84: Healing the Female Friendship Wound

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Dec 20

Do you feel insecure in female friendships? Do you sometimes find it easier to be alone or with men than with other women? Do you find yourself feeling jealous, competitive, or mistrusting of women? If so, you may have a female friendship wound. In this episode, we discuss how to heal the female friendship wound. I’ll be answering a question from a listener looking for advice on unhealthy female friendships.

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This listener recently went through a friendship break up, and sees a pattern, but doesn’t know where to start. She has struggled throughout their life to keep female friends. As women, we all desire deep connection with other women, and my intention for this episode is to assist you with healing the female friendship wound, become aware of where your friendship patterns originated from, grieve past friendships, and begin to embrace friendships from a heart-centered and empowered place.

Free Journal Prompts ✍️

Journal Prompts: Friendships

Recommended Episodes 🎙️

Book Recommendation 📚

Will I Ever Be Good Enough?: Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers by Dr. Karyl McBride Ph.D.

Timestamps ⏱️

Introduction: 00:14
Listener Question: 02:07
What is the female friendship wound: 4:21
5 Steps for Healing the Female Friendship Wound: 17:54
Outro: 33:51

Learn More ✨

Discernment vs Judging: The Mother Wound and Female Friendships (Bethany Webster)
Healing The Female Friendship Wound (Almost 30)

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This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool called Castmagic. Please forgive any typos or errors.
Amanda Durocher [00:00:01]:
Welcome to New View Advice. I'm your host, Amanda Durocher, and I invite you to join me here each week as I offer advice on how to move through whatever problem or trauma is holding you back from living life to the fullest. Let's get started.
Hi, beautiful soul. Welcome back to New View Advice. If you're new here, this is a healing centered advice podcast where I offer guidance for the healing journey. It's not my intention to give you all the answers. I believe you have All the answers you just may need a new view and a little help along the way.
Amanda Durocher [00:00:27]:
Thank you so much for tuning in today's episode. Today, we are discussing the female friendship wound, and I'm really excited to discuss this because I know that this is something I've been healing in my own life over the past year, and I found it really transformative to really look at and heal the female friendship wound. So some questions to ask yourself to see if maybe you have a female friendship wound would be, do you feel insecure in female friendships? Do you Sometimes find it easier to be alone or with men than with other women. Do you find yourself feeling jealous, competitive, or mistrusting of women? Do you have trouble opening up with women? If so, you may have a female friendship wound. In this episode, I'll be answering a question from a listener looking for advice on female friendships. This listener recently went through a friendship breakup and sees a pattern, but doesn't know where to start. She has struggled throughout her life to keep female friends. She feels as though friends come in and out of her life.
Amanda Durocher [00:01:14]:
She craves friendships, but doesn't know where to find them. As women, we all desire deep connection and acceptance from one another, And my intention for this episode is to assist you with healing the female friendship wound, become aware of where your female friendship patterns originated from, Grieve past friendships and begin to embrace female friendships from a heart centered and empowered place. Before we jump in, I wanted to mention that if you haven't checked out my website, I invite you to check it out After this episode, for more free resources, including journal prompts, meditations, blog posts, and podcast episodes about the healing journey. I also have episode 12, friendship break That's where I have created journal prompts to assist you in healing from friendship wounding, and you can find those on my website. You can check out my website at nuviadvice.com, and today's show notes will be at newviewadvice.com/84. So with that, let's jump on into talking about the female friendship wound.
LISTENER QUESTION
Dear Amanda, I loved your episode on friendship breakups. I recently went through a female friendship breakup, and have been finding it really hard to move forward.
