Speaker 1: Your brain doesn't really make the distinction between being rejected
Speaker 1: by love and being sort of cast out of the
Speaker 1: clan to lie on the savannah and be circled by
Speaker 1: hyenas you know, your body registers this as a very
Speaker 1: threatening state, like a physically threatening state.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
Speaker 2: ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 2: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 2: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 2: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 2: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 2: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 2: to make a life worth This podcast is about how
Speaker 2: other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how
Speaker 2: they feed their good wolf.
Speaker 3: Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is
Speaker 3: a repeat guest the One You Feed podcast. It's Florence Williams,
Speaker 3: a journalist, author, and podcaster. She's a contributing editor at
Speaker 3: Outside Magazine and a freelance writer for The New York Times, Slate,
Speaker 3: Mother Jones, National Geographic, and many many others. Today, Florence
Speaker 3: and Eric discuss her new book, Heartbreak, A Personal and
Speaker 3: Scientific Journey. Hi Florence, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Hi Eric, so great to be here. Thank you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's wonderful to have you back on. We had
Speaker 4: you on. I don't know the date, it's been years.
Speaker 4: At this point we talked about your last book, which
Speaker 4: was all about nature. Your current book is called Heartbreak,
Speaker 4: A Personal and Scientific Journey, and you're just such a
Speaker 4: great writer. It's such a well written and beautiful book.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 4: So we're going to talk about that, but before we do,
Speaker 4: let's start, like we always do, with a parable. There's
Speaker 4: a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say,
Speaker 4: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 4: are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 4: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 4: other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 4: and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and thinks
Speaker 4: about it for a second and looks up at their
Speaker 4: grandparent and says, well, which one wins? And the grandparent,
Speaker 4: says the one you feed. So I'd like to start
Speaker 4: off by asking you what that parable means to you
Speaker 4: in your life and in the work that you do.
Speaker 1: I've thought so much through this project about the power
Speaker 1: of negative emotions. So I had never experienced heartbreak before,
Speaker 1: and when it happened, it so knocked me off. My
Speaker 1: socks changed, the way my body felt, changed, my health,
Speaker 1: changed the way my cells were functioning. And that's what
Speaker 1: really drove me to write this book. So, you know,
Speaker 1: I had to confront why is it that uncomfortable emotions
Speaker 1: are so difficult to deal with? Why do we avoid them?
Speaker 1: And so the one you feed? You have to make
Speaker 1: a choice sort of on a daily basis, like how
Speaker 1: are those negative emotions going to play you? And how
Speaker 1: are you going to play them? And I think it
Speaker 1: really became a driving kind of pursuit while writing this book.
Speaker 4: I love are you going to play the emotions or
Speaker 4: the emotions going to play you? I really like that
Speaker 4: take because it doesn't say anything about that you have
Speaker 4: to get rid of the emotion, right, which you know,
Speaker 4: it's not a repression, it's a relationship, you know, it's
Speaker 4: how are you relating to and working skillfully with these
Speaker 4: difficult things.
Speaker 1: And in fact, I would say one of the profound
Speaker 1: and surprising lessons for me through this process was to
Speaker 1: sort of embrace the negative emotions while not letting them
Speaker 1: exactly play me. But they're the ones who teach you,
Speaker 1: you know, and they're sort of what you have to
Speaker 1: move through in order to grow. And I think I
Speaker 1: had been living my life pretty differently, you know, before that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I'm going to ask you to tell a
Speaker 4: little bit of your story of heartbreak. But I'm curious
Speaker 4: were you looking into this at all before it happened
Speaker 4: to you. Was this on your radar in any way
Speaker 4: as a writer, as a person who's looking at different things,
Speaker 4: or did it emerge wholly from like, oh my god,
Speaker 4: I'm right in the middle of this and it's terrible.
Speaker 4: What do I do.
Speaker 1: I have to admit it wasn't really on my radar,
Speaker 1: And in some ways I feel badly about that, because
Speaker 1: I have friends, you know, who went through heartbreak at
Speaker 1: various times, and I don't think I was the best
Speaker 1: friend to them. I think I tended to sort of
Speaker 1: dismiss heartbreak as being sort of the realm of melodrama,
Speaker 1: A little bit overwrought, you know. Okay, so you got
Speaker 1: dumped by someone. You know, obviously that person was a loser.
Speaker 4: Move on, that's right, They're not the right fit for you.
Speaker 4: Lots of fish in the sea, Come on, yeah.
Speaker 1: Pick yourself up. Don't be so dramatic.
Speaker 4: Yep, yep. So tell us a little bit about the
Speaker 4: events that led you kind of into this.
Speaker 1: Sure, Well, I met the man who would be my
Speaker 1: husband when I was eighteen years old, was literally my
Speaker 1: first day of college. And we dated for seven years
Speaker 1: and then we got married and we were married for
Speaker 1: twenty five years, two kids, And I think, like a
Speaker 1: lot of long marriages, I mean, there are moments of
Speaker 1: connection and there are moments of disconnection. And I guess
Speaker 1: I always had this sort of bedrock faith in it,
Speaker 1: and I had a desire really for it to work.
Speaker 1: I mean, there were so many things I was attached
Speaker 1: to about my life. But you know, he didn't really
Speaker 1: feel the same way, unfortunately. And I think often with heartbreak,
Speaker 1: when there's a separation like this, a romantic split, one
Speaker 1: person wants it more than the other. And I was
Speaker 1: the one who didn't want it. I was afraid of it.
Speaker 1: And it also kind of surprised me, honestly, So you know,
Speaker 1: at one point he told me that he wanted to
Speaker 1: go find his soulmate, you know, and that I wasn't
Speaker 1: it ouch ouch, right, big ouch? And so I felt
Speaker 1: that rejection, and I felt that pain really deeply, you know,
Speaker 1: in my heart, in my stomach, in my pancreas, in
Speaker 1: my body. I had always thought that heartbreak, you know,
Speaker 1: was something that you know, was in your head. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of sadness, and that heartbreak was sort of
Speaker 1: a metaphor. But you know, as I kind of launched
Speaker 1: my investigation into what was happening to me and why
Speaker 1: I felt this way, I learned that our bodies really
Speaker 1: register this kind of pain in ways that I don't
Speaker 1: think really get acknowledged or talked about it enough.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and we'll go into that. I certainly like you
Speaker 4: have a history you have, I guess unlike you, you've got
Speaker 4: sort of the one heartbreak. I've got a whole string
Speaker 4: of them. I'm sorry, you know, but it's interesting. The
Speaker 4: biggest one was to my ex wife, mother of my son,
Speaker 4: and I look back on that as both the most
Speaker 4: difficult period of my life and perhaps the most fertile
Speaker 4: period of my life for so many things. There was
Speaker 4: so much opportunity for transformation in it. I wouldn't wish
Speaker 4: it on anybody.
