Speaker 1: Pushkin. It's Miami in the nineteen eighties, inside a local
Speaker 1: elementary school, and one of the students, Vivek, is feeling
Speaker 1: out of place. He's new to the city, new to
Speaker 1: the country even and he's experiencing something that many of
Speaker 1: us are at least a little familiar with. Vivek is
Speaker 1: feeling lonely. Experiencing loneliness had very much to do with shyness,
Speaker 1: and I was actually not deeply introverted. I wanted to
Speaker 1: spend time with other people, but I was really shy,
Speaker 1: and I had at our time making friends. Young Vivek
Speaker 1: lived in the shadow of that loneliness. The schoolyard, his
Speaker 1: home room, and lunch tables may have been bustling, but
Speaker 1: no one seemed to stop to get to know the
Speaker 1: shy young boy in their midst Going to school each
Speaker 1: day was stressful, and I was always worried about cafeteria,
Speaker 1: lunch time and sitting alone. I was worried about what
Speaker 1: would happen in the playground when people were choosing teams,
Speaker 1: and was worried that I might be chosen last, even
Speaker 1: though I had good athletic ability, but I just didn't
Speaker 1: have a lot of close friendships with people. The Vak's
Speaker 1: feelings of sadness and isolation extended beyond the school day.
Speaker 1: He went home to a supportive family, but he held
Speaker 1: his loneliness closely. It was his secret, his biggest source
Speaker 1: of shame. It was something he wasn't willing to share
Speaker 1: with anyone. You know, I was embarrassed. I didn't want
Speaker 1: it to seem like I was somehow deficient in some
Speaker 1: way or unable to interact with people. Vivek's shame was
Speaker 1: compounded by a sense of guilt. His parents had moved
Speaker 1: several times and only a few short years, looking for
Speaker 1: the best place to raise a young family. Despite his age,
Speaker 1: Vivek could sense how difficult this was for his parents.
Speaker 1: He didn't want to burden them further by revealing his unhappiness.
Speaker 1: I didn't want them to think that somehow this was
Speaker 1: their fault. You know, my parents had just come to
Speaker 1: the United States. You're dealing with a lot of different
Speaker 1: stresses and trying to figure out how to make sure
Speaker 1: we were okay in school, and they were working really
Speaker 1: hard at that, and I just didn't want to make
Speaker 1: them feel like somehow they were falling short. And I
Speaker 1: don't think they were falling short. I think they were
Speaker 1: doing everything that a parent needs to do. If you've
Speaker 1: listened to previous episodes, you've probably heard that our minds
Speaker 1: are often unreliable, that we're prone to rationalizing or putting
Speaker 1: a positive spin on our tough memories by editing or
Speaker 1: forgetting them. But Vivek's early experiences of loneliness are still
Speaker 1: seared into his brain. They've even given him a new
Speaker 1: mission in his career today. Viveque to give his full
Speaker 1: title is Vice Admiral Vague H. Murphy, MD. Two time
Speaker 1: Surgeon General of the United States. Vegs tackled many public
Speaker 1: health priorities while in office, but one of the issues
Speaker 1: he wants is to take more seriously is loneliness. Loneliness
Speaker 1: seems to be a near universal experience. Is far more
Speaker 1: common than we think, and it's also much more consequential,
Speaker 1: both for our health as well as for how we
Speaker 1: show up in life, whether that's for our families, in
Speaker 1: the workplace, we're in school. So that's what led me
Speaker 1: on the path of focusing on loneliness. We sometimes tell
Speaker 1: ourselves that loneliness affects only a sad minority of people.
Speaker 1: The widowed, the withdrawn, the weird. We think that a
Speaker 1: busy life in a bustling office, school, or workplace means
Speaker 1: that we can't be lonely, that having kids or a
Speaker 1: loving partner can satisfy all of our complex social needs.
Speaker 1: And we usually assume that friendships just happen without our
Speaker 1: having to put in the work needed to seek out
Speaker 1: opportunities for connecting. But as you'll hear, our minds tend
Speaker 1: to lie to us about how social connection really works.
Speaker 1: And the truth is loneliness is much more pervasive than
Speaker 1: we think. In fact, if the statistics are right, it's
Speaker 1: even possible that you're feeling lonely right now. And if
Speaker 1: you are, what can you do about it? How can
Speaker 1: we fight our feelings of emotional isolation so that we
Speaker 1: can get all the happiness benefits that come from other people.
