The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Heartbreak: A Personal and Scientific Journey by Florence Williams

Episode Date: February 20, 2022

Heartbreak: A Personal and Scientific Journey by Florence Williams “Keen observer [and] deft writer” (David Quammen) Florence Williams explores the fascinating, cutting-edge science of heartbreak while seeking creative ways to mend her own. When her twenty-five-year marriage suddenly falls apart, journalist Florence Williams expects the loss to hurt. But when she starts feeling physically sick, losing weight and sleep, she sets out in pursuit of rational explanation. She travels to the frontiers of the science of “social pain” to learn why heartbreak hurts so much―and why so much of the conventional wisdom about it is wrong. Soon Williams finds herself on a surprising path that leads her from neurogenomic research laboratories to trying MDMA in a Portland therapist’s living room, from divorce workshops to the mountains and rivers that restore her. She tests her blood for genetic markers of grief, undergoes electrical shocks while looking at pictures of her ex, and discovers that our immune cells listen to loneliness. Searching for insight as well as personal strategies to game her way back to health, she seeks out new relationships and ventures into the wilderness in search of an extraordinary antidote: awe. With warmth, daring, wit, and candor, Williams offers a gripping account of grief and healing. Heartbreak is a remarkable merging of science and self-discovery that will change the way we think about loneliness, health, and what it means to fall in and out of love.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. The Chris Voss Show.com.

Hey, we're coming to you with another great podcast. We certainly appreciate you tuning in. Why do I say that at the top of every show? Because I certainly do. I mean, who wouldn't? For reals. Anyway, guys, thanks for being part of the Chris Voss Show family. Remember, it's the family that loves you but doesn't judge you.

I should make sure it's in the merch department for that, huh? Anyway, guys, go to YouTube.com, Fortunates Chris Voss, to see the video version of this. You're going to always want to see it on video because it's free for an unlimited time. It's the latest technology that's just come out. So we're excited to announce my new book is coming out. It's called Beacons of Leadership, Inspiring Lessons of Success in Business and Innovation. It's going to be coming out on October 5th, 2021. And I'm really excited for

you to get a chance to read this book. It's filled with a multitude of my insightful stories, lessons, my life, and experiences in leadership and character. I give you some of the secrets from my CEO Entrepreneur Toolbox that I use to scale my business success, innovate, and build a multitude of companies. I've been a CEO for, what is it, like 33, 35 years now. We talk about leadership, the importance of leadership, how to become a great leader, and how anyone can become a great leader as well. Or order the book, wherever fine books are sold. We're talking about a brilliant author today. She's written a new book called Heartbreak, A Personal and Scientific Journey. Just came out on February 1st, 2022 by Florence Williams.

She'll be on the show with us. In the meantime as well, go to goodreads.com, force.chrisfossy, everything we're reading and reviewing over there. Go to all of our groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram. I highly encourage you to check out the super popular LinkedIn newsletter that we have that's killing it over there, and also our big 132 000 linkedin group as well uh florence williams is a journalist author and podcaster she's a contributing editor at

outside magazine and a freelance writer for the new york times new york times magazine national geographic the new york review of books slate mother Jones, and numerous other publications. She is also the writer and host of two Gracie Award-winning Audible Original Series, Breasts Unbound, and Three Day Effect, as well as Outside Magazine's Double X Factor podcast. Her public speaking includes keynotes at Google, the Smithsonian, the Seattle Zoo, and Aspen Ideas Festival, and many other corporate and academic nonprofit venues. Welcome to the show, Florence. How are you? Hey, Chris. I'm great. Thank you so much for having me on today. There you go. It's wonderful to have you on as well.

So give us your plugs, where people can find you on the interwebs. I'm sure my website's easy, FlorenceWilliams.com. Links there to all my work and social accounts and everything else. There you go. So what motivated you to write this book? Oh, personal catastrophe. My 25-year marriage unexpectedly ended, was not my decision. I had been with the man who was my husband since I was 18 years old.

