Hello, and welcome to season three of Friendship Therapy! This is the podcast in which author and podcaster Emma Reed Turrell talks to real people about real friendships and looks at these pivotal relationships through a therapeutic lens.

This week, a special bonus episode to kick off a new season: Emma chats to Michelle Elman, bestselling author, speaker and life coach whose fifth book, Bad Friend: Why Friendship Breakups Hurt and How to Heal, is due to be published in May 2025.

Michelle joins Emma to talk about tolerance in friendship and explore why we can find it challenging to tolerate the decisions our friends make. When is it time to bite your tongue in friendship, and when does our silence make us complicit? Are we trying to save our friend, or is it really about saving a younger part of ourselves?

Pre-order Michelle's book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bad-Friend-Friendship-Breakups-Hurt/dp/1408749459/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

If you’d like to apply to appear on the podcast in season 4, please click the link below to fill out the form: 
https://forms.gle/9yZAVgF9BbyKhwsV7

Voicenote Emma with your dilemma in the @friendshiptherapypod DMs.

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Friendship Therapy is hosted by Emma Reed Turrell, produced by Chris Sharp and Lauren Brook.

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Social media: 

Emma Reed Turrell @emmareedturrell
Friendship Therapy @friendshiptherapypod
Email: [email protected]

Welcome back to Dial Emma from Friendship Therapy, and the season 2 finale! This is where you get to dial Emma, with your dilemma (see what I did there?!) You share your friendship concerns, and I share my reflections as a therapist to give you the tips and tools you need to build better bonds.

This week, our Dial Emma caller wants to talk about accountability in friendship. Should we adjust our expectations when friends let us down, or should we hold them to higher standards? Why is there often less accountability in friendship compared to romantic relationships?

In this episode, and in the absence of a friendship HR department, jury or ombudsman, Emma encourages this listener to ask a simple question that might open up a much more honest conversation: is it me that’s not okay, or is it this situation that is not okay?

Emma also explores why accountability and deep connection are not always a given in friendship, and why we need to get curious about what we are willing to offer as a friend and, crucially, what we need from friendship.
  
What advice would you give this listener?

We'll be back with season 3 very soon, so please keep sending in your dilemmas for Emma to respond to! Drop us a voicenote on Instagram @friendshiptherapypod.

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Friendship Therapy is hosted by Emma Reed Turrell, produced by Chris Sharp and Lauren Brook.

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Social media:  

Emma Reed Turrell @emmareedturrell

Friendship Therapy @friendshiptherapypod

Email: [email protected]

Welcome back to Friendship Therapy, the podcast in which we look at friendships through a therapeutic lens.

So many of our wonderful guests talk about childhood friendships and how those early experiences shape the friendships that we'll make as adults - so who better to help us talk about the way those friendships form than someone who's in the middle of making them right now?

This week, Emma chats to Elsa. She's 10 years old. She's an expert on childhood friendship. And she also happens to be Emma's daughter.

Emma and Elsa talk about what makes a good friend, those times when 'magpying' is actually copying, how to deal with it when a friend hurts our feelings, and Emma's personal friendship nemesis, the group of three.

Please do bear with us if the sound quality is slightly affected this week. Many sweets were consumed in the making of this episode.

If you’d like to apply to appear on the podcast in season 3, please click the link below to fill out the form: 
https://forms.gle/9yZAVgF9BbyKhwsV7

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Friendship Therapy is hosted by Emma Reed Turrell, produced by Chris Sharp and Lauren Brook.

--- 

Social media: 

Emma Reed Turrell @emmareedturrell
Friendship Therapy @friendshiptherapypod
Email: [email protected]

Welcome back to Dial Emma from Friendship Therapy! This is where you get to dial Emma, with your dilemma (see what I did there?!) You share your friendship concerns, and I share my reflections as a therapist to give you the tips and tools you need to build better bonds.

This week, we meet a listener who is grappling with feelings of guilt after moving away from their hometown - especially when the friends they left behind make comments about how little they get to see each other, and how they wish things could be different.

We can all recognise that the feeling of guilt is only appropriate when we have done something objectively wrong, but how can we put this into practice in our relationships? How can we repair, when there was no wrong to begin with? How can we understand the difference between what we're choosing to hear, and what is actually being said?

In this episode, Emma encourages this listener to get curious about their metric of friendship in order to find a way forward that meets their needs and that of their friends. Emma also explores some of the deeper emotions that might be hidden beneath the feeling of guilt, and reminds us all that we are not responsible for remedying how other people feel about the decisions we make for ourselves.
  
