Dial Emma

What is introversion and extroversion anyway?

This week we’re drawing on the ideas of Carl Jung, and the Big Five personality traits, to help us understand why some people get their energy from being around other people, and others prefer to recharge their batteries on their own.

Emma challenges the idea that it’s simply a matter of personality, and wonders whether we develop these behaviours as an adaptation to societal pressures, and Elizabeth explains why, as an introvert, she prefers a voice note to a phone call.

We chat about the impact of social media and the pandemic, cross-cultural influences and, most importantly, whether you’re a bath or a shower person.

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Carl Jung on psychological types: Jung, C. G. [1921] 1971. Psychological Types, Collected Works of C.G. Jung, vol. 6. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

More on the Big Five personality traits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits

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Best Friend Therapy is hosted by Elizabeth Day and Emma Reed Turrell, produced by Chris Sharp.

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Social Media:

Elizabeth Day @elizabday

Emma Reed Turrell @emmareedturrell

Best Friend Therapy @best.friend.therapy

Email: [email protected]

This week on Best Friend Therapy, we tackle the thorny issue of comparison - how it gets in our way, what its true function is and how it can actually direct us to feel happier and more fulfilled.

From Reese Witherspoon to Richard II, we cover themes of unconditional acceptance and safety, via the rise of social media and the Peasants Revolt (bear with us, ED is ever the historian).

Emma teaches us the difference between jealousy and envy and Elizabeth tells us how gratitude is her antidote to comparison (and why ex’s are no longer up for discussion).

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Emma does the show notes and gave up history as a subject as quickly as possible, so if you’re looking for references on Richard II and the Peasants Revolt, you’re on your own.

Naomi Klein’s book, however, is available here: Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World https://amzn.eu/d/gCFeiar

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Best Friend Therapy is hosted by Elizabeth Day and Emma Reed Turrell, produced by Chris Sharp.

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Social Media:

Elizabeth Day @elizabday

Emma Reed Turrell @emmareedturrell

Best Friend Therapy @best.friend.therapy

Email: [email protected]

Welcome to this week's episode of Best Friend Therapy - the one where we ask the tough questions...

* What's the difference between emotional detachment and emotional unavailability?
* Why can needs get confused with neediness?
* How do sympathy and empathy serve different purposes?

We explore how emotional detachment can actually help us to develop greater empathy and deepen authentic relationships, with others and ourselves. And we explain what happens when we don’t detach - how we can lose objectivity and fall foul of merging with others, enmeshing our experiences, projecting our beliefs and outsourcing our authentic needs...

Emma explains why she used to work for brownie points and Elizabeth gets interested in the inner psyche of the teenage girl.


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Not for the first time we reference the Love Languages work of Gary Chapman: https://amzn.eu/d/68aAaOc

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🚨 BIG NEWS 🚨

Not only are we back for a seventh season, but Elizabeth and Emma will be hosting a LIVE SHOW for the very first time! Book your tickets and join us live at the Bloomsbury Theatre on Thursday 4th April. We can’t wait to see your gorgeous faces IRL! 🎟️ fane.co.uk/best-friend-therapy

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Best Friend Therapy is hosted by Elizabeth Day and Emma Reed Turrell, produced by Chris Sharp.

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Social Media:

Elizabeth Day @elizabday

Emma Reed Turrell @emmareedturrell

Best Friend Therapy @best.friend.therapy

Email: [email protected]

🚨 BIG NEWS 🚨

Not only are we back for a brand new season, but Elizabeth and Emma will be hosting a LIVE SHOW for the very first time! Book your tickets and join us live at the Bloomsbury Theatre on Thursday 4th April. We can’t wait to see your gorgeous faces IRL! 🎟️ fane.co.uk/best-friend-therapy

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TW: Miscarriage

Welcome back to our seventh season of Best Friend Therapy and we begin with a update, for all those of you who have listened to or read Elizabeth's experiences on her fertility journey and who have reached out with care and concern.