I met him my first day in college. So I was devastated. I had never experienced heartbreak before. I had kind of dismissed it, you know, when my friends were going through it. It's kind of overdramatic. You know, it's like, obviously this person wasn't my friends were going through it. It's kind of overdramatic. You know, it's like, obviously this person wasn't right for you. Move on. What's the big deal? Wow. And then when it happened to me, it just really knocked me out. I mean, my body freaked out. I started to wonder, you know, why there had been so much art about heartbreak, so many songs,

so many poets, but so little science. I really wanted to understand what was happening to my brain and my body, why I felt so bad, why I was getting sick. And, um, and then I wanted to write about it. There you go. The scientific thing. I think everyone goes through heartbreak. And like you say, it's kind of the human experience because we, whether it's any type of loss, a death, a love, you know, all sorts of different things. You know, I think loss is unfortunately one of the experiences of life, I guess. It really is. It's a universal experience. But when you're going through it, it feels very singular. It feels very lonely. And among all of my close friends who were also long married, nobody was divorced. I just felt like, what just happened? Who am I now?

What do I do? I felt really existentially freaked out. And my immune system, you know, got implicated in this. And that's what really kind of launched my investigation. Like what is going on in my white blood cells? How can I get better? So did you go through the normal stages of grief and somewhere in there, did you decide to say, Hey, I mean, as long as I'm going through this, let's take a scientific journey on it, uh, to, to try and give yourself a purpose to maybe get through it or out of it? Or did it kind of just organically come together? Yeah, I would say for me, it was definitely kind of a coping mechanism, you know, to put my science journalist hat on and go visit some scientists, go visit their labs, go check

out the mice and the voles who were going through a little rodent heartbreak, little vole divorce. You take away my cheese that I have a rodent heartbreak too. Exactly. Scientists are studying these other animals to try to gain some insights as to what's happening in the human brain. And I thought that would provide a little bit of distance for me emotionally. And it was also, you know, got me out of bed in the morning. It got me talking to people who, I have to say, were fantastic. I mean, these scientists, the first thing they tell you is, oh, I was heartbroken too. Let me tell you what happened to me. And, you know, that really

humanized them as characters in the book. It made me feel sort of validated and better uh and you know little by little it also gave me some clues about interventions things i could try to make make myself feel better yeah and and that's quite the hard experience of where you're coming from 18 you probably didn't have a lot of breakups. You probably didn't date a lot in those early years. You don't have anything to fall back on as a, as an experience level. And, and yeah, that, that's really tough. I mean, I, I think my closest breakup was a business partner is my best friend for 22 years. And, and, and, uh, well, we were business partners for 12 years, best friend for 22 years. And that was hard. It was like losing a limb.

But yeah, people go through loss. So you go through a whole lot of scientific journeys in the book. Tell us about some of them and what you went through. Yeah. I mean, one of the early conversations I had was with an immunogeneticist at UCLA. And he's kind of made it his life's work to study the gene expression of people who consider themselves lonely, of which, by the way, there are many, many. We're living in sort of an epidemic of loneliness. A lot of people say that they feel lonely. They don't have a lot of close contacts they can fall back on if they're in trouble. And the amazing thing is their immune systems really register this sense of vulnerability.

So we know that they have a 23% increased risk of dying early. We know that they have increased risk of dementia and increased risk of heart disease, metabolic disease, just on and on. And so this researcher, immunogeneticist, Steve Cole, wanted to actually look at the genetic markers in our immune systems, find out why, what was actually going on in those molecules. And what he found is that people who consider themselves lonely actually upregulate genes for inflammation. They're putting out more inflammation. And the reason for this is kind of interesting. I mean, he speculates that it's because when we feel lonely or when we feel rejected in love, you know, our bodies don't really make the distinction between that and being literally left out alone on the Savannah where you're circled by

hyenas. And so your brain thinks alone, alone, alarm system, you know, this person is about to get it, maybe attacked by a predator, maybe attacked by somebody else. Maybe, you know, we'll get injured without people around her. Let's put out some inflammation just to get ready for that, just in case. So the body amps up to maybe fight or flight sort of mode and creates more stuff. The body thinks it's helping you out by putting out this inflammation. But the problem is if you stay feeling abandoned or lonely for weeks and months and years, then you're just pumping out all this inflammation, which we know leads to chronic disease. I was hearing something recently that men and women deal with being lonely differently. Men are very genetically or biologically nomadic.

