Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Welcome to unburdening, a mount north podcast.
[00:00:11] I want to use this first mini episode as a way to introduce myself and the podcast. My name is Claire and I am your host. I am a therapist at Mount north and a writer around town.
[00:00:24] The podcast is produced by Shannon Beaver, a therapist and clinic director at Mount North.
[00:00:33] Most of our episodes on Unburdening will be interview based, so we'll talk to guests from our community here in Johnstown and elsewhere. We'll invite others to share valuable insights and tools from their work in the hope that these will land with listeners who need to hear them the most.
[00:00:51] And if you're a listener, I want to thank you so much for supporting the show. Feel free to drop a comment. Tell me, tell us what you think or what you'd like to hear on the show.
[00:01:02] So for this first episode, I'm going to do a solo exploration of the causes and conditions that drove me to think this podcast was necessary to make in the first place.
[00:01:13] Podcasting as a medium has really taken off over the past 10 years or so, and there are broad social reasons for this.
[00:01:22] As we will see in this episode, people are feeling lonelier than ever.
[00:01:27] And when we're lonely, sometimes it can be really nice to have a soothing voice or a funny voice we can listen to during the long gray hours of the evening.
[00:01:39] In addition to loneliness, there is a lot of turmoil and uncertainty happening right now in the United States and abroad.
[00:01:48] And just like people in the 1940s gathering around their living room radio to listen in, to find accurate information, information or even just a thread of moral clarity in troubling times, listeners today are desperate for that kind of connection, for something real and evidence based, or even just meaningful.
[00:02:14] Sometimes we can be too desperate for moral certainty, and when we are in that state of mind, we can be vulnerable to misinformation or propaganda or lies.
[00:02:30] I know I've been misled before.
[00:02:33] One goal of this podcast is to provide information that can be understood.
[00:02:40] Information that makes us think, that even may make us look at topics differently, but that doesn't make us more paranoid or anxious.
[00:02:54] So while this podcast is certainly psychologically minded, as it is written and produced by therapists, it will also examine each topic through the lens of pop culture, spirituality, music, art, literature, everything that makes us feel alive and like it's unique, even worth it, to think about these things in the first place. I also wanted to take just a moment to explain the name of the podcast Unburdening. The reality is, is that human beings have been discussing these big topics since the dawn of time. Who do I love? How do I love?
[00:03:37] How do I exist in the world? What does it mean to be lonely? What does it mean to be happy? So none of these topics are going to end up solved.
[00:03:47] What they can be, however, is unburdened.
[00:03:51] In his therapeutic modality, internal family systems, or ifs, Richard Swartz will help clients learn to unburden different parts of their psyche that have been carrying around weights of shame or guilt or inhibition or anxiety.
[00:04:13] And a goal for this podcast is to unburden these topics, just like we unburden the more vulnerable parts of ourselves from undue baggage. So let's dive in.
[00:04:29] So here's what's on our agenda today.
[00:04:32] We're going to look at the behavioral psychology of mainstream social media wellness content and why it tends to exasperate the very sense of alienation it's supposed to soothe.
[00:04:48] We'll look at intergenerational histories of the American loneliness epidemic, some of the causes and potential solutions to loneliness, and at the end, I'll share my personal experience of what unburdening my loneliness has meant to me.
[00:05:22] In conversations with friends, one statement seems to come up again and again.
[00:05:27] Phone bad.
[00:05:29] For most of us, though, grazing social media has replaced reading magazines as a way of interacting with wellness information.
[00:05:37] And what we find in wellness spaces on social media suffers from a lack of quality control.
[00:05:46] While some creators use their platforms to tell nuanced stories that nourish our souls, what we find is that algorithms reward attention above all else, and nothing grips our attention like brief, dramatic, emotionally charged, or even extreme content.
[00:06:06] First, I want to point out how human it is to be captivated by this content, even unconsciously.
[00:06:14] As social animals, we are designed to immediately pick up on cues of strong emotion and if this emotion is tied to a core value, what we believe about our bodies, our health, our relationships, our community.
[00:06:28] This emotional messaging used on social media can be very persuasive for us.
[00:06:34] And look, the designers of these platforms Meta, Facebook, TikTok, whatever. They know this about us and they use it to their advantage.
[00:06:43] In his book how to Build Habit Forming Products, the tech designer Nir Eyl discusses how the designers of These apps used B.F. skinner, the father of behavioral psychology, as inspiration.
[00:06:57] Skinner was known for his experiments with rats, in particular for his experiments showing how you can create obsessive compulsive craving states in rats by using intermittent reinforcement. You promise them a little of what they're looking for, but you don't give it to them not really. In Skinner's experiments, the rats in their enclosures were given these little buttons they could press. And like, when they pressed the buttons, they'd be given a crumb of bread or some sort of food, right?
