Have you ever moved away from the place you used to call home? Did your friendships move with you? What was it like making new connections? What helps you to feel like you connect and belong? Is it a sense of shared history you have with your friends? Maybe it’s your shared values or beliefs. In this episode of Hand Baggage Only, host Suzette Shahmoon, is joined by Dr Tal Ben Shahar. A Doctor of organisational behaviour, Tal is the author of the New York Times bestsellers ‘Happier’ and ‘Being Happy’, and still holds the record for having taught the most popular course in Harvard University.   He now lectures on leadership and positive psychology to executives in multinational corporations, the general public, and to at risk populations.  Tal is also founder of the Happiness Studies Academy and like Suzette, has moved counties during his life.   Together, they discuss what it was like moving away from friends, how those friendships change, the challenges of making new friends in new countries, and the impact on them as parents as well as their family.

In this episode of Hand Baggage Only, host Suzette Shahmoon speaks to Natalie Silverman, Founder of the Fertility Podcast, the UK's first podcast dedicated to the topic, and co-founder of Fertility Matters at Work, who provides training and policy guidance for organisations to better support people dealing with family building challenges. Natalie joined Suzette in the studio to chat about her own fertility journey and how it affected her relationship with her family, friends and colleagues. They also talk about the work Natalie is now doing as a fertility advocate and raising awareness of the issues around the subject.

In this episode of Hand Baggage Only, host Suzette Shahmoon speaks exclusively to actor and model, David Gant about his experience of being in hospital and the importance of friendships. Recorded in the Medicinema at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London, we get to hear how this amazing facility brings so many of the hospital's inpatients an escape from their reality and a real opportunity to have a cinema experience whilst helping to build friendships and conversations between the patients. Being in hospital can be quite an isolating experience. In this conversation with David, Suzette finds out to what extent our friendships impact on our mental and physical well-being when we're in hospital.  This includes both those friendships which we've had for years and the small connections that we may make with a member of staff in the hospital or the person lying in the bed next to us.

In this special episode of Hand Baggage Only, host Suzette Shahmoon speaks exclusively to Lord Bird, Founder of the Big Issue, about how friendship is affected by homelessness. We get to hear about Lord Bird's own experience of homelessness, how he spent time as a child in an orphanage, then a detention center, and eventually prison and how it affected him socially.He tells us what led him to launch the Big Issue and how it supports homeless people though the creation of a community, which, as Suzette describes, is a place of belonging where they are able to excel as human beings.

In this sixth episode of Hand Baggage Only, host Suzette Shahmoon speaks to her youngest daughter Gabriella. Suzette asks her daughter about the experience she had as an introvert trying to make lasting friendships in her first year of university. Why don't people talk about this topic more? Is it normal to feel left out of the 'university experience'?  Gabbi ended up dropping out of University and has shared her story of the impact it had at the time, and how she has bravely changed direction in both her studies, and her attitude to making friends.  

In the fifth episode of Hand Baggage Only, host Suzette Shahmoon speaks to James Page, an internationally renowned interior designer and close personal friend. They explore the complicated situation of what happens to our relationships when we share a secret about ourselves, specifically focusing on James' journey of coming out as gay and what it's like to share something so deeply personal about yourself to those around you and perhaps anticipating a negative result.

In the third episode of Hand Baggage Only, host Suzette Shahmoon speaks to Aviva Elias; entrepreneur and founder of the Grey Icon movement.  They talk about Aviva's fearlessness when dealing with difficult situations, and their opinions on what to do if you think a friendship might not be working anymore. Perhaps we could all do with taking a step back from time to time. 

In the second episode of Hand Baggage Only, psychologist and cognitive hypnotherapist, Suzette Shahmoon, talks to Oliver Baum, a Psycho-Spiritual Therapist and Systemic Facilitator.   They discussed the complicated situation of what happens to our friendships when we suddenly find ourselves single again. What if your partner was the one in control of the social diary? Is it inevitable that friends will opt to take sides? And what happens when they don’t.  And how do we deal with the realisation that people now regard us differently, perhaps we’re a threat, or we’re no longer associated with that friendship group.

In the first episode of Hand Baggage Only, psychologist and cognitive hypnotherapist, Suzette Shahmoon, talks online to Dr. Deborah Egerton, an internationally respected best-selling author who works in inclusion, diversity and equity, and is an anti-racism consultant, and spiritual teacher. Suzette spoke to Deborah to explore friendships across cultural division. They discussed why having people in our lives who don’t reflect our own experiences is the only way we can grow as a society. 

Our experiences shape us. So many of our interactions make us form beliefs about our self and the world we live in. That moment when you put up your hand in class to answer a question only to get it wrong and face the humiliation of a class full of snickering, can leave you questioning your intelligence for decades to come. Each time you are put on the spot to speak up in public or make your thoughts and beliefs known to others can leave you feeling vulnerable thanks to the emotional baggage that classroom experience has left you with.  Or maybe you were the kid who was teased by others because of your looks and as a result you struggle to accept a compliment and any kind comments by your friends about your looks are interpreted as disingenuous or inauthentic. We all carry suitcases of these issues around with us all day long. It’s experiences like these which can  cause us to pack harmful beliefs into our emotional bags.  The list of what can trigger an emotional response and a harmful belief is as never ending as our ability to find things to place into our emotional bags. Sometimes these issues will weigh us down so much we end up mentally and physically exhausted. The emotional burden can manifest as a rise or drop in blood pressure, head aches, stomach aches, joint pains. Any physician will tell you; emotional baggage can affect any and every system in our physical body.  However our emotional baggage can also affect the way we interact with others. It can affect the way we process conversations and make us react to innocent comments in negative ways. Think about it… have you ever made a casual comment to a friend which has caused upset and distress? Has someone ever triggered you in the same way? If we don’t take the time to unpack our emotional bags from time to time we sometimes buckle under their weight, and that is the reason why I have released this series of hand baggage only. In this series my wonderful guests each discuss different aspects of friendship. How is friendship affected after the onset of a chronic illness? How do you maintain your friends after divorce or separation? How do you make friends when you don’t have the structure of school to support you?