September 29, 2024 • 18 mins
Welcome to the first episode of Social Leopards! Join hosts Beth and Bea as they embark on a journey to build an online community that fosters virtual friendships. Are you a solitary creature trying to navigate the social jungle? This episode dives into the challenges of making meaningful connections and the persistence required to find true friends.
Through their personal stories, Beth and Bea explore the struggles of loneliness, social anxiety, and the effort it takes to build deep, lasting friendships. They share their experiences of joining groups, volunteering, and the surprising ways they eventually connected with like-minded individuals.
Whether you're feeling isolated post-pandemic or have always found it difficult to make friends, this episode offers a comforting and relatable discussion. Join the conversation and become part of a community that understands and supports you.
Stay tuned for future episodes where Beth and Bea will delve into various topics related to social struggles and share stories from listeners like you. Let's navigate this jungle called life together and see if a leopard can indeed change its spots. Visit socialleopards.com or email us at share@socialleopards.com
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Music.
(00:06):
Do you ever feel like a solitary creature living in a social world?
We are building an online community that fosters virtual friendships.
Hello, and welcome to Social Leopards. I'm Beth.
Hi, I'm Bea. And we are here to collect and share stories and information in
the hopes of finding positive and meaningful ways forward.
(00:26):
It is our goal to navigate this jungle called life. Who knows?
Maybe a leopard can change its spots.
Hello, and welcome in. My name is Beth, and this is our very first episode of Social Leopards.
Yay, and I'm Bea. I'm so glad to be here.
(00:50):
We are super excited to come to you today to start a conversation and hopefully
a community of people that want to come and listen to us, I guess, right?
I hope so. We're going to try to be funny and interesting.
And to participate in the conversation. So first of all, social leopards.
(01:13):
So we had several names for this podcast, but social leopards is where we landed.
Leopards are actually very solitary creatures. And I think that they live their
life pretty much alone other than, you know, getting together to mate or other specific purposes,
(01:37):
raising their cubs when the cubs are very small, that sort of thing.
But the thing about leopards is that they are around a lot of other animals,
just like we're around a lot of other people in this world, right?
And yet they live alone.
Yes. So it's very interesting, you know, when we think about making friends,
(01:59):
we think about joining certain organizations in the hopes that if we have a
shared interest that we're going to make friends.
And very, in most instances, it actually doesn't happen because of the setting
or the circumstances or the people.
In my personal example, I've joined many organizations in the hopes of meeting
people, and the people were just there for the one purpose for the meeting and
(02:21):
they didn't want to socialize outside.
So I had to look a little bit further to make those connections.
I feel you. I had the same experience. I did a lot of volunteering.
When I moved here to this small Midwest town and thought I was going to not
have any problem making friends.
I had friends in my previous community and just thought it was going to be kind
(02:45):
of easy breezy, but it turned out to be quite the effort.
And I tried all sorts of things, church, choir.
Did you say you volunteered at the theater too? I did. I did a lot of volunteering
at a community theater and I had a lot of fun with that, right?
It was a good time and I enjoyed And it did kind of like, I don't know,
it put the loneliness to the side that I was feeling.
(03:08):
But, you know, before we go further, let's just like kind of tell how we got here.
So you want to start, Bea? Sure, I'll start. So I moved here after I got divorced
as a single parent, and I tried really hard to make friends.
I really didn't have the chance to participate in a lot of the kid activities
that our schools offered because I was always working during the day.
(03:30):
So I tried to join, like I'd said before, tennis. I was in a church choir.
You would think you would meet people there, I don't know.
And then finally an acquaintance of mine mentioned, and this was years had gone
by at this point, like my daughter was already almost in high school,
or maybe beyond, that there was this meetup.
For women over 50. And so then I went and it was myself, another lady,
(03:54):
and then Beth was there. And we just had this amazing connection.
She was so excited that I was there and I was excited she was there.
And we became really good friends because of that meetup. We just love that meetup. Yeah.
So that's meetup.com. We aren't getting paid to advertise or promote it,
but in certain communities, it's pretty popular.
It's not super popular where we live.
(04:16):
However, However, there was this one group and that was all it took.
