When Making Adult Friendships Feels Like Dating

The Fear of Being "Too Much"

Today, I want to chat about creating friendships as an adult.

This has been on my mind lately and something I've been actively doing since we moved cities about a month ago. And when I say a month ago, I cannot believe that it's only been a month since we moved our family from Ajijic in Jalisco to the beautiful colonial city of San Miguel de Allende in Guanajuato in Mexico.

If you're catching up, we moved our family to Mexico from Australia back in 2021 during the height of the plandemic. We did that for multiple reasons that you can go read about in Redefining Home, How We Left Australia and Found Ourselves in Mexico.

One of the challenges I've experienced since we moved here—and I say challenge, but it's not like this is on my mind, 24 hours, 7 days a week—but it's something that I've noticed when I'm meeting people and I'm curious if other people have experienced this as well. Which is why I want to dive into it!

I'm someone who I would say has some anxious tendencies. I'm not paralysed by those tendencies. I've been coming away from incredible conversations and meetings with dear friends and overanalysing myself.

I'll say things to myself like, was I talking too much? What are they going to think of me? Was I really listening? Maybe I shouldn't have said that.

And I can liken it to how I felt, for instance, when I was first dating Brendan.

You know when you really like someone and you don't want to put a bad foot forward or mess it up? When you question everything you say to them because you're fearful that you're going to say something wrong?

I don’t think this IN the moment. It’s afterwards. I'm over analysing the experiences and conversations I'm having with new friends.

Some greater context to this is that over the last three years, I haven’t had any friendships with women in the same phase of life as me: young mothers raising children within a marriage, having moved countries.

And now I'm finding myself meeting an abundance of amazing women (and men) in that same phase of life, who are experiencing the same things. I'm so excited by that that it’s putting me into analysis paralysis because I don't want to let these things go.

I've been so starved of deeply connected human contact over the last three years in our life in Ajijic that I almost feel desperate to connect with people.

It feels like I've got three years worth of words to share with my new friends and I'm wondering if that is too much for them.

Now, my husband Brendan assures me that I'm perfectly likeable and not weird in these situations. But in my mind, I'm awkwardAF. I'm overbearing. I'm too much. And I just want to feel relaxed, at ease inside myself, and not feel so self-conscious.

But I know at the same time this stems from a combination of a desire to have deep, lasting friendships with people I love and care about. It's also because I have a toddler, which means I don't have a whole lot of time where I get to have deep and meaningful conversations with other adults whom I love and adore.

When you have a small child, the time that you have for that is diminished greatly. And I feel emotional writing about this, because it's something that changes dramatically when you have a child. Your life is enriched in so many beautiful ways and it's also diminished in some. Despite positive rhetoric, it's okay for that to be the reality.

I think this is why I find myself being so paralysed by this desire to be liked; because deep, connected conversation is so important to me and I've been starved of that for years.

It's so beautiful to be coming out the other side to have those conversations and be seen again. I felt so invisible in many ways over the last three years, but that's all changing and it's due to my decision to put myself first into ask for what I wanted to move somewhere that allows me to be more of me.

So I feel like, I’m in (yet another) rebirth of sorts.

I feel like an awkward teenager who's just been sent to a new school, who has different clothes, and who doesn't know anyone. I'm the girl with glasses and is super awkward and trying to make friends. 🤓 

If you can think back to the time in your life where you were an awkward teenager, (if you were one. I was definitely one) and imagine having to relive that again. I never thought I would have to relive that part of my life again.

I've spoken before on this podcast about the different octaves of healing. And when you're committed to self-growth, shadow work, and meeting yourself in different ways this is reality.

How you often meet the same challenge in a different way?

That's exactly what's happening for me right now. It's pulling to the surface my insecurities, my tendencies, shining a light on them and asking me to look at them.

And so I am.

And what better way to do that rather than looking at them privately, but to do it in a newsletter and on a podcast with other humans of the world. 😂 

I do this because the more light we bring to things in our life that we think are shameful or things we should hide, the more free we are.

And I want to feel free. 🦅 

I don't want to feel like I'm the only person in life who feels awkward creating new adult friendships. I know that's not the truth.

And I'd greatly appreciate it if you also have felt this in your life, that you share that with me as well, because the more we share our “shame”, the more free we are.

So there are a few aspects to this that I've been unpacking for myself. One of which is my self-talk. And I'm going to do a separate episode on self-compassion. Because this is a huge piece of my “inner work” puzzle.

It's something I've been deeply unpacking behind the scenes. It also came up in a tarot and astrology reading earlier this year as the main roadblock to unlock to access the higher levels of me. And when I say higher levels, I don't mean “ascension”. I mean the most aligned, authentic, integral parts of me.

Integrity is a huge part of my path as well. The more able I am to unpack that with myself and do it openly with you, the more open my path becomes in life. 🚪 

I realised earlier this year that my internal voice is deeply, deeply scathing. And I've been doing a lot of work to figure out why that is.