Amanda Durocher [00:02:15]:
I am left feeling heartbroken. I'm a 23 year old female, and so was my friend. We shared everything with each other and talked every day. I thought she was going to be my best friend forever and the maid of honor at my wedding. Over the last few months, things started to feel off. She suddenly didn't have time for me, which is fine, but anytime I brought it up, she made me feel crazy and told me I was making up the distance I felt between us. Every time I asked her to hang out, she acted all excited and then would cancel the plans last minute. I know she's busy, so I tried to be understanding, but the last straw was when I told her I was going through a rough time and could use a friend.
We made plans for the weekend, and then she canceled because she was tired. This hurt me so much, and I decided to end our friendship. I told her that I felt like there was something off between us, and I needed space. She never responded, and we never spoke again. When I ended our friendship, I didn't realize I was actually ending our friendship. My heart hurts. I wanna make new friends, but I also don't feel ready yet. The truth is this isn't the 1st time this has happened in my life.
I've struggled in female friendships for my whole life, and I feel like I need to do some healing before putting myself out there again. I crave female friendships, but I feel like I'm always doing something wrong. Why do I struggle to make friends? Am I the only one? Any advice.
Thank you so much for this question. I think that this is a great question, and I think so many people can relate to this question. I know I can relate to this bash, and so I wanted to thank you for asking and for bringing this conversation forward. 1st, I wanna say that you're not doing anything wrong. I think so many women struggle with the female friendship wound, and we're going to talk about why that is today.
Amanda Durocher [00:03:38]:
But you are not doing anything wrong. And female friendships can be really difficult for some of us, especially those of us who have previous woundings, such as female friendship wounds from the past and mother wounds and sister wounds and wounding with females. So I just want to mention that there's nothing wrong with you and that I think it's beautiful that you are looking to heal this, and to dive deeper into this. Because the truth is, as women, we desire to connect with one another, and we desire for acceptance. And I think that one of the ways we will begin to receive that acceptance and that connection we desire is by healing our own female friendship wound. So I think it's really important for us to have this conversation. So I just wanna thank you so much for your question. So I wanna start with, what is the female friendship wound.
Amanda Durocher [00:04:24]:
The female friendship wound is the wound that happens between so many women. It is the pain that we feel in female friendships because of pattern behaviors and beliefs that keep us from being our true selves with one another. The female friendship wound so often is triggered in adult relationships, but stems back to our childhood, our Teen years and our relationships with our mothers and our sisters and family members. Many women learn from a young age that in order to fit in, we need to change ourselves and compare ourselves with one another. This has caused so much harm among women. It makes it hard for women to trust each other. We have seen this wound played out in our own lives, the The lives of our female friends and family members is shown to us on TV shows. TV shows that come to mind for me are shows like the real housewives as well as it's shown in movies.
Amanda Durocher [00:05:07]:
I've been watching old Disney movies recently, and I've been fascinated by the way these female dynamics are portrayed in even these really old movies such as Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. In Snow White, she has to run away from home because the evil queen, The only other woman in the movie wants to kill her because she is so beautiful. In Sleeping Beauty, another evil queen Punishes this beautiful and innocent baby because she wasn't invited to a party. And I mentioned this because this Wounding between females has been portrayed in stories for a very long time, and I think this shows how Deep this female wounding and this female friendship wound goes. And I think that it's important to recognize that because you said, is there something wrong with me? Am I the only one? No. There's nothing wrong with you. You're not the only one. This wound, this female friendship wound, this wound from female to female has been going on for centuries.
Amanda Durocher [00:06:05]:
You know, even think back to the Salem witch trials where women were forced to turn on one another. This wounding is deep. So I just wanna honor you and honor every woman listening to this and honor myself, really, because what we're healing here is a very old pattern. And it's important to note that because it's liberating to heal this pattern, it's liberating and freeing to understand that this is wounding and that there's nothing wrong with you. We all desire female friendships. Women desire to feel safe with one another. This is an inherent need. And, also, when we're better to one another, we're also better to all other genders.