Speaker 1: Our minds are constantly telling us what to do to
Speaker 1: be happy. But what if our minds are wrong. What
Speaker 1: if our minds are lying to us, leading us away,
Speaker 1: who will really make us happy? The good news is
Speaker 1: that understanding the science of the mind can poin us
Speaker 1: all back in the right direction. You're listening to the
Speaker 1: Happiness Lab with doctor Laurie Santos. If I want to
Speaker 1: improve my physical health, there's plenty of reasonably specific, science
Speaker 1: backed information out there. For example, the US Department of
Speaker 1: Health website lists the top ten changes I should make
Speaker 1: to my diet, things like limiting added sugar or eating
Speaker 1: more whole grains. The same goes for exercise. The CDC
Speaker 1: tells me I should do one hundred and fifty minutes
Speaker 1: of modern intensity activity every week, like this elliptical machine
Speaker 1: that I'm on right now. But to cite the impact
Speaker 1: that loneliness has on our health and well being, we
Speaker 1: don't have daily targets for social connection and the way
Speaker 1: we do for nutrition and exercise. There's no checklist telling
Speaker 1: you to say hello to five people in your neighborhood
Speaker 1: or to spend one hundred and fifty minutes per week
Speaker 1: having a real heart to heart with a person you trust.
Speaker 1: But these types of interactions are required for our health
Speaker 1: and happiness, and not getting a big enough dose could
Speaker 1: be taking a larger toll than you think. When Vvakmurthy
Speaker 1: first became Surgeon General, he assumed he'd carry on the
Speaker 1: work of his predecessors, concentrating on health problems like obesity,
Speaker 1: smoking and the opioid crisis. But loneliness, that feeling he
Speaker 1: remembered so vividly from childhood, quickly became an important part
Speaker 1: of his agenda. And that's because feeling lonely can have
Speaker 1: a devastating effect on our health. It appears that loneliness
Speaker 1: is strongly associated with an increased risk of heart disease
Speaker 1: and dementia, and depression and anxiety. People who struggle with
Speaker 1: loneliness also have fragmented sleep, so they may sleep for
Speaker 1: the same number of hours as somebody else, but that
Speaker 1: sleep is broken up and marked by something called microawakenings,
Speaker 1: where they don't fully wake up, but they nearly wake up,
Speaker 1: and that disturbed quality of sleep affects how RESTful your
Speaker 1: sleep is. It diminishes the quality of your sleep. There's
Speaker 1: also evidence that loneliness can be deadly. Take, for example,
Speaker 1: a famous paper by Brigham Young University psychologist Julian Holt
Speaker 1: lnstat She and her colleagues used a technique known as
Speaker 1: a meta analysis, in which you mathematically pool the results
Speaker 1: of all the existing studies on a topic to create
Speaker 1: a sort of mega study with tons of statistical power.
Speaker 1: Julian used this method and pulled more than a hundred
Speaker 1: studies on longevity and social connection, and her results were striking.
Speaker 1: People with strong social bonds were fifty percent less likely
Speaker 1: to die over a given period of time than those
Speaker 1: who had fewer social connections. And that scary finding maybe
Speaker 1: even underestimating the true dangers of loneliness, since the studies
Speaker 1: she pulled together tended not to weed out things like
Speaker 1: bad marriages and toxic friendships from all those healthier social interactions.
Speaker 1: For a newly elected surgeon general, such stark findings were
Speaker 1: hard to ignore if you look at the degree of
Speaker 1: life shortening. If you will, it appeared similar to the
Speaker 1: mortality impact of smoking fifteen cigarettes today, and greater than
Speaker 1: the mortality impact of obesity or sedentary living. But there's
Speaker 1: another feature of loneliness that makes it as much of
Speaker 1: a public health threat as so many other big challenges,
Speaker 1: and that's its commonality. According to some surveys, nearly a
Speaker 1: fifth of people in the United States today admit to
Speaker 1: struggling with loneliness. And just put this in context, twenty
Speaker 1: two percent of adults in the United States is more
Speaker 1: than a percentage of adults who smokes cigarettes. It's more
Speaker 1: than percentage of adults who have diabetes, so this is
Speaker 1: exceedingly common. And if more than one in five adults
Speaker 1: are impacted by loneliness, that means that you likely know
Speaker 1: somebody who's struggling with loneliness that very will Maybe you
Speaker 1: could be your spouse, and could be your friends, It
Speaker 1: could be your family. But we tend not to realize
Speaker 1: that people close to us are feeling lonely, often because
Speaker 1: they're taking active steps to hide it. Vege found that
Speaker 1: people were surprisingly willing to talk openly about their struggles
Speaker 1: with things like obesity and addiction, but loneliness not so much.
