Join Dr. Aja King and Cedric Weatherspoon as they explore the stark realities of loneliness amidst spring's promise of renewal on "Colors of Our Culture." Discover the nuances of solitude versus loneliness, the evolving landscape of community, and the impact of technology on human connection. From emotional fallout to fostering empathy, dive into the art of combatting loneliness and reclaiming the joy of meaningful connections. Tune in for a reminder of the power of being there for one another. #LonelinessInSpring #SolitudeVsLoneliness #CommunityEvolution #TechAndLoneliness #CombatLoneliness #MeaningfulConnections
References Clip sample
Loneliness is causing our physical and mental health to suffer | DW news [Video]. (2023, May 26). Retrieved from https://youtu.be/XSwCHgcAY3w?si=IK0jOdlH0IslqrpS
Dr Aja . King Couples Retreats
https://www.instagram.com/bravedefiance/
Cedric Weatherspoon, MA,LMFT
https://www.instagram.com/cedricweather/
Put Dr. Aja on the Hotseat ( Send your Hot seat Questions to Dr. Aja DM)
https://www.instagram.com/thecolorsofourculture/
Any question is fair game. We could possibly answer your question on our next episode.
Join Dr. Aja King and Cedric Weatherspoon as they explore the stark realities of loneliness amidst spring's promise of renewal on "Colors of Our Culture." Discover the nuances of solitude versus loneliness, the evolving landscape of community, and the impact of technology on human connection. From emotional fallout to fostering empathy, dive into the art of combatting loneliness and reclaiming the joy of meaningful connections. Tune in for a reminder of the power of being there for one another. #LonelinessInSpring #SolitudeVsLoneliness #CommunityEvolution #TechAndLoneliness #CombatLoneliness #MeaningfulConnections
References Clip sample
Loneliness is causing our physical and mental health to suffer | DW news [Video]. (2023, May 26). Retrieved from https://youtu.be/XSwCHgcAY3w?si=IK0jOdlH0IslqrpS
Dr Aja . King Couples Retreats
https://www.instagram.com/bravedefiance/
Cedric Weatherspoon, MA,LMFT
https://www.instagram.com/cedricweather/
Put Dr. Aja on the Hotseat ( Send your Hot seat Questions to Dr. Aja DM)
https://www.instagram.com/thecolorsofourculture/
Any question is fair game. We could possibly answer your question on our next episode.
What's up everybody? Dr Asia King.
Speaker 2:And I'm Cedric Wothersbone.
Speaker 1:And we are your hosts for the colors of our culture, a podcast where we talk about raw and rugged conversations. We dive into the deep crevices of the human experiences so that we can talk and express ourselves without any barrier. We have conversations that go beyond what you are used to, so get ready, buckle up, for some deep, funny, maybe some uncomfortable conversations, but, most importantly, authentic, real. Enjoy the show. Good morning, good morning everybody. Welcome to the Colors of Culture With your host, dr Asia King, along with Cedric Wothersbone.
Speaker 1:Alright, so let's jump into it. How are you feeling, Cedric.
Speaker 2:I am feeling great, the weather is great and in Minnesota in March usually if we have a foot of snow, and now we don't have a foot of snow, so it should be 60 today. So I'm in a great mood. I'm going to get out and have some fun.
Speaker 1:Yep, yep, yep, yep.
Speaker 2:How about you?
Speaker 1:The weather here has been kind of on and off, but mainly on. I don't know if it's due to global warming, but that is another conversation for another day. But what I do know is that, because it is remarkably beautiful outside, this is the time to get out, go hiking, go to maybe what's that Many ha ha falls. Like this is the time to get out. Like now spring is springing and sprunging quicker than ever before. And yeah, it's sprunging. I don't know if that's the word, but we're going to make it a word. But no, like this is actually so. The hard part about being in Minnesota is that you become more isolated because the temperatures can be so rigid and so hard that you really don't get to be out and be social. So now that the weather is really nice and really comfortable, now you get to be out. They even talked about barbecuing this weekend, so I guess maybe that leads us to our conversation around loneliness.
Speaker 2:Yes, I mean. What do you mean by loneliness? I think you're doing your.
Speaker 1:Loneliness.
Speaker 2:You're doing this couples retreat, so you're dialed in on people getting together.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, even I have a retreat even at the end of the year. The Costa Rica is the co-edit retreat for men and women, where we will come together and celebrate being single and happy in our singleness.
Speaker 2:So you're addressing loneliness in a real way. You're jumping right in.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, I mean loneliness. Well, you know, my aunt used to say I may be alone, but I ain't lonely. She used to say that all the time I may be alone, but I ain't lonely. So being single doesn't necessarily mean that you're lonely. It really means more of like. I enjoy the company of others without the commitment, but I have a social life.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:I hear you.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, I've been doing a little background. You know, study on loneliness, and we have a clip that says that loneliness is so bad, has gotten so dogged on bad. They're comparing it to the death toll to smoking. Could you believe that? Is that it's really? Can you believe that?
