Just As Well, The Women's Health Podcast - How to Feel Less Lonely in Lockdown and Beyond

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Starting point is 00:00:16 The substance. This balance is not working. And the naked gun. That was awesome. Now that's a mountain of entertainment. Hi everyone, you are listening to Going for Goal, the weekly women's health podcast. My name's Rochene Deviso Kaine. I'm senior editor on women's health and this is your weekly chance to plug in and be inspired to work on your health and wellness.

Starting point is 00:00:45 This week, I want to start by asking you something. Are you feeling lonely at the moment? That was just one of the questions we set out to answer when we surveyed over 2,000 women's health readers, followers and listeners this autumn. The findings were stark. 79% of you told us you feel lonelier now than you did before the pandemic, a number that rises to 87% among single people. In a way, it's not all that surprising, given that 2020 has disrupted so much about the way we work, socialised, parent, love, even just be.

Starting point is 00:01:17 But for a community formed around a shared passion for health, this is troubling news. Loneliness is about as destructive a force for human flourishing as you can get. And look, we know that you know this particular emotion is doing you no good, that you will have read about loneliness being a serious risk factor for both poor mental and physical health. So rather than spend our weekly slot chatting to you about all the ways loneliness can harm you, I want to talk you through something we hope can help you manage your feelings of loneliness, cultivate connection and reboot

Starting point is 00:01:49 your social health, whatever your current age, relationship status or living set up. It's our new campaign called The Loneliness Remedy. And it hinges on a simple concept that just as you plan your at-home workouts and take time out for self-care, working on your social nutrition, so doing things like cultivating meaningful connections and caring for others to lessen the burden of loneliness, is essential for your health. Our main advice, that just as you strive to eat at least five fruit and vegetables a day, per NHS advice, you should aim to get five socially nutritious interactions every day too. So how can you tell if you are lonely? What types of contact are going to help you feel better? And how, practically, can you go about getting your other five a day alongside all the very many things on your to-do list? In today's episode, I call up two experts who bring so much wisdom, actionable tips and kindness to this topic. They are Jeffrey Hall, Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Kansas,

Starting point is 00:02:52 whose research focuses on how people can nurture their social biome, which, like your gut microbiome, is a living, ever-evolving thing that responds to what you feed it and has seismic implications for how you feel and function. And clinical psychologist Dr Sophie Mort, who made the move from working in the NHS to running remote online therapy appointments with clients worldwide, and is in touch with many thousands of people via her Instagram, where she aims to bring psychological insight and discussion outside of the therapy.

Starting point is 00:03:22 Now, I am so excited to be talking to you both today about how people can avoid loneliness and cultivate connection and take care of their social health, which is the mission at the heart of women's health's latest campaign called the loneliness remedy, which launches this week. So a bit of background, we've surveyed over 2,000 women to find out after quite an isolating year how they perceive loneliness and just how lonely people are feeling right now. So there were lots of interesting insights, but the one I'd like to share first with both of you is that 79% of people report feeling lonelier now than before the pandemic. And I've got you two on because I know that you will both have some really useful insights about how people can recognize if they're lonely and take action to make themselves more connected and happier and healthier, which I think we all need a bit of as we come to the end of this year. Dr. Safe, let's start with you. You're a clinical psychologist. How do you work with loneliness and encounter it within your professional life?

Starting point is 00:04:32 Well, I mean, it's always something that comes up in therapy, but I have to say since COVID, it's something that's coming up in almost every conversation I'm having inside and outside of the therapy room. And I think what's really tricky about loneliness is it's not really something you can define in one word. It feels so different for so many different people. So some people describe it as a feeling of disconnection or a feeling of emptiness or sadness or anxiety, sometimes even resentment and anger. It's such a complex emotion that you feel really strongly in your body. And actually when it's intense, it can lead you to feel quite unreal. So this year, lots and lots of people have been coming to therapy or just in chats with friends saying that they feel any number of those experiences. and that they don't really know how to shift that feeling

Starting point is 00:05:21 when it's not like before where you could just walk out of your front door and straight into a cafe and have a chat, even if it's with a stranger, but face to face is coming up everywhere. What is loneliness and what is it not? Because there's quite a lot people seem to have quite differing opinions. Such a great question.

