Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - Healing Loneliness Through Self-Connection with Simone Heng

Episode Date: April 29, 2024

Simone Heng, author of 'Let's Talk About Loneliness,' shares her wisdom on recognizing and combatting loneliness in today's society. From identifying symptoms to navigating major life transitions, Simone provides invaluable insights into fostering meaningful connections that truly nourish the soul. Tune in for a dose of oxytocin and the tools to enrich your life with authentic connection.  To view full show notes, more information on our guests, resources mentioned in the episode, discount codes, transcripts, and more, visit https://drmindypelz.com/ep233 Simone Heng is a human connection specialist and former international broadcaster for, among others, Virgin Radio Dubai, HBO Asia, and CNBC. She is one of the youngest female Certified Speaking Professionals in the world. With over fifteen years of experience as a communicator on air, on stage, and one-on-one in different countries, connection has always been her life's work. Check out our fasting membership at resetacademy.drmindypelz.com. Please note our medical disclaimer.

On this episode of the Resetter podcast, I bring you Simone Heng. Now, roll up your sleeves, pull up a chair, grab a cup of coffee or a cup of tea because you are about to hear an incredible discussion on the power of human connection. And this is something that I have really been wanting to bring to you all because of the hormone oxytocin. So much of what I teach is about balancing hormones. And those of you who have read my books know that at the top of the hormonal hierarchy, the master hormone, that balances all hormones is oxytocin. And the best way to get oxytocin is through human connection. And so I have been talking about this in my reset academy. I have shared this on podcasts that one of the things we have to look at

when we are wanting to lose weight, when we are wanting to bring our sex hormones back into balance, is where are the relationships in our life? And this isn't just our intimate relationships, but this is also the relationship to yourself. So I have been thinking about this for several years now and wanting to bring a really good episode to you all on how we can create deeper connection in our life. And then I met Simone. And we instantly hit it off and just, I just loved her energy. She was like literally within the first five minutes of talking to me. She asked me what my three favorite books were. And I was like, oh my gosh, I love books. Let me tell you. And we ended up in this very deep, incredible connecting conversation. She wrote a book called Let's Talk About Loneliness.

and I think it's a lot of what we're suffering with right now in humanity are the things that are staying in silence. And loneliness is one of them. And I think there's a lot of shame around when we feel lonely. I think there's a lot of we don't know our door out of loneliness. I think we don't know how to measure loneliness. And what's going to happen in this conversation is Simone is going to answer all of that. She is going to tell you what the symptoms are of loneliness.

loneliness and it's going to blow your mind. She's going to talk. I asked her to really talk about what happens when we have big life changes like our kids leave the home or we leave a job or we leave a long-term relationship and loneliness kicks in. What do we do in those situations? We talked about how do you find good quality connections? Like how do you know if the people in your life are actually filling you with oxytocin, you know? we have a lot of people that I know that are constantly surrounded by people are some of the loneliest people I know because those relationships are not the depth of what their soul craves. If you're looking for more oxytocin, if you're looking to create better relationships

in your life, if you're looking to connect to yourself and how do you deepen your love for yourself, this is the conversation for you. Welcome to the Resetter podcast. This podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself again. If you have a passion for learning, if you're looking to be in control of your health and take your power back, this is the podcast for you. So I've been wanting to bring this topic of loneliness and really bring it to the surface so we can have a really good conversation about it. And so I'm so happy that finally we have connected our schedules and that you're here. So welcome. Thank you. much. And your hair looks bombed, by the way. This is my first time interacting with Mindy

when it's Bob. It's amazing. It's so good to be here. Thank you. So here's something that I've been thinking deeply about when it comes to human connection. And this really started during COVID. I just, like many people, sat like flabbergasted as to isolation and what that meant to our health. And since then, I have spent a lot of time talking when I have my clinic, talking to patients about how they felt about that process. I know how my parents, my 80-year-old parents' health really suffered from the lack of communication. And I feel like then we opened up. We all came into the world, and we still haven't addressed this major issue around how important human connection is for us. So I think the best place to start this conversation is really at like the pain point.

Like how do you know if you are disconnected? Because loneliness is sneaky and it doesn't give you really clear symptoms. And in your book, you talk about some that actually blew me away. Yeah, it's so interesting because we know the lonely brain is actually not rational. So how do you know whether you're lonely or you're going through some other symptoms? So here are some things you can look for. Firstly, is lack of good quality sleep. So there is this amazing researcher called Dr. Louise Hawkeley.

She actually studies micro-awakening's in the sleep as a marker of if you have disconnected. So if you had, you know, everyone in the pandemic was like saying, I am having vivid dreams and I am waking up in the middle of night. Yes, it's to do with the stress of the uncertainty, but it could also be long-term from the loneliness. And that's to do with how we evolved as early humans in tribes. So obviously we became dominant of all the species because of our ability to care for each other and work in numbers and that kept us safe. But imagine our worst nightmares to be cast out because we would be killed by Sabretooth Tiger or a foreign tribe in minutes. What would actually happen then is a fight-of-flight response.

