Latest / Friendship IRL: Real Talk About Friendship, Community, and What It Actually Takes / Your Friend Is Carrying an Invisible Backpack (And So Are You) with Stacey Uhrig

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Your Friend Is Carrying an Invisible Backpack (And So Are You) with Stacey Uhrig · Friendship IRL: Real Talk About Friendship, Community, and What It Actually Takes

• 0:00
  Podcast Intro/Outro: Hey! All righty, gang. Here's to nights that turn into mornings and friends that turn into family.
• 0:07
  Podcast Intro/Outro: Cheers! Hello, hello! Welcome to the Friendship IRL podcast. I'm your host Alex Alexander, and each week we explore what's working and what's not in our friendships, community, and connections. Have you ever wished you could sit down and have a conversation about what is really going on in your friendships? Well, you found your people. Join us as we dive into real-life stories and explore new ways to approach these connections. Together, we're reimagining the rules of friendship.
• 0:57
  Alex Alexander [Narration]: What if you just stopped needing to fix your friends? I mean, really think about that for a second.
• 1:06
  Alex Alexander [Narration]: What if understanding why someone does what they do was actually enough? What if you could get to a place of genuine acceptance, not because you gave up, but because something finally clicked? How much relief would that give you? Today's guest is Stacey Uhrig. She's a certified trauma care practitioner and the founder of Flip Your Mindset. Her whole thing is helping people understand the "why" underneath behavior, especially the protective patterns that make friendship and connection feel harder than they need to be.
• 1:45
  Alex Alexander [Narration]: Stacey believes that other people's behavior always makes sense, always. And in this episode, she and I work through some real examples of what it looks like to think that through. But as you'll hear, Stacey keeps asking me, "Why does this matter to you?" And I have to say, why does it matter that we understand our people?
• 2:05
  Alex Alexander [Narration]: Why do we need to make sense of it? What would it look like to just not really need that? We also get into the question I get asked more than almost any
• 2:19
  other: At what point is that behavior the one you're trying to make sense of? At what point is enough enough? At what point, when you've reflected, when you can see someone's behavior clearly, when you even understand where it comes from, at what point do you leave the friendship? Today's a good one.
• 2:40
  other: Let's dive in.
• 2:42
  Alex Alexander: Hi, Stacey.
• 2:42
  Alex Alexander: Thank you so much for joining me on the Friendship IRL podcast.
• 2:47
  Stacey Uhrig: I'm so happy to be here.
• 2:48
  Alex Alexander: You know, in your work, you talk a lot about how the behavior of other people generally makes sense, and yeah, I think people listening on the podcast are going to be like, absolutely not, absolutely not.
• 3:00
  Alex Alexander: I would love to make sense of my friends and why they're doing certain things, but can you talk a little bit just in general about that? And then I have some maybe specific examples.
• 3:13
  Stacey Uhrig: Yeah, so I have a philosophy that everybody walks with an invisible backpack, so everybody on this planet is carrying an invisible backpack, and in that invisible backpack is every lived experience the person ever had during their developmental years, like zero to 18. What meaning they made of those experiences, the interpretations that they made, the beliefs that they formed based on those interpretations and how they learned to—what I'll say—adapt to the situation, and so if you took that into account, like we don't recognize that we never think, oh, I wonder what's inside that person's backpack. But if we actually stopped and recognized that everybody is carrying an invisible backpack, and we actually dumped out the contents, very often it would make a lot of sense as to why somebody shows up the way they do. And I always love to put the disclaimer in that when someone's behavior is abusive, this is not a way of excusing that behavior, but it is a way of understanding the root of the behavior. But again, does not excuse it because not all behavior is acceptable.
• 4:28
  Alex Alexander: Yep, don't we know it? So I thought I would use an example, and maybe you can help me. Like we can do this live.
• 4:35
  Stacey Uhrig: Yeah,
• 4:35
  Alex Alexander: and my friend wouldn't feel offended because she's very upfront about this.
• 4:41
  Stacey Uhrig: Cool,
• 4:42
  Alex Alexander: but I have a friend who never, ever, ever, ever wants to accept help—ever.
• 4:45
  Alex Alexander: To the point where, you know, she's having a baby soon. She's like, you don't need to drop off a meal, you don't need to reach out and text. Like she is fine if you do nothing at all, and so there is absolutely a root to this. By the way, she knows that I'm using this as an example, so it's okay. I told her I was going to do this, but what you're saying is that like if I started asking maybe some certain questions to myself that I could maybe figure out what the root is. So, what are some of the questions?
• 5:27
  Stacey Uhrig: Maybe here's the question I would ask you: Why is it important to you to understand where the behavior came from in the first place?
• 5:37
  Alex Alexander: Well, I think because I want to help, right?
• 5:41
  Alex Alexander: When life changes,
• 5:41
  Stacey Uhrig: Does she wants the help?