Speaker 1: There was a stigma around loneliness that was also universal,
Speaker 1: a sense that if you admitted you are lonely, that
Speaker 1: somehow you were not likable or that you were deficient
Speaker 1: in some way, and that kept a lot of people
Speaker 1: from admitting their struggles. But in close conversations and in
Speaker 1: private moments, people of all backgrounds and age groups would
Speaker 1: share that they were struggling with loneliness. I'll be the
Speaker 1: first to admit that there are definitely times when I've
Speaker 1: felt lonely. I mean, I have a wonderfully supportive husband,
Speaker 1: and I work with a great team of stimulating students
Speaker 1: and colleagues. I get to interact with lots of great
Speaker 1: people throughout my day, but those same times when work
Speaker 1: keeps me really busy are also times when I have
Speaker 1: little opportunity to see my friends. And this pattern is
Speaker 1: something I have in common with Vic, especially when he
Speaker 1: first started his new job. I think we can get
Speaker 1: caught up in that narrative and convince ourselves in almost
Speaker 1: a martyrsh sort of way, that we're doing something for
Speaker 1: a cause greater than ourselves, and using that as justification
Speaker 1: for letting our relationships slide. And what I came to
Speaker 1: realize in retrospect is that the cost of that misprioritization
Speaker 1: was greater than I could have imagined. Vic's new rolement
Speaker 1: that he was interacting with dozens of interesting people every
Speaker 1: single day, even President Obama, But quality time with the
Speaker 1: commander in chief can't make up for missed opportunities to
Speaker 1: connect with the people we care about most. I had
Speaker 1: become distanced from good friends that I had strong relationships
Speaker 1: for years. I had realized that even this time I
Speaker 1: was spending with my family was not nearly as high
Speaker 1: quality as it should have been. As I was often
Speaker 1: distracted by emails and work and phone calls even during
Speaker 1: family dinners and other family outings. The evidence suggests that
Speaker 1: just like a balanced diet or proper exercise routine, we
Speaker 1: also need a variety of social interactions to stay healthy
Speaker 1: and avoid loneliness. Some of those can be shallow and fleeting,
Speaker 1: others need to be lasting and more intimate. Vic Is
Speaker 1: found there's no single quick fix if we're lonely. We
Speaker 1: need to sometimes do more than just changing the number
Speaker 1: of people we interact with. Putting ourselves in the middlevel
Speaker 1: crowd or showing up at a party or going to
Speaker 1: mixers are not necessarily always the solution to loneliness. In
Speaker 1: his fantastic book Together, The Healing Power of Human Connection
Speaker 1: in a Sometimes Lonely World, Vac explains just how complicated
Speaker 1: loneliness can be. There are three types of loneliness, and
Speaker 1: there's intimate loneliness, which is feeling that you lack a
Speaker 1: close confid on somebody who you can deeply trust, which
Speaker 1: just about everything, somebody who knows you deeply and who
Speaker 1: you know deeply. And when you lack that kind of
Speaker 1: relationship in your life, then people experience intimate loneliness. There's
Speaker 1: also something called relational loneliness, when we experience the absence
Speaker 1: of friendships where we would get together with somebody or
Speaker 1: with a group of people on weekends or in evenings.
Speaker 1: We may go on vacations, we may call them up
Speaker 1: to go to a ballgame or to watch a movie together.
Speaker 1: And finally, there's something called collective loneliness, which is what
Speaker 1: we experience when we don't have the benefit of identity
Speaker 1: with a common group. Now i identity may come from
Speaker 1: a shared interest or affiliation. We may find, for example,
Speaker 1: that we have a sense of community with the alumni
Speaker 1: of our college or the people that we go to
Speaker 1: work with. The truth is, we need all three of
Speaker 1: these who feel deeply connected in the most comprehensive way
Speaker 1: intimate friend connection, relational connection, and collective connection to fully
Speaker 1: address the dangers that come with loneliness. We need to
Speaker 1: make sure we're getting the right doses of each of
Speaker 1: these three types of social connection. But how do we
Speaker 1: do that. We'll answer that question when the Happiness Lab
Speaker 1: returns in a moment. Back when I was a grad
Speaker 1: student in the early two thousands, a new book came
Speaker 1: out that prompted lots and lots of conversations among my friends.
Speaker 1: Who was called bowling alone by the Harvard political scientist
Speaker 1: Robert Putnam. The title of Putnam's book came from an
Speaker 1: observation about over the last few decades. Back in the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, Americans used to belong to bowling links. They
Speaker 1: met weekly with a team to play competitively against other
Speaker 1: local players. But by the late nineties, people's bowling behaviors
Speaker 1: had changed. They seemed to just prefer bowling alone. Putnam
Speaker 1: argued that the bowling example is part of a much
Speaker 1: larger demographic change. He found that membership in all kinds
Speaker 1: of organizations labored unions, veterans groups, rotary clubs, they were
Speaker 1: in decline too. People just didn't seem to want to
Speaker 1: belong to social groups anymore. Collective connection, the important feeling
Speaker 1: of belonging that we get from sharing interests with a
Speaker 1: community of like minded people, it had gotten scarcer and scarcer.