And what's really interesting when we lived in those tribes is that other people in the tribe would take turns to watch while we slept. So when we were cast out of that tribe, we're sleeping in the tree, waking up every five minutes to make sure we're not under threat. That brain still sits in us. So if that less than good quality sleep is starting to happen, it's a great first indicator. Another fantastic indicator of chronic loneliness is holding your friends to a higher standard than is reasonable. And for me, this is my first alarm. for example, I'm a single, just about to be 40-year-old woman who lives alone. So I, and all of my girlfriends, I'm auntie to all their kids and they all have children

and they're married. And sometimes stuff comes up with the kids, you know, and I'm always, my rational response is to be like, of course, Auntie Simone will see the kids later. But the lonely brain response is actually to hold that friend to higher standard than it's reasonable. So the lonely brain will give you thoughts like, well, they're not a good. friend, cut them off. It's irrational thoughts. And I'll actually know that I'm a bit disconnected when I'll get those thoughts because the lonely brain is not rational. Yeah. So with you, so exactly, Dr. James Cohn

talks about this a bit on my YouTube, exactly at that point when you should be more social reaching out to people. Longliness causes a spiral. Right. Right. So it makes you cognitively slower, which means you're socially more awkward. Yes. So you go to that party and your brain's not as quick. don't have the wit that maybe you usually have. You're not as socially agile. So a lot of us saw this after the pandemic. So then you can't make more friends just at the point where you need more friends. And I think that that's what everyone needs to know more about with loneliness. It's like you're not going crazy. This is the self-preservation cycle, right? Another thing that we'll find with loneliness is you become socially awkward in that you don't interpret social cues as well. So we saw after

the pandemic, you know, people having outbursts and offers Zooms, just that being out of practice, but also we're post-pandemic now. People are still experiencing this. It hasn't changed. And with Gen Z specifically, and I know many of your audience are the mothers of Gen Z's, all the aunties of Gen Zs or whatever. Yeah. We're seeing a whole slew right now of digital app inventions that have been devised to tackle the issue of that Gen Z population that was in those formative social years. You know, when you were at high school, Mindy, let's cast our mind back the two of us, where you were finding out who you were in juxtaposition to the people around you. So Dr. Minnie found out she was sporty because she didn't like hanging out with the drama kids, you know.

I found out I wasn't the most athletic, you know, but we were finding out our self through social interaction. Now, let's imagine that generation had two and a half, three years of that just removed. And then we're asking them to go back in and integrate. So they're doing a double job now. I've got to find out who I am. And then I've also got to be able to socialize. So I'll see on my TikTok, there's just mass comments about I have or videos about social anxiety. Yes, I don't doubt that many of them have social anxiety because imagine you don't have,

it's not like us, the skills atrophy. you don't even have the social tools to get back in the game. That is hugely anxiety-inducing when you're lonely and you really want friends. And I really feel for that generation globally. In the global Met and Gallup study, there's only 1% separating how lonely they feel from my mother's generation who's in their 80s. But if we look at North America and we look at Australia specifically, where I grew up, Gen Z are the loneliest of all generation.

So in specific markets, that is what all of us in the space are attributing that to, because it's, yeah, it's like telling someone go fend for yourself and not giving them any of the skills. So what does connection look like? Because one of the things that I found interesting about your book that I really, really loved was you start off with connection to self. and I thought, oh, thank you, because I think that it's really, at least in the old day, the old days before the pandemic, I, you know, I think if I was lonely, I would call somebody and I would be like, hey, let's go do something. And I would look at that as connection. But what I've learned now in my 54th year here on this planet is that as I've gotten to know myself better, as I've turned within and connected to myself better, my relationship. are changing and the depth of relationship is changing. So talk about what connection looks like

and can we start off with self-connection. And is that the place to start? It seems like it would be the most logical place to start. But what are the skill sets we have even to connect? And I always am really mindful when I talk to what I know is an audience of busy working mothers who are juggling when I talk about self-connection because people assume that means I need self-care time or time alone. So firstly, I define self-connection as an awareness of one's own experience in any given moment. It's only through self-connection that you could identify the difference between is my friend, not being a good friend, or am I lonely, right? It's that deep relationship to be able to pull the fibers apart, right, from the ball of candy floss. Like, let's

pull those fibers apart. So I want to say, firstly, I believe self-connection before all, or all of the other types of connection, which hopefully we'll talk about later, is the most important, followed by intimate connection. That's your five closest people you can be truly, deeply seen by and share your existential crisis and so forth. But guess what? You can't make or maintain that intimate circle unless there is a level of knowing and understanding what state you're in at any given time because in the environment we're living in where our email is pinging off and our phone is pinging off and we've also got our existing trauma which I share a lot on mine in the book. There is so many things that are in our current environment that take us away from that connection

to self and we're living disembodied right because we're living in these like you and I right now connecting digitally. So self-connection absolutely needs to happen and whether that is two to five minutes before just breathing, before you're dealing with your family, your intimates for people who live in a household with their family are normally those five people that you cohabitate with. It is the game changer in terms of maintaining beautiful human connections from interfacing with the barista at Starbucks to the road rage incident that's going to happen when you're pulling up at the lights on the way home. Like if there's that checking in of the awareness, can avoid the fight-of-flight mode that plagues us.

That is also caused by loneliness. Loneliness also causes a fight-of-flight response. So, okay, I want to pause with you right there because I think this is a really interesting point because until I read your book, I always thought, if you're lonely, go find somebody to talk to. And it's like go out and seek friendships and communities. Literally, that's the way I always looked at it until I read your book. And then when I read this part about self-connection, I started thinking about.

my own journey in the last couple of years and I've been really since I left my practice, which was a very difficult thing to do where I was surrounded by people, hundreds of people every week. And then I came home and I was sitting with myself and doing all my work with me and a computer screen. And I went into deep grief. And what I learned in that moment was that the deep grief wasn't coming because I didn't have as much human interaction. It was that the human interaction that I had had for so many years acted like a buffer that prevented me from truly knowing who I am and what I wanted and what I was here to do and to really get to know myself. And so I've been on this incredible discovery to find that person. So when I think about

self-connection, I think about the pause that you talk about, and then I think about women who, like me, who are people-pleasers, or women who are always doing something for everybody else that just want to give, give, because we've been taught, that makes us feel good if we can make everybody around us happy. But in that moment, we don't know ourselves. We don't, you can be the busiest person, the most, have the life of the party. And when the party shuts down, you don't know yourself. That was me. So talk to that person because that was a real aha I had this year is that I really didn't know me. So I hear from women a lot, particularly those going through divorces and some of my male friends going through divorces, that the period of time

where the children are young and they're working is a complete hijacking of the self. Like there is not bandwidth to sit down and have the green juice and meditate. the part like what is everyone talking about right and it almost guilts them that's right and i and i do think for someone like me it is a luxury that i have this time i have other cognitive loads like my mother who's ill i do want to speak into this idea of the connection that you felt was actually distracting because it's been five years since i left broadcasting and my last broadcasting job was very toxic and that toxicity triggered a lot of my childhood issues so I was in fight or flight perpetually and I didn't realize it for about 20 years of being a broadcaster.