• 5:44
  Stacey Uhrig: Right. I mean, look. The reason why I ask that question is because what I'm really getting at, because I see this all the time, is when we think it's the narrative we create. When we think someone's in struggle, we're not happy. We're not content. We're not—I'm going to put it in quotes—"okay." It's dysregulating to our nervous system often, especially if it was someone who has learned or whose nervous system has learned to constantly be regulating with other people, and it feels dysregulating if they're not regulated. We get very enmeshed, and so I'm always curious. You know, why is it so important to somebody else that someone is happy? We can genuinely want happiness for someone, but often it comes down to it makes me uncomfortable. So we get to get curious about ourselves and how we regulate to people around us, but to use that example, a lot of the work that I do is rooted in something known as parts
• 6:47
  work. So, just a quick lesson: what I hear you saying is there's a part of your friend that is a hyper-independent part that does not feel comfortable relying on other people, maybe question mark relying on other people early on in life created pain, sadness, disappointment, frustration, shame, guilt, grief, whatever it is. And when we're really young and we have a really big emotion to process, or feeling to process, and we don't have the correct support to do it, and/or we don't have the language to express that we're trying to process it, it doesn't get dealt with, and so it kind of just—people say
• 7:36
  different things to me: "Oh, I shove it on a shelf. Oh, I shoved it down. I swallowed it down. I dropped it to the bottom of the ocean." Whatever it is, they just didn't want to deal with it. The part's protective job—their mantra is "never again." So we have parts of us that kind of develop during this time. That's like we don't ever want her to feel whatever this big emotion is ever again. In parts work, we'd call that the exile or the wound. We don't want it touched. So a part of her avoids or attempts to avoid any of those emotions coming up.
• 7:58
  different things to me: Because if I don't accept help, then I can't be disappointed. If I don't accept help, I can't be hurt. Or for a big one is if I accept help, then I'm letting go of control of how it gets done, and that also might be a part of them, like a big controlling part. So it's multifactorial.
• 8:28
  different things to me: Like there's so many different ways it can be looked at, but we can always get curious that that's a part of a person, not who they are. It's how they learned to adapt.
• 8:40
  different things to me: Hyper-independence is a huge, under-recognized trauma response.
• 8:50
  Alex Alexander: Oh, I mean, fellow hyper-independence girly here. Like,
• 8:54
  Stacey Uhrig: yeah, same. I have done
• 8:56
  Alex Alexander: years of therapy and work to try and yeah, let go of control or allow for just feel comfortable
• 9:03
  Stacey Uhrig: accepting help.
• 9:04
  Alex Alexander: Yep.
• 9:05
  Stacey Uhrig: Yeah.
• 9:06
  Alex Alexander: And then here we are,
• 9:07
  Stacey Uhrig: and here we are.
• 9:08
  Alex Alexander: People attracting hyper-independence friends, you know, and being like, "I want to be there for you." So, could we go through one more example? Because I just think this is helpful for people to maybe go on their own thought journey and allow themselves, right, to let go. Is that the goal—to let go?
• 9:28
  Stacey Uhrig: I mean, look, it's really funny. Can we talk about the letting like let go?
• 9:33
  Alex Alexander: Yeah,
• 9:34
  Stacey Uhrig: book from Mel Robbins earlier last year because I did, I think, five or six book clubs on that book.
• 9:42
  Stacey Uhrig: People were asking me to come and moderate discussions on that book. I probably moderated that discussion with over 100 people.
• 9:49
  Stacey Uhrig: I understand why the book resonated. Her marketing team did a phenomenal job. However, as a trauma trained professional, I did not think this was a good book, because it did not take into consideration the very benevolent parts of us that develop that might be a controlling part that we cannot just ask them to stand down and stop doing what they're doing in our nervous system to keep us safe. It's not as simple as she laid it out to be. "Oh, just let them," and then "let me." The concept is good, but that concept is the ultimate goal after really digging in to the work. It's not, and so what I found is a lot of people were reading the book and feeling a lot of additional shame because they could see other people around them being able to engage in just letting them and then let me, but they didn't also know where that person was on their own healing journey. So if you were new on your healing journey, I heard a lot of people saying, "I am much more controlling than I actually ever gave myself credit for, and I want to get curious as to why I'm so controlling, not just kick that controlling part to the curb."
• 11:08
  Alex Alexander: Yeah, yeah. I think I have not actually read that full book because I had feelings about it before I ever even opened it.
• 11:16
  Stacey Uhrig: Understood. Yes, I know there was a lot of controversy around
• 11:19
  Alex Alexander: it. Yeah, it's not necessarily. I guess I'm trying to say let go or shame myself about my friend. It's more that maybe acceptance is a better word. Like part of this friendship is going to be that she doesn't always want help, and even though that's a way I love to show up for people—that's just not a way we're going to connect. So, accepting that like there are other ways to connect, and quite frankly, not forcing myself on her like to show up in the ways I feel like I should is me respecting her and loving her and being the best friend I can be for her,
• 12:02
  Stacey Uhrig: and that's a "yes, and." And I think what happens is when I'm working with people on their relationship dynamics, if that's what comes up in our one-to-one sessions, we get to get really curious about what.
• 12:13
  Stacey Uhrig: And I said this to you earlier: what makes it uncomfortable for you if someone else is not open to receiving or open to connecting in the same way that you are, it's often what happens is people put a meaning to that where meaning doesn't need to be. They create a whole narrative about that or the person that's not necessarily accurate. Versus, I like this person. I like their energy. I love it when we connect. But I also recognize and respect they have their own backpack, and inside that backpack is a part of them that likes to keep some space and some distance and doesn't want any support. And I can just support by following that lead and that boundary for that person.
• 13:04
  Alex Alexander: Well, when you frame it that way, right? My mind goes, well, obviously, if she has this backpack on and it's a protective measure, then in like her most vulnerable moment when she just became a new mom, of course she's going to do that.