Speaker 1:I can believe it, because what is loneliness? Loneliness, I'm looking up a definition. Y'all know I'm a words woman.
Speaker 2:There you go, there you go.
Speaker 1:The loneliness is an unpleasant emotional response to perceived isolation. It's a social pain. It's described as a social pain, Wow To not having, not feeling connected, not feeling connected to others.
Speaker 2:Well, it doesn't doesn't that fall into the whole human experience? Anyway? Who wants to be alone? We didn't go on and hang out in caves and just chill by ourselves. We had people. Even if we had animals and stuff like that, we didn't do things alone.
Speaker 1:So yeah, we're going to play it. We're going to roll into this clip and then get into it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's, that's rolling to this clip and see what they have to say.
Speaker 3:Well, earlier this month, us surgeon general shown a light on the problems associated with loneliness by declaring it an American epidemic. He said the growing isolation in society poses a health risk as deadly as smoking. In an 80 page report, dr Vivek Morty said we now know that loneliness is a common feeling that many people experience. It's like hunger or thirst. It's a feeling the body sends us when something we need for survival is missing.
Speaker 4:Social emotional development. So I want to make it very clear that what I'm about to say is not my opinion, but it's actually what my findings are have been showing for over three decades. As the root of our problem, and what young people teach us through my mixed method, longitudinal research that I've been doing for over three decades is that we live in a culture that's out of sync with our nature and that's creating a crisis of connection, which is essentially loneliness, and what I mean by that is it's a culture that doesn't value the very things that young people say they want to need, and it's primarily, if not exclusively, close relationships, friendships, friendships in which they can be emotionally intimate, where there's a deep understanding. They feel seen and heard and listened to, and they're starving for those relationships. And we live in a culture, however, that doesn't value that, that thinks academic achievement and making a lot of money is more valuable than close, intimate friendships or relationships.
Speaker 4:So we put the so called hard skills over the so called soft skills, and yet humans are naturally both hard and soft in terms of. We have our hard skills and our soft skills. We need our soft skills to make connections with each other If we live in a culture that doesn't value those skills. It means we face a crisis, which is we raise our children to go against their nature and then we wonder why we grow up to be so lonely. We're not using the natural capacity we have as humans to deeply connect with each other and we're not even valuing that connection.
Speaker 3:How do we get here? When did we stop listening to our, our urges, our social needs.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's so fascinating to me. So basically it was apparently the big transition happened in the 1980s, at least in the United States. So we've seen the loss of friendship and the loss of connection within communities Go up, particularly starting in the 1980s late 1970s. So essentially in the United States that's also when you started to see income inequality rise. You had Reaganomics enter the culture, you started to see this very money-oriented culture grow and huge leaps and bounds. And at that very moment where we started to become more what I would call hardcore capitalists, we started to see the disconnections start to increase in our communities.
Speaker 4:And then obviously, as everybody points out, starting in about 2004, when Facebook comes into our conversations, social media Exacerbated that. But we have to get over over saying that technology created this disconnection. It just exacerbated what was already happening, because we cannot live in a culture that doesn't value our social and emotional Natural capacities and needs, or else we kill ourselves and we kill each other, which is what's happening right now. I mean, we're really in a crisis at this point and we're not seeing sort of what I call the hand in front of our face, which is a cultural problem. It's not an individual problem. It's not a matter of just fix the lonely people. It's a matter of changing our culture so that we value both sides of our Humanity, which is our heart, and our soft sides, not just our so-called hard sides.
Speaker 4:So what's stereotypic masculine? Because, of course, when you talk to boys and men, I've been talking, interviewing boys and men since 1987, a long time. And, by the way, around the world, my, my family, my ex-husband and my kids are all from Berlin, so I know the world, including your world, and and basically, men and boys are naturally just like girls and women and non-gender conforming people. They, they have their soft sides and their hard sides, and but we only value the masculine side and we demean and mock the so-called feminine side, which isn't, you know, we take these sides and we give them a gender identity. A hard side, our Desire for autonomy and our desired connection are actually not gendered, they're human and the fact that we've gendered them is what's caused the problem. So, yes, norms of masculinity are a huge problem in, because norms of masculinity in, you know, in implicitly and explicitly value everything that we call so-called hard and Demean everything that we call so-called soft. And we don't want to be soft, we want to be hard.
Speaker 4:So, but I want to point out to your listeners that Masculinity doesn't just affect boys and men, it affects everybody, because it's the rule of the day. So girls and women are now starting to feel more and more pressure to man up. You get that across the world. We do studies in China. Girls are now more likely to identify with needing to man up than boys at this point, because they see that if you so-called man up, you get access to more power. So that you know, girls and women are smart. They figured it out that if you actually deny half of your humanity, you end up getting more opportunity oftentimes.