Amanda Durocher [00:06:41]:
So I think it's important for us to heal this. So how does this wounding show up in friendships between women? This wounding shows up in many different ways among women, but I wanted to offer some common examples. So one way we see the female friendship wound is by judging and criticizing one another. I think many women judge other women. You see this in judging the way women look, judging the way women dress, judging the way women mother. I think that mothers have a really hard time with this. I think a lot of women judge the way other people mother, and it's Another way that this female friendship wound appears in our lives. I think that gossiping is a way that we judge and criticize one another.
Amanda Durocher [00:07:19]:
Unfortunately, a lot of women find community by judging other women. I know that was a pattern for me when I was younger is that I recognize that If we all had a common enemy, like somebody we hated or somebody we talked about, we all felt closer, but that is a form of this female friendship wound. Another way that this female friendship wound appears in our lives is through competition and jealousy. So competing with other women, comparing yourself to other women, Being jealous of women rather than celebrating their success, I think that jealousy is very common, and I invite you if you are a jealous person to begin to look at that jealousy. Because I think that jealousy is always communicating to us something that we want, but very often, the thing that we're jealous of isn't the exact thing we want. So for example, say you follow somebody on social media and you find yourself jealous of their life. I invite you to begin noticing what are you jealous of. Say you're jealous that they have a family.
Amanda Durocher [00:08:12]:
Are you jealous that they have children? Are you desiring children? Are you jealous that they have a husband? Are you desiring a husband, or are you jealous that their life looks happy? Are you jealous that it looks like they have everything they want? Did you put an expectation on yourself that they're meeting and you're not meeting? When you're jealous, it's a great opportunity to dive deeper because, like I said, it's not normally that you're jealous and just want that other person's life or exactly what that other person has. Fast. Very often, it's our inner guidance pointing us towards something we want. In my own life, I remember before I moved to LA, there was this girl who was Super creative, and I was really jealous of her, like, all the time when I was growing up. And she was a dancer, and she was really creative, and she was an actress, and I was so Jealous of her. I didn't like her. And then I remember when I chose to move to LA, this girl came up in a conversation, and I no longer felt jealous towards her. All of a sudden, all I felt was love towards her.
Amanda Durocher [00:09:07]:
I was like, she's so cool. And I was like, woah. What happened there? And what I realized through that experience is that my jealousy of Her was pointing me towards what I wanted. I wanted to live a creative life. I wanted the opportunity to pursue my creative dreams. And instead of connecting with that, I just decided I didn't like this girl. But through pursuing my own creative dreams, all the animosity I had towards her left. I didn't feel any more animosity towards her.
Amanda Durocher [00:09:34]:
And so now I see that if I'm jealous, it's my inner guidance system communicating with me something that I want. But with this example, I didn't want her life. I don't wanna be a dancer. I like to dance around my kitchen, but I don't wanna be a professional dancer. What I wanted was is the freedom to pursue my creative dreams. And so this example of being jealous really showed me something that I desired in my own life, And I think that that's a great way to begin looking at jealousy because I think it's a very common pattern among females. Another example of how this wounding shows up is through exclusion, so excluding other women, and forming cliques. So excluding women, this happens very often among young girls, but it continues in adulthood, in the workplace, in neighborhoods, in communities, in mom's groups, and more.
Amanda Durocher [00:10:18]:
And I think excluding women leads to rejection and betrayal, And these are very painful emotions, and I think forming cliques is kind of like a pack mentality. I think women form cliques because they feel safe With community, if you have a clique and you don't let anybody else in, you feel safe with those people. I really noticed this in my youth. I felt like my high school was very cliquey, And I struggled to find a click I belong to. I was kind of on the outskirts of multiple clicks, and I never really felt like I had those Deep friendships I was longing for, and there's different reasons for this. But one of the main reasons for me is leading to my next example of the wounding that shows up between women that is Insecurity. So for me, this has plagued me in female friendships. I have, for so long, felt so insecure back here with other women.