Speaker 1: Putnam's thesis rang true with the people I knew in
Speaker 1: grad school. None of us were really part of groups,
Speaker 1: and this wasn't a time before smartphones, a time in
Speaker 1: which most activities were irl in real life. Since bowling
Speaker 1: alone was written, so much more of our lives has
Speaker 1: migrated online and onto screens. I mean, the last time
Speaker 1: I went bowling was inside my house using a wee controller.
Speaker 1: This growing trend towards bowling alone or bowling virtually as
Speaker 1: it were, has meant that collective loneliness is on the rise.
Speaker 1: An entire generation has missed that important sense of community
Speaker 1: that our parents and grandparents probably took for granted back
Speaker 1: in the day. We should be careful about pointing to
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties as some sort of norm. This is
Speaker 1: podcast host and Harvard Divinity School fellow Casper Turkeyle. A
Speaker 1: lot of people were participating in these structures even though
Speaker 1: they didn't necessarily really want to, but because if you didn't,
Speaker 1: it meant being socially ostracized. But nonetheless, I think one
Speaker 1: of the things that we're looking for suddenly in the
Speaker 1: future is new structures of relationship that hold us together.
Speaker 1: Casper studies how our culture is shaped by collective organizations
Speaker 1: like religious groups and the happiness lessons we can learn
Speaker 1: from them. You might remember Casper from a previous episode
Speaker 1: about the power of rituals and the particular ritual Asper developed,
Speaker 1: which involved watching the bad romcom movie. You've got Mail?
Speaker 1: Bad Romcom, Laurie, Is it not a rom com? No,
Speaker 1: it's good. I'm sorry. Just as Casper advocated making a
Speaker 1: ceremonial ritual with that genre, defining romcom classic, he also
Speaker 1: argues that we need to copy what religion does right
Speaker 1: in order to improve our collective loneliness. There's lots of
Speaker 1: evidence that individuals who engage in religious services are happier
Speaker 1: than those who report not being so religious, But the
Speaker 1: science suggests that this happiness boost doesn't stem from what
Speaker 1: religious individuals believe. It's not due to a faith in
Speaker 1: the afterlife or a specific set of spiritual tenets. Religious
Speaker 1: individuals get a well being bump from social support and
Speaker 1: that sense of belonging that comes from hanging out at
Speaker 1: religious services. Religion seems to make us happier because it
Speaker 1: reduces our collective loneliness. And that's why Casper's such a
Speaker 1: huge fan of Religiou, which has always struck me as
Speaker 1: a little odd because Casper also identifies as kind of
Speaker 1: a hardened gay atheist. When Casper tried joining a church
Speaker 1: congregation as a kid, he didn't immediately get the connection
Speaker 1: that follows from a like minded community. Instead, he felt
Speaker 1: isolated and alone, certainly feeling very like I was not
Speaker 1: welcome in the little Christian lunchtime club where they had
Speaker 1: free kit kats and mister Kennedy played the guitar and
Speaker 1: was very handsome. So I went a couple of times
Speaker 1: until I realized that was not for me. And as
Speaker 1: I grew older, I started to realize that really the
Speaker 1: traditions that have thought most about, the questions that mean
Speaker 1: so much to me, are religious traditions. Right. They ask
Speaker 1: questions like what do we owe one another? How should
Speaker 1: we be together? What does a healthy community look like?
Speaker 1: How do we look after each other? How can we
Speaker 1: find joy together? And those are the questions I love
Speaker 1: to think about. As a Divinity School fellow, Casper began
Speaker 1: studying whether other secular public spaces could offer the community
Speaker 1: building interactions that churches provided, and he found a great
Speaker 1: example in Jim. You're there to lose weight, get a
Speaker 1: hot body, be strong, whatever it is. But the reason
Speaker 1: why people stay is because they're building relationships or they're
Speaker 1: finding meaning in these experiences. Casper has found that some
Speaker 1: gyms and fitness centers have perhaps unwittingly picked up on
Speaker 1: our thirst for a community and have incorporated it into
Speaker 1: their exercise programs. You're kind of forced into a bit
Speaker 1: of a social interaction, even though it's a little awkward,
Speaker 1: so you're high fiving people. The fact that the whole
Speaker 1: design of the workout means that no one finishes until
Speaker 1: everyone's finished. So I don't know if you've ever been
Speaker 1: in this situation, Laurie, but I certainly have, and it
Speaker 1: was very intense. I was the last one to finish
Speaker 1: some horrific series of running and lifting and burpies, and
Speaker 1: everyone stood around me, clapping like shouting my name, being
Speaker 1: like you can do it. And of course in the moment,
Speaker 1: I hated every single one of them, but afterwards I
Speaker 1: really felt like I would not have done it if
Speaker 1: they hadn't been there. That sense of I can do
Speaker 1: something more because of this community being around me is
Speaker 1: a really powerful motivated to keep pushing yourself. So they
Speaker 1: allow for that kind of community support, but in a
Speaker 1: way that's very invitational, and that's a really powerful thing.
