#89 Nice Girls, Mean Girls, and Silent Betrayals: What No One Tells You About Women's Friendships with Susan Shapiro Barash
In this episode of the Heal with Kat Podcast, Kat and Susan Shapiro Barash, author and women's studies expert, dive into female friendships. These friendships can be powerful, supportive, and deeply meaningful—but they can also be messy, painful, and even toxic. We explore the emotional terrain of female friendships, conflict, estrangement, and explore why so many women feel pressure to stay in unhealthy friendships, the emotional cost of betrayal, and how societal expectations (and even the "mean girl" mentality) influence the way women relate to one another. With warmth and honesty, they unpack how friendship breakups can actually be a path to healing and self-discovery.Time Stamps: 00:00 – Introduction 02:55 – Why Female Friendships Are So Complicated 06:10 – Spotting Unhealthy Dynamics + Betrayal 14:58 – The Weight of Societal Expectations + Mean Girl Mentality 21:02 – What Healthy Female Friendships Look Like 27:00 – How Our Mothers Shape Our Friendships 33:06 – Breaking Up with a Friend: Grief & Growth 36:08 – Final Thoughts🤍 /https://www.instagram.com/kat_daou/🤍 / https://www.tiktok.com/@healwithkatpod🤍 / https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCix2tpYqYdRcMNNAqKfYJew🤍 / https://www.katdaou.comConnect with Susan Shapiro Barash: 🩶 / https://susanshapirobarash.com/ 🩶 / https://www.instagram.com/susanshapirobarash/ 🩶 / https://susanshapirobarash.com/contact/ ✨ Want to win a FREE Ancestral Intuitive Reading with Kat?All you need to do is SUBSCRIBE, RATE, & REVIEW this episode.Screenshot that and send it to Kat on Instagram (link above) to enter your name in to win!Winners announced on the last day of each month on instagram stories.Links: Cycle Breaker Quiz Link:https://www.tryinteract.com/share/quiz/665bc191d9650a00154a4a22Age Mapping Mini Course Link:https://www.katdaou.com/agemapGuest Bio: Susan Shapiro Barash has written over a dozen nonfiction books, including Tripping the Prom Queen, You’re Grounded Forever, But First Let’s Go Shopping and Toxic Friends: The Antidote for Women Stuck in Complicated Friendships. For more than twenty years she taught gender studies in the Writing Department at Marymount Manhattan College and has guest taught creative nonfiction at the Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College. For her fiction, Between the Tides, A Palm Beach Wife, A Palm Beach Scandal, and Maribelle’s Shadow, she writes as Susannah Marren.She has been featured in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Elle, Marie Claire, and has appeared on national television including the Today Show, Good Morning America, CBS, CNN, and MSNBC. She has been a guest on national radio including NPR and Sirius Radio. Speaking appearances include Credit Suisse, Bayer Diagnostics, UBS, United Way, Kravis Center and the Society of the Four Arts.In 2021 Susan received the New York State Assembly Member’s Exceptional Leadership Award, presented by Assembly Woman Rebecca Seawright. The following year, she won the 2022 Firebird Book Award for her novel A Palm Beach Wife.She has served as a literary panelist for the New York State Council on the Arts, as a judge for the International Emmys and as Vice Chair of the Mentoring Committee of the Women’s Leadership Board at the JFK School of Government, Harvard. She belongs to Greenwich Pen Women (Pen Women America), NYWIFT, the Authors Guild and ASJA.female friendships, toxic friendships, friendship breakup, healing from toxic relationships, mean girl mentality, how to end a friendship, estranged friendships, women's mental health, women supporting women, unhealthy friendships, conflict resolution in friendships, why friendships end, friendship betrayal, personal growth after friendship loss, healing female relationships, women empowerment podcast, how to deal with toxic friends, friendship advice for women, supportive female friendships