And because of this insecurity, I have shrunk myself in female friendships. I have been way too agreeable. I've been a People pleaser. I have let people step on me because I felt so insecure about myself and insecure about the friendship. So I Developed my female friendship wound probably around 6th grade. Before then, I didn't really have problem with female friends. But in 6th grade, that's when they really developed for me, and I think that's very common for a lot of Middle school, high school is when these female friendship wounds begin to really manifest, and we begin to see them in our lives. Yours may be earlier.
Yours may be later. But for me, 6th grade was really when this became the case. I also think with insecurity, how this can manifest is being afraid to say the wrong thing or to mess up, Feeling like you did something wrong, feeling like a failure if the relationship doesn't work out, feeling like the relationship is always on eggshells. When I was in high school with female friends, I could say the wrong thing, and everybody could turn on me. I could have my words twisted against me. I could be led into a situation that I was set up for failure. That happened to me all the time. So moving into adulthood, I felt like in female friendships, I was always being set up.
So I was always overthinking them, and I always felt insecure in them. And I think this turned a lot of women off in my twenties because I was insecure, and I was also unable to be vulnerable because vulnerability requires trust. And so that leads me to another way this female friendship wound manifests, which is that we distance ourselves from other women, and we mistrust women. I work with so many clients who talk about how they struggle Trust women so they don't have any friends. And they want friends, but they're also happy without friends because they've seen how painful and anxiety inducing these friendships can be. And I know that's A pattern I played out in my own life that I have distanced myself from other women, and I have mistrusted women because I had a lot of wounding that I needed to heal from real situations where I couldn't trust women. And this leads me into the importance of healing this wound. I think this Wound is so important to heal because the truth is as women, we are all just looking for acceptance and connection with one another, and we've all learned through family and society and past friendships that we cannot trust to one another.
But from all the women I have spoken to, we desire to trust one another and to really connect and to be ourselves with one another. But with all this said, healing the female friendship wound will also help us to develop discernment. So discernment is important to mention when healing the female friendship wound because as women, many of us have not been taught discernment. And discernment is really the ability to slow down and see a situation clearly. It's being able to hold yourself while seeing the truth of a situation rather than allowing your inner wounding or false beliefs to shadow the truth. So discernment is different than judging because Discernment is respectful, and judging is critical. So an example of discernment is, say, you're in a friendship and somebody's not treating you well. You could judge that person and be like, wow.
Amanda Durocher [00:13:58]:
That person's an asshole. Or you could discern and just say, wow. I see that person where they're at. They have not done as much inner work as me. I see that now. Or you can use your discernment with this friendship you mentioned in your question that you were looking for a safe space, and you're discerning that this person wasn't a safe space. Maybe for a really long time, you were trying to force this person to be a safe space, and maybe they just never were able to do that, and that's okay. Through discernment, we learn it's okay to see the truth of a situation.
It's not judgmental to see where somebody's at in their healing journey or on their human experience. I think that allowing people to be where they are on their journey is a form of love. Learning to see somebody where they're at and not judge them for it and not try to fix them or help them or force them to be different is a form of love. I think in our society, so many people think they're helping one another by trying to fix each other. No. No. No. No.
Amanda Durocher [00:14:54]:
We are responsible for healing ourselves and honoring each other where we're at on our journeys. It is not your responsibility to fix someone. Somebody may come to you and ask for your advice, ask for some help. That's different than seeing somebody who is failing in all their romantic relationships and trying to fix them or seeing somebody who complains a lot and trying to fix them. That is not how we create those genuine female friendships we're looking for because what we are searching for from one another is acceptance for who we are. And when you are trying to fix somebody or change somebody, you are not accepting them for where they are. And they, the person who you may be projecting onto, is looking for acceptance just as much as you are. Does it mean you have to accept them and be friends with them forever? No.