So I think that the message there is just keep trying.
Even when you think that, you know, you're not making headway and,
you know, you've done the volunteer route or you've done the church route or
you've done the organization association route or any of these other things.
And some of these are recurrent themes.
(04:38):
People try a lot of things. Yeah, and I agree. I think you have to keep trying.
And you also have to come in with, I think, some modicum of confidence to believe
that you're going to meet someone.
I think it's just one of those things. I think you have to have that faith.
Because I think if you're negative, or you think it's just a waste of your time,
or you're just going through the motions, I think people are going to pick up
on that too. You know what's funny about that statement right there?
(05:02):
I have to tell you.
So I also found this meetup.com group quite by accident and through an internet
search, just a general internet search, and came to my first event and Bea was at that first event.
And my first impression of you was that you were so sophisticated and beautiful and all these things.
(05:32):
But that I wasn't real sure that we were going to become fast friends.
I thought you were going to be another one of those just acquaintances that
I have many of, and that I would only see you in the context of this group.
That was my first impression. I don't even know why.
It was a little judgy. I think maybe I was a little jaded by that point.
I could see that. Yeah. Yeah.
(05:53):
And I didn't want to get my hopes up. And so I didn't have that confidence.
And it took It took a good six months before we kind of realized that the two
of us had so much more in common than we originally realized.
So, again, you know, sometimes connections are a seedling, right?
(06:14):
They are. But I feel like you can kind of tell if you meet someone that you connect with.
I mean, if you feel that there's a connection there, you have to kind of pursue
it a little bit. And people, I think, are afraid, as what you said, the same thing.
Maybe that person is not going to accept me. Maybe that person is too confident
for me. I mean, maybe, you know, and we can assume so many things without like
delving deeper because first impressions, they can be true, but they can also
(06:35):
not necessarily tell the whole truth about someone.
Yeah, absolutely. And I think, too, that comfort level starts to build and then
that kind of fosters that confidence level, too. That's true.
Because a lot of our first conversations were very light and in that larger
group setting. That's true. Yes, they were. There's safety in numbers.
Absolutely. And so it is a good way to get started when you aren't really sure
(06:57):
how to pursue making friends, I think.
It's not that I didn't know how to make a friend. But, you know,
as we get a little older, it's easy in high school and college.
You know, you've got your social groups that are kind of built right into the environment.
That's right. They are. But once you go off to work, you've got your work friends.
(07:17):
And a lot of times that work friendship is simply at work.
But you come home and even if you're married and have kids around the house
or don't have kids around the house, you still you start to feel that sense
of loneliness and isolation because, you know, after work,
there's the television or the computer or, you know, your exercise routine or whatever you've got.
(07:40):
But it's so much better when you have people in your life.
Yeah, it's really difficult. I think you said the work friends.
I think some people are lucky, depending on what the nature of their job is,
that they can make friends because it's more conducive to that.
But it's very rare, I think. And it's also sticky if you make friends at work
(08:01):
and there's conflict and you have to see that person every day.
That becomes much more complicated.
Yeah, I hear you. I think I'm happy that most of my friends are not work friends.
I have a great group of people I work with. They're my acquaintances,
but I don't think, but we don't really socialize outside of work.
So I don't know what your experience is with that. Do you have some work friends
that you socialize with outside of work or not really?
(08:24):
I have people at work that I consider my friend, but I would not seek them out for social situations.
I feel the same way. Yes. And I think that is more of that caution that I feel.
And so, you know, luckily enough,
I met you and several other wonderful people through this one group.
(08:45):
And some of them have brought other friends with them along the way. That's right.
Yeah, they have. We've expanded. I mean, the group's expanded.
The group that we joined expanded a lot, which is nice. Yeah.
I absolutely agree. And so continuing on with the story of Beth and Bea,
there was a night when we decided to just go out to dinner after something else.
(09:08):
I can't even remember what it was.
And we started talking and we both started kind of conversing about how we wanted
something beyond work to have as sort of a hobby.