And so we can kind of turn off when we're not in relationships. But women are always, because know, they're because of their biology and genes and propagation of species. They, they, they experience loneliness maybe a little differently than men where they can't turn off, you know, they still seek to, to fulfill, um, you know, their heart and, and, and pairing. And so I think more of like a social status sort of thing. Yeah. I think women are really relational and we do tend to wrap our identities up in our personal relationships. You know, we feel like we're a wife and we're a mother, and this is a huge part of how society views us, how we see ourselves. Um, and when that falls away, it can be, you know, a big

identity crisis. But I will say that for men as well, you know, they may think they're sort of, you know, able to turn the other cheek to this, but we know from the statistics that men who are divorced, who don't remarry, have much worse health outcomes. Oh, really? Wow. So they especially get sick. They especially die younger if they stay single. Wow. And I wonder, is that maybe because, well, women do have a, they're tougher than us and they, not, well, than me, I should say. But, you know, they, women have, you know, you guys are designed to carry on the species no matter what. And so we usually die early because we're just, we're just, I don't know, we're just weaker basically. I mean, somehow in the biology of it all. I'm clearly not a biologist.

But is it maybe because the women usually spend more time with the kids when they separate? Maybe is that because they still have a social thing there with the kids? I mean, definitely women seem to turn to their friends. They do this thing that psychologists sometimes call tend and befriend, where they will really support each other. So that's helpful emotionally. But I think honestly, at least in the way men and women have existed in traditional marriages, you know, typically the wife does a lot of caretaking and, you know, the dude is kind of not so smart about eating square meals and maintaining social contacts and going to the doctor if he's not feeling well.

You know, it's the wife often that sort of takes on this role of taking care of everybody. And when she's gone, you know, he sometimes does not do so well. That's true. That's true. Moms, we couldn't live without moms. Um, the, uh, so you go through a lot of different, uh, like therapies and stuff. Tell us about some of the stuff you did there. Yeah. Well, um, one of the first people I spoke to said, yeah, we know that divorced people end up having these poor health outcomes, but some people really do better than others. And she said, yeah, we know that divorced people end up having these poor health outcomes, but some people really do better than others. And she said, what we have found is that there are certain personality traits that make people more resilient. And one of those is openness, openness to new experience, especially openness to beauty, openness to awe, you know, experiencing new things, being curious.

And I had never heard that before, you know, that beauty could be an antidote to heartbreak or an antidote to loneliness. And I thought, well, that's something I'm interested in. I know how to do. I already wrote a book about how great it is to be in nature, really good for your brain, good for your psyche, good for your body. So I was like, okay, I'm going to spend the next two years really trying to spend a lot of time in nature, in the woods, in wilderness, hiking, canoeing.

So I did big nature. I was like, this is a big heartbreak. I need big nature. I went into the wilderness for 30 days in the desert in Utah. I ran this river. I canoed it and I did two weeks completely alone in this bid to kind of feel awe and work on that. It partly helped, but it wasn't, it wasn't, you know, the total heartbreak cure. And then I, yeah, I had a great therapist. I also did a workshop

for divorcing people in a kind of therapy called EMDR, which is supposed to be good for emotional trauma. And it's where your sort of eyes move back and forth as you're recalling painful memories. This is supposed to help your brain kind of rewire, take some of the emotional storm out of your memories. I thought that was also somewhat helpful. I went to a museum called the Museum of Broken Relationships. There's a museum for it? There's a whole museum full of heartbreak. Is it like Journey songs the whole time?