Amanda Durocher [00:15:40]:
But it is your responsibility to just set where they're at, and then to discern if that friendship is in your highest and best interest. I hope that makes sense. So discernment is really about you and your own self respect. And And when you heal and begin to build up your own self worth and self respect, you'll continue to realize how valuable you and your time are, and it's okay to be discerning with who gets access to you. So I invite you to create a mantra and anchor statement for yourself when practicing discernment. Mine is I love myself enough to not spend time with people who disrespect me. I love myself enough to only be friends with people who can truly see me in my gifts. I love myself enough to accept that I cannot change other people.
Amanda Durocher [00:16:20]:
I love myself enough to walk away when people are abusive, disrespectful, or rude to me. I love myself enough to not put myself in situations where I feel depleted. I am worthy of friendships that fill up my cup, not take and take and take and leave me on empty. I'm worthy of people in my life who see my beauty, who see my strength, who see me and are not competing with me. I deserve friends who love me, who accept me, and who celebrate me. That is, like, my number one thing in my life now is that I only surround myself with people who celebrate me. Because for so long, I dimmed my shine. I didn't share how amazing I was because I didn't feel amazing.
Amanda Durocher [00:17:03]:
I was doing amazing things, but I was so insecure, and I was so wounded that it took me time to realize that I need to celebrate myself, and I can only surround myself people who celebrate me. We do not have to compete with one another. There is room for all of us, And I have chosen from here forward to not surround myself with people who can't see that. I only surround myself with people who have a there's more than enough for all of us attitude and not people who think that we have to compete with each other. I'm sorry. There's a whole world that's out there competing with one another. My inner circle, we are not competing with one another. But how did I cultivate that? Through time, through healing, through connecting back with myself and repeatedly seeing my own wounding.
Amanda Durocher [00:17:54]:
So that leads me into I wanna share 5 steps for healing the female friendship wound because what I just shared, I didn't get to overnight. It took a long time For me to continually heal back the layers of my feminine wound, of why I feared women, of why I competed with women, of why I judged other women, and spoiler alert, it's because I was judging myself, that allowed me to cultivate an inner circle of empowerment. So my 5 steps for healing the female friendship wound are, 1, allow all your feelings throughout this process. 2, be honest with yourself and bring awareness to your patterns. 3, continue doing the inner work and inner child work. 4, practice discernment in future friendships. And 5, be loving and compassionate with yourself. So let's break each of these down 1 by 1.
Amanda Durocher [00:18:44]:
So the 1st step I recommend is to allow all your feelings throughout this process. So for you with this question, because you're moving through a friendship breakup simultaneously as healing this female friendship wound, which I think is very common. I think that's how many of us come to healing the female friendship wound. I know that's I came to it. I went through a friendship breakup last year, and it led me to my knees where I said, god, I am not repeating this pattern again. Show me how to heal this Female friendship wound and, wow, the year of healing it sent me on. But through that process, I allowed my grief to be my guide. And so grief involves many emotions, but some core emotions that arose for me throughout this journey were anger, sadness, and denial.
Amanda Durocher [00:19:24]:
Through healing the female friendship wound, we will begin to see things we were denying. We will feel angry for the times we allowed ourselves to be disrespected, angry for the times we disrespected others, sad for the inner child within us and for the inner child within others, and more. But it's important to allow your grief to move you. Allow those feelings to show you because each feeling throughout this healing process from healing this friendship breakup is going to guide you to the next layer of freeing yourself of this female friendship wound. I think when healing from female friendships, our body and our emotions are really guiding us because they are supporting us and showing us, like a compass, what needs to be cleared and released from our body next. So this leads me into number 2, be honest with yourself and bring awareness to your patterns. When we are healing the female friendship wound, We have to be honest with ourselves with how we were showing up as a friend. This one can be really hard because so many of us Project on others, you were a bad friend.