[00:07:31] Except to mix things up. Skinner made it so the rats wouldn't always get the food. It was possible for them to press the levers and get nothing.
[00:07:42] This understandably drives the rats crazy because they are now always searching, always hoping for that little crumb of food.
[00:07:50] In the book, Nir writes, let's admit it, we are all in the persuasion business.
[00:07:57] Innovators build products meant to persuade people to do what we want them to do.
[00:08:03] We call these people users. And even if we don't say it aloud, we secretly wish every one of them would become fiendishly hooked on whatever we're making.
[00:08:15] In a blog post following up to this book called Want to Hook youk Users Drive Them Crazy, Nir goes on to say that designers can imagine an ideal user, and he calls her Julie. In the blog post, the ideal user, Julie has a fear, the fear of being left out.
[00:08:34] The designer is encouraged to create an internal trigger for Julie's fear to keep her constantly checking, searching for a way to soothe that fear.
[00:08:44] Fear is a powerful internal trigger, writes Nirvana. Once you have succeeded in playing on feelings like this, a habit is formed, and so the user is automatically triggered to use the product during routine events, such as wanting to kill time when waiting in line.
[00:09:01] So my algorithm knows I'm a therapist and a couple's therapist, so it shows me a lot of wellness content in the area of personal and relational health.
[00:09:12] Listen to these catchphrases from random posts that have showed up on my for your page and see if you can follow along and identify internal fear trigger for each one. Okay, here's the first one here.
[00:09:25] Three things he'll do if he sees you as a forever girl.
[00:09:30] Wow.
[00:09:32] So I think it's obvious the trigger for this one is the fear of abandonment, right? Trying to soothe someone who wants to feel secure in their relationship, who wants to know if she's that forever Girl, if she is worthy of not being left.
[00:09:49] Okay, here's the next one. How to transform your body in three months.
[00:09:54] Here the internal trigger is fear about having a good enough body, right? A body worthy of respect, of love.
[00:10:06] And here is the last one. All the things you could have, would've, and should have done. You know, I don't even know what. What specific fear this one is triggering, right, because it's so vast, it's a little cosmic, right? It's this vast regret. Maybe all the things you could've, would've, should've done. Wow, that's a Twilight Zone episode. But anyways, you get the point and I encourage you when looking at mental health or wellness content online, keep an eye out for language that hooks an internal trigger of fear.
[00:10:42] What strikes me about these examples is how manipulative they are. They set up this relationship with the reader where the content creator presents an almost esoteric knowledge about us, though they know nothing about us.
[00:10:59] Their language is magnetic but vague. So anyone absorbing the content can insert their own life stories, especially stories of desperation or fear. Right? Because research shows that there is an association between depression and increased social media use.
[00:11:17] There is a long history of this kind of emotional salesmanship, and its roots in America at least, can be traced to the days of snake oils for pain and even Christian Tet revival miracle cures. So in these settings, preachers would call out to those in attendance and claim to know a deep, deep understanding of their private guilt, fear or sin.
[00:11:45] And then they would present themselves as having the solution to that private guilt, fear or sin. And this had a self fulfilling prophecy because the people in the audience already felt like something was wrong with them. That's why they were there. And this labeling by the preacher of their sin reinforced that feeling of wrongness.
[00:12:07] Someone in the audience could go, hmm, maybe I should pay for this guy's miracle faith healing. I've been struggling for so long and I've been so desperate. I just want someone to see my pain, to take it away.
[00:12:21] In those days they use the word sin. But in today's modern language we might use the word symptom.
[00:12:27] Or we might label our relationships with such terms as avoidant, anxious, disorganized, and don't get me wrong, such words can be a starting point, but they are one.in a vast painting of relational history.
[00:12:42] Because it is so reductive, a lot of wellness content can feel like a tent revival for mental health.
[00:12:48] It's aggressive, all or nothing, and dependent on a feeling of wrongness in the viewer.
[00:12:54] I say all this in no way to shame any creators posting these wellness videos. It is likely they have internalized this language as part of a marketing strategy because sadly, we live in a system where our income is often tied to our reach on social media and quippy to help revival content reaches.
[00:13:13] And if you have benefited from this kind of content as a viewer, I certainly don't mean to shame any path you have taken to understand yourself.
[00:13:21] What I'm saying is that overall we are inundated with surface level information that uses optimization, not health, as a motivation for personal change. When I see an Instagram post telling me to optimize my routine so I can find a partner, make more money, or look more like a Bratz doll in the mirror, I don' feel inspired. I often feel numb, or if I'm really honest, a little bit bad about myself. Like wow, they make it seem so simple. Something must really be wrong with me if this doesn't work for me.
[00:13:53] Absorbing optimization content can feel like walking through an Airbnb of well being. A picturesque place where you can soothe your anxiety, but only for a little while. And also, you better not get the towels dirty, spill anything on that carpet because you're going to have to pay for that. I want and deserve. And if you're listening to this, you deserve this too.