That industry did not fit me. So I was constantly back in a childhood loop of trying to get approval and I didn't have any connection to myself. I had no semantic connection either. So if we look at self-connection as also the fusing of that mind, body and spirit, right? I was completely, I had a hateful relationship with my body. I had completely thrown out my intellect, which is not. now the vehicle with which I work with. And I think so many of us live in situations where we are outside of our bodies. Like forget connecting within myself. I am in flight to flight

chronically and I am outside of my body. And I think we have to put things into our days, even small, I like to put calendar reminders to take breaks and check in because it ends up destroying relationships. We're irritable. We're short with people. We're what I call. Agitato. It's a word I made up to make agitation sound a bit nicer. Agitato. It's like an Italian drink version of agitated. I'm agitato right now. Give me a musli bar. Tell me to sit down, have a breather. And in the way that we're living, I feel like in the way we currently operate, the world is almost weighted against us to be in a fight-of-flight mode. And this is how loneliness comes in. Even if you're watching this or listening to this and you think,

I am, Simone, I am not lonely. Okay, let me just add another layer to this. Remember I said our worst nightmare on the tribe is to be cast out of the tribe. So then within those spaces out in the savannahed by ourselves, the body sends an alarm. You're alone. You're going to die soon. You're alone. You're alone. You're alone. So you go into that fight-to-flight state with all the cortisol, with, you know, no epinephrine. All of that stuff is going through you.

And on an incidental level for most people, that's just the alarm to go back out and connect exactly what you were saying. Like, it's logical. I'm a bit lonely. I need to phone a friend. But the state of modernity that we're living in means people are living in that chronic fight or flight all the time because our cities have become planned differently. We're remote or hybrid working. We had a pandemic. Everything is stacked against us. And so that low level anxiety, that low level fight or flight is now through us chronically, which ends up destroying our immunity and shortening our lifespan, which is.

is why you hear, you know, Julianne Holt-Lunds' dad's stat, she endorsed my book, she is the lady who discovered it's more dangerous to be lonely than smoking 15 cigarettes a day and alcohol use disorder or obesity. So that is because of that low-level fight. And people don't know why. They're like, well, why? Why is that? That is what's happening. It's not just a mental health thing. It's a physical health thing too. I saw that too in the book and I was like, oh, because I'm a health stat fanatic. And I was like, isn't this interesting? Because right now, I don't know if you've noticed on social media, there's a big trend to bash alcohol. And I'm not saying that like alcohol is a health food in any way, shape, or form. I'm just saying we have bigger fish to fry.

And we have to look at other habits that are destroying people. And if you take, especially a menopausal woman who's really struggling with depression and anxiety, and you take her glass away, a wine away from her. Now you have like a literally like a suicidal woman. So I this is why I like going to the deeper root issue that is causing poor health. And so what I hear not only in that statistic and in what you say is that loneliness begins by learning how to connect to yourself. Yeah. That is revel. That is like I've never heard that when it comes to loneliness. and I really want to point this out to the listeners because what my old style of functioning when I was lonely was to call about a thousand friends.

The year after I closed my clinic was also the year my second child had left the house. So I was an empty nester and I had closed my clinic. So like talk about lonely. And so I would be calling people all the time, but it felt unquenchable. It felt like I could never get a. enough people to talk to to help this feeling inside of me. And one day my therapist said to me, what if you were your favorite person? Like, what if the best thing you could do was hang out with you and just get to know you?

And that became a game changer to me. And once I started to really go, what do I need to do for my mind? Who do I need to show up for myself so I want to hang out with me? all of a sudden I did truly go, hey, I don't mind being alone because it's just me and me and I love me. And I noticed that my intimate relationships, as you call it, became deeper and they became more satisfying. Oh, my gosh. So talk about that. And delicious.

Okay, I want to also point out how delicious the conversations that Dr. Minnie has on this podcast up, because they are very big clues for the quality of the type. of conversation that makes us feel seen and makes us less lonely. So I'm going to give you an example of why a lot of these apps that are being created to solve loneliness, things like there's an app called Times Left, algorithmically put six strangers together to go to dinner, Dr. Mindy, right? Problem is, at the end of it, the journalist reviewing the exercise was like, oh, all the rest of the people were swapping phone numbers to meet again.