Well, it's in Croatia. So it may play the Croatian version of that. Yeah. I mean, it was just helpful to me to see how common an experience heartbreak is. You know, we don't ritualize it. We don't really talk about it that much. And here was a whole museum devoted to people's stories where people like sent in these objects representing their relationships, representing their breakups. And, um, you know, that to me, that was actually really healing because it was like, okay, here's a way to talk about this,

to universalize it, feel less lonely. Um, and then, you know, I also, I spent a lot of time with friends. I had some rebound flings, which the science, it turns out says can be really helpful. I thought for the most part that was helpful, but you know, it's kind of a mixed bag as you can imagine dating at 50, like not so easy. Um, and then finally I, I, um, actually worked with a therapist in a clinical setting to do some psychedelics, which there's a lot of science behind as far as, um as helping people deal with trauma, helping people be less afraid of their future and to feel this kind of big technicolor awe, which I was really going for. Wow. I know there's some people, I don't know this for a fact, but I overheard some people recently talking about how, I believe it was, I can't think of the gentleman off the top of my head.

One of them is the big atheist, Sam Harris. Oh, Sam Harris, yeah. And they were talking about how, I guess, some people taking psychotropic drugs, even people with addiction can sometimes overcome that with those things. There's a lot of emerging research out of Johns Hopkins University. They have, um, you know, government funding and these are sort of official trials and,

and they found a lot of success with people who are, um, addicted to things like cigarettes and other addictions. Yeah. And also PTSD. See a couple of my early breakups. I just went to vodka. I think that was a traumatic thing,

but I don't recommend it. I did some of that too. You know, I think that's – so we do know from the science that people who are in the throes of heartbreak, they sometimes don't have as much behavioral and emotional regulation. You know, sometimes they're not as inhibited as we normally are in terms of making decisions and judgment. We do some dumb things. Yeah.

Yeah. Just, just don't, just don't go overboard folks. That's all I'm saying. You know, the, the,

the thing I always hate about loss and you know, I've, I've lost two Huskies so far in my life that were like my children and, and you know, whether it's parents passing away or loved ones or breakups breakups don't matter. Don't, don't affect me too much anymore, but you know, whether it's parents passing away or loved ones or breakups, breakups don't matter, don't affect me too much anymore. But, you know, when I was younger, they did. You know, it was like the whole world. And you're like, I'm going to die alone.

And you're like, you're 25. Calm down. Calm down. Like, seriously. But, you know, the stages of grief are the thing I hate the worst. Yeah. you know, the stages of grief are the thing I hate the worst. It's like, you know, when I have a loss, I'm just like, oh God, we got to go through, what was it, like these stages of grief? Yeah.

You know, I mean, that whole theory has been a little bit debunked. Oh, really? Because some people, I mean, grief looks different for everybody and there's kind of a different order, but certainly you hit the main, you know main stops on this train for sure, which are shock and sort of disbelief, a certain amount of bargaining where you're like, can't we work this out? Come back. All that. It's very humiliating. And then there's the loneliness piece and then, you know, hopefully some measure of acceptance.

But I recently heard someone say that they thought the missing stage of grief that you don't hear about so much is anxiety. And that one I really felt because, as you say, you sort of fear for your future. It's like, am I going to die alone? Am I going to die alone? Is a predator about to jump on me now Yeah. That my long life partner is no longer around. Yeah. It's, it's, uh, I think the other thing that I hate the most is the unpacking of everything. It seems like, and I don't know if you have to do this, but where you go and revisit everything, like it just, it's like, it's almost like an unbundling or unpacking that you have to do of mentally moving things out of your mind and picking them up.

And then the torture sometimes you put yourself through of like, well, if only I'd done this or I'd done that or, you know, and I hate that. It's just, it's medieval torture chambers of stuff. So much quarterbacking and it goes on and on and on. I think some people do that more than others. I know I certainly did it a lot. You know, it's called rumination or you're like just going through these conversations over and over again. It's not very good for you.

Although I think there's a way to kind of try to derive some lessons, you know, from that that can be helpful moving forward. Yeah. And sometimes, you know, the hard part sometimes, especially with like losses, the ghost parts that are left behind that remind you of stuff. So it's the leash that you find or, or, or, you know, she, she's left some dishes in the house. You find you're like, Oh, I thought we had these out of here.