[00:14:14] A place I can come back to not just when I have money to spend like an Airbnb, but especially when I don't have money to spend where I can dirty the towels, laugh ugly, cry and experience myself and others.
[00:14:28] Truly, not just the pretty high achieving masks, but as whole people made up of many parts, even some parts that are likely still stigmatized by society are Society of Achievement and Optimization Online, we are inundated with wellness content of people filming their morning routines in empty apartments, videos of them journaling, working out, or dropping exactly eight almonds into their instant oats. And most of these people aren't influencers, they are average people like you or me.
[00:15:04] That these videos are posted online shows a desire to be perceived in particular, perceived as aspirationally well.
[00:15:12] And under that desire to be seen as well, I believe, is a desire to be perceived as someone worth connecting with. Someone who always gets up on time, who eats the right foods, wears the right clothes, has the right group of friends.
[00:15:27] Someone who, more than being a true friend, enhances, optimizes the social capital of those they are seen with. Someone who can't be rejected, abandoned or hurt in the many devastating and normal ways that define our human experience and relationships with others.
[00:15:47] This is why this content feels so surface level. It's incomplete because real healing and real healing in relationships is not aspirational.
[00:15:58] A real home isn't always pretty. It gets messy. It's not about the perfect workout outfit, not about the eight almonds and the instant oats, but why we feel the need to measure those eight almonds out so precisely, film them as if they are tiny little gods.
[00:16:18] The mystic psychoanalyst Carl Jung said, I'd rather be whole than good.
[00:16:24] And I love this quote because I think it speaks to the truth of what healing really is.
[00:16:30] Healing does not always feel so good. In fact, it often comes with loss.
[00:16:38] Loss of relationships, of status, of old versions of the self, especially the versions of the self that depended on external validations, relationship status, beauty, money, follower counts to feel worthy. And as such, the initial loss that often marks the first stages of healing can feel devastating and lonely.
[00:17:03] Because the goal of this podcast is to help listeners and myself feel less alone with this process, I want to go deeper into this topic of loneliness.
[00:17:13] We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone, wrote Orson Welles.
[00:17:20] This quote has been parroted so many times that most people forget the second part.
[00:17:25] Only through our love and friendship can recreate the illusion for the moment that we're not alone.
[00:17:33] This quote comes from Orson Welles last live action performance in the movie Someone to Love.
[00:17:40] Over the course of this 80s movie, the characters share their philosophies on loneliness, each one having a different answer to the core question of why are you alone?
[00:17:50] And these answers reveal more about the person speaking than they do about society at large. For example, one man who is troubled with women projects the problem of his loneliness onto women, implying that since given more rights in society outside of the home, women must feel alone.
[00:18:09] But he is the one feeling alone. He is the one feeling lost in this new environment.
[00:18:16] Others blame the loneliness on the loss of an illusion, the loss of the American dream of a family unit.
[00:18:24] Some just say they can't get it right, they're afraid of commitment.
[00:18:28] What is most tragic about this movie for me is that these characters will talk to each other and you'll see them have a spark of connection, but then they can't help but sabotage that spark with each other. They pull away, raise their defenses when it gets too real, or they demand from the other a closeness that has not yet been built. Sabotage the connection by engulfing it, the characters create the very distance and loneliness they're complaining about.
[00:18:59] It's a self fulfilling prophecy.
[00:19:03] As a viewer, this movie is maddening to watch because it can feel like these people are just throwing away chances at connection, but it also raises a mirror to the viewer, makes us think long and hard about where we are doing this in our own lives.
[00:19:20] If you are looking to be kindly but firmly called out by Orson Welles, I can't recommend someone to love enough in the movie. Danny, the main character, makes the argument that loneliness has an evolutionary purpose because without it, we may never seek out people to love.
[00:19:38] We might take the people we love for granted.
[00:19:42] In a way, loneliness is a built in check to remind us of how much we need authentic connection to receive it, to give it.
[00:19:50] Our species might not survive without it.
[00:19:54] I love this view of loneliness as an emotion whose purpose is to pull us towards connection.
[00:20:01] We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone.
[00:20:05] This quote suggests that loneliness is a human condition and that even in close relationships we can never fully know another person and can never fully be known.
[00:20:17] We can't crawl inside someone's skin, live there.
[00:20:20] All we can do is be open to what each person has to offer us as they stay with us for as long as they can.
[00:20:26] All we can do is offer ourselves too, for as long as we can.
[00:20:32] And that listener, I would argue, is a good thing. We need our own ideas, dreams and awareness of the fragility and impermanence of relationships so we don't take them for granted.
[00:20:46] Part of living with a human condition of loneliness is accepting it as a natural part of our reality.
[00:20:53] Loneliness is not a personal flaw. That said, many of us intensify our feelings of loneliness with shame.