What advice would you give this listener?
 
If you’ve got a friendship dilemma, drop us a voicenote on Instagram @friendshiptherapypod!

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Friendship Therapy is hosted by Emma Reed Turrell, produced by Chris Sharp and Lauren Brook.

--- 

Social media:  

Emma Reed Turrell @emmareedturrell

Friendship Therapy @friendshiptherapypod

Email: [email protected]

Welcome back to Friendship Therapy, the podcast in which we look at friendships through a therapeutic lens.

This week, Emma is joined by Scott, a man who, now in his 40s, has experienced a sudden turnover in the friends he made in his 20s.

A repeating pattern of rupture and loss has made him more defensive in the friendships he has left and wary of making new friends, and friendship has gone from being something he felt he could count on in the past to being something that feels much more risky in the present.

So far, he's looked to his own behaviour for explanation. In this conversation, Emma guides Scott to look further back at the role he played within his family to help understand the expectations he has of himself in friendships now. This is a conversation about boundaries, and why it's OK to aim for doing what is appropriate in your friendships, rather than whatever is physically possible. 

If you’d like to apply to appear on the podcast, please click the link below to fill out the form: 
https://forms.gle/9yZAVgF9BbyKhwsV7

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Friendship Therapy is hosted by Emma Reed Turrell, produced by Chris Sharp and Lauren Brook.

--- 

Social media: 

Emma Reed Turrell @emmareedturrell
Friendship Therapy @friendshiptherapypod
Email: [email protected]

Welcome back to Dial Emma from Friendship Therapy! This is where you get to dial Emma, with your dilemma (see what I did there?!) You share your friendship concerns, and I share my reflections as a therapist to give you the tips and tools you need to build better bonds.
 
This week, we hear from a listener who recognises that they have a tendency to initiate very intense friendships, only to end them abruptly after a short time. This listener travels frequently for work and struggles to hold on to friendships long-term, but is that because they are not around in a purely geographical sense, or because there's something deeper there to explore?

In this episode, Emma explores the idea of bingeing and purging in friendship, and how we can both crave connection and be overwhelmed by it beyond a certain point. We also discover the role that attachment styles can play in our friendships, and why sometimes, it's better to lean into our fears and allow them to motivate us to make a change, rather than sticking with what we've always known.
 
What advice would you give this listener?
 
If you’ve got a friendship dilemma, drop us a voicenote on Instagram @friendshiptherapypod!

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Friendship Therapy is hosted by Emma Reed Turrell, produced by Chris Sharp and Lauren Brook.

--- 

Social media:  

Emma Reed Turrell @emmareedturrell

Friendship Therapy @friendshiptherapypod

Email: [email protected]

This week, Emma is joined by Annie to talk about her friendship with Katie, one that was born out of tragic circumstances and one that others have struggled to accept.

Katie had been engaged to Annie's brother and a cherished member of their family since she'd first arrived on the scene at 15, but some years later, they decided to take a break from their relationship. When Pete was tragically killed in a road traffic collision, Annie and Katie continued to be an active presence in each other's lives as they both navigated grief, loss, new relationships and parenthood.

In this episode, we hear about how Annie and Katie's friendship has sustained them through life's ups and downs, and why the last conversation Annie ever had with Pete would prove to be so important to the friendship they would go on to build.

If you’d like to apply to appear on the podcast, please click the link below to fill out the form: 
https://forms.gle/9yZAVgF9BbyKhwsV7

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Friendship Therapy is hosted by Emma Reed Turrell, produced by Chris Sharp and Lauren Brook.

--- 

Social media: 

Emma Reed Turrell @emmareedturrell
Friendship Therapy @friendshiptherapypod
Email: [email protected]

Welcome back to Dial Emma from Friendship Therapy! This is where you get to dial Emma, with your dilemma (see what I did there?!) You share your friendship concerns, and I share my reflections as a therapist to give you the tips and tools you need to build better bonds.
 
This week, we hear from a listener who is struggling to navigate an imbalance in communication styles in a friendship, especially when it comes to making plans and responding to messages within a perceived timeframe that, currently, neither of them are sticking to.
 
How can these friends update their friendship contract into the present so that both parties can show up wholly as themselves? Can people who have very different communication styles be in a successful friendship where their individual needs are met?
 
