When group chats go quiet and friends stop reaching out, the silence can start to feel like a judgment. Researchers are now talking about the friendship recession, adult friendships fading with no argument and no goodbye, and it is happening everywhere. This episode is about what that silence does to our sense of worth, and the one question that stops it.

What makes a fading chat so painful is seldom ever the absence of messages, but rather the meaning we attach to those missing messages. And somehow we always seem to reach for the harshest explanation and treat it as fact.

This conversation feels personal because I am almost always the one who messages first, so I know this silence from the inside. What years of being the one who reaches out has taught me about what the silence has meant, and what it has never meant, sits at the heart of this episode.

This is a short summer episode, honest and practical, made to fit inside the season you are living. And it is the last one before my four-week summer break. I will be back on Thursday the 13th of August, and there are 88 episodes waiting for you in the meantime. If a silence has ever told you a story about yourself, join me. Let's stop that story together.

In This Episode You Will Learn

• What the friendship recession is, and why adult friendships now fade instead of ending
• Why the person who never replies almost certainly is not thinking what you fear they are thinking
• What being the one who always texts first taught me about what silence does and does not mean
• The moment the silence starts talking, and how to recognize whose voice it really is
• The one question that stops the story mid-sentence
• The one message worth sending, and the two reasons never to send it

Connect with Lulu:Website: https://www.luluessey.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lulu.essey/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucille-marie-essey/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lulu.esseyThis is an inside job. Please share this episode with people you love. And follow while you are here 💛

Summer feels too short, so we grip every warm day and demand that it counts. Make every moment count sounds like such good summer advice, and it is also one of the fastest ways to miss the season entirely. This episode is about the moment the review begins, and the two small questions that keep us from throwing our summer away without realising it.

This is not a conversation about doing more with your summer. It is about the invisible standard so many of us hold our days to, where that standard came from, and why someone else's measure leaves us feeling behind in a summer meant for joy. There is a scorecard involved, a ruler that was never ours, and yes, a gorgeous sundress. The sundress will make sense, I promise.

I share the two questions I use when the pressure to make the most of summer starts humming, a small piece of Mental Fitness that turns the season from a test back into a life. To me, this is Self-Love in practice, choosing our own measure of what counts and letting the rest go.

These summer episodes are short, honest, and made for the season you are living right now. If your summer has started to feel like something you are performing instead of something you are in, join me. Let's put the scorecard down together.

In This Episode You Will Learn

• Why making every moment count is the opposite of what it promises to be
• The invisible standard we hold our summers to, and the surprising thing you find when you go looking for its origin
• Why the same habit that has us measuring our bodies in summer also has us measuring our time
• The question that catches you mid-review and brings you back into your own evening
• What adapt, not adopt looks like when you apply it to time itself
• How to write your own measure of a summer that counts, and the case for letting one moment count for nothing

Connect with Lulu:Website: https://www.luluessey.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lulu.essey/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucille-marie-essey/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lulu.esseyThis is an inside job. Please share this episode with people you love. And subscribe while you are here 💛

The summer comparison trap is one of the most diabolical things we do to ourselves, and it bites hardest when everyone else's summer looks better than ours. One minute you are scrolling through other people's summer escapades, the next your own summer feels insignificant, grey, and just not enough. This episode is about what is really going on in that moment, and the small shift that brings you home to the summer you are living.

This is not about where we are or are not going this year. It is about how fast a screen can lift us right out of our own life and place us in the middle of someone else's. And the longer we linger there, the more of our own summer slips by while we are looking the other way.

I share one simple question you can reach for the next time the scroll starts to sting, a piece of Mental Fitness that gently calls you back to your own life. And yes, there is a caftan involved. It makes more sense than it sounds. To me, this is where Self-Love begins, in coming home to the summer you are standing in and deciding to enjoy the hell out of it.

These summer episodes are short, honest, and this one made me laugh more than most. If comparison has been running off with your summer, join me to find a lighter way to hold it.

IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN

• How an ordinary scroll can talk you into believing your whole summer is a write-off
• The slightly absurd thing we all do the moment someone else's summer looks better
• What it truly costs us to go and live in someone else's summer instead of our own
• One simple question that gently calls you back when the scroll starts to sting
• Small, gloriously ridiculous ways to celebrate the summer you are actually in
• Why coming home to your own summer is something you do, not something you wait for

Connect with Lulu:Website: https://www.luluessey.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lulu.essey/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucille-marie-essey/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lulu.esseyThis is an inside job. Please share this episode with people you love. And follow while you are here 💛

Summer body image is a powerful struggle so many of us carry without always acknowledging it. Warmer weather, smaller clothes, and it can be so much harder to feel beautiful in our own skin, so easy to feel measured against everyone around us. This episode is about what's really going on underneath that feeling.

The pain so many of us feel about our bodies in summer may not be about our bodies, but rather how we constantly measure them, weigh them, size them. How we compare and size ourselves up against the people and the images around us. The measuring is the part that hurts.

This is not a new conversation. But consider holding beauty differently. Not as something we have to earn or put on show. As something we already are. I share a simple question you can carry into any moment this summer, one that helps you tell a choice that's caring for you from a choice that's working against you. To me, that's where Self-Love begins.

These summer episodes are short and honest, and this one's close to my heart. If summer has ever left you feeling measured and somehow not enough, I'd love for you to join me in this conversation, and to find a kinder place to rest your eyes.

IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN

• Why summer body image can be one of the hardest things to make peace with
• Why the deepest pain here may not be about your body at all
• What the constant measuring costs us, and how often we do it without even noticing
• How to hold beauty as something you already are, rather than something to earn
• One simple question that shows you whether a choice is on your side
• What to do with all the noise, without fighting it or making it wrong

Connect with Lulu:Website: https://www.luluessey.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lulu.essey/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucille-marie-essey/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lulu.esseyThis is an inside job. Please share this episode with people you love. And follow while you are here 💛

Feeling invisible as you get older is something a lot of women experience and it's complicated and doesn't feel good or fair. In this episode I discuss how I approached this during a recent experience that shifted things in a meaningful way.

It usually happens somewhere ordinary. You ask for help, or you say how something made you feel, and you get a disinterested shrug and sometimes the person even looks straight past you. And it is easy to decide that this is just what aging is going to feel like, and that there is no point trying to shift it.

I don't think it has to be that way. And I feel we can all do better. This episode is about being seen as something you can claim instead of wait for, and how much it matters when women decide to really see each other. It is short and honest, the way I intend these summer episodes to be.

It's hard to feel like you're not seen, it's painful and I invite you to join me in this conversation to find another way.

IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL DISCOVER

• Why feeling invisible as you age is so common, and why it does not have to stay that way
• What it means to claim being seen, instead of waiting for someone else to give it to you
• Why what you choose to do next can matter more than whether anything changes
• Why seeing each other, woman to woman, is a choice we get to make
• What to do when you feel overlooked, without firing off something you will regret
• Why being unseen is a moment, not a life sentence

Connect with Lulu:Website: https://www.luluessey.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lulu.essey/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucille-marie-essey/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lulu.esseyThis is an inside job. Please share this episode with people you love. And follow while you are here 💛

How to ask for help and get what you need is a skill most of us were never taught. Asking for help is hard, and the way you ask for help changes what comes back to you and lifts the weight off the person you are asking.When many of us reach out, we often unknowingly hand over the whole problem and a silent hope that someone will give us a solution. It is heavy to carry and heavy to receive. There is a different way, and it is smaller than you think.This week I share what happened when I reached out to three friends on three different continents and asked each of them for one simple thing. Not advice. Not a solution. Just a few words. What came back did not take the tiredness away, and was never meant to. It did not "fix" the situation, and was never meant to. What it did was remind me that none of us has to carry it all alone, and that support does not have to be in the room to reach you.For anyone who finds asking for help hard, or who has never stopped to think about how they do it, this is a small and practical place to begin. It is a short, concentrated episode on purpose. It is summer, and many of you are out living the full, fabulous lives we keep talking about building, so take it on a walk or in the quiet between everything else, and carry one question with you. What does my heart need right now?

IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL DISCOVER

• The one small thing I did differently that changed how it felt to ask for help, almost immediately
• Why a broad, open ask quietly lands as a burden on the person you are reaching out to
• The exact request I made to three friends, and the two things I made sure to leave out
• Why being specific when you ask for help is a gift to the people who love you, not a weight on them
• Why solutions feel impossible to find when you are overwhelmed, and what to reach for instead
• The single question to ask yourself before you reach out, especially when you do not know what you need

Connect with Lulu:Website: https://www.luluessey.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lulu.essey/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucille-marie-essey/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lulu.esseyThis is an inside job. Please share this episode with people you love. And follow while you are here 💛

f you love and support someone who is struggling with their mental health, this episode is for you. Mental health support is for the supporters too: the partner, the parent, the child, the friend who shows up every day for someone they love. You deserve to be seen, heard, and cared for as well, and that is exactly what this conversation is here to do.

I am usually on the other side of this conversation. I have been the person being supported, held by people who love me, and from that closest seat I saw how much they were quietly carrying. This is the episode that finally asks how you are doing.

It is the final episode of the Mental Health Awareness Month series, landing in June on purpose, because these conversations do not end when the month does. This week's question: what should we be talking about that we are not talking about? The answer is the people who hold the people who are struggling: the realities they live with that rarely get said out loud, the guilt that does not mean what they fear it means, and one small, doable practice that gives the weight somewhere to go.

If you have been the strong one for someone you love, this is the moment someone turns to you and asks how you are.

IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL DISCOVER

• Why the people supporting someone through a mental health struggle are so often unseen, and what changes when they finally are
• What it really feels like to love someone who is struggling, said out loud so you no longer have to carry it silently
• The guilt so many supporters know well, and the reframe that reveals it as evidence of how much you care
• Why being tired, frustrated, or in need of a break does not mean you love them any less
• What Lulu learned from being the person who was held: what the people supporting her truly needed
• One small, doable practice that lets you be supported too, and why a single honest sentence is enough to start
• Where the whole five-episode series lands, and why this conversation was always for you too

THE MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS MONTH SERIES

Episode 78: Self-Advocacy

Episode 79: Functional Freeze

Episode 80: Connection and AI

Episode 81: Grief for the Life You Thought You'd Have

Connect with Lulu:Website: https://www.luluessey.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lulu.essey/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucille-marie-essey/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lulu.esseyThis is an inside job. Please share this episode with people you love. And follow while you are here 💛

Nonfinite grief, mental health, and the emotional grief of feeling stuck, feeling behind in life, and grieving the life you thought you would have. This episode is about processing grief that has nothing to do with death, and why so many of us have been calling it failure instead of calling it what it is.

If you have been doing the inner work, showing up, pushing through, and your life still does not look the way you expected, this is for you. This is not about healing from grief through strategy or mindset. It is about what shifts when you finally call this feeling by its real name.

This is the fourth episode in The Lulu Essey Podcast's May series for Mental Health Awareness Month where I am asking the question: What should we be talking about that we are not talking about?

IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL DISCOVER

• What nonfinite grief is and why finding this language changed how I relate to what I have been carrying
• What most of us have been calling this grief instead, and the cost of that mislabelling
• What happened at graduation ceremonies across the US this month when speakers mentioned AI, and the one speaker who got a completely different response
• Why the Gallup data on Gen Z and AI is not a tech story
• What opens up when grief and gratitude are allowed to sit in the same place at the same time
• One practice using music and intention that meets grief where it actually lives

RESOURCES MENTIONED

Gallup survey on Gen Z sentiment toward AI, April 2026

Connect with Lulu:Website: https://www.luluessey.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lulu.essey/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucille-marie-essey/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lulu.esseyThis is an inside job. Please share this episode with people you love. And follow while you are here 💛

This is not a conversation about whether AI is good or bad. This is the more subtle, nuanced layer of AI and mental health that the binary debate is missing: are we getting AI emotional support without even realising it?