And we also through
getting to know each other learned about our common bonds
of you know being divorced and remarried dealing
(09:30):
with blended family issues working with
people that struggle yeah and yes and
we are both in in kind of service and support types of jobs and so that was
another common bond and it that's what it led thank you for reminding me that
is what led us to thinking about a podcast and the podcast about creating a community of people.
(09:56):
And I had just read this article about post-pandemic environments and how many people,
especially younger people, who had felt a sense of isolation and depression during the pandemic,
they weren't able to follow their normal lifestyle or the lifestyle they thought
they were going to be able to live, especially those last couple of years of
(10:17):
high school or just going off to college.
I feel really bad for those. The kids that missed graduation.
I mean, that was really horrendous. All of that. Yeah.
But then there was there were all of these other people who had to move from
they either lost their jobs and they were isolated and they had to figure out
what to do with themselves for months on end,
or they transitioned from an office environment to a remote environment.
(10:41):
And I did did the same thing. Oh, yeah. For about probably six months.
How about you? Well, you're...
Wow. Maybe that's, do you like that better? Sometimes, sometimes not.
(11:05):
I mean, it is harder to make those bonds and partner work-wise, but I don't know.
I don't know if that also kind of contributed to this sense of loneliness and
a stronger desire to figure out what to do.
And so we started talking about how many people struggle either post-pandemic
(11:25):
or have struggled their entire lives.
Another thing that I did during the pandemic was I started volunteering for
a website that provides online listening support to individuals who just want
their voices heard. It's a text-based chat.
It isn't like video or I don't hear the voices of the people.
(11:47):
Oh, you're texting. I didn't realize that. For some reason, I thought you were
on the phone with them, but you're not.
No, it is all like a big I am.
So you really can't see, you can't feel or understand the emotion behind the text.
No, and it's a very interesting experience.
And, you know, you have to be, you kind of have to tread lightly because there
(12:10):
are a lot of people who are upset when they come onto the site.
So you have to be what we call an active listener. And you get a little bit
of training before you become a listener.
But I met a person on this site, and this person has taught me so much about
loneliness and the struggles of people who just cannot,
(12:33):
for one reason or another, a specific purpose.
Reason for this particular individual, make connections with people.
And there's some fear and some anxiety and some, I feel socially awkward.
And this isn't the only person I've talked to on this site with same or similar issues.
And it just got me to thinking. And so I shared some of my experiences anonymously.
(12:57):
And this site is very anonymous.
You don't know who you're talking to. Everybody has a screen name.
You don't know where in the world.
It's a global mobile site so you could
be talking to somebody in arabia wow
and you have no idea no no sometimes an english
barrier will become apparent the site promotes that
everything should be in english although they do have some foreign language
(13:20):
forums okay or you can ask to connect with a listener who types your language
oh okay interesting yeah no idea okay anyway it's very it's been very enlightening.
And it has given me a new sense of or an enlightened empathy for people who struggle.
(13:41):
And I don't want to say that I'm judgy. I don't think I'm a judgmental person at all.
But I do feel like you don't know what that person who you're meeting for the
first time has going on in their life.
And sometimes you would be amazed to find out what their home life is all about.
(14:01):
And everyone's going to try to be in a social situation and put their best foot forward, right? But.
Taking that moment and not coming to any conclusions is like a newfound,
I don't want to say skill, but desire of mine is to not judge a book by its cover.
Yeah, I mean, everyone has a story. Everyone struggles with something.
(14:22):
And I think in my profession, being in psychology,
I think we see a lot, I think I've become more in tune and more empathetic to that, to your point,
because, you know, someone might say something to you that you take the wrong
way, but they're probably saying it because, you know, they're lashing out because
they themselves are struggling, they're in pain.
And they you happen to be that next person they saw when they had that thought
(14:45):
so they said something so you
know you have to like kind of take a I think a step back and think that,
something's really going on there that we don't know about so yeah yeah so I
guess the point of this chatting back and forth without having a there's no
point now that's right we're just kind of like randomly sharing our thoughts
(15:06):
as we go along here and and if you continue listening to this podcast,
which we hope you do, you might find that we're all over the place sometimes
and are probably not going to do a lot of self-editing because it's more fun
to talk to people and be in the moment, right? Yes, being in the moment is the best, yeah.