Elizabeth generously shares with us where she's been, where she is now, and what life looks like when you are childfree, not by choice. She shares her frustrations with the language and reactions of some, celebrates the kindness of many and describes the grief she has lived through, to reach a place of peace and renewed purpose.

Emma explains why grief can be like a game of Snakes & Ladders and reminds us that, in a world where we are encouraged to hold on, it's often the letting go that will require most courage.

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Best Friend Therapy is hosted by Elizabeth Day and Emma Reed Turrell, produced by Chris Sharp.

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Social Media:

Elizabeth Day @elizabday

Emma Reed Turrell @emmareedturrell

Best Friend Therapy @best.friend.therapy

Email: [email protected]

TW: Discussion on miscarriage.

Welcome to this week's episode of Best Friend Therapy - the fourth instalment of our miniseries on break-ups and the final episode of Season 6!

As we have been exploring different break-ups, whether it be a romantic relationship, the ending of a friendship, family estrangement or career change, we realised there is one feeling that connects them all - the feeling of rejection. So we are dedicating this final episode to unpacking this feeling - to better understand why it hurts and what we can do to help ourselves.

It may be the season finale but it's most definitely not a rejection, merely a time for reflection, and we look to the work of Alain de Botton to teach us about constructive pessimism and remind ourselves of Eckhart Tolle's wise words in "The Power of Now." We also look to the great philosopher, Elizabeth Day, and hear what the glockenspiel had to teach her about rejection and why she took up the trumpet instead.

Emma introduces the Transactional Anaylysis theory of the "hot potato" and walks Elizabeth down her Staircase of Beliefs, to find the fear behind the rejection, and explains why the antidote to rejection is self-acceptance and a Joy List.

See you very soon for Season 7 and thanks, as always, for listening xx

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Alain de Botton talks about "constructive pessimism": https://youtu.be/Aw1oLtuJOXQ?si=6BswjGNwxPWlxc6G

Eckhart Tolle, "The Power of Now": https://amzn.eu/d/g0Oh6mo

On the Hot Potato Theory and Episcript, p.124: https://www.fanita-english.com/wp-content/uploads/pdf/Berne,%20phobia,%20episcripts%20and%20racketeering.pdf

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Best Friend Therapy is hosted by Elizabeth Day and Emma Reed Turrell, produced by Chris Sharp.

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Social Media:

Elizabeth Day @elizabday

Emma Reed Turrell @emmareedturrell

Best Friend Therapy @best.friend.therapy

Email: [email protected]

Welcome to this week's episode of Best Friend Therapy, and the penultimate instalment of our miniseries on break-ups.

So far we have been focusing on personal relationships but today it’s time to take a look at professional break-ups - from being fired or made redundant, to feeling left behind or breaking up with a previous profession.

We talk about why people-pleasing and work don’t mix, and why healthy work contracts have to be reciprocal (just like those family contracts that we discussed last week).

Emma offers some advice on how to improve work dynamics when it's not practical to break up, and Elizabeth explains why the language of redundancy is so unhelpful.

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Best Friend Therapy is hosted by Elizabeth Day and Emma Reed Turrell, produced by Chris Sharp.

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Social Media:

Elizabeth Day @elizabday

Emma Reed Turrell @emmareedturrell

Best Friend Therapy @best.friend.therapy

Welcome back to our break-ups miniseries, and this week we're looking at the thorny issue of how to end, change or evolve a relationship with friends and family.

We talk about why remaining friends is not always as kind as we might think and why being authentic and accountable might actually be more generous.

Emma talks about non-verbal boundaries and how to reset realities for everyone's benefit, and Elizabeth describes what it feels like to be ghosted by a friend and what it looks like to grow apart.

We chat about the reciprocity of family relationships, how they need to work for everyone, why we need to challenge the taboo of family being fixed, the danger of toxic gratitude and how it can be healthier to recategorise certain family relationships.

We'll be back next week to look at break-ups of the professional variety!