Amanda Durocher [00:20:28]:
I was a good friend. If you have a lot of feelings about this, if you were shocked by this friendship breakup, It's likely that you also weren't showing up as your true self, and that can be really hard for us to see, and it can be humbling. For example, as I mentioned in my life, where I wasn't showing up as a good friend was how agreeable I could be. I never wanted to rock the boat in female friendships. I was, like, annoyingly agreeable. I never gave an opinion different than somebody else's, and I wanted them to feel so seen because I was desperate to be seen. But through this, I'd never felt seen. But why I didn't feel seen was because I wasn't allowing people to see me.
Amanda Durocher [00:21:09]:
When I'm agreeing with everybody, when I don't agree, I'm not allowing people to see me. When I'm hiding my gifts such as my intuition or my beautiful perspective, I am not allowing people to see me. When I'm not truthful about how great things are and how much healing I've done, I'm not allowing people to see me. And so for me, this transformation really started when I went sober because for the first time in my life, I had to show up as a different version of myself. Alcohol played such a strong role in my friendships for so long. Anytime I got together with a female friend, we had a glass of wine. Doesn't mean we were getting wasted, but we had a glass of wine. We always were meeting over drinks, over mimosas, over wine, over beer.
Amanda Durocher [00:21:54]:
And when I went sober, that had to change. And for the 1st time, I was allowing people to see me vulnerably. Some friends stayed. Some friends didn't. A lot of people didn't know I struggled with alcohol and self hatred until I went sober. But through my sobriety, I had to show up in a new way, in a new authentic way. And through that process, I began to discern that not all my friendships were actually good for me, that some people just liked me to be there so they felt better about their drinking, or They didn't wanna know sober me, or they didn't wanna hear my opinions. They didn't wanna hear how beautiful my life's become, and that was really hard.
Amanda Durocher [00:22:29]:
But by grieving those friendships, by seeing that pattern within myself, I began to heal. Another thing I highly recommend people look at when healing the Female friendship wound is to look at their mother wound. So I have an episode on the mother wound, but the mother wound is really the wounding we receive in childhood from our relationship with our mother. So many of us seek love from our mother that they cannot give us. So say we seek words of affirmation and they're very critical or say they're absent or abusive. There's many different ways This wound manifests, but the way we interact our with our mother can very often correlate with the way we interact with other females. I saw this in so many females in my life that women with very critical mothers became very critical females. And I also saw through my own life that I imitated the way my mom was with women.
Amanda Durocher [00:23:18]:
So my mother is very different from me, but she can be agreeable, and she can be a peacemaker, and she doesn't like Rock the boat. And I took those patterns, and I used those in female relationships. And the truth is I'm not a peacemaker. I am a wave maker, and my mother and I are very different people. So me taking her patterns and putting them on female friendships was not helpful for me, and I didn't feel seen or fulfilled because the things that make my mother happy do not make me happy. Some things do. I'm sure. I'd have to think about it, but we're very different.
Amanda Durocher [00:23:51]:
And throughout my healing journey, honoring our differences has helped me to love my mother more and to love myself more. So healing your mother wound will assist you in healing your female friendship wound because, also, a lot of people have competitive mothers, and so that competitive spirit at Home will lead to competition among women or they have jealous mothers, and that will lead to competition among females. This also goes for sister relationships. I've seen that pattern as well that people's relationships with their sisters will also affect to their female friendship wound. So those are places to really look for patterns of how you show up in female relationships. My 3rd piece of advice is to continue doing the inner work and inner child work. So as you are looking at these patterns and you're bringing up past wounding, More grief is going to arise. More feelings are going to arise.
Amanda Durocher [00:24:44]:
I think the more we heal ourselves, the more we show up in relationships in new ways. I truly, truly believe that the more we love ourselves, the more we can love others. This has been proven time and time again throughout my life. So as you're healing your female friendship wound, I invite you to continue doing the inner work. Continue to connect with your inner child through journaling, through meditation. I invite you to read books about the mother wound or to read books about female relationships. I've found it really healing to read female memoirs. That's something I've been leaning into recently, and it's been so healing to see other women say what I've thought but never said out loud.