One of the mentors that I've been looking to to understand my internal voice is Katherine Fabrizio. I hope to interview her to share more information about this topic with you in the future.

She describes something called Good Daughter Syndrome. What I've discovered is that I have been stuck for a very long time in what she calls the “Good Daughter Trap”.

Katherine talks about the difference between confidence and self doubt. Self doubt is something that I have carried for a very long time and is what fuels my criticality when creating new friendships.

She says that if we struggle with self doubt, it's highly likely to be related to our relationship with our mum.

When we have a mother who is supportive, we internalise her voice and take it in as support. It's like a warm, comforting jumper that hugs us and provides us with this layer of protection against all the challenges we bump up against as life unfolds for us.

A mother like this instills the idea and the reality that she believes in us. She trusts that we'll make the right choices. Because of that, we feel confident and we're comfortable with our decisions. We know that people make mistakes, but it doesn't mean anything about us.

In opposition to that, a Good Daughter has a mum who tends to criticise us. Over time we internalise that criticism and it becomes our self-doubt.

This results in us chronically second-guessing ourselves, we find it hard to make decisions and feel confident about them, because our mums teach us we can't solely rely on our own judgment.

Or, she projects her fear upon us so that we internalise that fear and that's what we hear when we're making decisions.

So what happens as children is that these criticisms and fears become a tape inside of our head and we internalise it.

It's a representation of our mother, it's not even our own voice. And this is what I've noticed inside of my own brain. She's become part of my self-concept, this internalised mum voice is there all the time, and quite often it undermines my confidence and has me feel like my own judgment isn't good enough.

Now, this is an area I've been doing a lot of work on. I've read a tonne of books and I'm really excited to share some different mentors in this realm with you. So if you hear the same tapes playing in your mind or have experienced a difficult mother relationship in your life, soon you can access some of the resources that have helped me over the last few years.

I'm someone who has a pretty strong intuition. I listen to it.

I have strong instincts.

If you've heard of Human Design, I have Splenic Authority, which means that I have a very strong instinct which I listen to, and I clearly know my yes from my no.

In the moment I'm okay. But what happens for me personally is, later on, maybe when I'm in the car or laying in bed or I've woken up the next morning, that voice comes in. And so does the distrust, lack of confidence, self doubt and the judgment.

What's so interesting is that it's not even me. As I said, it's not my voice. Now I'm able to see and hear the difference—to know myself from my mother, my grandmother, the red thread in my life, my maternal line.

So after spending my entire childhood and most of my adulthood so far—except for the last say couple of years—internalising that fear, voice, and judgment, I'm in the process of externalising that now. Removing it from my mind and my reality, and seeing it for what it truly is.

I'm an awesome human.

I bring a lot of joy.

Great conversation, laughter, depth and guidance to conversations and friendships.

I'm an incredible listener.

And I don't need crippling self-doubt to tell me otherwise. But it's there. I recognise it. I'm working through it. I'm not pretending it's not there. (I've just shared it with the world.) And I know I'm not the only person who has experienced that.

Becoming a mother is such a journey. Often we lose ourselves. We're rebirthed as an entirely different human. We have to get to know ourselves again whilst also not having much time to do that.

For me, I highly value time on my own in nature. Time with myself to allow thoughts to surface, to process those, and allow them to unfold so I can unpack them, come to different conclusions and see what's going on beneath the surface.

When I don't have that time to allow that process to unfold is when I find myself in these positions where I’m anxious, judging myself or fearful. And so quite often, the advice that I need to take for myself is to take some time out.Which really hasn't happened since we've moved. It's been a whirlwind of a month. 🌪️ 

One of the reasons I started this newsletter and podcast is because I'm sick of seeing the highlight reel on social media. I'm sick of people, pretending that life is all roses, that starting a business is easy, or women painting the perfect version of motherhood, relationships, or work-life balance.

I'm a triple earth. I have a Capricorn sun, a Taurus moon, and Virgo rising.

I’m heavily grounded.

My incarnation cross in human design is Tension.

I smell bullshit. 💩 

In the Gene Keys, my life's work is Gene Key 38. That gives me the gift of Perseverance. I'm one of the most resilient people you will ever meet. Gene Key 38 tells us that I'm here to challenge everything that takes away an individual's freedom and make them less than they could be.

So why not put what holds me back out there on the table?

Our shame—everything we hide from the world—makes us less free than we could be.

My greatest challenge in life, Gene Key 39, is to overcome the human tendency to take everything personally. What was I saying earlier? 😉 

Remember that critical internal voice, the self doubt, the judgment, the lack of compassion that doesn't give me room to breathe?

If I'm paralysed by what other people think of me, I'm not going to fulfil my life's work.

As you might've guessed, I love using different tools that highlight who I am and what my path is. Tools that create more of who I am (not take me away from that).