In this episode, Emma comes back to attachment styles to try and understand what the dissonance could be between these friends, and why they have two very different reactions to a lack of ‘regular’ communication, whatever that looks like for them. Are they simply singing from different hymn sheets, or is it about giving themselves permission individually to behave in the ways that work for them within the friendship?
 
What advice would you give this listener?
 
If you’ve got a friendship dilemma, drop us a voicenote on Instagram @friendshiptherapypod!

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Friendship Therapy is hosted by Emma Reed Turrell, produced by Chris Sharp and Lauren Brook.

--- 

Social media:  

Emma Reed Turrell @emmareedturrell

Friendship Therapy @friendshiptherapypod

Email: [email protected]

Welcome back to Friendship Therapy, the podcast in which we look at friendships through a therapeutic lens.

This week, Emma is joined by Holly to talk about friendship heartbreak and how it feels to be dumped by a friend.

When Holly’s two closest friends got engaged, she found herself waiting for an invitation to be a part of the bridal party that never came. What happened next was a slow and painful reevaluation of the terms of a friendship that had formed such a significant and meaningful part of her life for more than a decade.

In this conversation, Emma and Holly discover how a text message about wedding planning would unravel a whole decade's worth of friendship and, ultimately, reveal a much more conditional connection built on conflict avoidance and adaptation.

Through the Transactional Analysis theory of games, we look back to the beginning of Holly's friendship game to help her understand what went wrong and learn how to avoid the same heartbreak in future.

To learn more about transactional analysis and the games people play, visit: https://www.mindtools.com/ayjtd4p/transactional-analysis


If you’d like to apply to appear on the podcast, please click the link below to fill out the form: 
https://forms.gle/9yZAVgF9BbyKhwsV7

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Friendship Therapy is hosted by Emma Reed Turrell, produced by Chris Sharp and Lauren Brook.

--- 

Social media: 

Emma Reed Turrell @emmareedturrell
Friendship Therapy @friendshiptherapypod
Email: [email protected]

Welcome back to Dial Emma from Friendship Therapy! This is where you get to dial Emma, with your dilemma (see what I did there?!) You share your friendship concerns, and I share my reflections as a therapist to give you the tips and tools you need to build better bonds.

This week, we hear from a listener who has experienced a rupture in a friendship and is struggling to set boundaries with the friend who has hurt them, within the larger friendship group that they are both an active part of.

How do we remove ourselves from relationships that are no longer serving us, without becoming estranged from the entire group? When there isn’t an emergency exit, how can we navigate situations of conflict or rupture?

In this episode, Emma talks about family systems, the responsibilities we take on for others in group dynamics vs what is actually appropriate and reasonable, and learning to radically accept other people’s choices as theirs, and not our own, in order to co-exist more peacefully.

What advice would you give this listener?
 
If you’ve got a friendship dilemma and you'd like Emma's help, drop us a voicenote on Instagram @friendshiptherapypod!

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Friendship Therapy is hosted by Emma Reed Turrell, produced by Chris Sharp and Lauren Brook.

--- 

Social media:  

Emma Reed Turrell @emmareedturrell

Friendship Therapy @friendshiptherapypod

Email: [email protected]

Welcome back to Friendship Therapy! This is the podcast in which author and psychotherapist Emma Reed Turrell talks to real people about real friendships and looks at these pivotal relationships through a therapy lens.

This week, Emma is joined by Emily to explore why a long-term friendship with someone who was maid of honour at her wedding would become someone who now gives her, in Emily's words, the 'ick.'

Emma and Emily talk about the function of the ick, a primal human response that we feel in any relationship that doesn't quite add up, and how the ick might be protecting Emily from feeling sad feelings; because after a lifetime of stifling her voice, motherhood and miscarriage saw her finally risk taking some space and needing some attention for herself.

When this friendship let Emily down, it wasn't just the loss of her friendship that she had to process, but the loss of her unconscious hope that one day someone might finally put her first. This is an episode all about the unsaids and why the end of a relationship is less often the result of what we say and more often the result of what we don't.

If you’d like to apply to appear on the podcast, please click the link below to fill out the form:   
https://forms.gle/owsfs6DVxVdTMFo46  

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Friendship Therapy is hosted by Emma Reed Turrell, produced by Chris Sharp and Lauren Brook.

--- 

Social media:  

Emma Reed Turrell @emmareedturrell

Friendship Therapy @friendshiptherapypod

Email: [email protected]