Many of us are. We open ChatGPT or Claude for something practical, a question to think through, a strategy to plan, an email to write, and we leave having been soothed by software. AI is meeting emotional needs we did not know we were carrying, in moments we thought were efficient. That is the layer this episode is about.

According to research by the RAND Corporation published in JAMA Network Open, one in five 18 to 21 year olds in the United States now uses AI when they feel sad, angry, or lonely. Nine in ten say the advice feels helpful. The question this episode asks is not whether AI helps in the moment, because many times it does. The question is what it is quietly costing us in the moments we are not paying attention.

This is the third episode in The Lulu Essey Podcast's May series for Mental Health Awareness Month. This week's question: what should we be talking about that we are not talking about? The answer is the layer of the AI and human connection conversation that lives underneath the surface debate, the unconscious ways AI is becoming the easier substitute for the people in our lives, and the one small practice this week that nothing on a screen can replace.

If you have ever opened AI to think something through and found yourself comforted before you had even finished the question, this episode will speak to you.

IN THIS EPISODE YOU'LL DISCOVER:

• The moments AI starts meeting emotional needs you did not know you were carrying, even when you opened ChatGPT or Claude for something practical
• Why this is not a conversation about whether AI is good or bad, and what the binary debate about AI and mental health is missing
• What AI gives us before we have even asked, and why that quiet substitution is the layer that deserves our attention
• The difference between real comfort and real continuity, and why one cannot replace the other no matter how good the AI response feels
• What young adults using AI for emotional support are actually carrying that the wider personal development conversation has not named in their direction
• Why your nervous system can tell the difference between a human voice and AI, even when AI says the more beautifully crafted words
• One small practice for this week that does what AI cannot, and how to take the first step even if it feels too vulnerable

RESOURCES MENTIONED

RAND Corporation research published in JAMA Network Open, November 2025

Connect with Lulu:Website: https://www.luluessey.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lulu.essey/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucille-marie-essey/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lulu.esseyThis is an inside job. Please share this episode with people you love. And follow while you are here 💛

Functional freeze is why you feel nothing, and nobody asks if you're okay.

This week's Mental Health Awareness Month question: what should we be talking about that we're not talking about?

81% of Americans now recognise the importance of mental health, and yet access to services actually dropped this year. We are more aware than ever and more stuck than ever. For millions of people, the struggle does not look like a breakdown. It looks like a completely ordinary day. You go to work. You answer emails. You show up. And you feel nothing. It is called functional freeze, and it is your nervous system's way of protecting you from an overload it cannot process. It keeps the function running but shuts down the feeling.

This is the second episode in a May series exploring the conversations we need to be having. If you have been functioning on autopilot and wondering why you cannot access the tools you already have, this episode names what is happening and offers one neuroscience-backed step to start coming back to yourself.

IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL DISCOVER

• What functional freeze actually is and why it is not laziness, not burnout, and not a lack of motivation
• Why 81% of people are aware of mental health but more than half have not accessed any support, and what that gap really means
• What functional freeze looks like in everyday life, and why it is invisible to the people around you
• The connection between functional freeze and self-abandonment, and why your body shuts down feeling to keep you functioning
• Why experts are calling this moment a polycrisis, and what happens when your nervous system never gets the signal that it is safe to rest
• Why you cannot think your way out of a body state, and what neuroscience says about the way back
• One simple sensory practice backed by polyvagal theory that takes 30 seconds and gives your nervous system the signal to come back online

RESOURCES MENTIONED

Dr. Stephen Porges, Polyvagal Theory

Rula, 2026 State of Mental Health Report

Connect with Lulu:Website: https://www.luluessey.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lulu.essey/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucille-marie-essey/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lulu.esseyThis is an inside job. Please send this episode to people you love. And follow while you are here 💛