And, and you feel like you're moving on and you just sort of total process did the mda did the mdma uh work pretty good for you was it yeah i mean it was surprisingly good for me so when i when i worked with this therapist in a clinical setting we started with the mdma otherwise known as ecstasy and then uh waited like 30 minutes 45 minutes before doing the psilocybin, which are the mushrooms. And the MDMA is supposed to work to kind of make the psychedelic experience less threatening. It makes it seem safer, more benign, because you really do lose control of your mind under large doses of these substances. And that can be really frightening and destabilizing.

So, um, what they sometimes do is they'll start with this MDMA to kind of make it all seem like, oh, this is really cool. This is great. I'm not going to be freaked out by losing control. There you go. You even went under, you even went under electronic, electrical shocks. Tell us about that. That's quite extraordinary. That wasn't, so that wasn't supposed to be an intervention as much as it was this experiment to find out if I was still feeling threatened by the idea of my ex, you know, or if I was starting to really get over him.

And so what we did was we sort of measured my nervous system, specifically looking at what they call GSR, sort of galvanic skin response, or basically your sweat. Like how much are you sweating? How nervous are you? When I looked at a picture of my ex, a picture of my sort of support figure, who was my dad, and then a picture of just a stranger, you know, from the internet. And turns out, yep, I actually still was quite like, quite upset, you know, in this like deep way by looking at pictures of my ex. And this is even like a year after the split. So, so this is one of the reasons,

you know, people tell you, you know, don't follow your ex on social media, you know, don't necessarily, you know, hang out with them or answer their text messages.

You know, it's, you really kind of need some boundaries and some separation if your nervous system is going to kind of recover and feel safe again. Yeah. And then, you know, I mean, so many people, when they break up, they're always getting back together. There's that period of time. And then you don't want that to drag you out because you can't get healthy and what I call being clean and be able to enter in a new relationship with somebody until you've, you've washed that

out because if you drag that in, then the next relationship, then you got a whole new problem. Um, you know, I'm 54 now I've dated all my life. Um, it, the, the one rule that you learn when you date is you don't date anybody until they've been broke up from a serious relationship for at least two years. And if it was a long marriage or long relationship, 10 plus years, three years, which means, you know, people need a good two to three years on average. I don't know if they need to. You're the professional of this now with your scientific journey. But normally, I mean, my rule is three years.

If I find somebody like that, I'll just be like, I actually think you're really accurate. I mean, the science seems to support that. Really? On average. I'm a scientist. You just knew from your dating. You must have done a lot of dating. I've done a lot of dating.

Yeah, they say that, you know, in terms of measures of your health, like your cells and your immune system, that stuff does not get back to baseline after a big breakup for on average four years. Which is not to say that you can't have relationships and fall in love again, have a lot of joy and happiness. But on average, our bodies seem to take about four years before we kind of really get over it. Yeah. You've got to be able to clean all that out. And, you know, like I think everyone's been on dates, both men and women, where they go out with somebody and the person starts telling them about, you know, my ex did that. And then you're just like, wow, you're, you're, you're not over this one. Yeah.

You need some more time there, bud. Exactly. I know. I know that experience. We've all been there. We've all been there. So, but this is cool. I like how that you put it in, in this, in this book where it's not only the human experience

of it, but the scientific experience of it. So people can, you know, you can feel a little bit more, what's the word I'm looking for, empowered. Because you're like, hey, man, we all go through this. We're all going to sit and listen to Journey songs and cry or whatever. And, you know, don't stop believing only in the lonely or something. And do I get a royalty check for that? Billie Holiday.