• 13:18
  Stacey Uhrig: Yeah, but it's also her journey, right? And so, as friends, the best thing we can do is be side by side on someone's journey and move as quickly or as slowly as they do.
• 13:29
  Stacey Uhrig: It's not our timeline; it's their timeline, right? And so, think of all the people we meet on our journey, but remember, we're also meeting them where they are on their journey, and it's not our timeline, and it's not our prerogative. We're constantly switching between our own and the people around
• 13:50
  Alex Alexander: us. Yeah, it really leads us all down like a big thought rabbit hole, doesn't it?
• 13:57
  Stacey Uhrig: It can in a good way.
• 13:59
  Alex Alexander: In a good way, I think. Like sometimes I think it's easy to just, for friendships especially, give like a quick answer of like, well they don't want me, right?
• 14:08
  Alex Alexander: Whereas a familial relationship or romantic relationship or something, we might spend more time thinking about it. So to me, this is like a reminder that for our friendships, it's sometimes important to spend a little time reflecting. Well, I'm like I don't even driving to the grocery store is quite frankly more reflection than a lot of people put into their friendships.
• 14:26
  Stacey Uhrig: Yeah, and look, the reality is I think we're very quick in all of our connections to make a judgment, right? And I love the book The Four Agreements. I use it in a lot of my work, and you know, not making assumptions and not taking things personally really are amazing concepts to try to ground yourself in. They're very hard to practice. It takes many years to really be able to do that. But if we can just be in connection with someone and not put meaning to it, and really listen to our intuition, our true intuition versus fear. It's a very, very different experience.
• 15:10
  Alex Alexander [Narration]: As we were recording this episode, I had this thought in the back of my head. I was like, "Gosh, I'm so happy that this is being recorded right now because that friend I mentioned, the one that I have generally come to terms with, the fact that showing up for her the way I show up for others just isn't what she wants. It's not how we're going to connect. I think I have accepted that to some extent, but as you hear in the episode, I obviously haven't accepted it 100%. There is still some lingering wish somewhere deep down inside me, and that's exactly why it came up as an example. It's why my friend and I still joke about it, and it's a topic of conversation, even though nothing really changes.
• 15:56
  Alex Alexander [Narration]: So the reason I'm happy that this was recorded is because if you have listened to me talk about depersonalizing things in an episode, let's say 145, which is Reframing Rejection with Tanesha Moody, or episode 192, Disappointment is the Cost of Friendship, or episode 167, How to Ask Someone to Hang Out Without Making It Weird. All those are linked in the show notes, by the way. I hope that this conversation that I am having with Stacey gives you a real live example of what that actually looks like. Because yes, I can tell myself it's not about me, but I'd say if we're listening to this conversation, as you can hear, I'm only at about 75%. It's not me. My logical brain knows that. My subconscious, well, it seems like it still has some thoughts.
• 16:51
  Alex Alexander [Narration]: So people come to me, and I get comments sometimes from people saying things like, "Wow, you're just really good at this." And I want to be straight with you.
• 17:02
  Alex Alexander [Narration]: It's not that I have it figured out. It's that I practice. It's that I've been working on this.
• 17:06
  Alex Alexander [Narration]: It's that over time it gets easier and easier to depersonalize, and it's a practice to look at something and be like, "Wow, this honestly just like really isn't about me." But I still do care about this person, even if it's not the way I would choose for this relationship to go, but that's the relief of being at 75%. I think it's pretty huge, and so I guess what I'm trying to tell you is that if you are practicing this whole depersonalizing thing, you don't need to be at a 100% success rate for it to make a difference in your friendships, you also won't get to 100% overnight. If you ever get there, I don't know if I'll ever get there, but 50 to 75% is probably my normal success rate, and I would say it gives me a lot of relief.
• 17:59
  Alex Alexander: So, if I had another example, which is maybe a friend who cancels constantly,
• 18:05
  Stacey Uhrig: okay,
• 18:06
  Alex Alexander: this is just a made-up one. Yeah, yeah. But what we're saying is we want to reflect on this, but we don't want to put meaning to it. So I might consider all the reasons that this friend cancels. Maybe they have a chronic illness.
• 18:22
  Alex Alexander: Maybe they are the primary childcare, like primary parent in their household. Maybe they are in some sort of job that they are just working way too much. Whether they like that or they don't like that, work is like all-consuming. And so then, when I maybe have some possible answers that relate to my friend's life and patterns, and actually, wait, those are all recent. So you're saying I need to go back.
• 18:51
  Stacey Uhrig: Well, here's what I'm going to say: is we as humans are very quick to make meaning out of everything.
• 18:59
  Alex Alexander: Yeah, we're
• 19:00
  Stacey Uhrig: we're meaning making people versus just being neutral to something. It's like this goes back to what we said earlier. Why is it important?
• 19:07
  Stacey Uhrig: I'm not judging while I'm asking this. I'm genuinely curious. Why is it important to make sense of it? Why is it important to understand? Mainly because we don't like uncertainty. We don't like unpredictability. We like a sense of control and security.
• 19:27
  Alex Alexander: Yeah.
• 19:28
  Stacey Uhrig: Yes, and then it gets filtered through whatever's inside our own individual backpack. So some people may have made meaning out of an earlier experience of people don't like me, or people are not interested in me, or they might have an abandonment wound, or a rejection wound, or something that leaves them feeling not enough. And so, when then someone continually cancels, it gets filtered through that, and the story becomes something other than perhaps the truth, right? We create that narrative.