So, you know, we hope that you join us on this path as we learn about others
who share life struggles.
(15:29):
There are leopards in the jungle right along with us.
Maybe they want to be more social. And if
you're one of those people that struggles or just doesn't
know the path forward or you think you've tried everything in the book we want
to hear what or or maybe you've even like found some things that do work and
we haven't talked about it yet because today isn't really about solving anything
(15:52):
it's just about kind of letting you know what this is about so that you know
you will be interested in future episodes but,
what we plan to do is we plan to talk about a wide range of topics that touch so many of us out there.
We've said most of these words, but just to kind of put them in a list or a
menu, per se, is social anxiety.
(16:13):
Which impacts more of us than I think even the research shows.
Loneliness. I think even if you have large family and lots of social activities,
you can still be subject to loneliness and there's no shame in that.
Friendships. Friendships that go deeper than that, you know,
when I go to this event, this person is here and I kind of, you know, touch base with them.
(16:38):
But real friendships, developing friendships of
substance and depth and someone
that you can say is a confidant and someone that
you trust and could cry with and
it would be okay and then life
experiences with all of these things including you know
people that struggle with risk aversion sometimes it's
(17:01):
scary to put a foot out there and to try
and so helping find that how to
To take that step is another thing that we want to explore and hear stories
from anybody and everybody who has a story to share so that we can all be part
of the solution together and or support one another as we continue to struggle
(17:23):
with loneliness or anxiety.
So sharing moment of the week. What is the most unusual way that you have made a friend in the past?
There are no right or wrong answers to this question. You can let us know the
situation in which you made a friend or even just, you know,
(17:43):
a strong acquaintance. We're not picky.
We'll take any stories or actually any other feedback that you have about this
podcast, right? And what's the best way to reach out to us, Bea?
Yeah, so you can comment below or share your story or feedback by visiting SocialLeopards.com
or our email is share@socialleopards.com.
(18:04):
Awesome. And I think that is a wrap for episode one, right?
Yeah. Have a good week. Until the next time, take care. Bye.
This podcast sometimes discusses the struggles of loneliness,
isolation, and depression in a way that can be triggering.
(18:25):
Our content is not intended to provide or replace professional counseling.
If life starts to feel too hard to bear, please seek help.
In the United States, dial 988 if you feel as if you may harm yourself or others.
Help is a phone call away. If you can't afford or find therapy,
dial 2-1-1 for no or low-cost resources that may be available near you.
(18:51):
Music.
Music.
(00:06):
Do you ever feel like a solitary creature living in a social world?
We are building an online community that fosters virtual friendships.
Hello, and welcome to Social Leopards. I'm Beth.
Hi, I'm Bea. And we are here to collect and share stories and information in
the hopes of finding positive and meaningful ways forward.
(00:26):
It is our goal to navigate this jungle called life. Who knows?
Maybe a leopard can change its spots.
Hello, and welcome in. My name is Beth, and this is our very first episode of Social Leopards.
Yay, and I'm Bea. I'm so glad to be here.
(00:50):
We are super excited to come to you today to start a conversation and hopefully
a community of people that want to come and listen to us, I guess, right?
I hope so. We're going to try to be funny and interesting.
And to participate in the conversation. So first of all, social leopards.
(01:13):
So we had several names for this podcast, but social leopards is where we landed.
Leopards are actually very solitary creatures. And I think that they live their
life pretty much alone other than, you know, getting together to mate or other specific purposes,
(01:37):
raising their cubs when the cubs are very small, that sort of thing.
But the thing about leopards is that they are around a lot of other animals,
just like we're around a lot of other people in this world, right?
And yet they live alone.
Yes. So it's very interesting, you know, when we think about making friends,
(01:59):
we think about joining certain organizations in the hopes that if we have a
shared interest that we're going to make friends.
And very, in most instances, it actually doesn't happen because of the setting
or the circumstances or the people.
In my personal example, I've joined many organizations in the hopes of meeting
people, and the people were just there for the one purpose for the meeting and
(02:21):
they didn't want to socialize outside.