Amanda Durocher [00:25:22]:
To see my feelings mirrored in their experiences, to see that I'm not alone in how I feel even though I felt that way for so long. And so by continually doing the inner work and inner child work, you will continue to heal your female friendship wound. So when connecting with your inner child, I really invite you to begin to connect with the age that is arising for you as you heal. So if you see your mother wound arising, this could be a 5 year old, a 6 year old, a 10 year old, a 13 Teen year old. In friendships, your wounding could start really young. For me, when I was healing my female friendship wound, my first memory Of girls being mean to one another was at age 4. Mind boggling. I was at a girl's house, and there were 2 other girls there.
Amanda Durocher [00:26:05]:
And 1 girl said to me, oh my god. Doesn't she stank? Hee hee hee. In, like, the way a 4 year old would, but she meant it in a malicious way. And we were Supposed to bond in that moment about this other girl being smelly. And in that moment, I remember being so confused. That's why I remember it. Because in that moment, I had never experienced anything like that. I had never experienced bullying or talking about people.
Amanda Durocher [00:26:31]:
That wasn't something that went on in my household. But this girl who said that, her mother was very critical. And so that pointed to me that her mother had been critical with her since a very young age, and I know that to be true actually. So as I mentioned, the agreeableness that I took on from my mother in these female patterns, I saw that in my grandmother as well. So that was like an inherited ancestral wound, and I'll be talking about generational trauma next month. But It's important when healing this to be really kind and compassionate with yourself. This process is a patient process. I have been healing my female friendship wound for years, and I can't even say I'm fully healed of it yet.
Amanda Durocher [00:27:11]:
I don't know. Layers arise when they arise. I don't really know if I'm ever healed. It's hard for me to ever say that because then if a layer arises, I judge it. So I'm just healing. I can always be more connected with myself. I can always discover more of my own truth. I can always connect deeper with the truth of who I am and with God, source, the universe, whatever you call it.
Amanda Durocher [00:27:35]:
That's what I consider healing. Healing is freeing ourselves of what we thought we were so we can be who we truly are. This world disconnects us from the truth of who we are. Healing is remembering that truth. It's a lifelong journey. It doesn't happen overnight, and that's okay. This leads me into my 4th piece advice, which is to practice discernment in future friendships. So I talked about discernment earlier, but As you are letting females back into your life, as you're making new friends, practice that discernment.
Amanda Durocher [00:28:02]:
Trust what your body's telling you. I think a big part of discernment is trusting the communication of our body. That's what's been big for me with discernment is that sometimes my gut will tell me something That may not make logical sense to my mind, but discernment is learning to trust the green flags and the red flags. And so what I put under the category of discernment is learning Learning to set boundaries when you are making friends in the future or even the friends who you still have in your life now. You know, learn to set boundaries. You don't have to say yes to everything. You don't have to say no to everything, but learning to slow down and figure out what's best for you is a great practice when practicing discernment. Practicing discernment is, like, a really great thing.
Amanda Durocher [00:28:45]:
It's a moment where we Recognize our own worth, and so that's why we practice the sermon. It's a self respect practice. It's a self loving practice. And if you're a woman who has been healing for years and if you've been doing the inner work and you've been seeing your patterns, there comes a point When you can no longer tolerate friendships that do not fill your cup up, when you can no longer tolerate small talk and mediocre friendships, vibes, there comes a point when you're like, I can't do that anymore. And you don't have to punish yourself for that. You don't have to be wrong for that. You didn't fail. You've grown and you've changed.
Amanda Durocher [00:29:23]:
We have to understand that not everybody's gonna be in our life forever, and that's okay. I think clinging on to something that isn't serving you is self sacrificing in a way we abandon ourselves. It's a way we live in fear rather than love. The fear that maybe somebody new won't come in instead of loving ourselves enough to know that we are worthy of friendships that fill our cup up that we deserve and who see us and celebrate back. Discernment is a practice in self respect. So moving forward, I invite you to practice that discernment. And, again, it's not overnight easy. Right? Sometimes we get it right.