Speaker 1: Yes, I can really relate to that. Do you think Eric,
Speaker 1: that it gets easier, that heartbreak gets easier the more
Speaker 1: you go through it? Or does it get harder? Is
Speaker 1: it a cumulative this is you. I've only had one
Speaker 1: big heartbreak, so I still don't know the answers to that.
Speaker 4: That's a great question. I don't think it gets easier. Well, yeah, no,
Speaker 4: I don't think it gets easier. I do think there
Speaker 4: is a cumulative nature. You talk about this in the book,
Speaker 4: which is that the problem with heartbreak, unlike say death, right,
Speaker 4: that kind of grief that comes from that, is there
Speaker 4: is a element of I must not be lovable that's
Speaker 4: embedded in it. Right, And when that happens multiple times,
Speaker 4: it's almost as if you're like, well, see more evidence.
Speaker 4: You know, I've got multiple pieces of evidence to back
Speaker 4: up this theory. Yeah, And it's so interesting. I have
Speaker 4: been in a really good relationship with Jenny. Listeners have
Speaker 4: heard her on the show and it's been I think
Speaker 4: six plus years, and it's been really good and They've
Speaker 4: been six great years for me as far as my
Speaker 4: own development and all that, And I kind of wonder, like,
Speaker 4: how would I handle heartache now, heartbreak now? And I
Speaker 4: think the answer is it would still be extraordinarily painful
Speaker 4: regardless least. I just don't think it's something that you
Speaker 4: evolve past.
Speaker 1: I wonder, though, I guess the hope would be that
Speaker 1: at some point you don't buy that story anymore of
Speaker 1: not being good enough.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I think there's that, And I think there's the
Speaker 4: other element that is an interesting question to think about,
Speaker 4: which is how much of how strongly I am affected
Speaker 4: by heartbreak has to do with things that have happened
Speaker 4: to me in the past that haven't been healed.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right. I think that's one of the
Speaker 1: things you learned. Yes, Yes, it all comes back around.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I'd like to think if it happened again,
Speaker 4: I would be in better shape because I had healed
Speaker 4: a lot of things. But yes, I still think, based
Speaker 4: on the way we're wired up, that it would be
Speaker 4: very painful. So let's talk about that. You know, one
Speaker 4: of the things you said you thought heartbreak or sadness
Speaker 4: was something that was in your brain as if it
Speaker 4: didn't exist. But what we know, and you point out
Speaker 4: I'm going to let you elaborate on, is that that
Speaker 4: sort of pain triggers the same places in the brain
Speaker 4: that actual, real physical pain does.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. I set out to talk to neuroscientists
Speaker 1: and geneticists and psychologists to find out sort of why
Speaker 1: our bodies get so kind of implicated in our emotions.
Speaker 1: And one of the things I learned there's been so
Speaker 1: much research on people who fall in love and the
Speaker 1: neurotransmitters associated with falling in love. I think it's kind
Speaker 1: of probably a fun research area.
Speaker 4: Your subjects are all happy, you.
Speaker 1: Know, your subjects are happy, it's all sunny. But I
Speaker 1: spoke early on to Helen Fisher, who is a biological anthropologist,
Speaker 1: and she has scanned the brains of dumped people and
Speaker 1: while they're looking at pictures actually of their sort of
Speaker 1: rejecting departing beloved, and she found that the parts of
Speaker 1: the brain that get activated are similar, not exactly similar,
Speaker 1: but basically the same, you know, very similar to where
Speaker 1: we process physical pain. And also parts of the brain
Speaker 1: light up that are associated with craving and addiction. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, just because someone stops loving you, doesn't mean
Speaker 1: you stop loving them, and your body on some level
Speaker 1: kind of misses them and notes their absence and registers
Speaker 1: that absence, and you sort of want that back. You
Speaker 1: want those brain chemicals back, if not the person itself.
Speaker 4: Right, And in the book you mentioned multiple times there's
Speaker 4: this profound feeling of not being safe. Yes, that happens
Speaker 4: when you're dumped. The early stages of it. For me,
Speaker 4: they feel a little bit like panic.
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
Speaker 4: I wouldn't call it a full panic attack, but it
Speaker 4: is a to use a word you've got in the book, hypervigilance.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, you feel deeply imperiled. And it makes sense
Speaker 1: because if you think about sort of how we evolved
Speaker 1: as mammals, you know, we are supposed to feel safety
Speaker 1: in numbers. We form deep attachments that drive our every
Speaker 1: sort of behavior. And when your primary attachment partner, you know,
Speaker 1: takes off, you literally feel alone. Your brain doesn't really
Speaker 1: make the distinction between being rejected by love and being
Speaker 1: sort of cast out of the clan to lie on
Speaker 1: the savannah and be circled by hyenas. You know, your
Speaker 1: body registers this as a very threatening state, like a
Speaker 1: physically threatening state. And so that starts this cascade of
Speaker 1: stress hormones nor apinephrine. You know that then talk to
Speaker 1: our cells, talk to our organs, talk to our immune
Speaker 1: systems where white blood cells get in our bone marrow,
Speaker 1: and they're designed to be very responsive to our environment,
Speaker 1: and it turns out to our social state. One of
Speaker 1: the researchers I talked to said, you know, our cells
Speaker 1: listen for loneliness, and when they detect it, boy, they
Speaker 1: really kick into high gear because it's not a place
Speaker 1: where we are supposed to live for a long time.
Speaker 4: Right, So let's talk about some of the things that heartbreak,
Speaker 4: slash loneliness does to the body. You know, we know
Speaker 4: how it feels, we can register the pain, but there
Speaker 4: are changes throughout the body that occur. You notate a
Speaker 4: lot of them in the book, So I wonder if
Speaker 4: you could just elaborate on a couple of them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that feeling of sort of near panic
Speaker 1: or hypervigilance sets off some very specific symptoms, for example, sleeplessness, Yeah, agitation,
Speaker 1: difficulty digesting because your body is sort of gearing up
Speaker 1: for some kind of you know, fight or flight. For me,
Speaker 1: it was a lot of weight loss, my blood sugars
Speaker 1: were sort of messed up, I mean deeply messed up.