Starting point is 00:05:38 And I think the two things that I want to point out, one is loneliness is not being alone. Okay. So the difference between loneliness and solitude in my mind at least. is choice, so whether you choose to be around people and connected to people, or whether you find yourself disconnected from people. How long you think it'll last, whether you have any control over connection coming back into your life. And how connected you feel to others?

Starting point is 00:06:05 So, for example, I don't know if you've had this way, you realise you've got a night alone in your house, your housemates are out or your family if you live with family. And because they're normally there, it's a sense of relief. Like, tonight I get to read that book finally. or I get to dance naked around my house with the music that's really socially unacceptable playing really loudly. Oh, just me? Like it feels like a treat, right? You're alone, but you know that you could pick up your phone and call someone. You know you're connected to a web of relationships,

Starting point is 00:06:33 even if there's no one around at that moment. You know that you can choose to connect with someone. Whereas you could also be sitting in a house surrounded by people and feel deeply lonely. because even though there's numbers of people to talk to, you don't have that sense of, I've got something on my heart, I can share it with this person next to me. I've got this excitement to trying a new hobby, and they're going to be excited about sharing it with me.

Starting point is 00:06:57 So the first thing is, loneliness isn't being alone, it's feeling disconnected from the nourishing support of others. And the other thing is, which I don't know if many people recognises, loneliness is a deeply threatening experience. So in terms of our ancestors, you know, we survived by being in groups.

Starting point is 00:07:18 You know, like being surrounded by people didn't just mean you got to have sex, meaning procreate. It also meant that you got to share resources. It meant if a predator came, there were people on your side to fight alongside you. So if our ancestors found themselves alone, it could spell certain death. So we've evolved to survive by being in groups

Starting point is 00:07:43 When we feel disconnected, our body sends us into a threat response, which we might call anxiety or stress. And that's meant to be a signal to get back to the group. But what does that mean? It means many of us are in our homes or sitting surrounded by people we feel disconnected to, feeling stressed. Then, because as well, if our ancestors had slept alone, they wouldn't have been safe sleeping deeply. They slept kind of with one eye open. You know, they kept waking up, checking on their environments. which means that not only when we're lonely do we feel stressed,

Starting point is 00:08:14 we often can't sleep when it becomes chronic. It would have kept our ancestors alive, but we're just in our safeish houses, not sleeping, not knowing what's going on. Under a weighted blanket, whale songs in the background. You've not looked at your screen since bloody 9pm, going, come on. Why can't I sleep?

Starting point is 00:08:32 So the two things is loneliness isn't being alone and it is a disconnection that leaves us feeling quite threatened and it can affect our daytime and our sleep time. So when you talk about us being disconnected from our social lives and our social identity and basically everything that makes us human, Professor Hall, that's what you look at, right, within your work? Definitely. The practical element of our campaign, where we're encouraging people to get their other five a day, meaning five socially nutritious interactions, was inspired by your extensive research into human connection and social nutrition.

Starting point is 00:09:07 Can you tell me about your work in this area and how you arrived at? these insights. I think it's one of those things that I've always been passionate about thinking about what it is that connects us to one another. So I started studying communication studies with an understanding that I wanted to see how do we create connection, how do we canate do that through flirting, how do we do that through humor, how do we do that through friendship. And so kind of my path has weaved through these questions and always coming back to this issue of feeling connected to each other. So really kind of I set upon this mission about issues related to the social bio when I was kind of thinking about the idea of each conversation that we has has kind of a

Starting point is 00:09:45 nutritional content and has something that's good for us and or potentially things that are not good for us, things that make us feel disconnected or make us feel isolated from one another. So the idea being is that I really came on this because I wanted to understand how an entire system of relationships that we have amongst us. So not just the people at our homes, not just our significant others, but all of the people who we interact with in our days, all of the modalities that connect with them, so through text or through the phone or through face-to-face. But also, what do we talk about? You know, what are we talking about when we talk to each other? And if you take these three elements of the who, the what, and the modality of it, right, the way, the medium of connection, it really

