All friendships have ebbs and flows

Spending time in nature always helps me put personal issues into perspective and to see the challenges that affect my emotions in a more positive light.

I was recently told that all friendships have ebbs and flows. Last week I started a new job and while all is fine professionally, I became worried and anxious about my friendship with some of my former work colleagues. I found myself engaging in catastrophic thinking because I’m not getting the usual daily flow of texts or phone calls from certain people. While these conversations were usually work related, they had become relationships which gave me a sense of security and well-being; but they have now stopped. So, I immediately interpreted this adversity as loss and catastrophic: Have I said something to offend them? Did they only talk to me everyday because they had to?
This trail of thinking in this situation is not useful and may even become a self fulfilling prophesy. Positive psychology has taught me that I need to reset this “mindset of catastrophe” with a perspective that is based on reality. Firstly, my perceived emotional catastrophe of losing friends does not stem from me changing jobs, but rather from my own beliefs about changing jobs. Research by leading psychologists such as Martin Salesman has taught me that I need to dispute this catastrophic thinking by asking myself three questions about the situation I am reacting to; what is the worst case outcome; what is the best case outcome and what is the most likely outcome.
Clearly, the worst case is that “they have stopped contacting me as I either offended them or they only spoke to me in the first place because it was part of the job”. In putting this outcome into perspective, the best possible case is that “they really are great friends and will always be supporting and collaborative”. So what is the most likely case then? “There is no need to contact me all the time about work because ‘work is work’ and there is no point involving me in their jobs any more. I wouldn’t expect to involve them in my new job. We will keep in contact and remain friends but outside of work time”.
By taking a moment and applying this fairly easy thought process, I feel happier about the prospect of maintaining positive relationships with my previous work friends after changing jobs. I can now think and plan for this more likely reality rather than feeling paralysed and feeling helpless. While my first reaction was think that a catastrophe was the only outcome, I can now think that this “ebb” in our friendship will return to a “flow”.