And I was like, but maybe there are five other people out there that are better than these people. So these apps allow us to continue to make exponential shallow connection. And therefore, with shallow connection, we don't have those moments of this conversation is delicious. Let's go there. We don't have that level of intimacy that is a salve for loneliness. And when you go shallow and wide, you don't fully feel seen. So those five, after self-connection, the five intimate connections are very important. The second thing I want to point out, for those of you who don't feel lonely listening to this, but you want to show up for lonely people in your life. We all know when we scroll our WhatsApp which one of our friends likes to self-isolate, which one of our friends

we don't hear from unless we reach out. They're kind of introverted. The worst thing that you can say to these people during their pain of loneliness is, hey, just go out and make friends, go and do volunteer work, go out and connect. Similar to, you know, similar to depression. Like, those comments make them feel how little you understand and the cognitive dissonance between. between you. So actually, it should be again about listening, making them feel heard and gentle nudges, right? Because the lonely brain will spiral and further isolate. And lastly, the idea of sitting with ourselves. So self-connection is the subject of my second book, although we may usurp with another, we're in discussion right now. But I have written the first

draft. So one of the chapters is all about sitting with your discomfort, the discomfort of sitting with yourself. And in an era where the young people in our life are fumbling to find their own identity. And then we have bombardment from all these forms of media, which is a great blessing. But at the same time, if you don't have self-connection, how that can also hijack you. There's also emotional trauma. There are all these things that are uncomfortable, but that self-connection will be the gift that brings you through. through till the end of your life and it will, like you said, change the quality depth and the filtering process. If I look back to entertainment industry, Simone, which is like another human,

right, a different iteration of me. And the lack of self-connection meant how I was choosing to spend my time with people that should have just been filtered. If I'd had self-connection, I would have known, honey, these are your issues. That's why you're a true. attracted to these people. This is why you feel more alone. It's a vicious cycle. Get out of it, you know, but you don't have that without the self-connection. Yes. Oh, God. I, so I, the only, I'm hearing your words so differently because then perhaps I would have heard him a year or two ago, because I have just landed in this place of really feeling finally for the first time in my life connected to me. And so what I'm noticing,

like I said in that, is I'm becoming less tolerant of people who are operating from their traumas, people who are needing me to show up a certain way, people who have an ulterior agenda when it comes to connecting to me. I'm like all, it's like a bullshit detector that all of a sudden got turned on and I was like, oh, you're not good for me. No, this relationship's not good for me. And I didn't see it before. I didn't see it before. So one of the things just to help the audience that I really want to talk about before we move on to these intimate connections is one of the things I've struggled with, and this is just full transparency, is if I'm going to sit with me, then I'm going to have to listen to what goes on up in the mind. And a lot of times, I don't want to hear the bullshit that my mind is telling me. And so sitting became torturous.

I'll never forget the first time I laid in one of those flotation tanks where it's a sensory deprivation tank. I thought that might be a good idea to test that out. And when the lights went off and the sound went away, I was like, I'm going to lie here with nothing other than my thoughts for an hour. I may go crazy. And so I started to really unpack what do I do with those thoughts that make me crazy. and one of the things I found really worked for me was walking.

If I had a pattern of thought that wasn't working, just go for a walk, like move, and it was almost like the thoughts that didn't serve me just started to like leak out and move away and a calmer thought that came in. Another tool that I found was Transcendental Meditation, where I actually had a mantra that I could focus on, and then those thoughts could kind of come up and out. Breathwork, all kinds of breathwork, became incredibly helpful to do. just hear better thoughts inside my head so I wanted to sit with me. Now, those are the only three I know, but help the person who's like, this sounds beautiful, but you don't know what goes on up in

my head. Or this sounds amazing, but, you know, I had her trauma as a child, and when I sit still, that trauma really, you know, rears its ugly head. How do we give that person a toolbox to self-connect? And so firstly, thank you so much for sharing. Secondly, I understand I'm going to predicate what I'm about to say that, you know, some resources are more expensive than others. The walk is free, but the one that really moved me and I talk extensively about my trauma in the book, the one that really moved the needle for me is talk therapy. It doesn't work for everyone.

I'm a talker. I speak for a living. I have like the whole creola box of colors for every word I want to use. use, you know. And I wanted to say the first time I tried the sensory deprivation pod, it was the same for me. But now I'm so bad that I'm craving to go back in it because I'm like you. There's, you know, now I'm like, yeah, give it to me. So the point of that is be compassionate with yourself. It takes time. And I really want to talk to you as someone who's a little bit older than me, big sister. I'm turning 40 this year. And my tolerance level for

or BS has tanked. Did that happen for you a bit later? Do you think because of the people pleasing? Yeah. Yeah. And so you bring up a really interesting point because, and this is the topic of my next book, which is after 40, I call it the neurochemical armor starts to come down. And the neurochemical armor looks like you start losing first progesterone.

And with progesterone, she brings GABA. And so GABA is a calmer and progesterone is a calmer. So as she goes away, all of a sudden, irritability. People say the wrong thing. I mean, this is where intersection of your work and my work would be really interesting to create like a course or something like that. Because if you were already a lonely person and you already, people already agitated you, which I'm not saying that's you, when progesterone goes away and takes GABA with her,

you are easily agitated and irritated. and the littlest things will just set you off. But that's not the only one. Estrogen, as she starts to go away in your 40s, she actually stimulates serotonin, dopamine, acetycholine, oxytocin, which is the connection hormone, BDNF. So when she goes away, she takes her gang with her. I call it the girl gang.

No. She takes the girl gang with her. So as you're going through your 40s, you're losing 10 neurochemicals. But here's why work like yours and mine is so important. If you understand that at 40, you can start to do the work we're talking about right now. You can start to find that connection to yourself. You can start to work on your traumas.

You can clean up your lifestyle because if you do, then it's incredible because I can tell you at 54, I am like, I don't give a fuck anymore. about what anybody thinks of me. Like I am, and I say things, sometimes I blurt things out, and I'm like, huh, I would have never said that in my 30s. And that's the neurochemical armor shedding. And that's why these kind of conversations are so important because we need to step into another toolbox.