Speaker 1: My gut bacteria was messed up. I ended up with
Speaker 1: an autoimmune diagnosis some months after the split, that was
Speaker 1: type one diabetes. And what I learned, you know, from
Speaker 1: talking to researchers, is that sometimes these autoimmune diseases do
Speaker 1: in fact have an emotional trigger. They are made worse
Speaker 1: by inflammation, and inflammation is kind of the key. So
Speaker 1: when I talk to a psychologist the University of Arizona,
Speaker 1: David Spara, he said to me, you know, the story
Speaker 1: of divorce is an inflammation story. You know, I had
Speaker 1: never heard that before. And so then I met with
Speaker 1: a researcher at UCLA and we actually analyzed my genetic markers,
Speaker 1: my transcription factors, which are basically signatures for inflammation. And
Speaker 1: we did this at various time points after the separation,
Speaker 1: and that became kind of one of the central threads
Speaker 1: of the book, kind of looking at how mysells were
Speaker 1: responding to loneliness and how they were responding to different
Speaker 1: science based interventions that I was very eager, you know,
Speaker 1: to try, in this sort of urgent bit to feel better,
Speaker 1: to feel healthier.
Speaker 4: I love that aspect of the book, you've got biomarkers
Speaker 4: that you're trying to sort of pay attention to to
Speaker 4: see what's working what's not, in addition to just the
Speaker 4: correlation and making the correlation to how I'm actually feeling right.
Speaker 4: And I think that naturally a lot of us will
Speaker 4: emerge from heartbreak and hopefully start going, all right, what's
Speaker 4: this next phase of my life look like? And we
Speaker 4: start adding and building things in which I think is
Speaker 4: a natural process, and you go through it, and I
Speaker 4: just love that you're also bringing the science along with it.
Speaker 4: You know, it's interesting when you've said that the story
Speaker 4: of divorces and inflammation story, there's also you're talking about
Speaker 4: heart health at a different point in the book. One
Speaker 4: of the people you quote the tragedies of life are
Speaker 4: largely arterial, so there's actual heart aspects to this also.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so fascinating to me that, you know, for millennia,
Speaker 1: cultures across time have known that the heart is in
Speaker 1: some ways the seat of the emotion, probably because it's,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the few organs we can actually feel,
Speaker 1: we can feel it pumping, we know it stops sometimes,
Speaker 1: you know, during crises, and people have known for a
Speaker 1: long time too that you know, of course, husbands and
Speaker 1: wives sometimes die within a couple of days of each
Speaker 1: other or within months of each other because their heart stopped.
Speaker 1: But it was only in the nineteen nineties that researchers
Speaker 1: in Japan were able to start imaging the heart during
Speaker 1: heart failure to see that people were coming in to
Speaker 1: the hospital with sort of symptoms of heart attack, but
Speaker 1: there was no sign of an arterial blockage, which is
Speaker 1: kind of the standard cause of a heart attack. Instead,
Speaker 1: these people were experiencing this weird distension of the left
Speaker 1: ventricle quadrant of the part, so it was like ballooning
Speaker 1: out and then being unable to pump correctly. And they
Speaker 1: named it takatsubo, after a lobster pot which has this
Speaker 1: very bulbous head and a narrow neck, so it looked
Speaker 1: like this quadrant of the heart. So it's the stress
Speaker 1: hormones like adrenaline landing on receptors in the heart and
Speaker 1: causing it to just literally balloon out like that and
Speaker 1: sort of freak out. So we know now that takatsubo
Speaker 1: makes up about five percent probably of all heart failures.
Speaker 1: You know, showing up in the hospital. About five percent
Speaker 1: of those cases will result in death. Another twenty percent
Speaker 1: will result in you know, continued sort of cardiac risk.
Speaker 1: And we know that especially middle aged postmenopausal women are
Speaker 1: about eighty percent of the patients, which is kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: So there seems to be something protective about the estrogen
Speaker 1: sort of counteracting that adrenaline. But we know that people
Speaker 1: suffer this kind of heart failure after the death of
Speaker 1: a spouse or the death even of a pet. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it's after the death of a sports team that your
Speaker 1: particularly there are cases in the literature men suffering this
Speaker 1: when their sports team loses the World's Cup, and sometimes
Speaker 1: it just to happen, you know, for no known reason.
Speaker 1: But this is really interesting. There are cases that really
Speaker 1: spike after a natural disasters when there's a lot of
Speaker 1: you know, adrenaline. That makes sense, And there's just recently
Speaker 1: a new study showing that cases have spiked during the
Speaker 1: pandemic during COVID interesting, especially in women.
Speaker 4: Interesting, So, do we know of any things that make
Speaker 4: any factors that make us more susceptible to the really
Speaker 4: damaging effects of heartbreak or of having like heartbreak tear
Speaker 4: us up? More, is there anything that sort of says like,
Speaker 4: people like this or have had this happen or this
Speaker 4: sort of thing are more likely to have like just
Speaker 4: heartbreak to feel catastrophic, versus people who might say, well,
Speaker 4: you know, yeah, I mean again, I'm not saying anybody's
Speaker 4: gonna be like, well, a big deal, right, But I
Speaker 4: seem to be one of those people. For whatever reason,
Speaker 4: it was earth shattering to me, yeah, right. And I
Speaker 4: had friends who, yeah, it was painful, but it did
Speaker 4: not seem to just devastate them in the same way
Speaker 4: it did me. And I just don't know. Is there
Speaker 4: anything that explains that sort of difference.
Speaker 1: Yes, you know, we know that there are personality traits
Speaker 1: that seem to make people both more resilient and a
Speaker 1: little bit less resilient. You know, the data is not
Speaker 1: destiny here, but in general, people who on personality tests,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of register as being a little bit
Speaker 1: more neurotic, a little bit more introspective, a little bit
Speaker 1: more anxious, you know, sort of tend to ruminate and
Speaker 1: cognitively engage, you know, with their emotions are going to
Speaker 1: be harder hit, you know, by some of these emotional blows.