Speaker 1: But if you're suffering from collective loneliness and don't want
Speaker 1: a solution that involves tight like Gretn Burpes, Casper also
Speaker 1: has another suggestion sign up for a class. A kind
Speaker 1: of communal learning environment is a great way to meet
Speaker 1: people in a way that's not very intense. So it
Speaker 1: might be singing in a choir, it might be calligraphy classes,
Speaker 1: it might be learning how to code, whatever it is.
Speaker 1: Put yourself in a communal learning environment where you get
Speaker 1: to learn alongside other people, and the fastest relationships often
Speaker 1: happen in that kind of context. Casper has argued there's
Speaker 1: another way that many organized religions reduce collective loneliness. They
Speaker 1: often use a shared text to bring people together, think
Speaker 1: the Bible or the Torah. But could a similar sense
Speaker 1: of belonging and shared values come from a non religious text.
Speaker 1: Casper thought of a colleague who'd started a reading group
Speaker 1: about mental health using only the novels of Charlotte Bronte.
Speaker 1: I hadn't read J Mat and so I suggested, why
Speaker 1: don't we do this with a book that lots of
Speaker 1: people definitely love and for which there's a very active fandom,
Speaker 1: which is, of course, the Harry Potter series. And so
Speaker 1: we started a weekly class where we invited people to
Speaker 1: come and read and talk about the books with us.
Speaker 1: And it was wonderful because really, over nine months, we
Speaker 1: build a little bit of a congregation. You know, people
Speaker 1: visited each other in hospital, they became roommates, they fell
Speaker 1: in and out of love, you know, all the things
Speaker 1: that happen in a community. Casper's reading group also became
Speaker 1: a podcast called Harry Potter and the Sacred Text. It
Speaker 1: led fans all over the world to set up their
Speaker 1: own in real life congregations. There's now hundreds of local
Speaker 1: groups of people getting together to read and talk about
Speaker 1: the books. What's been more amazing than anything else is
Speaker 1: when COVID hit, the listeners self organized to create a
Speaker 1: mutual aid fund of podcast listeners, so people were sending
Speaker 1: money to each other to support one another through the pandemic.
Speaker 1: That was really a moment when I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is a community, Like they're really doing things together.
Speaker 1: If you'd have told me that I would have started
Speaker 1: a community of tens of thousands of Harry Potter fans,
Speaker 1: I would have been very surprised, because honestly, I didn't
Speaker 1: create it. I just made the first invitation to a
Speaker 1: few people, and so I really hope people know that
Speaker 1: they can create community. Casper's work shows that we can
Speaker 1: fight collective loneliness. We just need a way to actually
Speaker 1: meet people who share our hobbies. If you like basketball,
Speaker 1: go watch a game out in the world rather than
Speaker 1: catching it in your living room. Don't just give money
Speaker 1: to a good cause. Try volunteering that band you play
Speaker 1: on repeat on Spotify, try catching their next concert in
Speaker 1: person and meeting fellow fans. And Casper is quick to
Speaker 1: point out that collective community doesn't need to involve a
Speaker 1: huge crowd. All it takes is inviting one or two
Speaker 1: people maybe over to share our meal. Maybe you're going
Speaker 1: to go for a walk together, to just talk about
Speaker 1: something that you love, and that so often these communities
Speaker 1: organically will grow. So those are some strategies for fighting
Speaker 1: collective loneliness, that first type of loneliness that be vague identified.
Speaker 1: But how can we tackle the other two kinds of
Speaker 1: loneliness that plague so many of us. How can we
Speaker 1: find a new group of friends to connect with relationally,
Speaker 1: or that one bestie with whom we can talk more intimately.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about strategies for creating these deep relationships when
Speaker 1: the Happiness Lab returns from the break. So I would
Speaker 1: certainly be really nervous about moving to a new place
Speaker 1: where I didn't really know anyone. Marissa Franco was experiencing
Speaker 1: a challenge that many of us faced in the modern day,
Speaker 1: relocating to a new city for work. She had just
Speaker 1: moved to Atlanta, and in addition to finding a new
Speaker 1: place to live and figuring out a new commute, she
Speaker 1: also struggled with the need to completely rebuild her friendship
Speaker 1: network from scratch. At first, I was like, really intentional
Speaker 1: about trying to meet new people. You know, I went
Speaker 1: to happy hours, I went to events, but it seemed
Speaker 1: like nothing was really sticking. You know. I met a
Speaker 1: couple of new people, but then it wouldn't really go anywhere.