Speaker 4:So the point is is that it absolutely is rooted in masculinity, and I just to again to give to your viewers and listeners this is not sort of some Perspective I'm spouting. This is really coming from directly the words of young men from around the world for over three decades, and I know I'm gonna keep on repeating that, but I just want to say young people have been telling us this for a long time. Yeah, no, I'm actually gonna give a much more hopeful response than you I think you expected. So basically, it's the way we use technology, it's not technology. So if we use technology, where we all we have is likes and all you're looking for is how many likes you get, it. That creates a me, a me media, not a social media. So then it's about getting millions of likes versus actually connecting to other people. If you made TikTok a more Relationally based so that was more about people connecting to each other influences, connecting with their moms, their friends, etc. On TikTok and modeling how to connect usual relational skills on TikTok, you could totally transform the world of technology.
Speaker 4:Ai, I also want to add. Ai has a capacity actually to help human, human connection by actually nurturing the sort of fundamental relational skills we need, like Curiosity, interpersonal curiosity about each other. That's at the root of all good connection. The reason why AI will never work in the way they're using AI right now is that it doesn't entail the natural curiosity that AI does not have. So it's the idea is that our curiosity is at the root of how we connect to each other. Who are you, what can, what can I learn from you about how to live a life, all those kinds of things that humans have naturally, five-year-olds have in wild capacity, and and yet we don't nurture that interpersonal curiosity. So AI and technology actually could enhance our human skills, but we've decided to use it in a way that just enhances our Self-obsession and our need to get affirmation, rather than to build connection.
Speaker 1:Loneliness. What do we know about it?
Speaker 2:say it what you got first of all, this dr Way from NYU has a lot of street cred. I did some background Research on her, like she has done tons of research in communities of color. I mean she legit. You know we got it, we got to check our people out. But one of the things that she pointed out was this lack of social connection and emotional intimacy, and From my experience I'm always I know they said cell phones are. She said that cell phones wasn't the start and Technology wasn't the start of this loneliness Epidemic. What she was saying is is just exacerbated it. Since the 1970s, our generation you know I don't know if you say 70s and 80s has been. You know this has been an ongoing thing and she sites like we have shifted to me first type generation. Is that true? Dr Asia? I know you do a lot of work with Around relationships, is that? Are you seeing that shift? Like is everybody about me and not coming together as a community?
Speaker 1:well, you know, what I'm finding is that, because of oh, what is that in the background? Is that me?
Speaker 2:I think that's you, that was me. I take that back dr Asia, that was me.
Speaker 1:This is why people are lonely, brings me, because they don't trust other people. The biggest thing that I find when people are struggling with being with other people, it is it is the concern of trusting and the fear of taking risk with others.
Speaker 1:Wow you know cuz we always talk about like the perfect relationship, the perfect friendship, the, the perfect, the perfect, the perfect, but what we don't Take into account is that no relationship is perfect. Relationships are always evolving, they're always changing, and so because we don't have and we're not building a Higher tolerance to be with disappointment, disappointment, we just rather opt out of relationships all together you know, I do believe we're the meat generation out.
Speaker 2:You know, in my work I'm concerned about that, especially when I'm working with young people, because it's this promotion is. I don't need nobody, you know. It's all me, I can do this by myself. And what it does? It leads people into social isolation and you know, I know what they said.
Speaker 2:You know like a part of it has to do with some mental health issues, but some of it is just being disconnected. How many times have you been in a restaurant and you see a group of people, a group of people sitting together on their phones? So are they really present with each other and you know some of the background stuff is saying? You know people are sitting on their phone, they're in a crowd but they're alone. Like go to the coffee shop and sit on your cell phone.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:And I connect the people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and this is why you know social media, though, a blessing and a curse. You know it's a blessing because it connects us, but it is a curse because it disconnects us. So many of our clients say that they're struggling with anxiety. Social anxiety because they don't know how to talk to people in real life. Your keyboard warriors because you can take the hell out of what you want to say and cuss folks out and have fake accounts. Like you, you get to be anything in the world of the world wide. Well, you get to be anything you can. You can, you can be an expert all the way to a troll.
Speaker 1:But when it comes to real life situations, that's where, especially the millennials, the 20-year-old folks, they struggle with in-person, you know, being able to look folks in the face, being able to answer questions, being able to stand up to the words that they want to say, even struggling to put together a sentence Because you're so used to. I mean, the whole ability to have language is breaking down, Like the way our children are texting. They're not even texting in full sentences. Everything is an acronym.
Speaker 2:And even those nonverbal cues. It helps with the social cues. So if you're all in the technology, you're missing those nonverbal cues, and so people are responding in a way that's big to something that may not be big at all, and so you know, having those socials, those connections, are very important for those young folks. One of the things that she pointed out too is in the 80s. She cites that it began in the late 70s and 80s, during the Reagan era. I don't want to get into politics, but she talked about social inequalities being one of those indicators for loneliness. It's like fuel's loneliness, because people have to work all the time and they don't get very social and they feel they can be isolated in poverty.
