Frientimacy: The 3 Requirements of All Healthy Friendships: Shasta Nelson (Transcript)

Full text of relationship expert Shasta Nelson’s talk: Frientimacy: The 3 Requirements of All Healthy Friendships at TEDxLaSierraUniversity conference.

Listen to the MP3 Audio here:

TRANSCRIPT:

Our world is fractured by an epidemic of loneliness. And I’m not so worried about the stereotypical recluses and hermits that we kind of tend to picture when we, you know, think of that word.

I am more worried about the vast majority of us in this room who are lonely and don’t acknowledge it, who may not even recognize it in our lives.

You know, we often think, “I can’t be lonely. I know more people than I can keep in touch with.” And yet we report feeling largely unknown.

We know more people than any time in history, and yet we feel very much like we have nobody to confide in. Our social networks just keep growing and growing and growing, and yet so too do our doubts about whether we actually have a safety net and who would be in it should we need it.

Modern-day loneliness is not because we need to interact more; it’s because we need more intimacy.

Case in point, one of my moments of loneliness, I was actually hanging out with five of my closest friends, and we had met on a weekly basis, we had taken a few weeks off for the holiday vacation. And we were coming back together and decided to go around the circle and each give a little update on what life had looked like in the last month.