• 20:02
  Stacey Uhrig: This goes back to The Four Agreements of don't make assumptions and don't take things personally. We create a narrative filtered through the lens of the belief that we have that it may or may not be true.
• 20:19
  Alex Alexander: Yeah, because when you're asking why does it matter? If I was thinking about like the people that are messaging me and in my DMs and sending me voice memos, it's because they feel like their friend doesn't like them, which is exactly what you're saying.
• 20:29
  Alex Alexander: They filter,
• 20:31
  Stacey Uhrig: yeah, and I see it all the time. I mean, when I work with people, a lot of times it's, "I don't believe I'm really likable." Like I'm working with a client right now on lovability, okay, she has a lot of stuff in her backpack that led her, as a very young child, to come to the conclusion that she was not lovable, based on the way her parents were or were not able to parent her and meet her needs, and so now every single relationship from there gets filtered through: "They're only in my life because they have to be. They only care for me because they have to care for me. Because if they really knew me, they would know the truth.
• 21:12
  Stacey Uhrig: And the truth is, I'm not a lovable person. I'm not deserving of that." We're doing some really deep work around that. That's where my hypnosis comes in. I do a lot of hypnosis work on these kinds of very deeply rooted belief systems because they're just beliefs.
• 21:28
  Stacey Uhrig: They're things that we determined at a younger age to help survive something, and that doesn't mean there has to be like physical or sexual or any kind of abuse. It just could feel like we don't feel like we're enough. We feel unimportant, undervalued, insignificant, and if we develop that core belief and it protects us in some way because it maybe prevents us from getting really close to people to try to avoid that pain again, then it sticks.
• 21:59
  Stacey Uhrig: So someone—I hear this a lot—"I'm so insulted because that person keeps canceling on me, or I'm so insulted because that person didn't confide in me. I thought we were friends." That's about you. You're making that about you, and you're filtering it through your own lens of all the things that you may already believe about yourself. Because if not, and you had more secure attachment to yourself, you would look at that and say, "Oh, isn't that interesting?" From a very neutral standpoint, and not create a story around it.
• 22:41
  Alex Alexander: As you were talking, I was saying, like, sounds like not only do we need to maybe briefly consider what's in our friend's backpack, but we absolutely need to consider what's in our own backpack,
• 22:51
  Stacey Uhrig: 24/7. Yeah, I mean, this is the thing. It's a constant data analysis, and it's funny because once I developed this concept, you know, you could be anywhere, at anywhere in the food store, at the line, at the you know, at the mail postal office, whatever, and you're watching people from afar in their dynamics, and you can go, that's so interesting. I wonder what's inside their backpack, and then when you feel something get triggered inside of you, you go. Oh, that's really interesting too. I wonder what I'm carrying. That that felt like a trigger for me. Like that hurt me. I felt insulted. I felt whatever, and it gives us a data point, and it gives us a starting, like a launching pad for getting curious about ourselves.
• 23:40
  Alex Alexander: Well, and sometimes it's not also a like quote unquote bad thing. As you were talking, I was thinking actually about a personal story of my own, which is that I really, really, really struggle with birthdays. I come with a background of like unworthiness of that's in my backpack for sure, and so even though I know all my friends love me and they want to celebrate my birthday, and I have a million examples of them like showing up for me every year that birthday rolls around, and my brain, my whatever, just like cannot comprehend that people want to celebrate me, and it leads to tears. It's like a whole thing.
• 24:22
  Alex Alexander: I'm working on this every year.
• 24:25
  Alex Alexander: My goal is that by my 40th birthday, I actually like my birthday. But the point of this being, I'm sharing my very personal story. I mean, people here on the podcast have heard all sorts of personal stories about me. But that is one where, like, a birthday is like a very positive thing. That's not even like a friend who cancels all the time, or and yet that is a constant struggle for me.
• 24:47
  Stacey Uhrig: Yeah, listen, I don't like opening gifts in front of other people. Yeah, it's really uncomfortable. Like physically makes me feel uncomfortable, and I think there's a part of it. I don't like all eyes on me. I don't like the spotlight on me, despite having a social media presence and a YouTube presence and all this crazy stuff that I put myself into. I actually convince myself nobody ever sees it.
• 25:15
  Alex Alexander: Same,
• 25:16
  Stacey Uhrig: which is how I'm able to do it. But I don't like having the spotlight on me, and I think people who know me actually would not believe that.
• 25:24
  Stacey Uhrig: But internally, I can tell you it's very uncomfortable. Now, if I had to like psychoanalyze myself, me being visible growing up also could have led to me being harmed emotionally, psychologically, and so it doesn't feel safe to feel seen, right? And so sometimes it's more than just worthiness when people want to celebrate us.
• 25:54
  Stacey Uhrig: Sometimes there's a part of us that goes, "This is vulnerable.
• 25:59
  Stacey Uhrig: This is unsafe. I feel exposed." And that's uncomfortable for my nervous system. That is like an old memory, even though it's not relevant. It's still there.
• 26:10
  Stacey Uhrig: That's a curious data point to work through.
• 26:15
  Alex Alexander: Yeah, I just wanted to point out that like it could go both ways. It can be like maybe something positive that makes you uncomfortable, right? Building your platform.