Speaker 1: And also we know that people who've had early life
Speaker 1: traumas and childhood traumas are going to be more susceptible,
Speaker 1: you know, to future challenges. But I was so encouraged
Speaker 1: to talk to Paula Williams at the University of Utah
Speaker 1: who said, you know, yes, we know heartbreak is really hard,
Speaker 1: and we know that especially you know, people who split
Speaker 1: up after these long term relationships and divorces do have
Speaker 1: higher risk for early death, They have higher risk for depression,
Speaker 1: they have higher risk for metabolic disease, for cardiac disease.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's kind of a grim litany, frankly, But
Speaker 1: we also know that there are certain traits that make
Speaker 1: you more resilient. And this was the really heartwarming news
Speaker 1: to me. You can actually cultivate some of those traits
Speaker 1: and try to become better at them. And the one
Speaker 1: that was surprising to me and change the trajectory of
Speaker 1: my whole reporting over the two or three years of
Speaker 1: this book, which she said, the people who can really
Speaker 1: engage with beauty, people who can experience AWE on a
Speaker 1: regular basis, who can cultivate AWE, These are the people
Speaker 1: who seem to be able to make more meaning and
Speaker 1: sense of their tragedies. They can create more connections between
Speaker 1: their frontal cortex, which is kind of their seat of
Speaker 1: their self concept, and their sensory and motor parts of
Speaker 1: their brains in a way that helps them create meaning,
Speaker 1: helps them find per perspective, helps them experience conflicting emotions
Speaker 1: like yes, utter pain, but also wow, joy and beauty
Speaker 1: and possibility. The people who might be able to find
Speaker 1: a kernel of optimism and that that became true for
Speaker 1: me during the course of my journey. So I just
Speaker 1: glombed onto that as life saving advice. Not only could
Speaker 1: I experience beauty, but she was telling me that I
Speaker 1: could get better at it.
Speaker 4: The trait you're describing is often considered on a standard
Speaker 4: personality test. How open are you to new things? Right?
Speaker 4: How open are you in general? Yes? And there's a
Speaker 4: lot of people that say, you know, where you land
Speaker 4: on that personality test is sort of where you are, like,
Speaker 4: these things don't move.
Speaker 1: Right, they don't tend to move much.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you're stating.
Speaker 1: That either introverted or you're not right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And so you know, openness to new experience and
Speaker 4: the ability to find beauty you're saying, is trainable. What
Speaker 4: are some of the ways to do that well.
Speaker 1: She's a huge fan of starting early. So for example,
Speaker 1: childhood art education. You know, it's just a tragedy really
Speaker 1: that we don't have more of this, you know, in
Speaker 1: our schooling system in the United States. But this kind
Speaker 1: of developing an appreciation for art and for beauty is
Speaker 1: a lifelong gift that's going to help you survived totally
Speaker 1: the blows of life. And so, you know, wonderful if
Speaker 1: we could start that early. But with things like awe
Speaker 1: and beauty, you know, it's sort of like a mindful practice.
Speaker 1: You can go out, you know, around your block, and
Speaker 1: you can say, Okay, I'm gonna like find some things
Speaker 1: that are beautiful on this walk around my block, and
Speaker 1: I'm going to look at this flower. There's a way
Speaker 1: to sort of it. And I love this microdose AWE
Speaker 1: that I learned about from a study that I participated in,
Speaker 1: where there's an acronym for AWE where the A is attention.
Speaker 1: So you know, on your walk or as you're going
Speaker 1: through life, or even inside your house, you know, if
Speaker 1: you have a house plant, or you have an incredible meal,
Speaker 1: or you're looking at your baby, you know, attend right,
Speaker 1: just pay attention to that, and of course philosophers talk
Speaker 1: about this all the time, that attention is love and
Speaker 1: love is attention. You know, don't space out while you're
Speaker 1: looking at this beautiful blossom. And then the doub is
Speaker 1: for weight, So stay with it, stay with that attention,
Speaker 1: and the E is just exhale, just.
Speaker 4: Two breaths, say that last one again, exhale, exale, you.
Speaker 1: Know, so you may be staying with this moment of
Speaker 1: beauty for a couple of breaths. You know, it's like
Speaker 1: a one minute practice, and if you do it a
Speaker 1: couple times a day, there is some emerging data showing
Speaker 1: that it really does improve people's well being. It improves
Speaker 1: their moods, it improves their feeling of purpose in their lives,
Speaker 1: gives them some perspective. We know that the science of
Speaker 1: AWE is so interesting, also relatively new field of study.
Speaker 1: But in the presence of something beautiful, we are kind
Speaker 1: of naturally pulled out of our own thoughts. Our rumination
Speaker 1: sort of stops dead for a minute when the moon
Speaker 1: comes up, or when we notice, you know, the owl
Speaker 1: in front of us on the path or whatever it is.
Speaker 1: And I've had that experience where I've been just you know,
Speaker 1: so lost in some kind of conversation that I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about that I had, and then this owl jumped out
Speaker 1: in front of me on the trail and it was like,
Speaker 1: whow oh, completely stop thinking about what I was thinking about.
Speaker 1: I felt, you know the presence of something beyond myself, right,
Speaker 1: and that in itself is an incredibly helpful just feeling
Speaker 1: of connection on perspective.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I love that acronym usage, and I love the
Speaker 4: idea of you know, the weight and the exhale reminds
Speaker 4: me of Rick Hanson, who talks about a practice, you know,
Speaker 4: taking in the good, which is pretty much the same thing. Right,
Speaker 4: if you're having a good experience, stay with it a
Speaker 4: little bit, you know, give it, yes, savor it, no,
Speaker 4: savor it, you know, give it a little more attention.
Speaker 4: There are other attentional exercises that I think can be
Speaker 4: very helpful in this regard to which is things like,
Speaker 4: you know, I often play with seeing the edges of everything.
Speaker 4: What would be an example of that, Well, if I'm
Speaker 4: looking out my window right now, I mean I've looked
Speaker 4: at this window ten thousand times, right, and what we know,
Speaker 4: you know about the brains sort of predictive nature, right,
Speaker 4: is that there's some people believe that I'm not even
Speaker 4: really registering what's out there at some level. Right, my
Speaker 4: brain is sending down a prediction of what it expects
Speaker 4: to see. My senses are sending up what they do see,
Speaker 4: and if they match, I never have to process it.
Speaker 4: So something like looking at the edges would just be like,
Speaker 4: let me look at the edge of everything I see?
Speaker 4: Where are the edges of that building? Where are the
Speaker 4: edges of that tree? It just causes me to have
Speaker 4: to actually look.
Speaker 1: That's interesting.
Speaker 4: Or you could do this with color, you know, let
Speaker 4: me see all the green that's out there. It's a
Speaker 4: way for me of I think of actually looking.
Speaker 1: Yet it pulls you into some kind of process that's
Speaker 1: not about your head.
Speaker 4: That's right, Yeah, that's right now. The thing that you're
Speaker 4: talking about, though, is that is the element that goes
Speaker 4: a little bit beyond that, which is how do you
Speaker 4: then go from that sort of mechanical thing into a
Speaker 4: little bit more of a state of almost appreciation. Right,
Speaker 4: But as they say, you know, I think Mary Oliver
Speaker 4: said it best right that you know, attention is the
Speaker 4: beginning of devotion.