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Best Friend Therapy is hosted by Elizabeth Day and Emma Reed Turrell, produced by Chris Sharp.

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Social Media:

Elizabeth Day @elizabday

Emma Reed Turrell @emmareedturrell

Best Friend Therapy @best.friend.therapy

In a first for Best Friend Therapy, we bring you a four-part MINISERIES, all about break-ups.

We'd be lying if we said it was intentional but we quickly realised there was far too much to say about romatic break-ups, let along friendship break-ups, family break-ups and work break-ups, to get through in a single episode.

So this week's episode is dedicated to heartbreak of the romantic variety... When we break-up with a partner, we often feel a form of grief - not only for the relationship, but also the future we may have planned, and for a past version of ourself. It's a triple whammy.

We talk about the difference between being dumped and doing the dumping, how to break up well (if there is such a thing) and why break-up through divorce is hard, but break-up after divorce can be even harder.

Emma explains why romantic break-ups can reinforce core beliefs and re-enact past attachment trauma and Elizabeth directs us to the ever-guiding light that is Taylor Swift.

Join us again next week when we'll be turning our attention to friendship break-ups.

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If you want to hear us talk more about grief, you can tune into our previous episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/best-friend-therapy/id1614793299?i=1000601683198

Emma talks about the grief cycle, developed by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and made famous in her book, "On Death and Dying", in 1969.

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Best Friend Therapy is hosted by Elizabeth Day and Emma Reed Turrell, produced by Chris Sharp.

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Social Media:

Elizabeth Day @elizabday

Emma Reed Turrell @emmareedturrell

Best Friend Therapy @best.friend.therapy

This week, we’re talking about burnout and that particular kind of emotional exhaustion that can knock us off our feet and leave us feeling utterly depleted.

Emma and Elizabeth both share their own personal stories of burnout and explore what they learned from their experiences.

Emma talks about the work she does with organisations to prevent burnout in the first place and how to balance individual responsibility with a workplace culture that rewards healthy behaviour. And Elizabeth brings in the work of psychiatrist and author, Gabor Maté, who believes the physical symptoms of burnout to be manifestations of psychological stress.

We talk about how to recognise symptoms of burnout, how to treat it and, most importantly, how to understand what it was trying to tell you in the first place.

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Listen to Elizabeth’s conversation with Gabor Maté on How to Fail: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/how-to-fail-with-elizabeth-day/id1407451189?i=1000624455746

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Best Friend Therapy is hosted by Elizabeth Day and Emma Reed Turrell, produced by Chris Sharp.

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Social Media:

Elizabeth Day @elizabday

Emma Reed Turrell @emmareedturrell

Best Friend Therapy @best.friend.therapy

This week, Elizabeth shares a challenging work scenario, in which she found herself at the pointy end of someone else's ego.

We go back and look at the original meaning of ego through the eyes of Freud, with an overview of his theory of three-part personality, to build an understanding of how egotistical behaviour, narcissism and power-play intersect, and what we can do when we come up against “big egos” in our daily lives.

We wrestle with a tug of war between our instincts and morality and find our balance on a seesaw, which concludes that it’s good to talk and, if talking about feelings makes us less acceptable to some, we’re here for it.

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For more on Freud’s three-part psyche: https://www.simplypsychology.org/psyche.html

Emma references the work of Dr Christine Dunkley and her work on Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT): https://amzn.eu/d/9yLqPUU

Elizabeth talks about Jung’s Collective Unconsciousness and Emma expands with group imago theory which you can read more about here: https://amzn.eu/d/eLujeLP and https://www.awesomebooks.com/book/9780285647763/transactional-analysis-in-psychotherapy

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Best Friend Therapy is hosted by Elizabeth Day and Emma Reed Turrell, produced by Chris Sharp.

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Social Media:

Elizabeth Day @elizabday

Emma Reed Turrell @emmareedturrell

Best Friend Therapy @best.friend.therapy