Speaker 1: Marissa as a fellow psychologist, so she decided to take
Speaker 1: a scientific approach and to quantify her experience. She knew
Speaker 1: about the famed UCLA Loneliness questionnaire, and I was like,
Speaker 1: why didn't I take it? And when I took it,
Speaker 1: I realized that I was lonely. I thought, I'm around
Speaker 1: people all day, how could I be lonely? But I
Speaker 1: think in that moment, I realized that loneliness is actually
Speaker 1: about feeling comfortable around people, feeling like yourself, feeling authentic
Speaker 1: around people, feeling seen around people. So I realized I
Speaker 1: was lonely and I was struggling to make friends. But
Speaker 1: Marissa knew what steps to take next because she's not
Speaker 1: just a psychologist, she's also an expert on the science
Speaker 1: of friendship, an author of Platonic How the Science of
Speaker 1: Attachment can help you make and keep friends as an adult.
Speaker 1: If anyone should understand the importance of having a squad,
Speaker 1: it's Marissa. I mean friendships. There's some research that finds
Speaker 1: that it brings us joy more than our other relationships.
Speaker 1: And I think part of that is because friends aren't
Speaker 1: encumbered with the same responsibility and weight. There's just not
Speaker 1: the same level of obligation. I don't have to talk
Speaker 1: to my friends about doing our taxes together. I don't
Speaker 1: have to talk to them about planning for groceries. So
Speaker 1: there's this way that friendship just ends up being this
Speaker 1: relationship of sort of pleasure. And they also think that
Speaker 1: because there's no pressure to have friends like there is
Speaker 1: to be in a romantic relationship, that we end up
Speaker 1: choosing friends that are truly sort of compatible with us.
Speaker 1: Relocating to Atlanta made it difficult for Marissa to keep
Speaker 1: in contact with our old friends. But the science shows
Speaker 1: it's not just a cross country move that can upset
Speaker 1: the fragility of our friendship circles. Every seven years, we'd
Speaker 1: lose about half our friends. Friendship networks have been shrinking
Speaker 1: for the last thirty years. I think we're in a
Speaker 1: time of great crisis around friends. There's other research that
Speaker 1: finds that the average person hasn't made a new friend
Speaker 1: in the last five years, even though about half of
Speaker 1: people report that they would like to make a new
Speaker 1: friend if they only knew how. The problem is that
Speaker 1: our minds lie to us about how friendships work. We
Speaker 1: assume they just kind of happen, And to be fair,
Speaker 1: this assumption fits with how many of our friendships did
Speaker 1: develop when we were younger. Making friends back then was
Speaker 1: often as simple as going through some shared experiences at
Speaker 1: camp or in school or college. But Morris has found
Speaker 1: that's not how it works later in adulthood. I think
Speaker 1: one of the biggest misconceptions that I hear when it
Speaker 1: comes to making friends is I want it to happen organically.
Speaker 1: I want these friends to kind of fall into my life.
Speaker 1: And there's a study that kind of tested these beliefs
Speaker 1: and how they'd affect us over time, and it found
Speaker 1: that people that thought friendship was something that happened based
Speaker 1: on luck were actually lonelier years later, whereas those people
Speaker 1: that saw it as happening based on effort were less
Speaker 1: likely to be lonely years later. So it really does
Speaker 1: take initiative intentionality to go out there and make friends,
Speaker 1: which raises a question, why aren't we putting ourselves out
Speaker 1: there more often in order to make friends and fight
Speaker 1: our relational loneliness. The first issue for many of us,
Speaker 1: including me, is time. Studies suggests we feel busier than
Speaker 1: ever and time famine is a recipe for engaging less
Speaker 1: with other people. But an even bigger issue is that
Speaker 1: many of us are kind of anxious when it comes
Speaker 1: to making new friends, which stems at least in part
Speaker 1: from yet another way our minds lie to us, a
Speaker 1: common cognitive bias known as the liking gap. These researchers
Speaker 1: they had strangers interacts across a number of settings, and
Speaker 1: they found that in general, people underestimated the degree to
Speaker 1: which the person they interacted with like them. And so
Speaker 1: I think what this research suggests is that people like
Speaker 1: us more than we think they do. And one of
Speaker 1: my biggest pieces of advice for people to help them
Speaker 1: get into the mindset to make friends is start assuming
Speaker 1: that people like you. It's a mindset that even Marissa
Speaker 1: has had to use for herself when making new friends.
