overwhelmed and you can’t see anything positive about anything.

And they celebrate with you when you reach a goal or want to share good news. They are the person you listen to and trust and know they only have your own best interest at heart, even if sometimes they have to tell you a difficult truth. Let's dive into what it means to be a good friend to others and to be the best friend you can be to yourself.

In a prior blog, I share the 5 key areas of having a healthy relationship and the red flags to look out for if you suspect that your relationship needs a little work. If you haven’t read that one, check that out as well.

Who do you think of when you think of best friends? Do specific faces or names come to your mind? There is a small part of me that when I say the word “best friend” out loud, it conjures up this small child like or teenage part of me. Do you still have best friends even as adults? Some people really do but I would say for me personally, I don’t think so much anymore about the idea of a best friend, singular, but think about my best friends, plural.

I have my oldest and dearest friend who has been in my life since we were 7. I value her so much because we know our shared history. She knows me from as long as I can remember and there is such a gift in knowing someone for that long. It’s like having a sibling, you can’t remember a time without them.

And I have friends that I have been with for over 20 years since I moved to Cincinnati. They are my tribe and we have shared raising children together, from infancy to the teen years to going off to college and dealing with empty nest.

And I also have a handful of really close coworkers, who I may have only known for the last 5 years, but are so valuable to me, I can’t imagine a life without them. What do all of these friends share in common?

I can think of 3 ways in which a friend moves from the category of being just a friend to a best friend .

First is Authenticity. The older I get, the more important I realize it is to be authentic, to be fully myself, flaws and all. When I was younger, I spent a lot of time worrying about what other people thought of me and as time as gone on, there has definitely been a shift away towards emphasizing what do they think to what do I think?

In my teens and 20’s I definitely was so desperate for people to like me that I would have molded myself into anything I thought I could to have more friends or to get people to like me. The concept of being authentic was not even on the radar. I didn’t even know who I was as a person, how could I even imagine the idea of being authentically me?

As time has gone on, with a lot of therapy and psychedelic work, I’ve come to finally see more value in myself, separate from whether people like me or not. I truly believe that I would much rather have a very small circle of friends that I can really be myself with, vs this 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. If someone doesn’t really like me as I am, then I can see now it’s not personal. I don’t like everyone so everyone can’t like me.

Its taken me a long time and a lot of work to get here though. And maybe it would have happened anyways with age, But being able to be truly authentic is a key component of having a best friend. And the reverse is true, my closest friends feel the same way. I am very sensitive to people being fake or not real or honest. I want someone to be able to just be honest with me even if we disagree.

This leads into the second key for me, I need my best friends to be trustworthy. Trust is about believing that what my friends are telling me is true and that I can rely on them. It is somewhat connected to authenticity in that I need my best friends to tell me the truth no matter what. I want and need my friends to tell me when I’ve done something wrong or said or done something hurtful. I am a big talker in my relationships (if you couldn’t guess) and I need to talk things out when there is something going on. I don’t want to have to doubt that you are being truthful when you say you are ok.

I am very sensitive to lying. I am so sensitive, I don’t even like practical jokes because there is an element of lying to them. April fools day is my most hated day of the year. So tell me the truth even if you know I won’t like it, but I will trust and respect you for it, and that’s a non negotiable for my best friends. Once that trust has been broken, it is nearly impossible for me to open myself up to trusting again. I’m not saying that’s right, I’m just saying how it is for me.

And the last thing I need with my best friends is we laugh and truly enjoy spending time with each other. I love to laugh, and my genuine laugh is kind of loud and could potentially be slightly annoying to others. I laugh a lot! I've always been attracted to funny and smart people. To me laughing is just the best feeling in the entire world. Laughter is the sound of joy. If you smart, funny, authentic and trustworthy, then come sit next to me.

We have so little time on this planet, and with all of our responsibilities, I feel we have to be choosy about who we are going to spend our time with. Do I want to spend my time with people that bore me or want to do things or talk about things that I have no interest in? Absolutely not. I want to be with people where I feel joy and energized after having spent time together.