Starting point is 00:10:25 kind of makes up your social biome. So all of these things kind of came together upon a basic question of what makes us feel connected. The way that you phrased it, it was honestly like a little light bulb moment went off when we were talking about it in our office and we were like, That's brilliant. And I think actually since, well, anecdotally, I know since we've all been communicating with each other and building this campaign, we've all actually used it in our own lives because I think the way you explain it, it really makes a case for being more intentional and more deliberate and more analytical with your social connection, with your social life and with your social health, really. what are some of the key things that you would advise people to do? Say if someone's not feeling not feeling great at the moment they are feeling a bit disconnected as Sophie said they might be they might be living alone which again single people in our research it came up that they were struggling more than other people with loneliness but as Sophie said they could also be in a

Starting point is 00:11:28 house surrounded by people and they're just not really feeling seen and heard and got what how would you advise them to kind of look at at their social life and start to maybe break it down and look at it with a view to optimizing it or making it more rewarding for them. Yeah, definitely. I feel passionate about the idea that we have to build intentional social routines. So the idea of a routine in your life is, you know, you walk outside the door, you go to your job, you go to school, you have a routine about, you know, what kind of media you use, what kind of shows you like to watch. You have a routine around exercising and around eating.

Starting point is 00:12:06 But a social routine is not something that we think about consciously that much because the people who we enact with are largely just there. There are people who are out in our lives and our communities, the person who cuts our hair, the person who we see at our coffee shop that we like to go to. But so much of our social routines are not optimizing the best way to be close to one another. In fact, we often treat people in ways which are almost ignoring them as people, but instead just as service personnel. Our closest relationships, we don't necessarily foster,

Starting point is 00:12:33 through routine. We don't make a habit of calling people who are closest to or spending time with people we're most close to. And so as a consequence, we fall into routines which are easy, but not necessarily in our best interest. So when I think about those things in the context of the pandemic, I really liked what Sophie had to say about the idea that loneliness is actually when it's working, it's a motivational force to get you to do something, to take action. And you can respond to that force in unhealthy ways, like eating a whole ice cream carton, which I have been doing lately because it's so good to eat ice cream when you're feeling unhappy. But that's not an effective way to feel better about your loneliness, right? Instead, you want to harness that feeling and actually

Starting point is 00:13:16 make an intentional plan to call someone, to make a plan to catch up, to, if you can, find a socially distant space to sit in with someone and just chat and pretend like the world is normal, because it's not right now. So we need to kind of take that energy and move it to towards really positive steps. And to be quite specific about what steps, you know, the three kind of things that I always come back to is you want to tighten the circle, which means you want to communicate with people who you are closer to emotionally rather than just everybody. The second is we want to improve the quality of the content, meaning we want to focus on four particular types of conversation, affection, meaningful talk, catching up and joking around.

Starting point is 00:13:56 And then the last one is we want to be sensitive to the modality. So we kind of want to think about modality as being on a hierarchy and face-to-face is being on the top phone calls being slightly below that texting and video chat kind of third tier and then all of that social media content being the lowest tier so that last portion is kind of like empty calories but the things at the very top that's like your that's like your mackeys that's like your that's like your mcflurry and your onion rings during lockdown i've become so aware that much like fast food where you get that instant hit and then a slump you know when you check your phone there's like a oh And then, oh.

Starting point is 00:14:31 Whereas when you're talking to someone, often it's a slow burn. Like the gratification builds and stays with you for much longer. And what you're saying really reminds me of the fact that I think we're becoming increasingly aware, but not aware enough yet that our phones have been built to fight for our attention. So I love the idea of intentional routines because when we're not living with intention, we're grabbing our phone and realizing we're spending hours on our feeds, you know, on Instagram. and other social media apps. And even things like, you know, when you send a text message or you go on WhatsApp,

Starting point is 00:15:07 you know when you have the three dots that move at the bottom of your feed telling you that someone's going to text. So compulsive. Yes, it's built, though, so that you go, oh, I won't put my phone down because someone's going to message me. Yeah. So our technology is built to keep us away from the face-to-face conversations. It's built to make money off our attention. and if we want to cultivate face-to-face relationships, we need to be putting our phone away.