[00:21:01] We misread the loneliness as a sign that something is wrong with us, and a lot of optimization content on social media reinforces that feeling of wrongness.
[00:21:14] For example, we don't find a partner by the age we think we should, and we spiral. Our friends forget to invite us out and we wonder if they think we're boring, that we talk too much or too little, or we go to that party we've been looking forward to all month and are disappointed and devastated to realize that we feel completely alone in a room full of people that we can chit chat politely, but that our relationships with others never seem to progress to the kind of mutual vulnerability that builds emotional intimacy.
[00:21:46] Sometimes we feel this way in relationships we've been in for years, so we beat ourselves up for wanting more, for craving the very companionship that makes life worth living.
[00:21:58] In his book the Myth of normal medical, Dr. Gabor Mate stresses a need for a balance of authenticity and attachment in relationships.
[00:22:07] Authenticity is our need to be seen and accepted for who we are.
[00:22:12] Attachment is our need to feel securely connected to others.
[00:22:16] When these two scales get out of balance, our feelings of loneliness increase.
[00:22:21] For example, when we sacrifice authenticity to preserve an attachment, such as when we withhold our struggles from our loved ones out of fear that they will reject or abandon us if they knew the real us, we feel lonely in our relationships, but we can also go too far on the other end. Because when we sacrifice attachment for authenticity, such as when we communicate with no regard for how our words might impact others, or refuse to make adjustments or compromises in our relationships, we will push others away, bring loneliness upon ourselves.
[00:22:58] And sometimes when we realize we've done this, when we've overly sacrificed authenticity for surface level attachment, or defensively sabotaged attachment attachment to preserve a feeling of authenticity, we can feel deep shame.
[00:23:15] This shame creates a compound loneliness. Not only are we feeling the separation from others now, but we are also feeling separated from our self worth.
[00:23:25] The American songwriter Townes Van Sant says aloneness is a state of being, whereas loneliness is a state of feeling.
[00:23:34] It's like being broke and being poor.
[00:23:37] What I love about this quote is how it crystallizes the distinction.
[00:23:42] Being poor is an objective measure. It's not having enough money, just like not having enough authentic attachment in our life is a measure of aloneness.
[00:23:53] But being broke, feeling broken or lonely, that's a subjective experience, something that happens inside of us.
[00:24:03] Now I don't know if you've listened to Townes Van Sant's music, but I consider him the king of American loneliness.
[00:24:11] His songs are sparse, lyrical stories that hold a mirror to his own loneliness as a man who struggled with what in those days was called manic depression, but now would probably be labeled as bipolar disorder. Though I think these labels really do not do justice to the depth of this man's sensitivity and his humanity.
[00:24:32] I wish I could play some of his music for you now, but I'm afraid of accidentally committing some copyright infringement. So I'll just say engaging in the music of someone like Townes Van Sant is like the opposite of engaging in optimization content on social media.
[00:24:48] It won't offer up an easy solution to your loneliness, won't try to sell you anything, tell you that you have to be any sort of way to be accepted. But it might help you feel seen.
[00:25:00] It might help you feel less alone in your loneliness.
[00:25:05] And this is why music, art, theater, why storytelling is important for our well being.
[00:25:11] It can cut through the jargon of science, meet us not at the level of the mind, but on the level of the soul.
[00:25:20] Now this kind of loneliness of Towns Van Santa in America is profoundly common. It's so common you could almost call it a marker of national identity, a cause or effect of the rugged individualism that drives so much of our politics, discourse and social life.
[00:25:42] In fact, chronic shame based loneliness is so widespread and often so damaging that it was defined as an epidemic by the US Surgeon General in 2023.
[00:25:54] According to the American Medical association, chronic loneliness and isolation can increase risks for life threatening conditions like heart disease and stroke.
[00:26:04] Now, if you have any friends who are nurses or if you work in healthcare yourself, you might be familiar with broken heart syndrome. This is when one spouse in an older couple passes away and the loneliness felt by the surviving spouse is so devastating, they develop heart problems or even pass away themselves within the year.
[00:26:24] We don't just suffer on an emotional and spiritual level, but on a physical level.
[00:26:30] Some physical markers of loneliness in the body can include a racing heartbeat, trouble sleeping, loss of appetite, or even cognitive impairment.
[00:26:40] And I know I've experienced this. You know, those are those situations when maybe you're grieving and you just don't know what day it is.
[00:26:48] You are struggling with memory or recall.
[00:26:51] It's hard to focus, right?
[00:26:53] Just the experience of sudden or unexpected loneliness can trigger that kind of stress response.
[00:26:59] So around the same time the Surgeon General made this announcement defining loneliness as an epidemic. In 2023, the Graduate School at the University of Harvard conducted a massive research study exploring the causes and conditions of loneliness.