I also believe that something that has come with age and therapy, is the idea that all of my emotional needs cannot nor should not be met by other people. One of the most empowering beliefs that I have come to embrace over time is thatI am responsible for my own happiness. Only I am responsible for creating the life that I want to live. There is no prince charming, there is no fairy godmother than is going to come and bippity boppity, going to make all my dreams come true. If I want something, I have to be the one to go get it.

I’ve also come to see that one person cannot be your everything. Although I would certainly say that husband is truly my bestest best friend, I recognize that he can’t meet every one of my needs. Not one person can be your everything, and if you find yourself in a position where you have only one real good friend, then I would encourage you to be open to the idea that your life would be so much fuller with more than one. And in the end, in order to have good friends, you really do need to know how to be friends with yourself.

When we think about authenticity and trust,becoming your own best friend means that you have to start by getting very honest and real with yourself about who you are in this moment.Not who you want to be, or who you think you should be, but who you really are. I think this can be more difficult than people think. How do you answer the question, Who am I? That’s a really really big question.

Part of being authentic with yourself is reducing your self judgements. When you can love yourself as you are and not be so judgmental, it will allow you to embrace more aspects of yourself.

For example, when I was a kid in the 70s and 80’s, the term "nerd" was an insult. And I was definitely a nerd, with the glasses and braces and goal to do really well in school. And truthfully, I am still a nerd today, in whatever that means. I love Marvel and superhero movies and video games and I love puzzles…I love science and learning about how things work.

Whereas I used to be ashamed of these nerdy aspects of myself, I now see them as just part of who I am. Yes, some of my friends tease me about the Marvel stuff, but I don’t have to pretend anymore. If you don’t want to hang out with me because I like Marvel stuff then that’s your problem. To come to this place of self-acceptance I had to reduce those inner judgements about being a nerd and trust in the fact that I will find my nerd tribe or my less than nerdy friends will love me anyways.

As you work on 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 little bit?

To also know myself I have to be open to trying new things. I still don't excel in this area because I consider myself to be a recovering perfectionist. Being a perfectionist makes it really hard to try new things because we won’t be good at them at first. And experiencing that period of time where we are not good at something is really hard to tolerate for perfectionists.

But how can I know what I love and what I value in my life if I lived a very closed off and restricted life? I can know myself as a closed off person, or a person who is very fearful, but that may not be the real me. That may be the me that has been changed by outside judgements and criticisms and expectations from others. What if the real you is good at pottery, or singing or acting? To really discover the real, authentic you, it takes the courage to drop our old messages, be compassionate and kind to ourselves and get out there to experiment and try.

Lastly, its so essential to learn how to be alone. I have worked with so many patients, women in particular, who are very fearful of being alone. Sometimes that is a result of trauma they have experienced that leads them to feel unsafe, and sometimes it is a result of just never learning how. Maybe they moved from their parents house to their spouse's house and never lived in their own place.

For whatever the reason, it is crucial to self discovery to be able to be alone. There is so much that we can discover about ourselves when we take the time to really just sit and go inside our minds. If we are constantly distracted by being with others, we never get the time to really get to know our inner world.

Learning how to find joy when you are alone is so empowering. You don’t need to rely on anyone to help you feel safe or entertained, you trust yourself to be able to do that for yourself, whenever you need to.

For my patients that have difficulty being alone I encourage them to start small. Maybe take just 10 minutes out of each day to practice sitting with your own thoughts, not distracted by your phone or other media.

You can graduate to expanding that time of just sitting and being. You can also practice by going out alone. Go to the movies alone, eat at a restaurant alone. Nobody is looking at you, I promise. Nobody gives a shit that you are alone, they are focused on themselves and what they are doing.We often believe people are thinking bad things about us when we are alone, but really, that is our own voice, our own judgments.When you start to be kinder to yourself and reduce those judgements, you realize no one was ever giving you a second thought.

As you practice reducing your self judgments, spending time alone, trying new things and reducing perfectionism, you will absolutely learn more how to answer the questions, who am I, what do I like, what is important to me, what are my values and my priorities, what are my goals, how do I enjoy spending my time? As you answer those questions and follow your inner wisdom, you will learn in time how to be your own best friend.