Starting point is 00:15:33 We need to be putting it away, maybe even locked in a box or giving it to someone else. Because the recent research shows that even being able to see your phone, even if it's face down, it gets in the way of the amount of information you can hold in mind.

Starting point is 00:15:47 Interesting. So, yes, intentional routines, I love it, and try and stay away from your mobile phone. the quick hit is supported by research evidence in the sense that people turn to their phones when they feel disconnected, but they don't feel more connected as a consequence. The other is research that I've done directly found that you don't need to have like a really deep conversation every time. Like that's nonsense. It's not energy efficient and you can't have like a deep conversation with everyone you run into. But instead, it actually nourishes you so fully that you don't need to talk to people in that depth and another time. for a day or maybe two days. So, Jeff, we've spoken about the various types of interactions

Starting point is 00:16:28 that nourish us, catch-ups, joking around, meaningful conversations, but what might an ideal five-a-day mix look like? Yeah, so there are five aspects of research-supported ways that we can actually find ourselves to be nourishing our social health. And the way I like to think about this is that these are all things that you want to sort of like have a mix of, a little bit of this and a little bit of that. So all of them appear to independently contribute to a kind of a broader ability to have a good social life. So the first one is that we talk about the medium of communication. Face-to-face conversations, phone calls are really much stronger in terms of their ability to make us feel connected to one another than to other forms of talk. So that would include text messages

Starting point is 00:17:12 or social media interactions or otherwise. The second is the quality of what you're talking about. So you want to have kind of conversations, as you just mentioned before, affectionate, meaningful, playful, kind of conversations that really kind of are enjoyable and that are there for the simple fact of being there. You want to enjoy the aspect of conversation because it's there for its own sake. The third is thinking about it in terms of people who are close to you. So who are people who you want to be in touch with more, who are friends who you wish you talk to more often, who are family members that you really enjoy keeping in touch with. And that would be kind of this aspect of trying to have opportunities to interact with people who are close to you. And during the pandemic, for those who are not living with people who are close to you, this is going to be particularly challenging. You know, you want to reach out to people through modalities that are going to allow you access, but they may not be someone who lives in your home.

Starting point is 00:18:04 The other aspects are really about nourishing kind of the breadth and variety of interactions. So you want to have effortless interactions. And that's where things like a text to check. a text to check in on a friend or just a quick kind of catch up with another person are all actually really valuable. And in the time outside the pandemic, people benefited a lot by having interactions with people who were from a whole variety of places. And during the pandemic, you're going to have to find ways to have those kind of effortless, simple interactions, and text messaging is one way to do so. And the final aspect of this is really finding time

Starting point is 00:18:37 alone where you're regrouping and rethinking. One of the most surprising parts of my own research was one of the strongest correlates of people who have a really healthy social biome or people who, when they were alone, really wanted to be that way. They felt nourished. And this is what's called solitude. So it's a time alone where you want to be alone, where you want to regroup and relax. So that's actually part of having a healthy social diet also is a process of not in interaction. And I loved what Sophie was saying about the idea that solitude is not loneliness. solitude is a volitional choice to be alone to kind of regroup, to read that book, to take some time for oneself, and it's extremely healthy. So what's interesting is we have these kind of, I think, two parts about the social biome approach that I really want to emphasize.

Starting point is 00:19:23 First, it's not more is better. You're not looking to have every day have deep meaningful talks with everyone, right? It's not possible and it's probably not really in your best interest. But the second part is, is don't let those snobes. snacks get in the way of a more weighty meal, right? And there is research that says is when we have that motivation to interact, decreased because of our social media use, we're less likely to turn to the more in-depth conversation because we've already used up all our energy on scrolling through Instagram for an hour and a half. And I think that if you think about this idea of even though it's really efficient to look at Instagram and get information from it, it doesn't require the kind of depth of connection that allows people to really feel socially nourished. No. I love what you're saying there about the connection as well between loneliness and solitude. So it's almost like if your social needs are met, you're able maybe to see being alone as a positive thing rather than something that's forced upon you. So it's so connected, isn't it? Even this conversation about finding connection and your social health is so intimately intertwined with your inner world and how happy you are with your own life. Right. And a lot of times I think about this in the sense of almost like a wheel. in the sense that each one of these has like a spoke in terms of, you know, meaningful talk,