Amanda Durocher [00:29:58]:
Sometimes we get it wrong. Sometimes we're not clear. That's okay. Life's a journey. We're never Supposed to get these things right. I literally learn everything through experience. I fail all the time. I make mistakes all the time.
Amanda Durocher [00:30:13]:
You know, I had somebody the other day be like, how do you be you? Like, how did you get here? And the answer is through a lot of failure, through a lot of ignoring myself. And then I knew, oh, that was me ignoring myself, but I had to ignore myself to know I was ignoring myself. Oh, I went against my gut there. Now I know because I had this experience. You know? So life's all about trial and error. You don't have to be perfect, then what would be the fun? I always say that. What would be the fun in the human journey if we were perfect? It would be insanely boring. So just give yourself grace and compassion, which leads me to my 5th piece of advice, which is practice compassion, self love, and grace for yourself.
Amanda Durocher [00:30:53]:
I think I just basically summed this up in the last answer, but you do not have to be perfect. But I invite you to be kind and compassionate with yourself. Love yourself through this difficult experience. Love yourself through this wounding. Understand that you are healing this wound to liberate yourself, to free yourself of what you thought was true. I think healing is one of the best things we can do for ourselves because it's an Intimate journey with self where we get to discover who we are rather than who everybody else wants us to be. I did that for so long. I showed up in the world how other people wanted me to be, and I was miserable.
Amanda Durocher [00:31:31]:
It wasn't until I began to unravel All the lies I told myself, all the lies other people told me, the lies of society that I began to be like, shit. That's not what I want for myself. I want something different, and not everybody wants different. So this journey of healing the female friendship wound will involve a lot of grief. Because as you heal, you see where other people are stuck or where other people are attached to a truth that may not be true. And through discernment, we learn not to judge that and to accept that. We learn to see ourselves in that. We learn to see Yeah.
Amanda Durocher [00:32:07]:
I was stuck there for a while too. You're playing that out. That's cool. Good for you. Maybe that's what you're here to do. I don't understand why you're choosing that, but I don't have to. And I don't have to stick around to see you play out that pattern that's harming you because it's also harming me. Through compassion, we get to see people clearly and love them for where they're at without judging them, but also understand that we don't have to stay when people are harming us.
Amanda Durocher [00:32:35]:
And I just wanna end this episode with saying that you deserve amazing female friendships, and the safer you become within yourself, the more of a safe haven you become within you, for you, for your inner child, for your inner teen, for your inner adult, for you right now in the present, the more you will attract safe friends. Because they'll know you're a safe place because you've become a safe place for you. The only way I attract people into my life Who fill my cup up is by filling my cup up first. I only attract people who celebrate me and my success by celebrating me and my success. It's through the inner work, through feeling my feelings, through self awareness, and through self love that I continue to heal my female friendship wound. And And I begin to see other females in their female friendship wound, and I love them more for it because I see their pain is my pain. I see that connection they long for was the connection I longed for. I see that the acceptance they seek is the acceptance that I sought.
Amanda Durocher [00:33:35]:
And I know from my own experience that the only way I reach that acceptance or that connection was by accepting and connecting with myself first, and that's what compassion and self love will help you with. I hope something in this answer was helpful. Thank you so much for this question. Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of new you advice as always. I loved having this conversation with you. Today, we talked about the female friendship wound and steps to heal your female friendship wound. If you enjoyed this episode, I invite you to follow the podcast on your podcasting app and leave a 5 star review. Followers and ratings really helps bring more people to the podcast and help me to continue making more content.
Amanda Durocher [00:34:18]:
So thank you again for tuning in to another episode of newbie advice. As always, I hope I was able to offer you a new view on whatever you may be going through. Sending you all my love. See you next time.