[00:27:14] So we're going to go through this study piece by piece, talk about the findings and what they mean. But before we do that, I want to make clear that survey studies do not have the highest measure of reliability. This is because of flaws in this method of gathering information. People don't return surveys or will misrepresent themselves or report how they want others to perceive them, not how they really feel. This is called social desirability bias. And this reminds me of what we were discussing earlier about social media, where we represent ourselves not as we are, but how we want to be perceived.
[00:27:50] Also, survey studies can be vulnerable to sampling bias because a large amount of surveys go unanswered. I know I always ignore surveys when they hit my inbox and only answer them if pushed.
[00:28:02] So this bias makes a lot of sense. The only people represented in the data are the kind of people who actually answer surveys. So if you are that kind of person, thank you for your service and for single handedly keeping the scientific community afloat in these trying times of massive budget cuts and restrictions on social research.
[00:28:23] So I bring up the methodology of the study because I want to encourage the habit of thinking critically about all information we encounter, whether it's from the University of Harvard, your aunt on Facebook, a video on TikTok, or information you encounter on this or any other podcast. I encourage you to always do your own research. Follow the links in the source notes and make up your own minds.
[00:28:46] Despite the limitations of the loneliness study, I found the findings worth considering. So this is what they found. And listen, guys, this is important.
[00:28:55] 21% of adults in the survey reported that they had serious feelings of loneliness. That's almost 1/4 of Americans. So 1 in 4 of every person you meet is struggling with this intense loneliness.
[00:29:09] Maybe if you're listening to this right now, you're that person. That one in four. Maybe you have been that person. I know I have.
[00:29:18] So who exactly are the people suffering from this? Right.
[00:29:23] People between 30 and 44 years of age were the loneliest group.
[00:29:28] So people in this age range said they were frequently or always lonely. And this is my generation, the Millennial and Gen X generations.
[00:29:39] I have theories as to why our generations are struggling. So I want to linger here for a few minutes because if you are the Millennial or Gen X generation, maybe will relate to some of what I'm saying here. And even if you're not, I think you might find it interesting. And if you have your own theories as to why our generations are so lonely, please share them in the comments. Let me know your thoughts.
[00:30:02] I'm going to be talking about broad historical and cultural trends here, trends that might not have applied to every household or every family.
[00:30:11] So if you or your family had a different experience, I encourage you. Please share in the comments.
[00:30:19] To really get the full picture, I need to go back in time a little bit.
[00:30:23] Many of us in Millennial and Gen X generations were raised by the Baby Boomer generation, people born between the late 1940s and the early 1960s.
[00:30:34] One of my favorite examples of a Baby Boomer in popular media is Sally, Dawn's daughter on the show Mad Men.
[00:30:42] I think Sally's story illustrates a lot of the baggage our parents generation had to deal with, as well as the kind of world they were born into.
[00:30:52] I know watching Sally's story on TV helped me have compassion for my own parents understand their own challenges with loneliness.
[00:31:01] Born in the 1950s, Sally grows up frustrated by the emotional limitations of her parents.
[00:31:08] Both dawn, her dad, and Betty, her mom, come from the Silent generation, a generation of Americans that had lived through the Great Depression and World War II. Many in this silent generation struggled with authentic and open emotional expression because such expressions of emotion were deeply pathologized and stigmatized.
[00:31:30] Remember, this is the era of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest of lobotomies, of silencing and shaming those with mental health conditions.
[00:31:40] To give a stark example of this, I want to look at the diagnosis of combat related ptsd, which today we accept as a real natural consequence of war.
[00:31:51] But this diagnosis was only taken seriously and only destigmatized due to the brave and relentless grassroots advocacy of Vietnam veterans who advocated for themselves in the 60s and 70s.
[00:32:05] In the silent generation, the generation of Sally's parents and of my grandparents, it was called shell shock and it was seen as a weakness, a wrongness.
[00:32:15] So many World War II veterans, including Sally's father Don, just felt like something was wrong with them. And this stigma existed for all mental health conditions, not just ptsd.
[00:32:27] And while this stigma still exists today, I think those in my generation can struggle to really get how powerful that stigma was in our parents generation, how so many families had a member. They just didn't talk about how this fear of shunning created an implicit gag on authentic expression. Not in all families, but in many.
[00:32:51] One of the most famous families of this era, the Kennedys, is a perfect example of this. Rosemary, John F. Kennedy's sister, who struggled with intellectual disabilities, was strictly kept out of the public eye.
[00:33:05] They essentially pretended she didn't exist.
[00:33:09] So in the show Mad Men, you see dawn and Betty, Sally's silent generation parents, cope with this repressed loneliness in destructive ways. Don with his drinking, Betty with her obsession on body image.
[00:33:25] And these numbing coping mechanisms alienate their daughter Sally, who is desperate for authentic connection with her parents.