Speaker 1: Right there you go yep.
Speaker 4: You know. So, how do we devote ourselves to something.
Speaker 4: We pay attention to it. And I think, you know,
Speaker 4: my Zen training talks so much about this, about just
Speaker 4: the ordinary thing. If you give it enough attention, it
Speaker 4: will come alive.
Speaker 1: And I think you do get better at it the
Speaker 1: more you do it.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 1: For example, I'm during the pandemic, one of my little
Speaker 1: rituals when you know, we all felt so housebound and isolated,
Speaker 1: and I would walk every night to go look at
Speaker 1: the sunset, and it just became, you know, this automatic
Speaker 1: part of my day. It's like, oh, time for the sunset.
Speaker 1: I'm going to run down the street and go look
Speaker 1: at the sunset. And it's when you do that, it's
Speaker 1: impossible not to sort of drink it in, you know,
Speaker 1: like this bomb. It just you become better at doing it.
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 4: So you found over that time that you began to
Speaker 4: develop the skill of appreciating the sunset more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm really trying to sort of access the aught
Speaker 1: in it as well. Yeah, to find myself stilled by
Speaker 1: that beauty. And then the other interesting thing that happened
Speaker 1: is that there were a number of my neighbors doing
Speaker 1: the same thing and so, you know, I would see
Speaker 1: the same people every night, and I felt closer to them.
Speaker 1: You know, I didn't know them, but pretty soon I
Speaker 1: did and we would say hello. And so it became
Speaker 1: not just this personal awe experience, but it became a
Speaker 1: collective awe experience, which was incredibly comforting and you know,
Speaker 1: a really nice antidote to loneliness. If you can experience
Speaker 1: that kind of unselfing in the presence of other people,
Speaker 1: it sort of amplifies it, I think.
Speaker 4: So it sounds like you had a location that multiple
Speaker 4: people agreed was an optimal place to watch a sunset from.
Speaker 4: Is that accurate.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I live in Washington, d C. And I'm about,
Speaker 1: I don't know, five blocks or so from the bluffs
Speaker 1: overlooking the Potomac River. So it's one of the few
Speaker 1: places where you actually can get a little bit of
Speaker 1: a vista. It looks west and there's the sunset. Wow.
Speaker 1: I mean it just you know, some nights it was
Speaker 1: it was lame, but usually it was pretty great.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, So let's move into Now we've talked about
Speaker 4: what heartbreak is, how difficult it is for us, the
Speaker 4: things it does to us. Let's talk about where did
Speaker 4: you start to turn for healing. I don't think we're
Speaker 4: going to get through all of it, but maybe you know,
Speaker 4: highlight a few key places.
Speaker 1: Sure. I became so motivated to try to do what
Speaker 1: was kind of science based in my kind of urgent
Speaker 1: bid to get healthier, and so I turned, per this
Speaker 1: conversation with Paula Williams, I turned to spending a lot
Speaker 1: of time in nature, trying to focus on beauty. I
Speaker 1: went on a wilderness trip to even try to kind
Speaker 1: of crank up the volume on the awe and the immersion.
Speaker 1: So I embarked on a thirty day wilderness trip. I
Speaker 1: did half of it alone, which that's kind of some
Speaker 1: unexpected results. I would say, actually it was good in
Speaker 1: some ways, it was not as helpful an other. I
Speaker 1: did some EMDR therapy, which is supposed to be good
Speaker 1: for emotional trauma and there's some interesting emerging research about that.
Speaker 1: And I did some psychedelics, actually working with a clinician
Speaker 1: in a therapeutic setting. Again to I would say heighten
Speaker 1: the awe kind of dose that I was trying to
Speaker 1: go for. And there's a lot of science there, of course,
Speaker 1: and it was really helpful to me.
Speaker 4: So let's start with nature. You wrote a book called
Speaker 4: The Nature Fix, which was all about how nature is
Speaker 4: healing for us and critical for us as humans. Did
Speaker 4: you find yourself naturally just I guess that's a funny sentence,
Speaker 4: naturally turning to nature, Like you just kind of knew
Speaker 4: it and you went to it. Or was it a
Speaker 4: case of sort of having to rediscover that.
Speaker 1: I was so primed already to think that nature could
Speaker 1: be helpful. Having written The Nature Fix, I felt like
Speaker 1: I was leaning on every lesson I learned from that book,
Speaker 1: not just because you know, the subtitle of that book
Speaker 1: was how to be health Happier, healthier and more creat
Speaker 1: of Now I felt like I needed it to survive.
Speaker 1: You know. It was a whole different level of kind
Speaker 1: of need, and so it was an intuitive place for
Speaker 1: me to try to seek help. But in that book,
Speaker 1: I only talk about sort of the dose curve of
Speaker 1: nature immersion up to three days. Like I end the
Speaker 1: book with the so called three day effect, talks about
Speaker 1: the interesting things that happened to your brain and your
Speaker 1: body after three days aside, And I felt like, Okay,
Speaker 1: but I've fed a lot more than three days, Because
Speaker 1: this is a really big heartbreak. I'm going to go
Speaker 1: for thirty days.
Speaker 4: So what were the aspects of that that felt really
Speaker 4: healing and what were the aspects of that that felt
Speaker 4: more challenging.
Speaker 1: Well, I did half of the trip with other people
Speaker 1: and half of the trip alone. So the first half
Speaker 1: was the half of other people. And you know, for me,
Speaker 1: I loved the planning the trip. Even the logistics of
Speaker 1: an expedition can actually pull you out of kind of
Speaker 1: the limbic parts of your brain and force you to
Speaker 1: sort of, you know, be really cerebral in a way
Speaker 1: that's helped right to deep emotions. And then I also
Speaker 1: just wanted to spend good times with my friends and family.
Speaker 1: You know, I felt so much comfort from being surrounded
Speaker 1: by them. I had all of these friends and family
Speaker 1: who signed on, and so I felt very supported by them.
Speaker 1: You know, they were helping me kind of self actualis.
Speaker 1: But also they just also really liked being on the river,
Speaker 1: you know, and so it was kind of a lot
Speaker 1: of jolly times. I would say it was sort of
Speaker 1: jolly and fun. Yeah, and then everyone disappeared and it
Speaker 1: was like, Okay, now I'm going to do the really
Speaker 1: deep work here. I'm going to learn how to be
Speaker 1: alone because i have not ever in my life been
Speaker 1: alone since I met my husband when I was eighteen.
Speaker 1: I'm going to learn to access bravery since I'm scared
Speaker 1: of this future that looks so different and so feel
Speaker 1: so insecure. I wanted to feel the metaphor of paddling
Speaker 1: from one destination to another.