Yeah, whatever the songs are. But, you know, we all go through that. We're all human. Let me ask you this. This is a question I have for you. You know, we're more in our world today more alone than ever. Even sometimes people that I know that are in relationships, married and someone's in the house, they're more alone than ever. Even sometimes people that I know that are in relationships, married and someone's in the house, they're more alone than ever. Social media, you know, especially COVID, the lockdowns. I mean, we've had, I think I was reading on CNN or something that there's like 26% of the population

hasn't had sex with anyone in the past year or two. You know, we're really living in a lonely world and it's even getting worse. I mean, we have the incels and these younger generations that they're not really connecting with anybody. So do you think that social media and stuff contributes to and kind of the distance that we have with each other where we don't really engage anymore? I think there are probably a lot of factors going on, but I do think social media probably has to play a role because if you look at the demographic who considers themselves the most lonely, it is young people. about face-to-face interaction, about reading each other's emotions, about really connecting with people through sort of the emotional intelligence that you have to learn if you're actually on the playground with them every day. I mean, these kids today, and I'm a mom of teenagers, they just don't hang out with each other the way that we did. And certainly the pandemic has, of of course made that

worse, you know, for so many kids. Um, I'm worried about them. You know, I think that they will have a harder time, um, you know, learning just emotional intelligence and learning communication. Um, I, I worry about it. Yeah. I mean, dating was so much different when I was younger. I mean, you would, everyone would work out and then dress up and then go to a club or, you know, wherever, you know, when I was 16, I think it was cruising up and down state street. That's how old I am. Um, but you would, you would meet a girl, you would see a girl, she would be the girl because you know, she wouldn't have some sort of Instagram filter. You'd be like, Oh, I can see you as a human being.

You are exactly who you say you are. And, you know, you ask for a number, you take her out. Nowadays with, you know, and I think a lot of that gives rise to the hookup culture that we have with these Tinder apps, these dating apps. And, of course, I mean, you see so many fake catfishing stuff. Yeah. You know, I mean, I've been known to go on dates and jump out of my shoes when the date shows up. And I'd be like, I don't know who you are, but that's not you. Like, you're, like, different. And so, yeah, I don't know how these kids do.

But definitely the loneliness and stuff can't be good and healthy for us or as a society where, you know, people aren't meeting and building families and contributing to, you know, the social aspect of that. Yeah, exactly. And so, you know, I think the solution has to be that, you know, we need these more authentic connections, you know, to each other. But I also talk about, you know, we could really use some connection to our natural world as well. Like we're cut off from that. We're cut off from our sense of ourselves, you know, as, you know, the animals that we are. And we're trying to kind of often, I think, suppress our emotions or our needs or just distract ourselves with television you know or with tinder or whatever and um i i think we've in some ways forgotten how to feel alive

yeah it's tragic yeah i mean we're just walking around like this all day going what's in the phone the uh and and yeah we need to see outside of our world. I think one of the other things that I see in a lot of my divorced friends, especially men, you know, is they don't keep a social circle. I don't know about women so much. I think women keep better social circles than men. They do a better job of it. Yeah. And a lot of men that are my friends that circle in and out of marriages, they really have a hard time because a lot of times they abandon their men friends. And it didn't used to be this way.

And I've heard some different studies or data on this where men used to have, you know, we would have the bar back in the 70s or whatever, the 80s. And, you know, we'd go down to the bar and have drinks or barbecues. With social media and everything else and just everybody struggling to make a life, probably with the dissolving of the middle class, men don't have that so much anymore. And so they're really lost and they really have a hard time. And I don't know. It's something that I think people need to realize. If you're in a relationship, you need to keep your friends.

You need to keep your social circles. And I think it's something that I think people need to realize that if you're in a relationship, you need to keep your friends, you need to keep your social circles. And I think it's even healthier. And, and some governments are even really interested in this because they know that lonely people are going to require more healthcare. And so for example, I visited the UK for my book and I had an interview with the minister of loneliness.