[00:33:33] She even says at one point, my father never did anything for me, never gave me anything. Now hearing Sally say this creates some resistance in the viewer because we know Sally is a rich kid. She lives in a massive house. She wears cute, expensive clothes and will eventually go to an elite college. And all of this is in part paid for by dawn, her father.
[00:33:56] How can she say he never did anything for her?
[00:34:00] Sally has more than most of us can ever dream of. A wealthy family to support her, the financial freedom to fail.
[00:34:06] But Sally is deeply wounded by the emotional neglect of her parents.
[00:34:12] And this, listeners, illustrates how painful loneliness can feel. It is so deeply distressing that a child can live comfortably in a mid century American palace and still feel abandoned.
[00:34:26] Let that sink in.
[00:34:28] Money might give material security, but it is no substitute for the loving presence and acceptance of a parent.
[00:34:35] As the Beatles, one of the most popular bands of the baby boomer generation, sang Money can't buy me Love.
[00:34:42] That this song was so popular with my parents generation speaks to their desire to connect on a deep level and explains why so many of them fled their affluent households to participate in the so called hippie movement.
[00:34:56] They weren't trying to rebel. They were seeking authentic connection.
[00:35:00] And if they couldn't find it at home, they would try to find it out in the world.
[00:35:04] At one point, Sally says to her father, dawn, you know what I'm going to write down for my dream? I'm going to get on a bus and get away from you and mom and hopefully become a different person than you two.
[00:35:17] And when you watch this scene, you can really hear the thwarted connection, the desperation in her voice.
[00:35:25] Sally doesn't want to leave, but feels she has to.
[00:35:30] Sally, like many baby boomers, was born into a time of unprecedented American prosperity. Though not for everyone. The usual racial, gender and class disparities still plagued society. But overall, the economy was better in terms of the quality and the security of employment.
[00:35:49] The social support policies passed in the New Deal era created a social safety net. Efforts by unions had created some degree of protection in the workplace. Right. And these things literally had never existed in American society until this point.
[00:36:05] In addition to this, the post war economic boom provided by GI bills contributed to this national feeling of security in this world. People who wanted jobs found jobs, and these jobs paid them enough to support themselves.
[00:36:20] Sounds nice, huh?
[00:36:23] So, okay, what happens next? These baby boomers grow up in relative prosperity and have children, Gen X and millennials, who are raised with this basic assumption that things will be okay, at least when it comes to money.
[00:36:36] We may be lonely, but we will be secure in a way we were set up to expect more than any American generation before us. Before the New Deal and especially during the Dust bowl, many people in America lived in third World poverty. Think of the shanty farms and John Steinbeck's the Grapes of Wrath or the crowded apartments in Upton Sinclair's the Jungle. And make no mistake, there are still parts of America like this, and they are getting more common.
[00:37:04] But for a brief period in the 90s, in those 10 years or so before 9, 11, and in particular in the Clinton era, there was this unusual feeling of optimism.
[00:37:16] So what happens when that, that fundamental assumption of security falls through?
[00:37:22] When we are not only lonely, but insecure?
[00:37:26] When the children of baby boomers, millennials and Gen X fail to find meaningful, insecure work, we can feel like we failed this basic life task that just happened for our parents.
[00:37:37] We grew up with images on TV of these 90s sitcom houses, two car driveways, images few of us will ever have the income to actualize.
[00:37:47] And so not only are we carrying the intergenerational loneliness passed down by our parents and our parents parents, but we also carry the feeling of having failed.
[00:37:58] There's an old saying in family therapy that it takes three generations to heal. Because only by seeing clearly the struggles and the strengths of each generation in our family can we begin to understand the influences that shape our present moment.
[00:38:13] We are one of few American generations to overall have less economic security than the previous generation. This pervasive sense of failure can block us from forming meaningful connection.
[00:38:25] That and just being too busy between working three jobs. But I'm getting ahead of myself here. Okay, so what are people saying are the leading causes of loneliness in America? Technology, number one. 73% of those surveyed selected technology as contributing to loneliness in the country. And that makes sense, right? Remember what we were talking about earlier? Phone bad. Right? But phone bad, not just because of the technology itself, but because of the way it triggers that internal fear response. Right?
[00:38:59] Other causes of loneliness, people are overworked or too busy.
[00:39:04] Mental health, challenges that harm relationships with others, and no religious or spiritual life. Too much focus on one's own feelings and the changing nature of work with much more remote and hybrid schedules. Right. So people have different ideas of what is driving their loneliness. But these things, technology, insufficient time, feeling overworked, these are the main drivers. Okay?
[00:39:31] And over the course of this podcast, we will explore all of these topics in future episodes. Interview people who have been in the trenches of these problems so they can share their wisdom and insight with you guys. Okay? So lastly, the Harvard study asked Americans what their proposed solutions to loneliness might be.