Speaker 2:And so and it goes back to like this is why it's important for us, as people of color, to really look into this loneliness epidemic because, you know, we still have those disparities and economic disparities. So technically, we've probably been dealing with this longer than what she has. She has, like, studied past the 30 years. You know, I think, the 1960s movement. You know it was about being together, and then, once we kind of crossed that threshold, then we went to the me first hey, we're going to benefit from all this stuff that we worked so hard for, and then we wind up going into isolation instead of being in community. Back in community.
Speaker 1:Back in the 50s, 60s, 70s, I mean I would even go all the way up to the 90s when I was growing up back in Birmingham. As you sat outside you walked the neighborhood, you communicated with folks. Like I come from a neighborhood, I've come from a community where everybody spoke, everybody spoke. And then when I moved up here to the North, you get where people really, literally people, will go out of their way not to make eye contact.
Speaker 1:I got my neighbor and I hope she listening, I hope she listening, my neighbor will, literally. I know she sees me because peripheral vision is real. You see me out to peripheral and this woman will literally go out her way to not say anything and I make it a deliberate point to say good morning and she'll briefly look up good morning and then run back in the house and to me it is I get. I get so angry because I'm like your inability to want to connect. I ain't asking you to be my friend but, lo and behold, if anything ever happens to your house or anything ever happens to you, you better get to know me so that that way you can say, asia, hey, I'm going out of town. My neighbors, we used to be able to say hey, we're going out of town watch the house, and that was the thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:When I had to go, when I had to go to Jacksonville, florida, to bury my aunt, all of her neighbors and her cul-de-sac had been in their houses for 24 plus years. Every last one of them came to our house and said hey, are you okay? What do you need? We know Cherry, we know Beverly. She was this, she was. They were sharing stories with her, with us. They were coming, they were connected, like this is a solid built community. So now their thing is is because her house is up for the market, they want to make sure whoever comes in they can connect with them too.
Speaker 1:And these are older people, 50 plus, 60 plus year olds. So our connectedness is at risk. And so when you talk about loneliness, it's the social isolation where you don't know people, you can't connect to people, you feel awkward around folks, you question everything that you do and say to the point where it just debilitates you, to where you don't want to connect. So now you're sitting here, you don't have any friends, you're not able to go out, you don't even know how to communicate with people, and then you're feeling lonely, which causes depression, anxiety and, at its best, addiction issues, cause now you're trying to drink the loneliness away.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but you know they was thinking about. She was talking about technology, you know, and how it can be helpful and how they're trying to use, you know, ai to replace people like you and I. You know the therapist, but one of the things she said AI cannot use the advanced human skills. It can only do so much.
Speaker 2:You know you can't tell AI to have no verbal expressions or the pause, all that. You can't teach AI how to do all of that stuff, although it can be used as a good tool, but it can not be the sole tool that people use to. You know, a cure of the loneliness piece, I also saw a piece where you can also. One of the solutions that Japan has came up with is that you can rent a friend. So if your social skills aren't where, it needs to be.
Speaker 1:You can call a person who said money can't buy happiness. That's a lie. You could buy happiness cause you can rent a friend.
Speaker 2:You know, really is that happiness? Though, If you buying a friend, it's like okay, Asia, I got, I got an hour. I give you a hundred bucks if you go out and have coffee with me and talk to me like you're my friend.
Speaker 1:I think we have to redefine how we think of connection, you know, because connection can be longterm relationships but some people can only handle other people in short, intermittent phases. You know, I enjoy being with people and I enjoy being away from people. I enjoy a mixture of both. I don't have to be in the company of people all the time. Like I have a friend who she's one of those folks where her door is open. Like you can come in her house. She has people. She's a pop up person. You could pop up at her house and she's cool with it. I am not a pop up person. I want a week notice. I'm going to give you an hour. I'm going to give you.
Speaker 2:You know what I'm saying Well, if we're social people, why would that over-stimulate you?
Speaker 1:It's like taking a dose of man. I can take people in doses, so what's wrong if I hired somebody to go out? You know, for a moment we go chill. I mean, that ain't no different than an escort.
Speaker 2:Oh Lord. So, that's how we're supposed to solve loneliness by just getting their scores. That is not a solution.
Speaker 1:Well, I didn't say it was a solution, but every shoe doesn't fit everybody's foot, and I'm saying every shoe don't fit everybody's foot.
Speaker 2:So we're talking about meaningful connections, meaningful that can be meaningful.
Speaker 1:But who gets to define meaningful?
Speaker 2:The person, of course, who gets to define meaningful Right exactly?