Speaker 1: You know, I actually go into this place where I
Speaker 1: remind myself people are going to accept me. That's sort
Speaker 1: of my new internal dialogue. But overcoming the liking gap
Speaker 1: and changing your mindset is only the first step to
Speaker 1: reducing our anxiety when it comes to connecting with new people.
Speaker 1: We also have to commit to accepting the small bouts
Speaker 1: of anxiety that come from actually engaging with the people
Speaker 1: we meet. It's a discomfort, I know well myself. I'll
Speaker 1: be at a house party and I'll start feeling weird
Speaker 1: about chatting with strangers, so I'll spend the entire time
Speaker 1: looking at my phone or hanging out with the host's cap.
Speaker 1: Or I'll go to a new yoga studio in order
Speaker 1: to meet new people, but then I'll sprint off as
Speaker 1: soon as class ends without chatting with anybody. Something that
Speaker 1: I've talked about is the idea of covert or overt avoidance.
Speaker 1: So overt avoidance is, you know, we're kind of nervous
Speaker 1: about meeting new people, so we don't put ourselves out there.
Speaker 1: But then covert avoidance is that we do put ourselves
Speaker 1: out there. We do show up at the event, but
Speaker 1: when we do, we don't engage with people. While we're there.
Speaker 1: We're watching the game, we're playing with the dog. And
Speaker 1: I think to make friends we have to really overcome
Speaker 1: both of these forms of avoidance. We need to show up,
Speaker 1: and then when we get there, we need to start
Speaker 1: introducing ourselves, saying hello. Overcoming this hurdle of covert avoidance
Speaker 1: is especially important for people who suffer from social anxiety.
Speaker 1: So they'll, for example, they won't talk too much, you know,
Speaker 1: when the conversation gets quiet, they'll start disengaging and playing
Speaker 1: on their phone. And all of these are behaviors for
Speaker 1: their own self protection. But it turns out that when
Speaker 1: they're engaging in these behaviors, they make rejection more likely.
Speaker 1: So when the researchers told the people with social anxiety
Speaker 1: stop using those safety behaviors, they were more open, they
Speaker 1: were more engaged, and actually their interaction partner like them more. So,
Speaker 1: I think when it comes to making friends, there's all
Speaker 1: these things that we might do to protect ourselves from rejection,
Speaker 1: like not seeming too interested, not seeming too enthusiastic, and
Speaker 1: in fact, the other person is afraid of rejection too,
Speaker 1: so when we do those behaviors, the other person is like, oh,
Speaker 1: that person is rejecting me. Overcoming our relational loneliness requires
Speaker 1: remembering that other people are feeling the exact same anxieties
Speaker 1: we are. The science shows that taking the first step
Speaker 1: and making them feel more comfortable will often lead to
Speaker 1: more connection than we expect, but Marissa admits doing this
Speaker 1: isn't easy, even for a friendship expert like her. When
Speaker 1: she first moved into a new apartment block, she made
Speaker 1: little progress befriending her neighbors. We pass it in the hallway,
Speaker 1: and you know, I say a quick high, but don't
Speaker 1: really interact with them. Marissa's partner witnessed this and immediately
Speaker 1: called her out. Marissa, you need to take your own advice.
Speaker 1: Go over there and introduce yourself. And so we sort
Speaker 1: of pushes me out the door. And so then I
Speaker 1: go to them and I say, you know, hey, my
Speaker 1: names Marissa. I just moved into the department building. It's
Speaker 1: so nice to meet you. We start talking, we exchange
Speaker 1: phone numbers, we end up forming a WhatsApp group, and
Speaker 1: then every week during the pandemic we've done a socially
Speaker 1: distanced gathering in the garden. And I look back and
Speaker 1: I'm like, it would have been so easy for that
Speaker 1: to not happen, right. I think sometimes we think, you know,
Speaker 1: it won't make a difference if I reach out to people, like,
Speaker 1: you know, the social world that we live in is
Speaker 1: outside of our control. But I think that really showed
Speaker 1: me that our social worlds are very much within our control,
Speaker 1: and there are intentional actions we can take that can
Speaker 1: really change the trajectory of our friendships. Can we use
Speaker 1: similar kinds of intentional actions to move from mere relational
Speaker 1: closeness to the more intimate kinds of friendships that third
Speaker 1: category of social connection that the vague Murphy mentioned earlier?