Starting point is 00:20:41 in terms of your first closest 15 being your closest relationship partners, in terms of your time alone and solitude, your amount of choice. And each kind of turn of the wheel is a different part of the things that you need to have nourished. So the wheel metaphor works for me in part because it's not like I just need to, you know, always be focused on face-to-face in-depth conversation with every person I've had, but instead saying some time alone then gives rise to a time of depth, which gives rise to a time of, you know, feeling nourished, which allows for me to respond to my own needs, which allows me to go back into being socially active again. So it's almost like an in and out sort of process rather than a more, more, more, more process. And with the loneliness remedy, we're encouraging people to think about their social health as something that's just as important as other areas of their well-being.

Starting point is 00:21:32 but this concept of social health, even though it sounds so simple and obviously very important for human health when we talk about it like this, it's just not a routine way of thinking in our culture right now. And before people can improve, as is anything, they need to know where they're starting from. So do you have any suggestions for how people can work out where they're at with their social health right now? So the two things that I think that people might want to start thinking about when they think about this is, first start with groups. Who are the groups of people who I had opportunities to interact with prior to the

Starting point is 00:22:07 pandemic? So this could be clubs or social organizations. This could be people who are at work or people who are other part of your lives. And are there people in those groups who you can kind of reconstitute contact with, have opportunities to keep in touch with, or find ways to be in contact with in some fashion? The other is to think about it in terms of individuals, who are the particular people

Starting point is 00:22:29 who you haven't been keeping in touch with as much or as often as you might like? And can you reach out to them specifically? The second one is actually easier in the sense of being able to identify people who are going to be close to us and people who we might want to renew social contact with, but harder in the sense that we might make them feel obliged

Starting point is 00:22:47 to spend time with us because we don't have an excuse to do so. At least with groups, we can say, hey, let's catch up about work or what's been going on with that thing that we used to do together. Is that going to happen again, maybe in April or May or sometime this summer. With individuals, we might feel a little bit circumspect about that kind of reaching out. But I guess what I'm here to say is that creating a

Starting point is 00:23:07 routine of interaction that you have with people who you're close with through the phone or through other ways of contact actually might be something that could come out good from this pandemic because it creates a social routine that's sustainable over time. Right. And even though face-to-face is the gold standard, the phone is still the next best thing. That's right. I think as well, just adding to what you're saying, I think one thing that's really missing or that we're not experiencing so much of during lockdown is side-by-side connection. Yes. So doing things together.

Starting point is 00:23:38 Because now if you're wanting to initiate interaction with people like a video call, we're looking at each other, we're chatting, there's no time to just sit and breathe and share in an experience. And I just think I didn't really take those, I took those things for granted before. you know go to a gallery together go and do an activity together um it's exhausting staring at a screen chatting backwards and forwards especially i'm quite introverted it's like a social introvert i burn very bright for a very short period of time and then i need to go and be on my own to regroup so side-by-side activities for me it has always been the best way to engage i was even thinking this from a work perspective um i work with brilliant colleagues and loads of us have worked together for years

Starting point is 00:24:22 so we know each other really well. But so much of what you do would be together. And if you felt you could intuit that maybe someone wasn't feeling all right, or you could, I don't know, pull someone into room if you wanted to moan about something. But now you have to be like, you're going to call someone up and be like, I'm annoyed because of this. Or to actively call someone up and invade their space and say, I feel sad. Can you reassure me?

Starting point is 00:24:47 Like it requires a lot. I think at the moment in our current conditions, rectifying, remedying some of this loneliness does require some real vulnerability. And I wondered if either of you would have advice for someone who is struggling with the feeling of reaching out. The first thing that has been a theme through everything we're talking about is actually how loneliness makes a lot of us feel quite ashamed, embarrassed to admit that we feel this way.