Speaker 1:Maybe meaningful for me just is I just need you to hear about my day for this moment. I don't need to share that with you for weeks and years on end. Maybe I just need that dose of human connection. I get my dose, I move on and then when I feel the need to have more doses, I get more. I hire my companion friend, I go take a trip by. But we also see cases where people really don't have any friends. They rupture all relationships that come their way.
Speaker 2:Well, I want to point out, loneliness and getting solitude to reflect is two different things. So you can choose to live in solitude and say, you know, I want to have moments of reflection, but I have meaningful relationships, but I'm taking this time. For me, that's totally different and that's fine. This type of loneliness is the lack of engagement. And I'd like to go back to, like one of the you know the video that I watch with people who are struggling with loneliness in Japan. These folks one guy didn't leave his apartment for 20 years but he was on his computer, he was interacting with other folks, but he wasn't, he didn't have that social interaction outside. You know, clinically they say, well, that's a gorophobia, they're staying inside and they're not really socializing. So we're talking about you know, loneliness is a little bit different than loneliness and agoraphobia. You know a person with agoraphobia could experience loneliness too, and you know depression leads to like self-isolation. But does that mean?
Speaker 2:that they suffer from loneliness.
Speaker 1:But I think it speaks to the point of you know, what you were saying before is that there's a difference to being around people and feeling connected. Because you know we work with people where they say they have plenty of friends, plenty of family and coworkers, but they feel empty. They feel empty in those spaces.
Speaker 1:They feel isolated, even in a room full of people. And so then you know, I have to look further into well, how are you really defining these relationships? Are you looking at them as just bodies that are in the room, or are you really looking deep and feeling the being able to share those empathetic moments with people? Are you really leaning into people's stories? I haven't even really explored this before that. When you are with people, are you present?
Speaker 1:Yes, I was gonna say that I was thinking that Right, because, like what you were saying at the beginning, like you could be at a restaurant, you see a group of people and then half of them are on their phones. So, yeah, I went out with friends. But I think we need to look a little bit deeper and start asking a question. Well, when you went out, were you present? And I'm sure we're gonna hear people ask what do you mean by present, meaning you know, did you ask questions? Did you use reflective statements? Were, when your friend was telling you their story about their cat, did you zone out where you on your phone? Were you distracted or did you really lean in to what they were experiencing? Did you share a moment? And I don't think that's what's happening. We're not sharing moments with each other. That's why I tell my boys when we're out, phones up. When we're at the dinner table, phones up. When we're out, when we are out, phones up. Just driving in the car, everybody put your phone up.
Speaker 2:Do anybody throw a tantrum? Oh, no Like. Oh my God, you made me take my phone off.
Speaker 1:Oh, I incorporated that early on when the boys were little, when before they even had their first phones, phones up because you need to look outside. You've been in front of the computer all day. You've been on the phone with your friends. You've been gaming on the PS4, xbox, whatever. Look outside, see a bird, look at a tree, start to observe how the clouds are formed. Tell me what you see.
Speaker 2:You're a therapist all the time, aren't you? You don't ever take a bath.
Speaker 1:Oh, I eat sleep breathe therapy.
Speaker 4:Do you understand?
Speaker 1:But I eat sleep and breathe the human experience.
Speaker 1:And you know, if that's the case, I've been a therapist since I was a little girl, because that's what we used to do. I actually have a children's book coming out pretty soon called the Art of Sitting, and it is about how we how me down south, my experience of being outside and just sitting and just observing, like we used to spend quiet moments on the porch on grandma's rocking chair, just looking outside, no words said, no words said. I can tell you the layout of my whole neighborhood, because that's all we did was sick, cause my grandma was. Let's see, by the time I got to my grandma, she was already in her 80s. She was born in 1905. So she taught me the art of being present, just naturally.
Speaker 2:So who's teaching our kids the art of being present? And one of the things in my research, it just popped out that usually it's like, well, older people live in solitude and isolation because some of their friends pass away and it was just like, okay, I'm in this, this space where I can't connect to anybody, and they feel lonely. But now they're saying, like you know, the younger generation, our kids, you know, between 10 and 31, 32, they're experiencing this epidemic of loneliness in a major way because they're on the back end of the me generation and now they're immersed in this new technologies. How many times have you seen you know I'm not knocking anybody for doing this, but how many times have you seen someone give, you see, a little kid sitting around their family on the tablet just to keep them quiet, or they're giving them a tablet? You know the kids are all on the adults' phone. The adults are interacting on their phones too.
Speaker 2:How many times have are we modeling not being present, you know? So those are the things that we need to really pay attention to, and I think a lot of my work in the schools, you know, I try to figure out what is the magic thing that I need to be telling parents, and what I need to be talking to kids about is about, like, exactly what you're saying is being present and having meaningful relationship, because what I'm seeing is like the lack of conflict resolution, a lack of picking up on those nonverbal cues and seeing kids more so can't tolerate, you know, just can't socially connect because they don't have enough practice. And so we have technology in our school to perpetuate that too. Yes, it's a good thing, but how much is enough?