Absolutely. This is like when I was, I remember learning about, you know, grumpy old men, how like, be careful of that teacher, he's cantankerous. And that was because they were losing testosterone. and no one ever talks about it in terms of women. And so I think that this is going to be life-changing. And also, one of the things that happened when we launched my book was Hayhouse and I, we did something to try and get, because I live in Asia,

but more people where Hayhouse has normally historically been dominant in markets like Australia where I grew up, but the US and the UK. And so a whole bunch of new women came onto my email list, but a large grouping of them, because we were trying to solve the loneliness issue, right? The way I would get the replies, the angry replies on my email list if I did a blast out, I knew they were all to do with the lonely brain. I got one the other day from a guy that said, I'm 50. This is, by the way, these phrases are great identifiers if you're lonely. Okay. A guy writes back on the email list and says, Simone, remove me off your email list. I'm 50. I'm a

loss cause. No book or anything will ever help me. And my, my phrase, when I was cleaning my mom's hoard after she became paralyzed and I was alone was, there is no other 29 year old with a father in the grave and a mother in a wheelchair. And I used that statement to stop me going out. So if this is, if this is clinging off and a lot of these people that we, that we got to know and added to the list were in that metapausal demographic, like that age bracket. And so now you're, you're breathing life into something that I've, been seeing on an incidental level through the emails that are coming through, like really agitato, very agitato, but that totally makes sense. If your hormones are going haywire and you're lonely,

it's stacked against you. Yeah. And this is why conversations like this is really important, because what I'm trying to help women is to feel seen and to feel heard. And what typically happens to women is that when we are feeling lonely or we're feeling lonely, or we're feeling, like we something is wrong with us we didn't do something right is that we turn on ourselves i do believe that's a that's a typical difference between a man and a woman a man will turn outwards and blame you know it's that dude is it's his problem and and pushed away whereas a woman will internalize it and i don't know if you know this statistic but it's one that motivates all my writing and all my teachings and that is that the most common time for a woman to commit suicide is between the decade or the

the years between 45 and 55. And I strongly feel because we have this confluence of the neurochemical armor coming down. We have children leaving the home. We have marriages ending. We have lives changing. And what's happening is we don't understand ourselves. So we assume something's wrong with us. And what I love about what you bring to the table in this self-connection is there's our opportunity. There's our work. Is when, we hit that moment and the brain isn't performing and telling us the things we want to hear, how do we start to connect deeper to ourselves? It's just like when my therapist said, what if you were your favorite person? Like, I really sat with that for a long time. Like,

why am I not my favorite person? If I'm not my favorite person, why would I want somebody else to hang out with me? What do I need to do to become my favorite person? And that, question led me to so much healing. So I'm really, it's important we give language to this so that women stop turning on themselves. Absolutely. And let's add to that if the woman has a specific trauma, right? So it's, it's, yeah, that also feeds in again. I mean, I'm just, my particular issues too, it's for years up until I graduated from weekly therapy to once in a while therapy, was that everything I did was because I'm a loathsome person. It's because there's something wrong with me,

added to that layer that women do this culturally anyway. And I think that stat about female suicide, it's so interesting as I've started to get older, how there's an element of invisibility, the way that there wasn't in the 20s and 30s. So this idea of being seen, the human need for significance to have your presence acknowledged, and all of a sudden you've given everything to your children.

So right now, my friends are in the stage where they've had the second kid, so two kids under six or seven, they are run off their feet, and they know, and they'll verbally say to me, they're like, so when we see you gallivanting around the world and all this stuff, they're like, I'm not going to be able to do this for like 15 more years minimum. And they know, and they know. And so then you can imagine, like when you left the clinic, like the vacuum that happens when that leaves.

And with my mom, it showed up, and there's a chapter on this in the book, it showed up with hoarding disorder. So my dad passed away. She became a widow at the same time that I went to live overseas, and my sister moved out. And my sister had her own partner. And what she did was she filled the space in the house with things, literally to fill the vacuum of loneliness. It literally like when you see on those TV shows, you know, we shouldn't call it hoarders. It's now in the manual of mental health disorder. So it's actually called hoarding disorder.

And individuals who are lonely, there seems to be a correlation between that and hoarding disorder as well. So it's a form of actually, yeah, the psychiatrist I interviewed said it's actually related to OCD. So it's a form of wanting control. So it's like if I have all this stuff and I have to clean one thing, that means I'm obligated to clean all of it. And then it's too overwhelming. so it stays there. Everything stays there. So it's fascinating, but it's also, these are real things that are happening as women become widows or go through divorces or go through that time in their life where the children leave. It's a huge vacuum. And society doesn't have a very good re-entry

back into society post-children, post-divorce. I have a lot of friends who have divorced and their kids are up and out of the house now. And these are some of the best mothers I know. Like they were like the best, like, I couldn't even hold a candle to the type of mother that they were. And they did such an incredible job. And now their children's launched and their marriage has ended. And now what do they do? How do they get back into the workforce? Because their work has been their child for 20-some years. And how do they start dating again? I had a really interesting conversation with a friend the other day where she was talking about what it feels like to think about being intimate with a man again and how that would feel exposing her body, her 50-some-year-old body to, you know, what does that feel

like? So that's why I'm so obsessed with helping women through this perimenopause and menopausal transition because neurochemically things are changing. But society doesn't have a good structure to be able to support us through that process. And no one's talking about it. And we're like and no one's talking about it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean that was the one that the one, my friend who just recently said to me, oh, I think about that a lot with like going back out to dating again like what my body feels like and and my aging body and how sexy it is. And my brain, you know, as a woman who's been married forever was like, my God, I never even think about that, but that's because I've been with the same man for almost 30 years.

So it's really interesting that when we vocalize that, and then there's something about just releasing it and talking about it and coming up with collective solutions around it, which is why I wanted to start this conversation with this self-connection, because my thought would be in that scenario, your work becomes self-connection. Like that becomes, if you are resonating with what we're saying, your work becomes fall in love with yourself. And that needs to be the first step into a more connected life. Would you agree or disagree with that? I could not agree more. And I want to say, number one, be compassionate to yourself. But number two, expect what Stephen Bartlett calls the no man's land when you start a business. But it's the same with self-connection.