Starting point is 00:25:17 We tend to, not everyone, but often when we feel lonely, we look at everyone else. living their lives and talking to other people and our inner critic gets really loud. Says things like everyone else has friends. They make it look easy. People aren't contacting me. It must be because there's something wrong with me. And a few people realize,

Starting point is 00:25:37 so pre-pandemic, there was nine million people saying they were lonely. In the UK, sorry. So that's a huge percentage. And now, like you say, the numbers have rocketed. So people feel often like it's a personal failing. So that vulnerability, firstly, needs to be something we acknowledge in ourselves before we even consider reaching out, right? This thing of loneliness is totally normal when we feel disconnected. It is not our failing.

Starting point is 00:26:02 Everyone is experiencing it right now. When the inner critic comes up and it says, they're not reaching out to me because they don't want to. The first thing we need is self-compassion. Remember, you're already in threat mode. That survival instinct in you is saying, something's wrong. We're under threat. So if you start criticizing yourself, that threatening feeling increases, if some of the things you're saying to yourself are critical, I'm only imagining. I can only imagine, but I imagine there's some critical thoughts in there. Would you, how, what would you say to a friend in your scenario?

Starting point is 00:26:32 What would you, would you, would you, because you know, often our friend tells us they're feeling lonely, you're like, I'll put on a cup of tea, come over, I'll give you a cuddle, let's have a chat. Oh, cuddles pre-COVID, you know. I did it too. I know what you do. Yeah, so much. But we're so loving to other people.

Starting point is 00:26:49 So that's the first thing is, when you're feeling. feeling vulnerable, if you notice any self-criticism, think what would I say to a friend or do for a friend and do that for yourself? The second thing is, I purposely gave that example because often when we think, oh, if I reach out to someone else and say I'm lonely, they're either going to judge me or they're not going to want to hear it or, you know, it'll make me seem too vulnerable. But when we think, if someone told me I was lonely, they were lonely, I would be so honored to be able to be there for them and to be able to offer them some connection, that when we realize that it can empower us to think, okay, if someone told me that they were struggling, I would be there for them.

Starting point is 00:27:25 Therefore, maybe, just maybe, if I say to a friend, hey, I'm having a hard time, maybe, maybe, they'll be exactly what I need. They'll reach out to me. Maybe they have no idea. Maybe they're struggling too right now. Yeah. But the next thing I would say is, obviously, if you can, send a message to your friend saying, hey, I'm having a bad day. But it doesn't have to be like that. You could literally just send a message saying, hey, do you want a Zoom call in a cup of tea? And then when they say, sorry, I'm busy, remembering they might actually be busy and say, okay, because the inner critic always goes, knew it, knew they didn't want to hang out with me. So you instead say, okay, when are you available? And one of my areas of study is about friendship is that this

Starting point is 00:28:09 issue of thinking of friendship as an invitation that's an imposition makes it so that we don't develop our relationships with our friends in any speed and any closeness. Because we're not willing to, as Sophie said, if someone says, I'm busy, and we just go, oh, it's over or I'm not going to try again, either because a person doesn't want to be close to me or because that we simply forget to try again, you know, and I think there's a lot of humanness in this. We have to remember the routines that we have are often functioned around work, around money, around obligations that we have that are immediate. And friendship is actually, when it's meaningful and routine, both of those things, it means that we say, hey, I want to make a date to talk to you,

Starting point is 00:28:49 and we're going to do that again. And so it will be something you can continue to sustain to the future. It's seen as polite to say, hey, we should get together. And then no one follows up. And the lack of follow-up makes it so that we don't have the opportunities to connect. So I think that Sophie's analysis is really quite brilliant in the sense of thinking through what are the barriers to being able to reach out to other people. But the part that I would add for this is that there's also a gift of your own presence that you give to another person by just reaching out to them. So it's not just to saying, I'm lonely and I need you. It's more on the lines of, I like you, and I want to be with you. And it's just kind of a lovely thing in its own right. So I think that

Starting point is 00:29:29 we can think of the first 15 people in our lives, those 15 most important people, are great people to say I want to spend time with because they are less likely to say, no, I'm too busy or I don't want to see you. And they're more willing to, if someone says, well, if we can't do it now, can we do it later? They're more likely to be people like that. So think about who were your first 15, love that. Who are the people that, who are the people that nourish you? Yeah. Reaching out to them and not feeling like you are a burden. My friends and I have started doing online classes together, not like, not like smart ones. Yeah. Someone had suggested like, why do you learn a language together?