Speaker 1:Right and I think you know. Going back into you know what can we teach people?
Speaker 1:What I'm finding is that people are struggling with tolerating rejection and disappointment, and so it's easier to not connect because I don't wanna have to deal with possibly being rejected by a lover, a friend, a co-worker. You know, whatever the case may be, and our inability to tolerate no or not right now, or you're not my type is too overwhelming. They either rage out because it doesn't go their way or they just totally disconnect. Isolation feels safer than trying to bond and you know it has to be all or nothing with our community, with our society, and you know I encourage people. Yeah, it is a risk being with other folks, I'm not even gonna lie. It is a risk when you go and ask that girl out or that guy you know says that he's interested in you. Yeah, there's a possibility he might cheat. Sure, you should take different precautions and make sure you're not fooling with everybody. But it's better to have loved a little than to not love at all.
Speaker 2:Well, that goes into like relationship trauma. I mean, when people have a bad breakup, they don't wanna be. Some people have said like I'm not messing with nobody, I'm done. They live in isolation. They live in these non-meaningful relationships. And I think the key part is, yes, you can be with somebody. On paper You're like, oh, you're not lonely because you're with somebody, but are you really present with that person? Are you really having an emotional connection to that person? And I work with a lot of folks who experience complex trauma and have been dealing with trauma for a long time, a lot of hurt and pain.
Speaker 2:And I imagine and I've been talking about this in my trauma recovery group is a lot of folks are dealing with their issues in isolation. First thing, you do, you have a breakup, what do you do? You get to yourself? You isolate. And some people, some people like, okay, I want to be just left alone. I mean, being alone is good, sometimes, like that first week or so. But if you're doing this for months on end six months, seven months, eight months then that could be a problem because you're not even trying to connect with anybody, you're just in solitude dealing with your stuff.
Speaker 1:Right, I mean. But that goes back into the ability to feel and understand that relationships come and go. People do change, you know, and just depending on the situation. You know, my sister always says people do have a right to opt out at any moment. If I decide to continue to deal with you, that is great and we need to appreciate, you know, the relationships that we do have, whether they be right, wrong or, you know, fair or not fair. We do need to learn a sense of appreciation for what we are able to have and experience.
Speaker 1:But the second it doesn't go our way. We just throw everything to hell. We just throw up our hands and say, see, I knew it doesn't work and people don't like, and then we create these false narratives about ourselves that keep us in this perpetual cycle of I'm not good enough or other people suck. People suck is what people say, and when I hear people say that, it disappoints me because it's like, well, it's not just that people suck is that people are trying to figure it out and so we have to allow people to come and go sometimes.
Speaker 1:Sometimes I'm not saying in all situations some people really do need to be out your life, but I mean seriously, because there are some people that are very hurtful and toxic and will bring you to death and constant tears if you're not careful. But for those that just need space, like I, have friends that I don't talk to on a regular basis. Sometimes some of my friends I don't even see for years, but we could pick back up as if we were just kicking it yesterday and there's no love loss. Like I'm not better, we haven't talked in a minute. I still appreciate the moments that we shared connections and conversations and love for each other. But that's, friend.
Speaker 2:That's solid friendship Like, that's friends, like you can connect to another friend. But when you have a partner this is my major concern with this whole yeah, it didn't work out kick rocks, move over. You got to. You have the choice to choose who you want to be with. That's cool, I get it. That's good boundaries. But why? You know, if you spent time with someone and you have a connection, why does the friendship and all those other pieces don't matter anymore? Because you can't be intimate anymore? That is my biggest, my biggest gripe. I think that's a serious issue. It's like so we're not, we can't be intimate anymore, but our friendship got to go to and that's the whole piece. Like in couples therapy and all of this breakup therapy is talking about several of these ties send them on their way, buy, you know, block them on Instagram. I'm from your social media. Don't return their calls. If you spent three to four years with someone, you develop a closeness, just because it ain't working out, why can't you have a good friendship?
Speaker 1:And I think you can. You know, sometimes people are better as friends than they are lovers, you know, and that's okay. I think the ability to allow flexibility within your relationship is important. So real quick, you know, psychology today identifies seven types of loneliness and why it matters. So they say new situations. Loneliness is one of them. Where you move to a new place, so you're in a new city, a new job, I'm different. Loneliness where you feel different than other people, but you don't. You feel different, like I'm not, like you all. Okay, no, sweetheart, this is where you have lots of friends and families, but you feel lonely. There's no intimate or romantic connection, no animal loneliness I have a dog, you got a dog and I think a cat and the cat too.