• 26:22
  Alex Alexander: Most people would say that's like a positive life experience, and yet it's triggering all sorts of things. Yeah,
• 26:28
  Stacey Uhrig: yeah.
• 27:37
  Alex Alexander: Okay, so now that we've done some of these exercises and really considered some people's behavior, one thing you always say is that understanding someone's behavior and excusing it are not the same thing. Can we talk about that?
• 27:51
  Stacey Uhrig: Yeah, of course.
• 27:51
  Stacey Uhrig: Like again, we all have these backpacks. So I have a subspecialty in narcissism and coercive control. So we'll use that as an example, okay?
• 28:01
  Stacey Uhrig: Because that all falls underneath the domestic violence wheel. I can look at somebody and have a pretty good understanding of why, for them, they learned to manipulate and have control over and a power dynamic over someone in a relationship. I can understand it if I understand their background. It's not that hard to figure out. However, that being said, it is never acceptable, and people get sticky with that because if they're in a relationship with someone, could be a parent, it could be an intimate relationship, it could be with a sibling, it could be with a friend, where there is a power dynamic at play in the relationship, what I find very often is sometimes clients say,"But I totally understand their background, and I just feel so bad for them, and I want to be the one to show them I'm a safe place." And the reality is, is it's not your work to do, and you will not be in a safe place unless they are doing the work, and so you can have compassion for someone, and at the same time not have a relationship with them because being in a relationship with them is not safe, and I see it a lot where people are like, but I know how they tick, so I'm okay. I'm kind of ahead of them. You're never ahead of them, actually. So that's where that usually comes from because I am in that space so often.
• 29:40
  Alex Alexander: So then, a friendship that maybe we're in that is not dealing with these
• 29:47
  Stacey Uhrig: yeah
• 29:47
  Alex Alexander: very intense factors, but going to what we were talking about earlier about someone who maybe we are struggling with a pattern of theirs, like the canceling, the way they speak about us, something like that. We're not talking about the abuse piece.
• 30:05
  Stacey Uhrig: Yeah,
• 30:06
  Alex Alexander: we can understand their behavior, but again, we don't necessarily want to excuse it. At what point?
• 30:15
  Alex Alexander: This is like the question I always struggle to answer on the podcast because there's a lot of nuance here. At what point is like enough enough, and it's time for us to remove ourselves from this friendship?
• 30:27
  Stacey Uhrig: It's really interesting because again, unless you listen to a podcast like this and you start taking into consideration all of the things that we're filtering or the decision making through, right? Because we're creating
• 30:42
  narratives: they don't like me, they're not a good friend, I'm not worthy of it. Like it's very curious where we go with that, but at some point, you also, if you're more grounded in yourself and you're more aligned with who you are and what really ticks, and you're not really living life from the part of the wound, if you will, this is where boundaries come in, where you get to say the tenets of friendship for me personally look like this, and I'm not really able to get that in this friendship. And every time I keep trying to go into this friendship, I find myself dysregulated. You know, I find like I'm abandoning myself for the sake of the friendship because I want the friendship to work, but some sacrifice is happening. You're either sacrificing yourself, or you're sacrificing this fear of being alone, which I see a lot. Like people want the quantity, they don't want the quality per se.
• 31:44
  narratives: So when people are at that tipping point. I always just say you get to get curious about the energy that somebody's bringing into the space, and if they're consistent, you actually can't be mad at them. If you keep putting yourself into the position of being disappointed, they're showing you what it is.
• 32:05
  narratives: So then that's when a boundary comes in. Boundaries are not punishment; they're self-preservation. They're a way to connect back to yourself, so you get to say to yourself, "I had this happen in the last year, where, and you and I were kind of talking about this in the green room the other day, where I had a long friendship, but I was deprioritizing my values, my morals, my needs, for the sake of keeping the peace.
• 32:37
  narratives: And honestly, one day it was like a flip of the switch.
• 32:41
  narratives: Something just flipped in me and was like, "What am I doing? I don't even like who I am, I just bite my tongue, and that doesn't feel very aligned to me." I can't even be myself in this connection, and so therefore I'm going to very clearly state why this is no longer working for me. It did not go well, but I felt so resolved in it at the end because I was now no longer abandoning myself every single time we got into this connection.
• 33:14
  Alex Alexander: Yeah, it sounds like we are very aligned in this. In that, like, so I talk a lot about how you know our expectations. You were saying like our tenets of friendship.
• 33:25
  Alex Alexander: They are a kind of like a constant, like we have our own personal tenets of friendship, but then in each friendship, we have kind of like expectations of each other, and we can realign those over time. But if they're being their true selves and you're being your true self, and is
• 33:46
  Stacey Uhrig: and there's sacrificing
• 33:47
  Alex Alexander: your values, right? Then, at a certain point, unless you know you are really both open to conversation and negotiation and whatever, you may not find your way back there. And if that's the case, like you know,
• 34:05
  Stacey Uhrig: yeah. And people just don't really love that because we do feel safety in numbers. People like a large flock, right? And as we get older, our flock does thin out.
• 34:18
  Stacey Uhrig: It just naturally does, and you know that's disarming for a lot of people. It's very dysregulating for a lot of people if they have kind of a low self-esteem or a concern about their self image, it kind of just puts everything in the spotlight, and it's really just like I said earlier, a launching pad to get curious and do some internal work.
