The Friendship Episode
ShrinkChicks
Jennifer Chaiken, LMFT and Emmalee Bierly, LMFT
5 • 717 Ratings
🗓️ 13 October 2025
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week on ShrinkChicks, Em and Jen are taking on the topic of friendship, from making new ones to grieving breakups and navigating the complicated in-betweens. They share why effort matters in adult friendships, how to handle loneliness, and why friendship breakups can hurt just as much as romantic ones.
Listener questions cover everything from reconnecting with old friends, financial differences, and friendship triangles to handling drifting connections, performative friends, and rejection. Em and Jen also dig into adolescent friendship wounds that still sting in adulthood, how to politely exit a new friendship, and what to do when your child’s friendships clash with your own. Plus, in Dear Em & Jen, they respond to a listener dating someone new with big-T trauma.
Tune in to gain insight, awareness, and action! PS: Fast forward to around 7 minutes to skip the intro and get straight to today’s content.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Our society does not properly acknowledge how painful friendship breakups and loss are. |
| 0:07.8 | I would encourage you to do it just like a romantic breakup process. |
| 0:12.2 | You can go to therapy about it. |
| 0:13.9 | You can read about it. |
| 0:14.5 | You can listen to music. |
| 0:15.7 | You can write a letter that you don't send that you tear up or light on fire or just get |
| 0:20.1 | rid of. |
| 0:21.4 | Make a playlist. Mark the ending in some way. |
| 0:24.5 | There is nothing wrong with deep grief of a friendship. |
| 0:30.0 | It means it was something real. |
| 0:43.8 | Well, Welcome back to another episode of shrink chicks. |
| 0:49.0 | Take a seat on our virtual therapy couch and get ready to learn all about, well, you. |
| 0:50.1 | I'm Emily Beerley. |
| 0:51.4 | And I'm Jennifer Chakin. |
| 0:55.4 | And we're both licensed, marriage and family therapist and relationship experts. |
| 1:02.7 | We're the owners and founders of the therapy group, a nationwide psychotherapy practice with down-to-earth therapists just like us. |
| 1:06.8 | Your session is starting. So get ready to know yourself and grow yourself. |
| 1:12.1 | So let me be honest for a second. |
| 1:15.2 | Braws and underwear have always been a pain point for me. |
| 1:16.5 | You know the drill. |
| 1:22.4 | Strap, sticking in, bands that never sit quite right, underwear that either rolls or rides up. |
| 1:26.8 | I'd get so frustrated shopping for bras and underwear that I kind of gave up. I'd add things to my card |
... |
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