The first six to 12 months when you start it, you're going to feel like you've churned the porridge in one. direction and now and so the first six to 12 months will be messy but stick with it because after when you when you start to break down and learn who you are and have tools to connect with yourself on almost like an on-demand level like my therapist taught me any time that I'm feeling triggered inflamed like or just a little bit down what are the healthy things that you can go to to lift your moods I mean this is the most simple tool but if you've been raising kids for 30 years. When would you even get time to think about? Like, you're not got time to listen to a two-hour podcast to get that one nugget to then, you know, you're like, like,

I'm not talking about your podcast, Dr. Media. I'm talking about other people's, but you don't. You're like, you're on the school run for 15 years. When are you like, you know, people are in the back? I ride, I'm like the best auntie. I ride with all. And my girlfriends, my niece is in the back, like, Mom, Mom, Mom. I mean, you can't listen to a. podcast, I forget it. So if by luck we've been able to pierce through the, you know, the post-marriage kids part of your journey, and you do get this nugget now that you have time to listen to stuff, be compassionate. And that process of finding that thing that lifts you when you are in a place of emotional crisis during that first to six to 12 months can be game-changing.

Like, is it a, is it a bulk in cozy up with your dog? Is it the perfect cup of cup of coffee and your favorite cafe, even if you're alone where you get to look out and watch people on the street, just find a toolbox, two to three things. And I still use them to this day. I was just in Perth visiting my family. It's the ground zero of my trauma. And my mom for the first time couldn't say my name. So she recognizes me, but the disease has now stopped her from, you know, I'm like, Mama, who is this? And she can't get the words out. Thank you. I feel better now. But you can imagine that time, I do the Asian thing and I keep it strong. Oh, yeah.

Because she's not cognitive. So it will freak her out if she sees me like this and I contain it. But I know within the next 24 hours after that, when I've been triggered, I need to be doing a walk in nature, my favorite meal, something that is just going to lift me and give me a moment to process what I've been through in that moment. I think it's really important. It's really important. Yeah, and I hope people are feeling hurt in this and understanding that there are ways out and that we all experience it.

I think on the other side of this conversation that's really interesting is that a lot of times we pick friendships and connections that are situational. And when in parenthood, this really happens because I used to call it, I used to call it mommy dating. I would tell my husband, I'm like, I need some mommy friends. I'm going to the park with our kids and I'm going to go mommy dating and find a mom that's got

kids the same age as our kids. And there's a constant, like, looking for a connection of somebody who's in that same time of life. Then you find that connection. And then as you grow and things change, you realize that they were kind of a situational person. And like they were sort of not everybody. And some of my closest friends who we've raised our kids together,

I just want to say they may be listening to this podcast. And not you, just so they know. But there are certain friendships that I, as our kids grew, I had to make a conscious moment and say, you know what, that was a situational friend. That wasn't a soul-filling friend. And it was a great friend at a great time of a great time of my life, but it's not the person that's going to make me feel connected.

So I think a lot of women are going through that, and it leaves me with this question to you, which is, how do you know a connection should be an intimate connection? Like, how is somebody worthy of coming into your intimate? And how are they worthy of your vulnerability, as Brené Brown says. I love this question. So the big researchers on this say, firstly, in numbers about five. So don't let social media fool you that your friends, this is a thousand people, okay? It's five. And they're characterized normally by the person you can call in an existential crisis, somebody that you would be able to ask for money if you were in a bind,

someone who would bring you to the hospital if you were ill and you needed to call them. Now, the problem is one in three Americans feel they don't have these people, right? We don't have the stats. Now, we don't have the stats for the rest of the world, but for me, the research geek, I'm approximating America, you're not alone. This is not, this is not, this is a condition of modernity. This is not just North America. But that's, you think about who's in your life where there's that depth. I'm telling you, it's not many, it's not many people. So yeah, yeah, it's not many people. Yeah. So what do you do if you don't have that? What if you are like listening to this and you're like, yeah, I don't have that. Like that's not. So you start

with the gateway to deeper connection, which I call micro connections. Okay. So these are those, this was the mum in the school yard where you stood over the fence at Sports Day and you both watched the kids run together and she makes a really cool funny comment and you're like, you're cool. Or she says, that male teacher over there, don't you think he's pretty fit? Don't you think he's pretty hot? And you just love and you begin that. Now, that should, and it might not be situational, but that is a great place to start.

And there's a lot of uninformed stuff on. Instagram about small talk and you know we don't want but what we know now because Gen Z doesn't have small talk skills which is why they're so lonely we need this as the vehicle to get deeper if you can't build rapport you're you're gonna be really hard hard pressed to build something deeper and then what happens is something called social penetration theory and that is because of that cave person wiring us to connect you just put two humans who have rapport established so you like each other you know it's not the mum at the playground you don't

to be friends with. It's like you have rapport. You will naturally disclose like a ping pong match, a tennis match. You know, you'll tell a story about your life. She'll be wired to tell a story about her life and it will naturally go deeper. This is how we are actually wired as humans to build connection. We are not wired to do this all day long to get to. Now can I tell you my existential crisis and cry down the phone to you? It does. There is some mediation of this, but this is not the destination. This is the way station. And we've got to keep that top of mind.

I want to talk about the ping pong like approach to conversations because I have said this so many times that if I sit with somebody who doesn't understand a conversation is like playing ping pong, I ask you, I make a comment. you ask me, you make a comment. If I'm with somebody who doesn't get that, and I've used that exact thing before, I'm like, it's like a ping pong game. You're just constantly going. That's to me the richest conversations. But I'm out.