Starting point is 00:30:08 No, we do online dance classes together and they are hilarious. So there's this brilliant thing called Forward Space. So in New York, in Manhattan, you would normally go there. And it's like, the woman even goes, in your club, in your lounge. And so it used to be like going to a club, but now you're in your sitting room. But the music's really loud. The music's really good. And my friends and I, WhatsApp call each other on our phones.

Starting point is 00:30:33 And then we have our computers up. And we can just see each other dancing around. It's honestly, it's hilarious. But there are ways of bringing in side-by-side activities in a face-to-face way. So you're not talking, but you're both enjoying it. And you can both, it's so silly watching your mates bop around. I guarantee your mates aren't as coordinated as they think they are. Mine aren't, anyway.

Starting point is 00:30:56 And I certainly am not. But it's so wonderful because after you get off the call, even if you speak for five minutes, just like sweating, saying, wow, that was so good. Oh, my God. It was so hard. I can't believe how bad I am. You've got this really shared buzz and glow that lasts with you for the whole of the rest of the day. The pandemic has placed a lot of emphasis on households and couples.

Starting point is 00:31:16 And I think if people aren't there and, you know, not there by choice, they just haven't found the right person. Then this has been tough. So, Sophie, do you have any words of comfort for people in this situation? If you're feeling sad and disconnected and alone and dating is causing you just, stress right now, you really aren't alone. It's totally understandable. Pre-COVID, you wouldn't just be dating people on apps. You would be meeting people in bars, on buses, in the street. You'd be hanging out with friends. All of the different aspects of your identity would be being nourished.

Starting point is 00:31:52 Now what's happening is when people are dating, the only option, really, is through an app. And apps, again, feel like a peer rating system often for people. You go on there, have people liked me, don't, do they want to meet? And then when you go on a date right now, for example, people are having to go back to Zoom dates. And again, they're very unusual scenarios. So firstly, if you're feeling distressed right now, it's totally normal. I would recommend actually minimizing your dating app use. Mainly use your app on a Sunday night because that's when everyone is on. Limit your app use to 15 minutes in the morning, 15 minutes in the evening if you're going to use it every day so that you don't feel like your entire self-worth is hinged on, is,

Starting point is 00:32:33 depends on what comes up. And the reason I mentioned before about all of different areas of people's identity being nourished is what I'm noticing right now, particularly in my clients, is that dating feels like a rescue mission sometimes. People are feeling so bored in their lives, they're feeling so sad and so alone, that any time they meet someone a dating app, it's like, maybe this person will save me from the monotony of the day, right, rather than just maybe I'll go and meet this person and they'll add something to my life, which means that if someone, text or if they don't, people's mood is heavily dependent on that. So nourish all of the areas of your identity. Think about, okay, I really want to date, but I really need to nourish my friendships.

Starting point is 00:33:16 What hobbies do I care about? What are the things that make me, me? And make sure every day dating only takes up a small period of that time. Make sure you have a support group, right? So your friends are you text saying, oh, I really want to check my app, but I'm trying not to. Can you hold me accountable. When you feel the urge to reach out to ex-boyfriends or ex-girlfriends, ex-partners who perhaps didn't make you feel good, again, get your friends to hold you accountable so that you don't do that. And again, I'm going to go back to the inner critic because that is the thing I'm hearing

Starting point is 00:33:49 the most in my clinic as people who are feeling alone have this constant negative self-talk. If you are struggling as a single person looking to date, please notice any moment where your mind is against you, where it's saying that there's something wrong with you. Please, again, think about, I'm hammering home this idea of speaking to yourself as a friend, because in the absence of being able to talk to your friends, we need to be that person for ourselves. We've talked about this idea of the social biome and making sure, as you would to nourish your gut microbes, that you're getting enough variety of different interactions. What are some of the key interactions that people should be having? And what about accountability? It's something we talk about