Speaker 4: Tell listeners about what the trip was real quick.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So it was thirty days down the Green River
Speaker 1: in Utah. Starts in southwestern Wyoming and then flows through
Speaker 1: a lot of Utah to merge with the Colorado River
Speaker 1: in Canyonlands National Park. It's one of the sort of
Speaker 1: premiere river trips you can do in the United States
Speaker 1: where you can be on the river for that long.
Speaker 1: You know, most of it is through public land. You
Speaker 1: need a series of permits to go through these different canyons.
Speaker 1: They're different permitting agencies, including Indian Reservation. So it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's logistically complicated for the solo piece. I was in
Speaker 1: Canyonlands National Park for most of that. Also some Bureau
Speaker 1: of Land Management land, and so there's only one resupply
Speaker 1: point in that two weeks, one road that goes in
Speaker 1: so I had to sort of line that up, you
Speaker 1: plan the food, and I felt like I just needed
Speaker 1: to mark this passage in my life, you know, by
Speaker 1: doing something kind of grand and something that would carry me,
Speaker 1: you know, through this passage into what I thought would
Speaker 1: be kind of a better story of myself as literally
Speaker 1: the pilot of my own boat. You know. Metaphors were
Speaker 1: just irresistible to me.
Speaker 4: And so what were the good and bad parts of
Speaker 4: those fifteen days.
Speaker 1: I think that I did access a lot of bravery.
Speaker 1: I think I felt like, Okay, I can be alone,
Speaker 1: I can take care of myself, I can be self reliant.
Speaker 1: But I also had this realization that I don't want
Speaker 1: to be I don't want to be alone. I don't
Speaker 1: want to take care of myself. I learned that, and
Speaker 1: it's through the absence of having other people around me
Speaker 1: that the value of having other people around you is
Speaker 1: to help you not feel so bad about yourself. You
Speaker 1: know that if you tend to go down these dark
Speaker 1: rabbit holes, it's the company of people you love who
Speaker 1: help pull you out of that. You know, it's one
Speaker 1: of the tremendous values of our social you know, instincts,
Speaker 1: but you know, beyond that, we are healthiest when we don't.
Speaker 1: I don't just rely on ourselves. It's kind of our
Speaker 1: cellular super fuel as a species that we do help
Speaker 1: each other. And so if we deny ourselves that opportunity,
Speaker 1: we're just not going to kind of hit our real potential,
Speaker 1: I think. And those were all big revelations for me,
Speaker 1: because I don't think I had wanted to rely on
Speaker 1: other people so much. I think I did want to
Speaker 1: kind of embrace this kind of self reliance, you know,
Speaker 1: this is the myth that we're all sort of fed
Speaker 1: from such an early age. I also wanted to connect
Speaker 1: with people through dark emotions, you know. I think I
Speaker 1: had been taught that dark emotions aren't necessarily something you
Speaker 1: want to share with other people. Nobody's comfortable with them.
Speaker 1: Let's just put on a happy face and keep going.
Speaker 1: And I found myself so resisting that and wanting to
Speaker 1: sort of have more authentic connections with people in my
Speaker 1: life that necessarily involve expressing that.
Speaker 4: Hi everyone. One of the things that I know many
Speaker 4: of you struggle with is anxiety, and very recently I
Speaker 4: shared some tips on managing anxiety in our newsletter. Specifically,
Speaker 4: I shared a practice on clarifying your values In the practice,
Speaker 4: you write down one or two of your core values
Speaker 4: and then identify one action step that aligns with them.
Speaker 4: I find that taking one positive action towards things that
Speaker 4: matter to me really helps reduce anxiety. Also, I have
Speaker 4: a reflection question, what positive experiences have you had today
Speaker 4: that you could focus on instead of your anxiety. Every
Speaker 4: Wednesday I send out a newsletter called a Weekly Bye
Speaker 4: to Wisdom for a wiser, happier You, And in it
Speaker 4: I give tips and reflections like you just got And
Speaker 4: it's an opportunity for you to pause, reflect, and practice.
Speaker 4: It's a way to stay focused on what's important and
Speaker 4: meaningful to you. Each month we focus on a theme.
Speaker 4: This month's theme is anxiety, and next month we'll be
Speaker 4: focusing on acceptance. To sign up for these bits of
Speaker 4: weekly wisdom, go to Goodwolf dot me slash newsletter. I
Speaker 4: think earlier on and this is certainly my journey. Also
Speaker 4: in this which was earlier on, my view of spiritual development,
Speaker 4: of getting healthier, of being psychologically well, all that was
Speaker 4: kind of there was an element of self reliance in it,
Speaker 4: and there was an element of psychologically healthy people don't
Speaker 4: need other people right, sort of a codependency. Right, the
Speaker 4: opposite of codependency. Codependency was saying, you know, you lean
Speaker 4: on other people too much, you care too much what
Speaker 4: they think. It's what rules your life. That's a problem,
Speaker 4: and certainly it can be. But more and more I'm
Speaker 4: seeing people talking about the fact that we are social
Speaker 4: creatures that do need each other and there is a
Speaker 4: healthy way to do that. Not only is there a
Speaker 4: healthy way to do it, it is healthier for us
Speaker 4: to do it, to find connection, and that we thrive
Speaker 4: best in connection with other people. And it just seems
Speaker 4: that that is a theme that is coming up more
Speaker 4: and more.
Speaker 1: I love it that people are talking about this more,
Speaker 1: and in some ways, I think one of the silver
Speaker 1: linings of the pandemic is that we have realized the
Speaker 1: value of connection more and we've kind of fallen on
Speaker 1: our knees a little bit and said, yeah, this is
Speaker 1: a hard time, let's talk about mental health. I think
Speaker 1: those are really really positive developments. But I also worry about,
Speaker 1: especially younger people now, who do consider themselves the loneliest demographic.
Speaker 1: Is so interesting. They're the most anxious, they're the most lonely,
Speaker 1: they're the most concerned about their mental health. I worry
Speaker 1: about them, and I think that they live in very
Speaker 1: challenging times where they are not making the authentic connections
Speaker 1: maybe that we sort of grew up with in the
Speaker 1: absence of the Internet, in the absence of social media.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I think there's another element to that that I
Speaker 4: think is interesting, which is there's an idea out there
Speaker 4: that stress becomes stress when you perceive it to be
Speaker 4: harmful to you, or let me say that differently, stress
Speaker 4: becomes harmful when you perceive it to be harmful. Right, right,
Speaker 4: And I'm going to make another analogy, which is sleep. Right.
