Have you ever lost a houseplant because you forgot to care for it? How about a friendship? Taking care of our friendships can be a lot like taking care of our plants. Join us in this Emotional Push-Up with Kyle Hagge from Morning Brew to talk about how to maintain the friendships in our lives.  

Thank you for listening! Staying emotionally fit takes work and repetition. That's why the Emotionally Fit podcast with psychologist Dr. Emily Anhalt delivers short, actionable Emotional Push-Ups every Monday and Thursday to help you build a better practice of mental health. Join us to kickstart your emotional fitness. Let's flex those feels and do some reps together!

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The Emotionally Fit podcast is produced by Coa, your gym for mental health. Katie Sunku Wood is the show’s producer from StudioPod Media with additional editing and sound design by Nodalab, and featuring music by Milano. Special thanks to the entire Coa crew!

Ready to break an emotional sweat? Welcome to Emotionally Fit, with me, Dr. Emily Anhalt. As a therapist, I know that staying mentally healthy takes work and repetition. That's why I'll share emotional push-ups, short, actionable exercises to help you strengthen your mental fitness. From improving your friendships to managing stress, let's flex those feels and do some reps together.

Hey there, Fit fans. I am here with Kyle Hagge, lead community manager at Morning Brew. Hey Kyle, it's so good to see you.

Hey Emily. Great to see you as well. Thanks for having me.

Thanks for being here. I have a question for you. Do you have plants at home?

I do not have plants at home, believe it or not.

You don't have any plants?

No, we could probably have a whole episode on the psychological reason behind that, but I have no plants.

Have you ever had plants?

I have had plants.

And how did that go?

The plants are not here to tell the tale.

Okay.

Yeah.

And why do you think that is? Did you forget about them or what happened there?

Yeah, I will forget to water them on a consistent basis and I don't derive a lot of joy from them, for some reason. So, they just fall to the bottom of the priority list.

That's fair. Well, I have a bunch of plants. I really love plants. I get very attached to them. I name all of my plants. And one thing I've noticed about my plants is that some of them are really communicative about what they need. I have a plant that I named Eileen because she leans over when she's thirsty and she perks back up when she's happy, so I always know what she needs. But I have other plants that are less communicative, and sometimes, I'll forget to tend to them. Sometimes, that's fine. I can leave some of them for months and they're totally good. Other times, it turns out they're not so fine, and maybe I can bring them back from the brink, but it takes a while for them to heal or they're never totally the same. And still other times, I wait too long, it's too late and they die on me. It sounds like you're familiar with that one.

Yes.

All this to say, I've realized that friendships are this way. There are friendships that are communicative about what they need and there are friendships that aren't. There are friendships that can go months and months with no attention. And there are others that need more care if they're going to last. I think life moves really fast. It's easy to take our friendships for granted, but they need our care and attention over time. What do you think about this idea?

Yeah, it's interesting. And I'm already making lots of parallels back to plants I've owned in the past, and now my relationship with friends. I did have a plants growing up that was a cactus, which was quite easy to keep alive because I don't think I had to water it all that much. And so now we're getting really deep here, but yeah, I'm thinking about friendships in terms of that.

Well, tell me more. Tell me how you're putting these two together.

Yeah, so I was thinking cactuses, I would forget to water it because I would be busy with a bunch of other stuff. But when I came back to it, it was still there. It's what I thought it would look like. I would water it great at that time. And then I knew, "All right, I have 30 days, I have 40 days where I can go and get some other stuff done and come back to the cactus." The plants that I had that died were the plants that needed constant care. And it's not that I didn't want to care for them. It was just the fact that I had a lot of other stuff going on and I wasn't able to prioritize that plant in a way that kept it alive. I think the parallels to friendship probably write themselves.

Well, let me see if I'm getting it right. Would you say that friendships of yours that need constant attention are less likely to survive in your life, and the ones that can kind of sustain themselves do better with you?

Yeah, I think that's pretty accurate, actually. And I would say I would put a caveat on that. If a friendship needs constant attention, it's easy for me to do if it is communicative. If a plant could remind me every morning, like, "Yo, don't forget to water me," I would water it. It's just when it's not communicative that I forget about it and then it ends up dying out. So, I think friends that are clear about kind of the expectations of this friendship and how it needs to go in order to be successful, make it easier for me to fulfill those obligations. And friends where it's less clear, it's fine if they end up being a cactus of a person and we can just get together when we find time. And it's lovely when we do, and then we see each other in a month, that's great. If they're not a cactus, then there's probably going to be some tension that needs to be resolved in some way.

