Suzette Shahmoon is a psychologist and cognitive hypnotherapist.
In this series, along with an array of guests, Suzette will be examining the emotional baggage that builds-up and clutters our lives due to the complex nature of life experiences and the relationships with those around us. When is a friend, truly no longer a friend? How do our friendships change when our life circumstances do? And why do those around us not always act in a way which we would want, or expect them to? And why don’t we? She’ll explore these questions and more together, so we enter our friendships with hand baggage only and leave room for stronger more authentic friendships to grow.
For more information, visit www.suzetteshahmoon.com
Host Suzette Shahmoon and guest Dr Tal Ben Shahar, a Harvard University lecturer and happiness expert, explore how moving away from friends can impact relationships and what helps people connect and belong in new places.
14 Nov 2024
How fertility issues can affect friendships
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.
10 Oct 2024
How friendship is affected by long term hospitalisation: Hand Baggage Only Special with actor and model, David Gant
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.
17 May 2024
How friendship is affected by homelessness: Hand Baggage Only Special with Lord Bird
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.
4 May 2023
S1 Ep6 - Friendships and the student experience
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.
27 Apr 2023
S1 Ep5 - Friendships and coming out
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.
13 Apr 2023
S1 Ep3 - Friendships that no longer work
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.
6 Apr 2023
S1 Ep2 - Friendships post-breakup
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.
30 Mar 2023
S1 Ep1 - Friendships across cultural divides
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.
23 Mar 2023
Trailer: Hand Baggage Only with Suzette Shahmoon
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?
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