Speaker 1:Right, right, right. So you know animals are very helpful. No time for me. Loneliness Sometimes you're surrounded by people who seem friendly enough but they don't want to take the jump from friendly to friends, like they keep it surface level out. You know, hey, how you doing All right, cool Bye, susan, and you keep it moving Untrust, untrustworthy friends. Loneliness Sometimes you get into a situation where you begin to doubt whether your friends are truly well intentioned, and so you're friends with people but you don't quite trust them. I think that's a big one. That's a huge one where we we have we have people that say, yeah, I got friends, but you know I'm, I ain't friendly like that. You know. No, no, what they say no new friends no new friends, no new friends.
Speaker 1:And then the last one is quiet presence, loneliness. Sometimes you may feel lonely because you miss having someone else's quiet presence.
Speaker 1:You may have an act of social circle at work, but you miss having someone to hang out with at home there is a roommate, a family member or a sweetheart, or a spouse just some, or a spouse right, it's somebody, just somebody, in your space, and I think that's why you know I ain't trying to let y'all all up in my personal business, but that's why I ain't got no man See there you go. Cause I got kids, cause I got kids, so they just lonely space.
Speaker 4:Who's lonely? My kids.
Speaker 1:I'm just playing, listen, I, I am not lonely. I actually have a very robust. I like you, no, oh there you go. I don't miss. Okay, let me tell you this there's nobody I miss. There's nobody I miss. I like being by myself, like my aunt said, and I will carry this all the way to the end. I may be alone, but I'm not lonely. I really feel filled and happy, like with our connections, and I go out and I I'm one of those people that can get my dose of people and take a break.
Speaker 2:Okay, I got, I got a hot question for you, I'm glad. So you do, you do these, these couples with treats. So how do you deal if I'm I'm trying to re-energize my relationship and I'm dealing with loneliness in my relationship? So it has been identified that, yeah, I'm cool with my people, I'm kind of lonely in my relationship, so we don't talk, we kind of isolate, going about our own business, we're stuck in this routine and then we're hanging out, but we're we're doing stuff, but we're lonely, like I'm lonely in this relationship. How do you just give me a little teaser? How would what? Do you start to kind of bring things back together? Now you don't have to answer it, now it starts with go ahead.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, will you ask me wait a minute?
Speaker 2:Am.
Speaker 1:I answering or no?
Speaker 2:You get to decide. You get to decide if you want to answer it or not.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:I'm going to answer. All right, let me go and answer.
Speaker 1:So you know, I think, the biggest thing, because we have this all the time with couples where you live with somebody but you still feel alone in the relationship. So I asked the couples well, what is it that you would like? And oftentimes they'll say I want more attention, I want more. A lot of times they're saying they want more sets and intimacy, and I asked them what does that look like? What's lacking? So find out what does that look like for them? Because oftentimes their partner thinks that they are doing it and so when I get the other partner in, they're like but I am giving you the look and what they're not realizing is that you may be doing it the way you feel is right, but it's not matching the love language of your partner.
Speaker 1:And that goes back into the love languages. Like, what does intimacy look like for your partner? Is it just come in and say, hey, lay down, let's do it, and then we're done? Or does it mean come, let's make cookies together?
Speaker 1:Like your partner might be one of those folks that wants you to watch a Hallmark movie with them or rub their feet or participate in the things that are meaningful to them, like participating in a hobby with your partner is the highest level of intimacy you can have, when you don't take an interest in your partner's hobbies and what they're doing, and I don't mean just supporting, but really take an interest in it.
Speaker 1:See what it is that they enjoy about crocheting or gardening, or if your guy is, if it's a guy and he enjoys sports, watch a game with them Like I don't know the hell out of football, but I'm gonna sit and watch it with you and try to see who the quarterback. And so this builds a level of not only intimacy but interest sharing, because connections are all about exchanging of emotions and ideas and thoughts and expressions. Isn't it strange? It's going both ways right. And so then when you find that you are taking time with each other, then the intimacy, the sex and the romance just becomes much better, because now it's like, ooh, this is my baby. Like my baby knows I love football and knows the quarterback right, Mm-hmm yeah.
Speaker 1:You know. So I tell them to start paying more attention to what your partner has an interest in. Ask more questions, be more curious. Be more curious when you're tuned out. I had a couple just recently tell me that you know the other one. When they're spending time together he's on his phone. I think that's a common thing it is he's on his phone and so just simply put the phone down. Put the phone down. When you two are together, the rule is nobody gets to use the phone.
Speaker 2:No phones.
Speaker 1:Unless there is no phones, unless there is an emergency, there are no phones. Now, not to say there can't be phone time, but phone time has to be done when you two aren't spending time together. Just being there in presence with somebody doesn't mean you're spending time with somebody, you're just a shell, see, dr Wei talked about stereotypical masculinity and soft like.
Speaker 2:she talked about two skills soft skills and hard skills. She equates hard skills to men. You know, like men are married, like masculine, tough, resilient, they take on that role, and women are the soft side, and she said like we need to have a little bit of both going on at one time to make this loneliness thing work. What you're saying, though, is like it's okay to slide over and say, hey, I like a little football now and then.