[00:39:50] And so here's what people said. They said, reaching out to family or friends, learning to love the self, learning to be more forgiving of others. Right?
[00:40:00] And finding ways to help others.
[00:40:03] I mean, this all sounds like good stuff, like, be kind to yourself, be kind to others, help other people.
[00:40:13] Every major spiritual tradition in the world teaches some version of this.
[00:40:19] At this point, I want to open up about my own journey with loneliness.
[00:40:25] My family has Celtic heritage, and my dad is a Welsh speaker.
[00:40:30] There is an untranslatable word in the Welsh language that I think describes perfectly the feeling that these lonely people in the survey are trying to find.
[00:40:42] It's the feeling of being truly seen and embraced by loved ones, of coming home to the people you feel safe with.
[00:40:51] This word is kutch.
[00:40:53] Kutch is hard to explain in English, but it basically means a warm hug that generates feelings of safety and security, a feeling of home.
[00:41:04] One Welsh speaker on Reddit described the word as the hug you have with your mum when you break up with your boyfriend or the cuddle with your grandma. As a scared kid who just had a nightmare. It's the little reading nook in the corner of your room where it feels like nothing could touch you. It's the part of the pub you occupy with your friends or family where the rest of the pub no longer matters.
[00:41:30] I love this description.
[00:41:33] And the first time I felt this feeling of Kutsch was paradoxically a period of profound social isolation for me.
[00:41:43] I was in a cycle I'm sure many listeners can relate to. I had called out the damaging dynamics in my family that had contributed to my eating disorder and adolescence, which, as you can imagine, did not endear me to my family. In addition to that, I was stuck in a pattern of choosing romantic relationships that replicated the very pattern. I yearned to break free from situations that lacked the stability and self awareness that make authentic emotional connection possible.
[00:42:15] And just as often as not, I was the cause of that instability in my relationships.
[00:42:20] And if you're listening to this and relate to looking back and cringing in the past, I just want to send you compassion. Because acknowledging the places where we fucked up is valuable wisdom and the first step to greater awareness and maturity.
[00:42:36] So I needed to break away. I needed space to become my own person. I got a scholarship to live and study in Wales, see what it was like to make friends and connections on my own terms, to be seen for who I was, not who I felt I had to be in order to be accepted by my family, my community of origin, which was a small Christian town in rural Pennsylvania.
[00:43:01] This was not the empowering experience I had hoped it would be.
[00:43:05] My first full month living away from home, I had panic attacks almost every night.
[00:43:11] Like many Americans who tried to return to the countries their immigrant ancestors came from, I felt like an outsider in, and this compounded my loneliness. An outsider in America, an outsider in Wales.
[00:43:24] Where was I supposed to find home?
[00:43:27] And did it even exist?
[00:43:30] I don't think it did. Or does not as an external place anyway.
[00:43:36] In her novel Wiseblood, the writer Flannery o' Connor says, where you come from is gone.
[00:43:43] Where you thought you were going to never was there. And where you are is no good unless you can get away from it.
[00:43:51] Where is there a place for you to be?
[00:43:54] Wow, I'm shook. But listen, there's more. Flannery goes on to write, nothing outside you can give you any place in yourself right now is all the place you've got.
[00:44:10] So at one point, I just realized I had to create the acceptance in myself, the safety in myself, the home in myself. I Could not find out in the world.
[00:44:22] And to this day, I continue to try. Because this journey never ends for me. Working through this loneliness required effort in two areas. In my relationships with others and in my relationship with myself.
[00:44:36] Living in another country, I built up my relationships with others slowly. I'd forced myself to go to open mics, community radio meetings, writers groups. I put myself in the places where I might make connections.
[00:44:50] Now, this was before the days of social media, so this actually took some work. I had to read flyers, bulletin boards, and then just show up to places.
[00:44:59] But once I was there, I was always happy to have made the effort, even if I didn't meet anyone I clicked with. It was nice to just get out of my apartment.
[00:45:08] But slowly I did start building connections with others. Then I deepened those connections by opening up little by little and actively listening to others open up about their lives too.
[00:45:22] I made this podcast itself as an expression of that ongoing process.
[00:45:27] Now, confronting loneliness in the relationship to myself was and continues to be more difficult.
[00:45:35] As a girl who is socialized to be dependent, deferent, to not cause problems, AKA share feelings, have boundaries, or speak the truth, One character trait I've had to work really hard on is assertiveness.
[00:45:49] Assertiveness is absolutely necessary to having a strong feeling of home in the self.
[00:45:56] Think about it. A home needs both soft places to rest and strong beams holding up the structure. A home with no structure is dangerous. A home with no softness is a void.
[00:46:09] So I built this assertiveness and continued to build it by proving to myself I'm capable.
[00:46:15] I hiked long distances in nature. I strength trained and protected my time for my creative work.
[00:46:23] So how did I do this? I started really, really small.