And I had to go visit her because I thought this is like out of Harry Potter or something, the minister of loneliness. And it turns out, um, that they have really recognized this as a serious health problem. And so they actually have developed a number of programs that they're funding such as a men's shed. And there are a number of these now all over the country. I went to visit them. It's a lot of old retired guys and they go in there. Some of them are married, some of them are widowed, some of them are alone, but they go in there and they work with power tools, you know, and they're making bird houses and they're building whatever. And, you know, sometimes guys aren't so comfortable, you know, necessarily talking face to face, but they like working side by side, you know,

and that's how they can find some belonging and some community and eventually some conversation. And so these men's sheds, I think it's a really interesting program. And there are a number of these, not just men's sheds, but there are, you know, birding societies and walking groups and knitting circles. You know, they're like, the government is now trying to sort of step in and create this community that we've lost. Yeah. It's, it's really interesting to me how we've gotten really far away. And we, from what we, what we used to work really well with is a tribal society. You know, we formed tribes. Men would go out and do men's stuff together.

Women would socialize and do gatherer stuff. And men would go do hunter stuff. And that really works for us. And even a lot of the married men that I'm friends with, they really suffer from a loneliness. And they don't really get it until they hang out with other guys and like, oh, hey, other dudes. This is fun. Yeah, this is fun. We can do stuff and you need that balance. I think one of the lessons of my book is that we actually really need to take loneliness more seriously and we need to take heartbreak more seriously because our health will be imperiled if we don't take heartbreak more seriously because, you know,

our health will be imperiled if we don't. And, um, you know, other people in our lives will feel isolated, you know, if we're separate from them. So, um, you know, take it seriously, do what you need to do to feel better, to get out there, um, to have these authentic connections, uh, and then to find some purpose, you know, and some meaning from your heartbreak that can help you move on and ideally can help others as well. There you go. Anything more you want to touch on or tease out on the book before we go?

You know, I think we really covered a lot. And I would just really encourage people also don't forget nature. Don't forget beauty. Don't forget beauty. Don't forget art. And it's a surprising, unexpected heartbreak here. Yeah. And in getting out in the world too, one of the things I always used to do when I was in California, whenever my problems would get so big and it was just a nightmare mess, I would go down to the ocean and sit on the beach and just listen to the lapping of the waves. Sometimes I'd go out to Avalon and Catalina Island, but just sit on the beach. Sometimes I'd go out there at Avalon like 2 or 3 in the morning. Yeah, go to your favorite places.

Absolutely. Go to the places that make you feel a little bit calmer, a little bit more grounded, and also remind you that your personal pain, your personal problems aren't the only thing in the world. And that's really healthy to sometimes feel like a little speck of sand in the universe. Exactly. You went right where I was going. The awe of it, you know, sitting and watching, you know, seeing the little sand things come up on the beach. And you listen to the waves and you're like, these waves have been lapping here for eons of time. There's a million probably humans or billions of humans that have set foot on this beach with the same stupid sandhill of problems and all that sort of good stuff. And the awe of that and just thinking about your place in the universe or looking up the stars and you think about how big this universe is and how silly your little pile of problems.

And I would get done after sitting at the beach for an hour or two walking through the sand. I would get done and be like, oh, my problems aren't that bad. Exactly. And then you sleep better. And all of a sudden, it's better, right? Once you get that vitamin D that you healthy need to get that fresh oxygen, exercise,

a little fresh air. And you know, one good other point to this for people that go through this is you get out of your environment because your environment puts those ghosts in your head of everybody and drives you mad. So there you go. There you go. I think we figured it out.

There you go. We got it down. All right. Well, thank you very much for coming on the show. We certainly appreciate it. Florence. Thank you very much. You bet. It's been a pleasure. There you go. I think we figured it out. There you go. We got it down. All right. Well, thank you very much for coming on the show. We certainly appreciate it, Florence. Thank you very much. You bet.

It's been a pleasure. Thanks, Chris. There you go. And give us your plugs one more time before we go out so people can look you up on the interwebs. Sure. It's FlorenceWilliams.com, and the book is Heartbreak, a Personal and Scientific Journey. There you guys go.

It came out February 1st, 2022, so you can go ahead and order it up. Go to all of our things on YouTube.com, Force S. Chris Voss, Goodreads.com, Force S. Chris Voss, all of our groups on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, all those different places. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time.