Speaker 4: I've rebelled a little bit in my own head and
Speaker 4: with people close to me a little bit with what
Speaker 4: I refer to as the sleep police, right, because now
Speaker 4: everybody is saying, like, you've got to get eight hours
Speaker 4: of sleep or you know, you'll you'll get the bubonic
Speaker 4: plague next week. Right. I get the over correction saying, look,
Speaker 4: this is really important, but restless leg syndrome and when
Speaker 4: it kicks in, I don't sleep well. And so now
Speaker 4: I'm not sleeping well. And all I'm hearing all the
Speaker 4: time is how destructive it is to me that I'm
Speaker 4: not sleeping well, And I worry that all this research
Speaker 4: about how bad it is to be lonely could be
Speaker 4: doing the same thing to people who are already lonely,
Speaker 4: and now they're being added to that is oh god,
Speaker 4: how bad is it for me to be lonely? And
Speaker 4: to the extent that any of those things help us
Speaker 4: take positive change, right to the extent that the sleep
Speaker 4: police helps somebody to go, you know what, this five
Speaker 4: hours of sleep nonsense I'm doing isn't really a good idea.
Speaker 4: I should put more effort into getting sleep really positive.
Speaker 4: To the extent that knowing how destructive loneliness is to
Speaker 4: us helps us move towards positive direction. I think it's helpful,
Speaker 4: but I worry about a tipping point with all this stuff.
Speaker 1: I think you're right, but loneliness is such an interesting
Speaker 1: emotion because you know, it's subjective, right, So you can
Speaker 1: be in a marriage and feel lonely, and live in
Speaker 1: a house full of people and feel lonely, and yet
Speaker 1: it seems to have a very highly adapted reason, which
Speaker 1: is that it is a signal. You know, the feeling
Speaker 1: of loneliness tends to make us feel like there's something
Speaker 1: we don't have that we want. There's a disconnect between
Speaker 1: what we want and what we have, and by noticing
Speaker 1: that and feeling it, it actually is supposed to I
Speaker 1: think propel behavior drives us to seek a little bit
Speaker 1: of comfort or a little bit of connection. The irony, though,
Speaker 1: is that if you feel lonely for too long, it
Speaker 1: kind of does the opposite. It makes it harder for
Speaker 1: you to have connection because you're more suspicious of other people,
Speaker 1: You maybe feel worse about yourself. It's one of these
Speaker 1: emotions sort of like heartbreak, that I think exists for
Speaker 1: a reason, but it can also kind of morph into
Speaker 1: something more destructive if it lasts for too long.
Speaker 4: That's a really great point. It turns into something that's
Speaker 4: harder to get out of the longer you're in it. Right,
Speaker 4: And what I find really interesting is, you know you
Speaker 4: just stated something, which is that kids these days, you know,
Speaker 4: teenagers are considered the loneliest. Now forever, it's been senior citizens, right, right,
Speaker 4: senior citizens were you know, it was just very clear
Speaker 4: they were the loneliest. And we understand why. Right, Their
Speaker 4: partners are passing away, their friends are passing away, they
Speaker 4: don't have a job, right, they're isolated in ways, but
Speaker 4: it is sort of stunning that kids feel that way.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 4: I'm not even sure what to do with that information.
Speaker 1: I don't know either, but I think we need to
Speaker 1: pay attention to it. I'm really concerned about it me too.
Speaker 4: I'm concerned that the people who generally have the most
Speaker 4: energy to solve that problem don't feel like they can
Speaker 4: solve it. You know, youth does have an energy of
Speaker 4: I feel like, the ability to make things happen. And
Speaker 4: I get when you're seventy, it's much harder to be like,
Speaker 4: all right, I'm going to go to three social events today. Right,
Speaker 4: you're tired. But when you're eighteen, that's a different thing.
Speaker 4: And so, yeah, I'm with you. I find it somewhat alarming.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's why I feel, frankly so motivated to talk
Speaker 1: about the things that can help build resilience, such as
Speaker 1: authentic connection to other people but also to the natural world.
Speaker 1: You know, I really do believe that by helping young
Speaker 1: people connect to nature, by helping them get out of
Speaker 1: their own anxieties a little bit, you know, I do
Speaker 1: very strongly feel that it's part of the solution.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I do too, one hundred percent. I remember my
Speaker 4: last bad heartbreak, and I remember exactly what I did.
Speaker 4: I just made a last minute decision to go to
Speaker 4: this nature retreat in Ohio for like four days, and
Speaker 4: it's basically it's entirely off grid. You're by yourself more
Speaker 4: or less except meals are provided for you. And it
Speaker 4: was transformative for me. It kicked off something really valuable
Speaker 4: in my life. And you know, nature was certainly a
Speaker 4: big part of that. So I think that is one path.
Speaker 4: And did your research lead you into other paths out
Speaker 4: of loneliness for people?
Speaker 1: Yes? So you know I told you that we did
Speaker 1: this experiment where we looked at my white blood cells
Speaker 1: for markers of inflammation and also for markers of virus
Speaker 1: fighting ability, which is something you really want when you're
Speaker 1: going into a pandemic. Yes, And I worked with this researcher,
Speaker 1: Steve Cole, who has in fact done a lot of
Speaker 1: interventions with populations where he's looked at their immune cells
Speaker 1: and how they may improve after, for example, they try
Speaker 1: zen meditation or after they try volunteering in schools. And
Speaker 1: what he has found is that where he sees the
Speaker 1: best improvements in people's immune cells immune profiles is not
Speaker 1: necessarily when they report feeling happier or kind of more mirthful,
Speaker 1: or they're able to seek more pleasure. He says that
Speaker 1: he sees the biggest improvements when they feel like they
Speaker 1: have meaning in their lives, us in their lives. And
Speaker 1: that's not the same thing as waking up every morning,
Speaker 1: you know, feeling amused totally and sort of you know, calm.
Speaker 1: It's this kind of larger right north star, And so
Speaker 1: I thought that was fascinating and also not something that
Speaker 1: we hear of as an antidote to heartbreak or an
Speaker 1: antidote to loneliness. You know, it's not necessarily being with
Speaker 1: other people. It's feeling like you're doing something worthwhile, like
Speaker 1: there is a why that you are answering in your life,
Speaker 1: and eventually, ideally that will lead to feelings of connection
Speaker 1: with other people.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Ye, my experience, I mean, I have sort of
Speaker 4: a close firsthand experience with that, which was in AA,
Speaker 4: which was a big part of my life for a
Speaker 4: long time. That was the foundational element, right, which was
Speaker 4: to work with other people who were struggling with what
Speaker 4: you were struggling with. And that's not exactly what you're saying,
Speaker 4: but what it was was purpose, it was service, and
Speaker 4: it was connection exactly. The line that I remember was
Speaker 4: nothing so much insures in community from drinking then working
Speaker 4: with another alcoholic. Yeah, there's some aa people out there
Speaker 4: who are gonna be like, you didn't quite get that,
Speaker 4: but it's close, it's close, and so yeah, I agree.