[00:46:27] However small you're imagining. Smaller than that. This looked like making just one or two shifts in a routine. A week, not a day, a week.
[00:46:36] Then once I got comfortable, I challenged myself a little more.
[00:46:41] And over time, I built up this evidence that I was strong enough to be assertive. Strong enough to make commitments to myself and keep them.
[00:46:50] Part of this work involved noticing and releasing that reflexive feeling of shame that popped up every time I felt lonely. That popped up every time I spoke up for myself. Every time I said, sorry, I can't do that.
[00:47:05] And I won't lie, I still hear that voice of shame sometimes. This is deep stuff, right?
[00:47:11] But it does get easier with practice.
[00:47:15] Now, if you are someone who is socialized within the more so called traditional masculine values, maybe your task will be different. Maybe it will involve softening the structure you were giving adding a couch, a place where you can rest and get to know, without judgment, your own emotions.
[00:47:34] And maybe the shame you are learning to let go of is that reflexive, critical voice that pops up when you imagine doing this. That voice that tells you that your worth comes from doing and providing.
[00:47:46] That opening up and asking for help will invite rejection and social punishment.
[00:47:52] And honestly, that voice isn't completely off base. Whether it's a woman being assertive or a man being emotionally vulnerable, the truth is that we are often socially punished for daring to become a whole person.
[00:48:07] That's why so much Wellness optimization content falls flat. It does not capture the risk of becoming whole, of fully coming home to the self.
[00:48:17] So I'm going to bring it back to Richard Swartz, the guy who invented internal family systems, right? And he says that we can tell we are in a moment of being fully whole at home with the self when we feel what he calls the eight Cs calmness, curiosity, compassion, confidence, courage, creativity, and connectedness.
[00:48:43] These eight Cs will be the guiding principles of this podcast series, the threads we will follow through the dark. So this brings me to the final segment of the episode where I share with you my first coming home moment. This is where I started to feel some of the eight Cs the Welsh word of kutch, in my own body.
[00:49:02] I was hiking in nature on a rocky beach called the Worm's Head on the coast of Wales.
[00:49:08] And as I was doing this, I could hear the loneliness in the wind.
[00:49:13] Anyone who has grown up in a place like this knows how the wind can carry sounds for miles and miles. You'll hear echoes of voices, you'll hear sheep, you'll hear dogs, you'll hear a car.
[00:49:27] And you know, this experience is so profound that there's actually a whole Welsh fairy tale about the sound of the wind and about how it can drive people crazy because it's just promising a connection that's not there. You hear people, but they're not with you.
[00:49:44] So I was hiking through this crazy inducing landscape and just feeling that loneliness.
[00:49:52] And I don't know why, I don't know how, but I had an experience that some people describe when they take psychedelics, which is an experience of complete connection with my surroundings. Like, no matter what happened, I was truly going to be okay.
[00:50:09] I felt a sense of connection to the grass, the sun, the water.
[00:50:15] And in certain Buddhist spiritual traditions, they say separation is an illusion. And in that moment, I felt that.
[00:50:24] I felt that the illusion was melting away and that I was deeply and surely connected to what was around me.
[00:50:33] And it was there, on a random Tuesday, that all the instances of slow, small care I had been giving myself and others finally, finally, finally loosened up that empty, lonely feeling made room for something else.
[00:50:53] So while I was on that hike, I actually had a wild fox follow me for a little while.
[00:50:58] And hanging out with this animal felt so reassuring because I hadn't expected this kind of companionship. It just arrived like a gift.
[00:51:08] It wasn't what I was looking for. Like everyone else, I was looking for a partner, a career, a way to prove my worth.
[00:51:15] But this little fluffy animal, it's what I found instead.
[00:51:20] And just for a little while, couldn't that be enough?
[00:51:25] This fox followed me for miles. You know, I think maybe he thought I had food or something. But all I know is that he helped me feel less alone.
[00:51:37] And this experience of connection was so meaningful for me that I actually went on to get a giant fox tattooed on my arm as a reminder that it's possible to have a different kind of experience.
[00:51:48] And to this day, I still get lonely. But that's not all I get.
[00:51:54] I want to leave you with that core question asked in the Orson Welles movie Someone to Love.
[00:52:01] Why are you alone?
[00:52:03] And when you answer this, I invite you to notice if any strong feelings, any defensive replies pop up in your head.
[00:52:12] And you don't need to let go of those thoughts. Those feelings, as we've discussed, we know they exist for a good reason, but just make room for the possibility, the dream of other feelings, too.
[00:52:28] All right, that concludes our first episode. I am so excited for you guys to hear the guests we have planned for you. In the meantime, feel free to like, share, subscribe and share your own thoughts and insights in the comments.
[00:52:41] I'll see you next time.
[00:53:06] Sa.
[00:53:32] Sample.