Speaker 1: Are there steps we can take to turn a regular
Speaker 1: relational friend into a ride or die bestie. Ultimately, when
Speaker 1: it comes to making friends, people think the people that
Speaker 1: are good at making friends are really cool, or really smart,
Speaker 1: or really accomplished. But in fact, what I find from
Speaker 1: the research is that the people that are really good
Speaker 1: at making friends are really good at making other people
Speaker 1: feel like they matter. They're good at affirming other people,
Speaker 1: and surprisingly, one of the best ways to affirm another person,
Speaker 1: to make them feel valued and special, is to get
Speaker 1: really vulnerable in front of them, voluntarily sharing a problem
Speaker 1: and asking for help, intentionally admitting that you're struggling and
Speaker 1: not sure what to do, even shedding and embarrassing tier.
Speaker 1: We assume that such overt displays of our own weaknesses
Speaker 1: would make potential besties avoid us like the plague, But
Speaker 1: this is yet another spot where our minds lie to us.
Speaker 1: It's a bias that German psychologists on A. Brook and
Speaker 1: her colleagues have christened the beautiful mess effect, which is
Speaker 1: basically the idea that when we're vulnerable, people actually perceive
Speaker 1: us a lot more positively than we think they do.
Speaker 1: People actually like it when we're vulnerable. It makes them
Speaker 1: feel special to hear our intimate struggles, and it allows
Speaker 1: them the opportunity to share more intimately with us. Our
Speaker 1: messiness is far more beautiful to potential friends. Then. We
Speaker 1: think a lot of the things that we think burden
Speaker 1: people bring us closer to one another. So, for example,
Speaker 1: showing vulnerability in general, the more we disclose intimately to others,
Speaker 1: the more they like us. And it's so interesting because
Speaker 1: we tend to think, you know, we're going to push
Speaker 1: other people away, they're going to think we're too much,
Speaker 1: But in fact, that vulnerability conveys that we are authentic,
Speaker 1: that we are honest, that we trust them, and all
Speaker 1: of these things bring people closer to us. Just as
Speaker 1: initiating the contact needed to build up our relational connections
Speaker 1: involves a bit of courage, so too to cementing more
Speaker 1: intimate friendships. But if we value fighting loneliness, it's critical
Speaker 1: to take this scary step. We need to open up,
Speaker 1: reveal our inner selves, and share things we often keep hidden.
Speaker 1: But mrs Is scene firsthand that following the scientific advice
Speaker 1: really can reduce loneliness. I feel like I'm living proof.
Speaker 1: I mean, since I've started studying friendship, I have become
Speaker 1: so much better at taking initiative. I realize that I
Speaker 1: don't necessarily have to be an amazing, magnificent person to
Speaker 1: be an attractive friend. That all I have to do
Speaker 1: is make other people feel loved and valued. And so
Speaker 1: that's my bigger priority now around my friendship. It's not
Speaker 1: being special, or being funny, or being particularly insightful. It's
Speaker 1: making sure that I treat my friends in ways that
Speaker 1: align with how much I love them. The research shows
Speaker 1: that lots and lots of us have something in common
Speaker 1: with Young Vivic back in that nineteen eighties school yard.
Speaker 1: Many of us are surrounded by people all the time,
Speaker 1: but we're still not enjoying the full range of human
Speaker 1: interactions we need to be happy. We might not feel
Speaker 1: like we're part of a community, or a crew of friends,
Speaker 1: or a close relationship like Young Vivic. We might be
Speaker 1: saddened and ashamed by our loneliness. We might curse all
Speaker 1: our imagined shortcomings and whish there was something we could
Speaker 1: do to feel more connected. But I hope this episode
Speaker 1: has shown you that finding friends doesn't require luck or
Speaker 1: the perfect personality. Like most of the good things we
Speaker 1: talk about in this podcast, connecting better requires understanding some
Speaker 1: of the mind's lies and then putting in some time
Speaker 1: and work. But the science shows that with a little initiative,
Speaker 1: we can begin building the foundations of nourishing relationships, whether
Speaker 1: they're casual and breezy and based on the love we
Speaker 1: have for our favorite book or intimate and personal based
Speaker 1: on revealing our inner world to the people we meet.
Speaker 1: It is a lot of work, even for the experts,
Speaker 1: but a less lonely life is possible and the benefits
Speaker 1: are huge for your health and your happiness. The Happiness
Speaker 1: Lab is co written and produced by Ryan Dilley, Emily
Speaker 1: Anne Vaughan, and Courtney Guerino. Our original music was composed
Speaker 1: by Zachary Silver, with additional scoring, mixing and mastering by
Speaker 1: Evan Viola. Special thanks to Milabelle heather Thing, John Snars,
Speaker 1: Carli Migliori, Christina Sullivan, Brandt Haynes, Maggie Taylor, Eric Sandler,
Speaker 1: Nicole Morano, Royston Preserved, Jacob Weisberg and my Age, and
Speaker 1: Ben Davis. The Happiness Lab is brought to you by
Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries and Nate Doctor Laurie Santos. To find more
Speaker 1: Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your podcasts.