I'm not into fluffiness. I'm not into toxic positivity and pretending that I don't go through challenges or that everything's fine all the time.

I'm repulsed by that.

It's my job and my role to show you those parts of myself, so you feel comfortable sharing yours with the world too.

So, thank you, for reading about my awkwardness in creating friendships.

On one hand, I'm having a beautiful conversation and connection with people. And on the other hand, I'm going home and dismantling every second of what was said and imagining saying something else. And creating meaning and reasons for why I should have said something else.

Is that useful? I believe not.

Is it happening? Yes.

Am I working through it? Yes.

Am I sharing it with you? Yes.

We all have different tendencies. This is one of mine. Something I'm exploring with you here because I'm committed to being as human as I possibly can.

I believe that the more of us that show up authentically and responsibly online without pretending our life is a highlight reel 24/7, the better world we're creating for our daughters and sons. And, as I've said previously on this podcast, I'm incredibly grateful that the internal voice of my daughter will not mirror mine, because of the love, intention and consciousness that I put into parenting her.

And that's not to say that my parents didn't care about how they parented me. But what's different about our generation is the access we have to self-reflective materials, resources, and courses via the internet.

They didn't have that. Our parents and their parents were stuck with their programming. They still have their programming and most of them will never uncover or shift it because:

A) they don't even realise it exists;

B) they're too scared to go there; and

C) they deny access to the tools that will help them do that.

I'm being stereotypical here because some people of older generations will do this work. But from what I've seen out there, it's a small minority.

Recently, I had a conversation with Brendan where we asked each other, “What is the difference between our generation, Gen X, and the Boomers? Our reflections were this. The Boomers seem to have zero desire to reflect on themselves. They don't want to look at their programming. They don't want to be responsible for what they say or do.

Gen X is a little bit more likely to do that, but they're not digital natives. We're not even digital natives, but we've accessed what is available to us and embraced it. Whereas Gen X tends to—from what I've seen once again, I’m generalising—still want to separate the professional from the personal. They have a tendency to have two separate lives to want to sweep what's happening for them underneath the carpet, pretend it's not there, and project a different version of themselves out there in the world, aka the professional version of themselves.

What's happened with us, the Millennials, is, we've embraced the internet. We've embraced healing tools. We are the first generation that has done that. In our generation, there are people doing it in so many different ways.

We have a huge contingent of psychologically-oriented people. There's a lot of research into narcissism, emotional immaturity, and self care.

We have a somatic component, the body-based therapies.

There’s plant medicine, ancestral modalities, and ritual.

We have things I've already mentioned today like the Gene Keys, Human Design, astrology, tarot, divination. That's another component.

Not to mention self-development junkies, mentors like Tony Robbins, modalities such as NLP, and reprogramming limiting beliefs.

There is an abundance of healing and transformation tools available to us today and our generation has embraced them. We've gone all-in on them.

Whereas, the generations before us look at us and think we're mad. They're unwilling to go there. They don't understand it. It's not native to them.

I've noticed this specifically as I've been diving into my Mother Wound, my Mother Hunger. Within the realm of mother daughter healing, there is a deep lack of understanding between daughters and the mothers they have chosen to remove from their life.

The mother doesn't understand why and how this is happening and the daughter doesn't understand the mother's viewpoint. It's because they're living in two completely different worlds. They can't understand each other because up until now, each generation has allowed those unconscious patterns to keep unfolding.

There was no interrupt. No breaking the cycle.

There was no ability to change them because there was minimal resources to do that before we had the internet—unless you joined a cult, commune, went to India, or lived an off-grid or alternative life.

Now, the internet has created the ability for anyone to do that. If any of these Boomer mothers were inclined to, they could Google "why is my daughter not speaking to me" and she would probably find an abundance of therapists or healers sharing the answers that would allow her to repair that relationship, should she have that desire. But that doesn't usually occur to a Boomer mother.

As always, I find this all extremely interesting as it's so multifaceted. I'm interested of course, because it's unfolding in my life and I'm reflecting on my own patterns, desires, unconsciousness, and the challenges that manifest in my life.

There is no “resolution” thus far. But what I've shared with you today is enough.

You now know that I sometimes feel uneasy. I feel self critical. I often feel losing the things I love. I often judge myself. And I'm okay with all of that. It's part of life.

I don't need to pretend that I'm some authority that is different to you. That I've got all my “shit together” because I'm sharing something online. That is what I stand to tear down.

So thanks for being with me. Thanks for reading and listening.

Please, let me know if you've experienced anything like what I've shared today. And if you have any tips on feeling at ease when creating adult friendships, let me know. I'm simply human after all, just like you.

 If you enjoyed this and like listening as much as you do reading, I would love to welcome you as another follower of my podcast. Head on over here to subscribe and leave me a review so I can get my work in the hands of more people.

I love hearing your feedback. It's my favourite part of sharing what's on my heart.

Until next time,

Aimee

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