• 34:40
  Alex Alexander: Yeah, there's also definitely right. I believe like the longer we've had a friendship, it's somehow inherently more valuable. Like they know us for longer. They know us in certain periods of life. I'm never going to meet a friend who knows me when I was my high school self again. How could I ever walk away from that? And I mean, what I would say to someone is like that version of you exists in a variety of relationships. Yes, that one does maybe hold specific things, but if it's causing you this much dysregulation, then you got to choose yourself at a certain point.
• 35:18
  Stacey Uhrig: Yeah, and sometimes when we have those really long-term relationships, people evolve at different paces, and so sometimes one person just kind of outgrows the other person. Also, like if one's just on a faster growth trajectory emotionally, maybe they've been through some really hard things. They gained a lot of post-traumatic wisdom from it. They don't have a lot of tolerance for nonsense anymore.
• 35:44
  Stacey Uhrig: Like I see this a lot, where then they're kind of on this like evolution. This, you know, they're evolving as a person, and the other person's still kind of nitpicking and going after things that don't have value to the other person anymore. And so you're starting to see this like pulling apart, and that's okay too. That is kind of just the natural progression of connection.
• 36:09
  Alex Alexander: yeah. I mean, I think we all have this idea that connection always progresses like up and better and higher and closer and whatnot. But in reality, there are definitely periods where you like fall apart, come back together, no doubt, maybe completely end. You know, and that's not a failure of the friendship. It did its job for the period of time that it did it, and
• 36:34
  Stacey Uhrig: it's the natural burn down.
• 36:36
  Alex Alexander: Yeah, it's okay.
• 36:36
  Alex Alexander: It's okay, people. Yeah. So this friendship that you walked away from, you had a very—it sounds like—direct conversation. Is that correct?
• 36:46
  Stacey Uhrig: I did. Okay. I'm a very direct person, so I would never be the kind of person to just slowly remove myself from something. It just would have been too obvious, and I also wanted to be really honest because if the person was willing to reflect, it might be of an interesting thing to that person. They really were not interested in reflecting. They were much more interested in defending their position, and that was also a really good piece of information for me, you know, because I was like, okay, so we are at different points, and that's okay too. Like, it's no judgment, but this is no longer the kind of connection that I'm seeking to have. I don't want to be in a connection with somebody where I can actually be really vulnerable, and instead of saying, "Oh my gosh, I had no idea, I'm so sorry," it was just to defend the position. That was a really good piece of information for me to get right from the get-go,
• 37:49
  Alex Alexander: yeah, and I love that you know this goes back to what you were talking about earlier is the way that you're talking about it is so neutral, right? It's just information.
• 37:56
  Stacey Uhrig: It's just information
• 37:57
  Alex Alexander: confirming things that you felt already. It is reaffirming the decision that this is not a relationship you want to keep investing in,
• 38:04
  Stacey Uhrig: yeah,
• 38:05
  Alex Alexander: and it is what it is,
• 38:08
  Stacey Uhrig: and it's interesting because you're right. Like, especially when I'm dealing with people who are in a toxic dynamic with a parent, or with a sibling, or with an intimate partner, and there have been, you know, it's gone on for decades. There's this mindset of, well, I've put so much time in that, like, I want to get the return on investment, and I was like, yeah, but this is a very end result focused concept versus this process focused concept of like this relationship came into my life at a time to learn X, and this relationship is now also teaching me what it means to stand in my own truth, and it's gifting me the opportunity to express that truth. And you know, it's a very scary thing for people to do. They're very afraid of losing that.
• 39:05
  Alex Alexander: Yep, I again know this very well,
• 39:08
  Stacey Uhrig: yeah. It's untangling like the stories or the beliefs, right? Of like they are whatever, whatever you have a belief about. They are my longest friend. They are my mom, brother, sister, dad, uncle, grandpa.
• 39:27
  Stacey Uhrig: So therefore, it has to.
• 39:29
  Alex Alexander: They are the father of my children. They are the yeah. Therefore, and then like we have some expectation of ourselves of the amount of effort and energy and.
• 39:42
  Stacey Uhrig: But there's also a societal construct and a cultural construct and a generational, familial set of rules and contracts that have been placed on us that are really unspoken. Also in the backpack, by the way, all of the stuff's inside the backpack, all of it, and so we kind of get lost in all of that information, and like our own intuition kind of gets drowned out, and we go against ourselves very often.
• 40:12
  Alex Alexander: Yeah, and sometimes for a really long time,
• 40:14
  Stacey Uhrig: for a very long
• 40:15
  Alex Alexander: from personal experience for very long time.
• 40:18
  Stacey Uhrig: Yeah,
• 40:18
  Alex Alexander: yeah, and then you look back and you're like,"Wow, I was really just throwing myself through the wringer repeatedly over and over and over again for that. Yeah,
• 40:28
  Stacey Uhrig: yeah.
