How to Overcome the Battle of Loneliness with Deeper Friendships with Shasta Nelson

Shasta Nelson is a Friendship Expert, Speaker, and author of three books. She has a passion for spreading awareness on the importance of friendships, especially with the ever-growing loneliness epidemic that is sweeping our world. As if loneliness wasn’t already bad enough, the COVID-19 pandemic came in and left many in a world feeling isolated and divided, leading to extreme levels of loneliness. However, Shasta is here to help you learn how to deepen your friendships and as she has coined, your frientimicy.

As Shasta began to notice changes in the way her friendships worked as she went through life, she began to notice that we have expectations for ourselves that lead to us just assuming that we know how to be a good friend. However, it turns out that this is just not the case. Just like with any relationship, being a good friend takes a lot of practice and a willingness to grow through the struggles.

One of the biggest struggles in friendships is the need to be seen. This is a struggle we see often in relationships with family and significant others, however, it is not one we talk about enough with friendships. So how do we feel more seen in friendships? By simply being a better friend ourselves through better learning how to maintain the friendships we have. Shasta explains that we do this by bringing more positivity, consistency, and vulnerability to the table.

Also much like our other relationships, another struggle that friendships face is the fear or avoidance of conflict. However, Shasta explains that conflict is absolutely necessary to a healthy friendship because it is conflict that allows you to grow closer and deepen the friendship with that person. While it is important to not avoid conflict, she also explains that how we choose to handle that conflict is absolutely everything. She tells us that we do so through seeing the love in our friends.

So what do we do when conflict goes wrong? It may be easier said than done, but we have to learn to forgive. Shasta explains to us that intimacy and forgiveness absolutely go hand-in-hand. While this once again applies to any relationship in our lives, she applies it to our friendships by saying, “It is impossible to have intimacy with someone and not practice forgiveness.”

Shasta also believes that our friendships at work are some of the most important relationships in our lives, due to the fact that they are the ones that we spend the most time with. She even goes so far as to say that they are the people who have the biggest impact on our overall happiness, implying that these friendships are worth the effort. She also breaks down exactly how to manage these friendships, especially when they can feel a bit uncomfortable.

In Shasta’s episode of the Love Intently Podcast, we chat about her story of becoming a Friendship Expert, writing her books, managing friendships, overcoming loneliness, and so much more. Tune in to hear her full story and see below for key topics discussed during this episode with Shasta Nelson.

Key Topics Discussed

- Why Shasta got into being a friendship expert (“We have these expectations that we are supposed to just know how to be a good friend”)
- The changes in friendship patterns as we get older (Before we had jobs and our own careers, it didn’t really matter who our friends were”)
- Identifying an intimacy gap in our lives (“How loved and supported do I feel in life right now”)
- How she coined frientimacy (“All of these relationships come from just wanting to be seen.”)
- Managing loneliness (“It’s our body telling us there’s a need that’s not being met”)
- The need to be seen in our society (“This desire to be seen is really, really common.”)
- Finding more friends is not always meeting more people, it’s not knowing how to maintain friendships (“With all these people I’ve been meeting, I have to learn how to keep them.”)
- The need for more positivity, consistency, and vulnerability (“We need more positive emotions.”)

- Defining what positivity truly looks like (“Positivity means that the end result of our actions is that we both feel good.”), (“The goal isn’t to only say positive things, it’s that we both feel accepted”)
- The importance of going through something together (“We feel safer with them because we have gone through conflict together.”)
- Her advice on conflict with friends (“Affirm and ask.”)
- Breaking down the “friendship triangle”.
- How to identify if a friendship is healthy or toxic (“A healthy friendship meets all three requirements and it’s obvious this one isn’t healthy.”)
- Managing personal differences with friendships (“Less commonalities leave us feeling more vulnerable.” )
- How differences can help us grow closer in our friendships (“That’s the goal… to use these apparent differences to help us get to know each other better.”)
- “How can I leave you in a way that leaves you feeling accepted?”
- The importance of being able to see the love in our friends (“If I can’t practice seeing the love in you and we have been friends, then that scares me for my ability to do that for the people in my day-to-day life.”)
- The pain and destruction that comes along with loneliness (“Loneliness is contagious.”) (“The lonelier we are, the less likely we are to show up with love.”)
- The importance of empathy and compassion in friendships (“I know that feeling so I’m going to connect with that.”)
- Overcoming the fear of rejection in friendships (“What is this stopping me from doing or not doing in my friendships.”)
- Why intimacy and forgiveness go hand-in-hand (“It is impossible to have intimacy with someone and not practice forgiveness.”)
- How to exercise our spiritual and emotional “muscles” (“You’ll never be a spiritually healthy person if you don’t practice emotional sweat and building the muscles of forgiveness.”)
- “Our friendships are the places we can be our best-selves”
- The importance of our friendships at work (“The people we spend time with at work affect our happiness almost more than anyone else.”)