Starting point is 00:34:29 a lot on this show. It's so important for habit change and ultimately health. As I said before, we're not encouraged to prioritize our social health. How can people hold themselves accountable for meeting their social needs when other responsibilities get in the way such as like demands from work? That's such a good question. And as we know, work and commuting are the two strongest negative correlations with time spent socially interacting. And what I mean by that is people who work more and more hours or have to commute further and further distances are actually people who find least time available to be able to socially interact for pleasure, just to do so for its own sake. So I would say that one way to think about this is that you need to make a plan. And I say this

Starting point is 00:35:14 often and I am not embarrassed to say so, is that I put things like call so-and-so on my list of things to do. I put things like making sure that this is somebody who I haven't reached out to a while, that I'll write it on my list or some reminder of myself to get in contact with them. The other way to actually hold yourself accountable is to actually make sure that when you're making that plan, you renew that plan immediately after having already engaged in it. So, for example, one barrier that happens a lot for working adults, or particularly people with families or schedules which are hard to be just free, is that the phone call feels like something you just can't do, right? Or spending time having lunch with a friend back in the

Starting point is 00:35:55 days before the pandemic just really felt like an inconvenience. What I'm trying to remind that people could do in a very sort of mindful fashion is before they get off the phone, say, hey, let's talk again in a month and put that directly on the calendar. Make sure it's something that you already have to look forward to. And I really think a once a month check-in with a close friend or a family member who you don't talk to as often as you might like to, like a brother or sister, you know, these are people who you actually would benefit greatly by having something to look forward to. So you make yourself accountable by making it into a habit that benefits both of you. And if it works well, and I would hope that it would for all of your listeners, then people will reach out to you

Starting point is 00:36:36 and return. So if you fall off that habit, if you actually, you know, kind of fall behind, a person can say, hey, remember when we used to get together and talk as often as we did? Let's do that again now. I like that. So kind of buddying up and making a plan with others, but then also thinking about it on a daily level. So for us where we're encouraging people to think like, right, just five, just five interactions that are going to make you feel good today, just adding that to your to do list. Exactly. I'm hyper aware that lots of people might be listening to this and thinking, but I don't have a top 15 because lots of people, a bit like we're talking about dating, actually lots of people don't have access. So there's one thing I'd like to say, and that is

Starting point is 00:37:16 there are so many ways you can bring other people into your life. even if you don't have them. So for example, meetup, meetup.com, can't even say it. Meetup.com has so many different hobby groups that you can meet up with online. You could do photography, you can do languages. But volunteering is just what speaks to me after you said about acts of service. When we give, we receive more. So one of the things around loneliness is if you want to improve your self-esteem, if you want to feel connected, feel like you have meaning in life or a role, volunteer and there are so many ways you can look on Google and look where you can offer your skills. And I guarantee that if you don't have a top 15 now, it's okay.

Starting point is 00:38:00 There are people who want and need what you have to offer. There's a lot of evidence that says that's just true about human nature. Is that in giving that we actually feel more part of a community that people care about us because we care about them. And Sophie, I'm so thankful that you brought that up because in no way do I want to suggest that those who don't have close relationships with others are somehow wrong or to blame for their own what they're missing. But the opportunities to nourish and develop relationships are always with us. You've been listening to Jeffrey Hall, Kansas University professor of communication studies and clinical psychologist Dr. Sophie Mort in conversation with me, Rochene Devchokane,

Starting point is 00:38:43 about women's health's latest campaign, The Loneliness Remedy. To echo what Sophie said earlier, If you're struggling right now with feelings of loneliness, you are very much not alone. And of course, loneliness exists on a scale. So while much of this advice around being more deliberate and communicative about your social needs will make sense for many, loneliness is a risk factor for mental health issues such as depression. And if you feel like you need professional support for your mind right now, please make contact with your GP, a therapist or brilliant charities such as Mind, details from the show notes, who can all offer support.

Starting point is 00:39:19 sometimes you won't be able to make yourself feel better and that's 100% okay. If you'd like to contact us about today's episode, get in touch. You can email or drop us a message on Instagram. If you've enjoyed it or you think someone else might, please share widely and remember to rate and review on Apple Podcasts because it really helps other people find a show. Going for Goal will be back next week. Until then, take care of yourself and take care of those relationships that matter to you. Bye.

Just As Well, The Women's Health Podcast - How to Feel Less Lonely in Lockdown and Beyond

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