So I had to look a little bit further to make those connections.
I feel you. I had the same experience. I did a lot of volunteering.
When I moved here to this small Midwest town and thought I was going to not
have any problem making friends.
I had friends in my previous community and just thought it was going to be kind
(02:45):
of easy breezy, but it turned out to be quite the effort.
And I tried all sorts of things, church, choir.
Did you say you volunteered at the theater too? I did. I did a lot of volunteering
at a community theater and I had a lot of fun with that, right?
It was a good time and I enjoyed And it did kind of like, I don't know,
it put the loneliness to the side that I was feeling.
(03:08):
But, you know, before we go further, let's just like kind of tell how we got here.
So you want to start, Bea? Sure, I'll start. So I moved here after I got divorced
as a single parent, and I tried really hard to make friends.
I really didn't have the chance to participate in a lot of the kid activities
that our schools offered because I was always working during the day.
(03:30):
So I tried to join, like I'd said before, tennis. I was in a church choir.
You would think you would meet people there, I don't know.
And then finally an acquaintance of mine mentioned, and this was years had gone
by at this point, like my daughter was already almost in high school,
or maybe beyond, that there was this meetup.
For women over 50. And so then I went and it was myself, another lady,
(03:54):
and then Beth was there. And we just had this amazing connection.
She was so excited that I was there and I was excited she was there.
And we became really good friends because of that meetup. We just love that meetup. Yeah.
So that's meetup.com. We aren't getting paid to advertise or promote it,
but in certain communities, it's pretty popular.
It's not super popular where we live.
(04:16):
However, However, there was this one group and that was all it took.
So I think that the message there is just keep trying.
Even when you think that, you know, you're not making headway and,
you know, you've done the volunteer route or you've done the church route or
you've done the organization association route or any of these other things.
And some of these are recurrent themes.
(04:38):
People try a lot of things. Yeah, and I agree. I think you have to keep trying.
And you also have to come in with, I think, some modicum of confidence to believe
that you're going to meet someone.
I think it's just one of those things. I think you have to have that faith.
Because I think if you're negative, or you think it's just a waste of your time,
or you're just going through the motions, I think people are going to pick up
on that too. You know what's funny about that statement right there?
(05:02):
I have to tell you.
So I also found this meetup.com group quite by accident and through an internet
search, just a general internet search, and came to my first event and Bea was at that first event.
And my first impression of you was that you were so sophisticated and beautiful and all these things.
(05:32):
But that I wasn't real sure that we were going to become fast friends.
I thought you were going to be another one of those just acquaintances that
I have many of, and that I would only see you in the context of this group.
That was my first impression. I don't even know why.
It was a little judgy. I think maybe I was a little jaded by that point.
I could see that. Yeah. Yeah.
(05:53):
And I didn't want to get my hopes up. And so I didn't have that confidence.
And it took It took a good six months before we kind of realized that the two
of us had so much more in common than we originally realized.
So, again, you know, sometimes connections are a seedling, right?
(06:14):
They are. But I feel like you can kind of tell if you meet someone that you connect with.
I mean, if you feel that there's a connection there, you have to kind of pursue
it a little bit. And people, I think, are afraid, as what you said, the same thing.
Maybe that person is not going to accept me. Maybe that person is too confident
for me. I mean, maybe, you know, and we can assume so many things without like
delving deeper because first impressions, they can be true, but they can also
(06:35):
not necessarily tell the whole truth about someone.
Yeah, absolutely. And I think, too, that comfort level starts to build and then
that kind of fosters that confidence level, too. That's true.
Because a lot of our first conversations were very light and in that larger
group setting. That's true. Yes, they were. There's safety in numbers.
Absolutely. And so it is a good way to get started when you aren't really sure
(06:57):
how to pursue making friends, I think.
It's not that I didn't know how to make a friend. But, you know,
as we get a little older, it's easy in high school and college.
You know, you've got your social groups that are kind of built right into the environment.
That's right. They are. But once you go off to work, you've got your work friends.
(07:17):
And a lot of times that work friendship is simply at work.