Speaker 4: I think that's so important. The other thing I've been
Speaker 4: thinking about, I think a lot about how do people
Speaker 4: build community? How do people go from being lonely? You know,
Speaker 4: how does this happen? And one of the things I've
Speaker 4: realized recently is that it's not that I realized. I
Speaker 4: found some research recently that said, you know, in order
Speaker 4: to make connection with a new person, right, So if
Speaker 4: you've already got existing connections, right, nurture them, right, But
Speaker 4: if you need to make new ones, you're just like
Speaker 4: I just don't have any in my life where I
Speaker 4: have very few and I need to make new ones.
Speaker 4: It takes a lot of time, it does. And so
Speaker 4: what I see a lot of people doing, and I've
Speaker 4: done this in the past, is I go, all right,
Speaker 4: you know what, I got to find some connection. I'm
Speaker 4: going to go to the local meditation group because I'm
Speaker 4: interested in meditation. There'll be people there that are like me,
Speaker 4: and that's how I'm going to do it. And I
Speaker 4: go once or twice and I don't feel connec because
Speaker 4: that's not how it works, right, And so then I go,
Speaker 4: this isn't working and I give up, or I do
Speaker 4: a volunteer thing that only happens once or twice, and
Speaker 4: that's not enough time either. So you know, one of
Speaker 4: the things that I've been talking with people about is
Speaker 4: really saying, you know what, pick a couple things, but
Speaker 4: it's going to take a commitment. Yeah, it's going to
Speaker 4: take I've got to keep going even when I'm uncomfortable,
Speaker 4: even when I feel like I don't fit in, even
Speaker 4: in the beginning, because it just takes a certain number
Speaker 4: of hours. You know that the research is different on
Speaker 4: how long it is. And I'm always skeptical of like,
Speaker 4: you know, twenty one days do a new habit, right,
Speaker 4: Like it's so variable. So it takes more than seeing
Speaker 4: somebody twice for an hour.
Speaker 1: That's right. And I think that there are other ways
Speaker 1: to connect and to feel connection. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: face to face with other people is one way. It's
Speaker 1: a great way, but you can have a meaningful connection
Speaker 1: with a pet. Yes, you can have meaningful connection. And
Speaker 1: I'm really big on this with nature. You know, if
Speaker 1: you have I have a sort of favorite spot or
Speaker 1: couple of spots where you can go where you get
Speaker 1: to know the seasons and you get to know the birds,
Speaker 1: and you get to know you know the patterns of
Speaker 1: the water or the rocks. You know. It sounds a
Speaker 1: little goofy to say it, but I think there's some
Speaker 1: compelling research here showing that when people can feel connected
Speaker 1: to the natural world, it can be a great antidote
Speaker 1: actually for loneliness.
Speaker 4: Yes, I think that's a really important point to kind
Speaker 4: of keep coming back to. It's not only other people.
Speaker 4: There are lots of ways to connect. And even back
Speaker 4: to what we were talking about earlier around beauty and art.
Speaker 4: I have deep connections to pieces of art, pieces of music,
Speaker 4: things they exactly do feel like connection. You know, they
Speaker 4: are valuable.
Speaker 1: So I guess, like the great trifecta, you know, to
Speaker 1: sort of sum it up, the great trifecta of kind
Speaker 1: of heartbreak antidote or loneliness antidote seems to be this
Speaker 1: sort of beauty plus connection plus purpose. I think it's
Speaker 1: very hard to lie too much on one of those
Speaker 1: over the other. It seems to be, you know, in combination,
Speaker 1: seems to be sort of a pathway into ultimately feeling
Speaker 1: a sense of belonging, feeling like the things that you
Speaker 1: do matter, and ultimately, of course, increasing your capacity for love,
Speaker 1: which is really what it's all about.
Speaker 4: Well, I can't think of a more beautiful place to
Speaker 4: just kind of wrap up. That was a great summary there, Beauty, purpose,
Speaker 4: and connection. I want to take a second and let
Speaker 4: you share a little bit about there's an audio version
Speaker 4: of your book, which I think is really exciting. One
Speaker 4: of the things that's so great about so many of
Speaker 4: these books like yours, is you talk to so many
Speaker 4: interesting people, and we get you sort of giving us
Speaker 4: that in the writing, but I think in the audiobook
Speaker 4: we can actually hear these people. Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks so much for asking about that. I'm really
Speaker 1: proud of this audiobook that we made. That's very unusual.
Speaker 1: As I went around reporting the research for this book,
Speaker 1: I had my tape recorder and I taped everyone I
Speaker 1: talked to. I also taped myself in an audio journal.
Speaker 1: I taped my friends, I taped my therapist, and so
Speaker 1: when we made the audiobook. We decided to actually pull
Speaker 1: that tape into the book, so it's not just me
Speaker 1: reading the text, it's actually these real conversations layered in
Speaker 1: as well as really beautiful music and sound design, and
Speaker 1: so it feels like a very immersive, I think, audio experience,
Speaker 1: and I hope people will check it out.
Speaker 4: And it sounds like a lovely companion for being heartbroken,
Speaker 4: I hope.
Speaker 1: So, you know, I really wanted the book to be hopeful,
Speaker 1: because I think that heartbreak is, you know, as difficult
Speaker 1: as it is, it is a path to transformation. And
Speaker 1: how lucky you know that we can get that.
Speaker 4: Well. Florence, thank you so much for coming back on
Speaker 4: It is always a pleasure to talk with you.
Speaker 1: You too, Eric, Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2: If what you just heard was helpful to you, please
Speaker 2: consider making a monthly donation to support the One You
Speaker 2: Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this
Speaker 2: monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members only benefits.
Speaker 2: It's our way of saying thank you for your support. Now.
Speaker 2: We are so grateful for the members of our community.
Speaker 2: We wouldn't be able to do what we do without
Speaker 2: their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted.
Speaker 2: To learn more, make a donation at any level, and
Speaker 2: become a member of the one You Feed community. Go
Speaker 2: to oneufeed dot net slash join The One You Feed
Speaker 2: podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting
Speaker 2: the show.