Speaker 2:You know like I can get into your masculinity things, and she's also said that the girls are impacted by this hard masculinity thing. It's like they feel like they have to be tough and get with the program and isolate their emotions too In order to get advancement and other opportunities in life. And so I like, when you talk about like having that exchange, you know men can also go it. You know, if you're a stereotypical man, traditional and don't believe in like, you know you believe in those traditional roles, well, every now and then, like going there and cook.
Speaker 2:it's a balance I like to cook though because you know my mom say yo this how you hook it up, so.
Speaker 2:but you know, those conversation is like you know all of this stuff is leading to this, this you know this whole episode of loneliness People. It goes back to me, I'm gonna do me, I'm gonna be me, and that's it. And so it's great conversation to even talk about like people being can be lonely in their intimate relationships. Because I think if we're talking about loneliness, I think it impacts the work you do with couples, because you know people think they're doing the right thing and they're together, but in reality they're not meeting that person's needs and that person is lonely in their relationship.
Speaker 1:And you have to be willing to take risk. You have to learn how to train your body to tolerate the unknown. You have to learn how to tolerate the unknown. Every time you interact with somebody, it is always a risk. Some risks are lower than others. Like talking to you, this is a low risk.
Speaker 1:I know we cool, we scraped. Talking to my sister, I know we cool, we scraped. Like we cool, we cool, you know, ain't no issues. But talking to a new guy, for me that's a risk, cause I don't know if he's gonna like me. I don't know if he's gonna accept me. I don't know. You know, you don't know.
Speaker 1:But I've gotta take a chance. I gotta take a chance and if, for any reason, it does not work, I'm not looking for the future with this guy. I am sitting in the here and now. I can appreciate this moment. And if I get tomorrow with you, okay great. If I get next week with you, okay great. But I can tolerate the ability of not knowing. And that's where we have to get to as a society, because all of it is a risk. I mean even with people that we're comfortable with, because you know, when I was working with my aunt, when I was helping my aunt through hospice and she passed in January the 16th. I knew that our connection was going to change and I knew that saying goodbye was gonna be hard. But I still showed up for her and I was present with her and I did her hair, I scratched her scalp, we rubbed our hands and put lotion on her. We sung songs together.
Speaker 1:Like I said in the moment, knowing that at any moment this would be the last time, and that was a risk and that what took a toll on my nervous system, because now this relationship has shifted. It's not gone, it's just shifted. Like the pastor said at her funeral, you know, she's not gone, she's just on the other side of the street.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's fine.
Speaker 1:She's just on the other side of the veil of this, so it's all a risk, and so I encourage people that if you are lonely but people have reached out, reached back, doing the small doses, you ain't got to dive all the way in and say, hey, let's go on a cruise together, just text back.
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 1:If somebody say hi, say hi back.
Speaker 2:Say what up? That's what I.
Speaker 1:Say what up? And my aunt has. I mean, when she passed, hundreds of her friends came and was like one thing about your aunt was that she made sure she checked up on folks. Even when she was going through her chemo. She always made a point to ask how are you doing? She knew about relationships and she knew how to keep them. So at the end she had a whole bunch of people honoring her and really valuing her friendship and crying over the fact that she really cared.
Speaker 2:So Shout out to Auntie Bev.
Speaker 1:Aunt Bev, that's my baby.
Speaker 2:Remember love for you.
Speaker 1:Hey, but this was great. This was great. I hope you all enjoyed this conversation. But if you listen and leave your comments on how you're combating or overcoming loneliness, what are you doing to make sure that you're not just around folk but you feel connected to folk and feel loved? And what does that feel like? Do you feel warm? Do you feel welcome? Do you feel open? Do you feel happy? Or do you find yourself in situations where, yeah, you may be the person in the room, but you feel like just a body in the room?
Speaker 2:What is it like?
Speaker 1:Reach out to us and let us know All right.
Speaker 2:That's it. I mean not so rough. Hey, I love it See y'all later.
Speaker 4:You all.
Speaker 2:We're going to give everybody a big dose once a month. I'm trying to convince. So I got some more. Put Dr Asia on the hot seat moments that I got, so I'm going to see if I can get her to pull and maybe we can drop another 20 minutes to put her on the hot seat again around this loneliness piece. I love this conversation. It's so much things, so many things that we can kind of uncover and talk about, and I don't want to leave people cold, dr Asia, and not give them a way out of this thing. So I might have to get back at you this month. What do you think?
Speaker 1:We're going to have to do it again. We're going to have to have a part too, because this is a huge issue and it's still an epidemic. So what are we going to do to help as not just people, but also as clinicians? So you all, take care of yourselves and, most importantly, take care of each other. Please, please, please.
Speaker 2:Thank you.