Like, I've gone to lunches before, like with friends, and I, for two hours, and I have left and realized they didn't ask me one thing about me. And in those moments, I'm like, I'm out because I want somebody, where there is a give and take, where there's this reciprocity where I, you know, I'm vulnerable, you're vulnerable, and that is quality connection. And if I'm the only one being vulnerable and you're not being vulnerable, we got a problem, or vice versa. So thank you for saying the ping pong

because I feel like it's like conversation and connection should feel like playing ping pong. And what's there are so many people today that have particularly Genzi who've never felt that because everything is mediated by this. And when you have 24 hours to formulate a response, how can you ping pong? You're like, yeah, right? But I would say I just found out by credible author David Brooks, who just wrote a book called How to Know People. Do you know that only one third of the population ask questions? That's crazy.

So I trained so many doctors in my office. I think in, you know, the 25 years I was in practice, I had like 25 doctors come in that I trained. And the number one thing I would always say is that if you want to make somebody feel good, like when a new patient comes in and you want to create rapport, how you create rapport is you ask them questions about themselves because everybody likes to talk about themselves. So the fact that people don't know that. But we live in quite a narcissistic world. And my dad was an immigrant shopkeeper. So everything I learned really to connect was watching him in the back of that cubicle.

serve these, you know, European, Aussie customers, people that he had to build rapport with that not necessarily they came from the same context. And I would watch him ask those questions, and it just became why. So I think what we can take away from this is don't think you're being offensive if you're naturally curious. As long as the questions you're asking are around our basic physiological needs, and Maslow had the pyramid. So if you're looking at clothing, food, water, shelter, and, you know, these are very innocuous questions in a very polarized, triggered world right now that they're pretty same. You know, people who, you know, talk about clothing, people are like, oh, you have a pixie cart. I've always wanted to have a pixie cut. Have you

found it's hard to style? I mean, you're not going to offend anyone with this. These are great entry-level rapport building questions that masterful human connectors like a Dr. Middy do naturally, But we now have to teach the population. And that's why I do the work that I do. And I'm on the TikTok and I'm on the LinkedIn and I'm doing this. Well, I reckon it's our next existential crisis after climate change. We survive climate change. This, for me, because of how it damages our health loneliness and therefore the cost to governments,

this is why all the governments are mobilizing on this. And with AI, there's a whole bunch of other implications that probably we, we don't have time to talk about today, but where we can see things are projected to going, it's really important that people learn human connection skills. So that actually leads me to a question I had, which is the connection we're making on social media. Is that creating a, like I have positive connections on social media. Like I send funny reels.

I like have little splashes of some of my favorite people that I will connect with. Is that a real connection? We still get some feel-good hormones from social media. It's just not the same quota of the oxytocin dopamine that we get from that in-person in real-life connection. So if we're looking at a hybrid or remote-working society where you're getting lower quota of touch, and touch is a massive salve to pain in the body, makes us more resilient, all these other things. So imagine within a year versus pre-pandemic how much less in-real-life connection we're having. and then let's add to that substituting with digital.

It's not a solution. It's a use in tandem with, but it doesn't mean that they're not real if you end up meeting with those people. Or like you and I live on the other side of the world and we met in real life. So we established trust in real life. I was like, okay, Dr. Minnie's legit.

It's amazing. I was like, she's legit. Okay, I can trust her. Yeah, she's awesome. And then, you know, we have a bit of things. things in the DM, but this has now led to a deeper conversation. So I absolutely think it can be used incredibly. For example, my mum is ill. To be had a video with her, wouldn't have been able to do that 20 years ago. I lived in four countries before the age of 30, so I've got some of my intimate

connections in Switzerland and Dubai. And so it allows us to have video chat, but it's not a substitute for it doesn't mean at all that they're not real. And I think they're, they're, are those connections that you are making online where you're having the real voice notes in the in the DM, direct message on Instagram, they are a huge blessing of this technology. Like, I'm not anti-tech at all, but I think we need boundaries. And the only way we get boundaries is self-connection. It's the only way you're going to know is it's too much time online. It all comes back to that.

Yes. Well, if you don't feel good about yourself, you're not going to want to connect. with people in real life. So, which leads me to my next question because I have a lot of people that I have different ways I connect with them. I can, I'll text them, I'll message them on Instagram, you know, maybe I'll have a phone call with them or a Zoom call with them. And then there becomes a point where my brain goes, I care about you so much that I need to see you in person now. And I have a couple of people like that in my life right now that I actually, I love so much. and I've actually never met them in real life.

And I'm going through and making sure that each one of these people, I'm actually either going to their area or finding out when we're in the same area because I have decided that the ultimate form of satisfaction for me when it comes to human connection is in person. And that all the other pieces of connection are nice and they're fun, but they're not really deepening that relationship I want with some of the amazing people in my life. And this has become so, and this might be the 54-year-old brain and the empty nester, and I just closed my, but my clinic, but I've gotten so clear on this that I'm trying to open my

schedule up so that I have space and time to go see these people because many of my closest friends don't live in my area. And so I want to make sure we go and have time together because they mean something to me. And that's a new realization that I just had that that is in-person is the most satisfying form. And science backs it up. So they say digital connection, it is a former connection, but is the junk food version of connection. It tastes good. It's immediate. It's accessible, but it doesn't satiate us chemically the way the in-person stuff.

So that's why it feels so good. Yeah. Amazing. Amazing. So when I hear you talk about how the science backs that up, there's this part of me that's like, social media, our phones, Zoom, it has all become a disconnecter. Like we think it's connecting us, but there are so many times I would go see a friend, but I get lazy and I'm like, I'm just going to text her. And I don't always take that extra step to clear my schedule to make sure I can see this person. So this has been a new awareness for me.