• 40:29
  Alex Alexander: Something that I feel like I've never talked about on the podcast, but we kind of keep talking about like in circles around it, and I just feel like you might be an interesting person to discuss it. Something I talk about in my book a little bit, actually, is the idea that in so many relationships, right, in like familial relationships, in romantic relationships, we have some sort of like contract or expectation, right? Like "they are my mother" brings some sort of expectation about how they're always going to show up in your life, what they're willing to do for you, things like that. They are my spouse, or my boyfriend, or my girlfriend. Again, I mean, even actually, that's a great example. Like, they are my boyfriend, girlfriend has a different expectation than they are my husband, wife. Like, you sign that piece of paper, you go through that ceremony. There is now a level of expectation where, like, I don't know if your boyfriend didn't come sit by you for hours and hours and hours at the hospital, and your mom swapped in sometimes you kind of be like, well, they're just dating. But when they're married, like I don't know, it's a little concerning that your husband wasn't there. Okay, so the whole point of this being that I always think it's really interesting because friendship doesn't really have like a set expectation, and I think that that is interesting when it comes to that safety, security, control piece, because we don't really know what that kind of like end result of security looks like. So I almost feel like in friendship, sometimes it's worse.
• 42:13
  Stacey Uhrig: It's different for everybody.
• 42:15
  Alex Alexander: Yes,
• 42:16
  Stacey Uhrig: right. But really, if you think about it, you know, a boyfriend or a girlfriend or a friend. At the end of the day, we do have a set of implicit, unspoken rules and contracts
• 42:30
  that we layer on: "This is what a friend is. This is what a boyfriend is. This is what a girlfriend is. This is what an intimate partner is. This is what a spouse is." Like we don't even say them out loud unless, like, maybe we're taking a vow.
• 42:46
  that we layer on: But we get to get very, and it's always going to come back to curiosity for me. We get to get very curious as to where those rules came from. Yeah, I poke holes in this for my clients all the time. Well, that's just the way it is. I said, "Well, according to whom? Who decided that?" People never stop to think of all the social man-made constructs that we're walking through all day, every day.
• 43:09
  that we layer on: We're almost like zombie to it.
• 43:15
  that we layer on: We're just kind of walking, like sleepwalking through it. But when you stop and really think, I guess, like I don't know, like where did I even come up with that construct? Was it because this is what you were taught in school? This is what a good friend is. Did you read it in a book? Did you watch it on the Hallmark Channel? Did you watch it on shows, TV? Is it something that was told to you by your friends, by your family? Like I love this example. I want you to hear this one because it's so good. Yeah. Do you have kids?
• 43:45
  Alex Alexander: I don't, no.
• 43:46
  Stacey Uhrig: Okay. Do you have friends who have kids? I know you just mentioned.
• 43:49
  Alex Alexander: I am an auntie to my core. I got so many kiddos.
• 43:52
  Stacey Uhrig: Auntie to all.
• 43:52
  Stacey Uhrig: Okay. So let's just imagine we have like a five, six, or seven-year-old.
• 43:57
  Alex Alexander: Yep, got one in my mind,
• 43:59
  Stacey Uhrig: and they're tired.
• 43:59
  Stacey Uhrig: They had a long day, or maybe they had a long week, and it's Saturday, and let's just say Joey, pulling a name out of the hat, Joey has a birthday party to go to at the bounce house place that Mom RSVP'd for on Joey's behalf, and everybody from the class is going to go.
• 44:24
  Stacey Uhrig: And Joey's exhausted. Joey just was at school all week. He just wants like a down day. He doesn't really want to get dressed. He just wants to chill out, and so he's fighting: "I don't want to go." And this is what we hear back: "Of course you want to go. You don't know what you're talking about.
• 44:43
  Stacey Uhrig: You're not being a good friend.
• 44:43
  Stacey Uhrig: They already paid for you to go.
• 44:47
  Stacey Uhrig: You have to go. That's what a good friend would do, and a good friend would show up for you." And it's so like covert. There's no malice in any of it. It's all benevolent intention. But we are
• 45:03
  sending a message: deprioritize your needs, put your needs aside for the needs of someone else.
• 45:10
  sending a message: We're not saying that explicitly, but that is definitely the implicit message.
• 45:15
  sending a message: It doesn't really matter what you're telling me you need right now. That's not what a good friend is. This is what a good friend would do. And then we wonder why later down the road, at 30 years old, they're coming to me and saying, "I don't know how to say no to my friends because that wouldn't be me being a good friend." And I say,"According to whom?"
• 45:34
  Alex Alexander: Yeah,
• 45:35
  Stacey Uhrig: whose voice do you hear in your head when you hear that rule?
• 45:40
  Alex Alexander: Another example I've had with people that I talk to, like I was just thinking about, is you know when you're a little kid and maybe you have family friends. You have like your parents' best friends and their kids. Yeah, and it'll be like, oh well, Bobby is going to be your longest, most important friend. Bobby's going to have known you your entire life.
• 46:02
  Stacey Uhrig: Right.
• 46:03
  Alex Alexander: You and Bobby are going to do life. You're like brothers.
• 46:06
  Stacey Uhrig: Like brothers,
• 46:07
  Alex Alexander: you're like cousins, you're like whatever, and then I talk to people, and they message me, and they go,"Yes, I've been friends with this person since I was born, but we have nothing in common."
• 46:19
  Stacey Uhrig: right?
• 46:20
  Alex Alexander: We have nothing in common, and yet I feel this like wild pull that I have to show up in all these ways for this person, because I was told as a kid that it would matter.
• 46:32
  Stacey Uhrig: But also remember this, and this is where it comes
• 46:35
  down to: if that person were working with me one on one, and I would say, in a best case scenario, what would you want?