I love that, how that tracks that way. And I've known a lot of people who are this way who say, "I'm not great at being the person who reaches out, but if the other person reaches out, I love it. And I'm happy to join them there." That being said, there's a particular kind of friendship that that attitude will lose from our life because there are some people out there, like you, who are waiting for you to reach out. And if you don't, then maybe the friendship won't be as strong.

I think that perfectly leads to the point of our push-up today, which is all about giving our friendships a little water and light. Being thoughtful and looking around and seeing, feeling the soil and being like, "Who could use a little more from me today?" So, your push-up today, Kyle, is to send a text or an email to one or two friends, letting them know that you're thinking of them. And this can be short and sweet. It could just be saying, "Hey, thinking of you," or you might write out a memory of them that makes you smile, or you might ask about something you know they're going through right now.

When I did this push-up, I chose two friends purposely who I know need a little more love from me. And then I also sent it to one friend who I knew would be fine if I didn't check-in, but who I love dearly and wanted to show a little extra love to.

For people listening in, you can go ahead and press pause while you send out these messages, or keep listening to see how it went for Kyle. Kyle, how did it feel to send out these messages? How did you choose who you would send them to?

Yeah, it felt great. I got out the old watering can, AKA my iPhone and shot a few text messages to some friends. How I picked these friends, it was mainly, I texted a few people who live in Milwaukee and I recently had moved from Milwaukee to New York. And so it's a little easy for those people to fall out of mind.

And how did it feel to send the messages?

It felt great. It felt like a relief. I got some messages back, and I think we have this idea that maybe this fear, that if I reach out and it's been a while, someone's going to be mad at me or they were waiting for this text for months and felt betrayed by me. What actually happens is they were super-excited to hear from me and scheduled some time to catch-up in a more substantive way, like a phone call or a FaceTime later in the week. And so I think you also realize that you're not the center of gravity for everyone else's life. Sometimes, just getting a message saying, "Hey, thinking of you. Would love to catch up soon. Hope you're doing well." If I got that message, I would be like, "Wow, that was really, really nice." I wouldn't be like, "That person should have texted me two weeks ago." So, it made me feel really good. I think it made them feel really good. And now we have some kind of concrete plans to move forward and catch-up in a more substantive way. So, I loved it.

I love that. And I was thinking about the cactus metaphor and that I've had cacti as well. I feel like there's two types of cacti. There's the kind that are like, "Leave me alone. I'm fine. And don't give me too much water. I'm good." And then there are others that are like, "I'll be okay if you forget about me, I'll figure it out. But kindly don't leave me for too long." I was thinking about with our friendships, I think there are friendships that actually the friendship is going to go best if we don't crowd them. And then there are other friendships that they will be fine, but it could also be quite powerful to lean in and give them something, even if they're not literally dying for it. So, as you were speaking, I was like, "Hmm. I wonder who my cacti friends are that I might reach out to, just to make sure that they know I'm still there."

Yeah. I really like the cacti metaphor, particularly the cacti that can figure it out when you're not there because I find those people, when you're not catching-up frequently, but shallowly, just texting back and forth, I feel like when you do finally meet up, you have really substantive, deep, dynamic conversations, because there's so much to share and unpack. Sometimes, those conversations are even more powerful and even more enjoyable than a frequent, but more shallow, conversation with someone.

Oh, I love it. What a powerful thing. Well, thank you so much for doing this push-up, and I'm excited to hear how it goes in an ongoing way to tend to those friendship plants.

Yes. Thanks for having me. And to all my friends listening that may or may not have received a text, I still did want to text you. It wasn't just because of this podcast. So, I love you all. Thanks for having me, Emily.

Thanks, Kyle. Thanks for listening to Emotionally Fit, hosted by me, Dr. Emily Anhalt. New push-ups drop every Monday and Thursday. Did you do today's push-up alongside me and my guest? Tweet your experience with the #EmotionallyFit and follow me at Dr. Emily Anhalt. Please rate, review, follow and share the show wherever you listen to podcasts.

This podcast is produced by Coa, your gym for mental health, where you can take live therapist-led classes online. From group sessions to therapist matchmaking, Coa will help you build your emotional fitness routine. Head to joincoa.com, that's joincoa.com, to learn more and follow us on Twitter and Instagram @Joincoa. From StudioPod Media in San Francisco, our producer is Katie Sunku Wood. Music is by Milanu. Special thanks to the entire Coa crew.