So for those people listening, what I want to really emphasize that you said is the ultimate way to get the health benefit of connection is in person. And what I think would be helpful as a society right now is if we all stop being like, I'm so busy, I'm so busy, I'm so busy, I've got things to do, and that we stopped and prioritized human connection with the people we loved. And if we did that, what, what, paint a picture for me, what do you think the world would look like? Like, how would that change, what would that change and how would that create a society that we've never seen? Well, it's already happening with some young kids in Amsterdam that created something called offline events. And they

charge like five euros and they choose beautiful cafes around the city and people go, they bring whatever activity they're doing, a book, knitting, whatever, and they go and they just sit without their phones for two to three hours and they're doing stuff, but they're also connecting with each other at the same time. So it becomes like the old salons. Do you know where there used to be conversation salons? Hundreds of years, like 150 years ago in Paris where people would engage over conversation without being mediated by that thing. I think we're seeing a huge turn away in the younger generation because of the loneliness issue and then knowing it's to do with this device that they've grown up with. I would love to see a world where we came together.

Do you know how cities used to be planned once we stopped being nomadic around the central piazza or the mosque or the church or what it, right? And so we would go to the market square on the weekend and we would buy things from the market together. Some cities still have this. I live in Singapore, not so much. Here, we have the opposite. You know, you know where you said you actually, because of where you live, have to get in the car and go somewhere? I live in a place with really high population density where we have another problem and this might resonate to some people listening where you're surrounded by people, right? But it doesn't mean you're in connection with people. So you're siloed. We're alone together. So the idea would be that we are together.

together. So people are seen, people are asking questions of each other. There is a witty repatee going on. And we are sharing in experiences together in real life in person. We're not performing on this. And I think it's the vision and the group of researchers that helped to inform my work. We all know each other. And when we got together at Harvard last year in October, they had a big symposium, go to New York to be with them soon in May again. And when we have our salon and our, conversation in between the sessions. That's what it's around. And changing the architecture of our physical spaces to aid connection as well, the way our offices are built and our, that's the dream. It's the dream. You know, my kids are 24 and 21, and neither of them are on social media.

And when I text my 24-year-old, when I text her, so, and I know people will be like, well, that's an answer. She's giving a mom, but it's not. She'll tell me, oh, my phone died. I, yeah, so sorry, like I couldn't get back to you. And I've watched her. She just is not addicted to her phone. And I don't know, and it's not just unique to them. I do think their friend group, like are starting to, they're so over social media. And they're so over the trauma that it was to be raised in a culture that had that at the forefront that they, many of them are starting to do it different. I blame my generation.

I think even though millennials were not coming up as the loneliness in the stats, if I look at the way in my 20s, I was addicted to and proliferating that sort of performative content, especially because I was in the media industry at that time as well. So it was deeply encouraged that you knew how to use these. I think only it's been, I think it's also turning 40 this year. I'll actually turn my phone off for the first time in my. entire adult life, I will just turn the whole thing off. And that, I never thought, I never thought I would get there. Like honestly, because people know that I'm so connected on it. And it, it feels

wonderful. Feels good. Yeah. Amazing. Amazing. Well, thank you for this conversation. I really, I just, I've been thinking because of the hormone oxytocin, and I think I told you this when we saw each other in New York, oxytocin, when it, when it comes on the scene, it calms cortisol. And when you calm cortisol, you become more insulin sensitive. And when you're more insulin sensitive, you balance all your sex hormones. So I have spent so much of my career teaching insulin sensitivity, teaching sex hormone balancing. And one of the conversations I don't have enough and I'm wanting to have more of is don't forget oxytocin. Because she is the master hormone. And if you bring oxytocin in, you change all the other hormones. And oxytocin's

half-life, I don't know if you know this, is only two to three minutes, which means you have to keep getting more and more and more. So the best thing you could do for your hormonal health is actually like wake up in the morning and think about how many oxytocin hits you're going to get that day. And if you did that, all your dieting that you've been trying to do, all the weight loss techniques would work better, your sleep would be better, you would balance. you wouldn't need as many of the bioidentical hormonal creams and patches. But until we prioritize oxytocin, we are going to continue to be in hormone dysregulation. And the main way to get oxytocin is through connection.

So your work is incredible. So keep shouting it from the rooftop. Thank you so much, babe. Thank you so much for having me. Can I just add something about that they did a very breakthrough study at Virginia University that shows that high-quality human touch stops the pain receptors in the brain from lighting up. Dr. James kind of did this.

So if you are trying to lose weight, but you have an injury that is stopping you from doing the exercise or anything around the well-being, understand that high-quality, that means a human connection you trust, time with that person, touch with that person, helps to mitigate that pain as well.

So that's also going to help your wellness journey. amazing oh i love that i love that but worth worth stating so thank you okay here's my last question and that is what does health mean to you like what is your definition of health and do you have a health goal that you are working towards right now the health goal is to not have the same outcome as my parents both of them and that is motivating when you know your genetics and i've had the testing done all of those things. And I feel very blessed to not have the same condition as my mom. And so I guess then my health goal is really to inhabit this body healthily for as long

as I can. Health means to me that I'm able to do all of the things that I want to do and show up for all of the people who need me in a non-agitato state. Agitato. I hope you brand that. I feel like that needs to be your word. Beautiful. So beautiful.

That's amazing. Well, Simone, thank you so much. I mean, for my own soul and my own, you know, understanding of who I am and how I want to show up in the world, this was really incredible. So, and I know my audience will feel the same. So keep, keep singing your cause from the rooftops and get working on that self-connection book because I think we really need it. It is definitely a skill that I've done.

just am finding so few know how to do. So I appreciate you bringing it to the surface. Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it. So please leave us a review, share it with your friends, and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.