But you come home and even if you're married and have kids around the house
or don't have kids around the house, you still you start to feel that sense
of loneliness and isolation because, you know, after work,
there's the television or the computer or, you know, your exercise routine or whatever you've got.
(07:40):
But it's so much better when you have people in your life.
Yeah, it's really difficult. I think you said the work friends.
I think some people are lucky, depending on what the nature of their job is,
that they can make friends because it's more conducive to that.
But it's very rare, I think. And it's also sticky if you make friends at work
(08:01):
and there's conflict and you have to see that person every day.
That becomes much more complicated.
Yeah, I hear you. I think I'm happy that most of my friends are not work friends.
I have a great group of people I work with. They're my acquaintances,
but I don't think, but we don't really socialize outside of work.
So I don't know what your experience is with that. Do you have some work friends
that you socialize with outside of work or not really?
(08:24):
I have people at work that I consider my friend, but I would not seek them out for social situations.
I feel the same way. Yes. And I think that is more of that caution that I feel.
And so, you know, luckily enough,
I met you and several other wonderful people through this one group.
(08:45):
And some of them have brought other friends with them along the way. That's right.
Yeah, they have. We've expanded. I mean, the group's expanded.
The group that we joined expanded a lot, which is nice. Yeah.
I absolutely agree. And so continuing on with the story of Beth and Bea,
there was a night when we decided to just go out to dinner after something else.
(09:08):
I can't even remember what it was.
And we started talking and we both started kind of conversing about how we wanted
something beyond work to have as sort of a hobby.
And we also through
getting to know each other learned about our common bonds
of you know being divorced and remarried dealing
(09:30):
with blended family issues working with
people that struggle yeah and yes and
we are both in in kind of service and support types of jobs and so that was
another common bond and it that's what it led thank you for reminding me that
is what led us to thinking about a podcast and the podcast about creating a community of people.
(09:56):
And I had just read this article about post-pandemic environments and how many people,
especially younger people, who had felt a sense of isolation and depression during the pandemic,
they weren't able to follow their normal lifestyle or the lifestyle they thought
they were going to be able to live, especially those last couple of years of
(10:17):
high school or just going off to college.
I feel really bad for those. The kids that missed graduation.
I mean, that was really horrendous. All of that. Yeah.
But then there was there were all of these other people who had to move from
they either lost their jobs and they were isolated and they had to figure out
what to do with themselves for months on end,
or they transitioned from an office environment to a remote environment.
(10:41):
And I did did the same thing. Oh, yeah. For about probably six months.
How about you? Well, you're...
Wow. Maybe that's, do you like that better? Sometimes, sometimes not.
(11:05):
I mean, it is harder to make those bonds and partner work-wise, but I don't know.
I don't know if that also kind of contributed to this sense of loneliness and
a stronger desire to figure out what to do.
And so we started talking about how many people struggle either post-pandemic
(11:25):
or have struggled their entire lives.
Another thing that I did during the pandemic was I started volunteering for
a website that provides online listening support to individuals who just want
their voices heard. It's a text-based chat.
It isn't like video or I don't hear the voices of the people.
(11:47):
Oh, you're texting. I didn't realize that. For some reason, I thought you were
on the phone with them, but you're not.
No, it is all like a big I am.
So you really can't see, you can't feel or understand the emotion behind the text.
No, and it's a very interesting experience.
And, you know, you have to be, you kind of have to tread lightly because there
(12:10):
are a lot of people who are upset when they come onto the site.
So you have to be what we call an active listener. And you get a little bit
of training before you become a listener.
But I met a person on this site, and this person has taught me so much about
loneliness and the struggles of people who just cannot,
(12:33):
for one reason or another, a specific purpose.
Reason for this particular individual, make connections with people.
And there's some fear and some anxiety and some, I feel socially awkward.
And this isn't the only person I've talked to on this site with same or similar issues.
And it just got me to thinking. And so I shared some of my experiences anonymously.
(12:57):
And this site is very anonymous.
You don't know who you're talking to. Everybody has a screen name.
You don't know where in the world.