• 46:43
  down to: And they would say, "I'm not getting anything out of this relationship. I don't even want to be in it anymore, but my mom would be upset. My dad would be upset. You know, it's going to be awkward because the family still gets together at the holidays." Blah, blah, blah. You know, the whole narrative, and we get to get really curious about what that does to your nervous system. Meaning, like, do you feel anxious? Do you feel activated in some way, shape, or form about the idea of someone being disappointed in you, or about the idea of somebody not being happy with you or happy with your decision, even though the decision is best for you?
• 47:24
  down to: And that's a really challenging dynamic, and I see it a lot. And if the person were to be really bold, I would have them ask the parent, "Why is it important to you that this relationship stays as X?" And if they say, "Because it just makes everybody more comfortable," which is probably what they would say. I would encourage my client to say back,"Why is it my job to make you comfortable?" Yeah, but people don't want to have these conversations. They see it as conflict, but it's not conflict.
• 48:02
  down to: It's just a conversation where people might disagree,
• 48:09
  Alex Alexander: yeah,
• 48:10
  Stacey Uhrig: or have differing opinions,
• 48:11
  Alex Alexander: yeah, and have to rewrite expectations and rewrite narratives and reflect on their own. You know, if you ask that question to your parent, the hope is that the parent would then reflect, hopefully,
• 48:22
  Stacey Uhrig: but probably unlikely. Like, especially like if a parent's coming into the mix at like 70, 80s—you're 80 years old. They might be like, just get over it, just plow through, just make it easy for everybody else. So you just don't know what is in their backpack or what's inside their access of what they'd be pulling from or what they were trained to believe.
• 48:46
  Alex Alexander: The webs you untangle are beautiful and amazing, Stacey. My brain is now just like thinking of every web in my life, every relationship, the backpacks they might be wearing. I'm going to go to the grocery store today and just stare at people and wonder what might be in there. Watch
• 49:03
  Stacey Uhrig: those invisible backpacks. It is a fascinating experiment for me. I can't look at anyone without ever thinking about what's inside their backpack without judgment. It's just a pure curiosity. I'm a very curious person, as you can tell. I think I've probably said that word 100 times, but we are not walking around as curious people. We're walking around as very judgmental, quick to put a narrative to something, and it really keeps people stuck.
• 49:34
  Alex Alexander: Yes, and as you said earlier, you know people who want to assign meaning.
• 49:38
  Stacey Uhrig: Yeah,
• 49:38
  Alex Alexander: like I would say, I'm a very, very, very curious person, and I think I do pretty good at staying neutral.
• 49:44
  Alex Alexander: But walking away from this conversation with you today is just a reminder for me that like it's amazing to be curious, but curious and neutral don't assign meaning.
• 49:55
  Alex Alexander: I'm pretty good at that, but I'm gonna see if I can do even better.
• 49:59
  Stacey Uhrig: Yeah, it's a fun little experiment.
• 50:02
  Alex Alexander: Well, Stacey, thank you so much for being here today and having this conversation. Yeah,
• 50:07
  Stacey Uhrig: yeah, it was great.
• 50:08
  Alex Alexander: This is going to help a lot of people. I'm really excited for this one to be out there.
• 50:11
  Stacey Uhrig: That's my hope.
• 50:12
  Alex Alexander [Narration]: So, as you listen to this episode, there might have been a friendship or a few friendships that popped up in your mind where you have just really been struggling with something about the way they show up. But here's
• 50:25
  what I'm going to say: is that no matter what friendship you are in, you are the common denominator in every single one of your friendships, which means that your backpack is showing up in all of them, and that's not a bad thing. That's actually really good news because it means that getting curious about what's inside your backpack is always useful. Always. You don't have to have every answer.
• 50:49
  what I'm going to say: You're probably never going to.
• 50:51
  But starting to ask questions: Where did this come from? Whose voice is that telling me I have to show up that way? Why does this matter so much to me? Even in this episode with Stacey, you saw where some of my questions, like I, started to reflect back and things started to shift. So, if there is a friendship that is just sitting with you right now, one that is lingering, giving you a little anxiety, taking up more mental space than you'd like, try this. Ask yourself, what would make this make sense, and then why does it matter so much to me, and you don't have to land on some perfect answer.
• 51:29
  But starting to ask questions: You just have to give your brain something to hold on to instead of spinning. I said this in the narration, and I'm going to say it one more time because I really do mean it. When you ask yourself that question, why does it matter so much to me, and you're trying to depersonalize and do this reflection. You don't have to get to 100% acceptance to make it count.
• 51:49
  But starting to ask questions: Just sitting with the curiosity, working on letting it go even a little bit. That's a practice.
• 51:59
  But starting to ask questions: Every little bit moves the needle, even if you never get to 100%. You can find everything about Stacey and her work in the show notes. Links to her podcasts, to her website, to her coaching, ways to connect with her, and dive deeper into this work—work that I think any of us could use. With that, I'll see you next week.
• 52:23
  Podcast Intro/Outro: Thank you for listening to this episode of Friendship IRL. I am so honored to have these conversations with you. But don't let the chat die here. Send me a voice message. I created a special website just to chat with you. You can find it at alexalex.chat. You can also find me on Instagram. My handle, @itsalexalexander. Or go ahead and leave a review wherever you prefer to listen to podcasts. Now if you want to take this conversation a step further, send this episode to a friend. Tell them you found it interesting. And use what we just talked about as a conversation starter the next time you and your friend hang out. No need for a teary goodbye. I'll be back with a new episode next week.