It's a global mobile site so you could
be talking to somebody in arabia wow
and you have no idea no no sometimes an english
barrier will become apparent the site promotes that
everything should be in english although they do have some foreign language
(13:20):
forums okay or you can ask to connect with a listener who types your language
oh okay interesting yeah no idea okay anyway it's very it's been very enlightening.
And it has given me a new sense of or an enlightened empathy for people who struggle.
(13:41):
And I don't want to say that I'm judgy. I don't think I'm a judgmental person at all.
But I do feel like you don't know what that person who you're meeting for the
first time has going on in their life.
And sometimes you would be amazed to find out what their home life is all about.
(14:01):
And everyone's going to try to be in a social situation and put their best foot forward, right? But.
Taking that moment and not coming to any conclusions is like a newfound,
I don't want to say skill, but desire of mine is to not judge a book by its cover.
Yeah, I mean, everyone has a story. Everyone struggles with something.
(14:22):
And I think in my profession, being in psychology,
I think we see a lot, I think I've become more in tune and more empathetic to that, to your point,
because, you know, someone might say something to you that you take the wrong
way, but they're probably saying it because, you know, they're lashing out because
they themselves are struggling, they're in pain.
And they you happen to be that next person they saw when they had that thought
(14:45):
so they said something so you
know you have to like kind of take a I think a step back and think that,
something's really going on there that we don't know about so yeah yeah so I
guess the point of this chatting back and forth without having a there's no
point now that's right we're just kind of like randomly sharing our thoughts
(15:06):
as we go along here and and if you continue listening to this podcast,
which we hope you do, you might find that we're all over the place sometimes
and are probably not going to do a lot of self-editing because it's more fun
to talk to people and be in the moment, right? Yes, being in the moment is the best, yeah.
So, you know, we hope that you join us on this path as we learn about others
who share life struggles.
(15:29):
There are leopards in the jungle right along with us.
Maybe they want to be more social. And if
you're one of those people that struggles or just doesn't
know the path forward or you think you've tried everything in the book we want
to hear what or or maybe you've even like found some things that do work and
we haven't talked about it yet because today isn't really about solving anything
(15:52):
it's just about kind of letting you know what this is about so that you know
you will be interested in future episodes but,
what we plan to do is we plan to talk about a wide range of topics that touch so many of us out there.
We've said most of these words, but just to kind of put them in a list or a
menu, per se, is social anxiety.
(16:13):
Which impacts more of us than I think even the research shows.
Loneliness. I think even if you have large family and lots of social activities,
you can still be subject to loneliness and there's no shame in that.
Friendships. Friendships that go deeper than that, you know,
when I go to this event, this person is here and I kind of, you know, touch base with them.
(16:38):
But real friendships, developing friendships of
substance and depth and someone
that you can say is a confidant and someone that
you trust and could cry with and
it would be okay and then life
experiences with all of these things including you know
people that struggle with risk aversion sometimes it's
(17:01):
scary to put a foot out there and to try
and so helping find that how to
To take that step is another thing that we want to explore and hear stories
from anybody and everybody who has a story to share so that we can all be part
of the solution together and or support one another as we continue to struggle
(17:23):
with loneliness or anxiety.
So sharing moment of the week. What is the most unusual way that you have made a friend in the past?
There are no right or wrong answers to this question. You can let us know the
situation in which you made a friend or even just, you know,
(17:43):
a strong acquaintance. We're not picky.
We'll take any stories or actually any other feedback that you have about this
podcast, right? And what's the best way to reach out to us, Bea?
Yeah, so you can comment below or share your story or feedback by visiting SocialLeopards.com
or our email is share@socialleopards.com.
(18:04):
Awesome. And I think that is a wrap for episode one, right?
Yeah. Have a good week. Until the next time, take care. Bye.
This podcast sometimes discusses the struggles of loneliness,
isolation, and depression in a way that can be triggering.
(18:25):
Our content is not intended to provide or replace professional counseling.
If life starts to feel too hard to bear, please seek help.
In the United States, dial 988 if you feel as if you may harm yourself or others.
Help is a phone call away. If you can't afford or find therapy,
dial 2-1-1 for no or low-cost resources that may be available near you.
(18:51):
Music.
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