Florence Williams on How to Heal From Heartbreak

And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,

how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is a repeat guest the One You Feed podcast. It's Florence Williams, a journalist, author, and podcaster. She's a contributing editor at Outside Magazine and a freelance writer for The New York Times, Slate, Mother Jones, National Geographic, and many many others. Today, Florence and Eric discuss her new book, Heartbreak, A Personal and Scientific Journey. Hi Florence, Welcome to the show. Hi Eric, so great

to be here. Thank you. Yeah, it's wonderful to have you back on. We had you on. I don't know the date, it's been years. At this point, we talked about your last book, which was all about nature. Your current book is called Heartbreak, A Personal and Scientific Journey, and you're just such a great writer. It's it's such a well written and beautiful book. So we're going to talk about that. But before we do, let's start, like

we always do, with a parable. There's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and thinks about it for a second, looks up at their grandparents, says, well, which one wins,

and the grandparents says the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. I've thought so much through this project about the power of negative emotions. So I had never experienced heartbreak before, and when it happened, it so knocked me off. My socks changed, the way my body felt, changed, my health, changed the way my cells were functioning. And

that's what really drove me to write this book. So, you know, I had to confront why is it that uncomfortable emotions are so difficult to deal with? Why do we avoid them? And so the one you feed? You have to make a choice sort of on a daily basis, like how are those negative emotions going to play you? And how are you going to play them? And I think it really became a driving kind of pursuit while writing this book. I love are you going to play

the emotions of the emotions going to play you? I really like that take because it doesn't say anything about that you have to get rid of the emotion, right, which you know, it's not a repression, it's a relationship, you know, it's how are you relating to and working skillfully with these difficult things, And in fact, I would say one of the profound and surprising lessons for me through this process was to sort of embrace the negative

emotion um while not letting them exactly play me. But they're the ones who teach you, you know, and they're sort of what you have to move through in order to grow. And I think I had been living my life pretty differently, you know, before that. So I'm going to ask you to tell a little bit of your story of heartbreak. But I'm curious were you looking into

this at all before it happened to you. Was this on your radar in any way as a writer, as a as a person who's looking at different things, or did it emerge wholly from like, oh my god, I'm right in the middle of this and it's terrible. What do I do. I have to admit it wasn't really on my radar, And in some ways I feel badly about that, because I have friends, you know, who went through heartbreak at various times, and I don't think I

was the best friend to them. I think I tended to sort of dismiss heartbreak as being sort of the realm of melo drama, a little bit overwrought, you know. Okay, so you got dumped by someone. You know, obviously that person was a loser. Move on. That's right, They're not the right fit for you. Lots of fish in the sea. Come on, yeah, pick yourself up. Don't be so dramatic. So tell us a little bit about the events that

led you kind of into this. Sure, Well, I met the man who would be my husband when I was eighteen years old. It is literally my first day of college. And we dated for seven years and then we got married and we were married for twenty five years, two kids, And I think, like a lot of long marriages, I mean, there are moments of connection and there are moments of disconnection. And I guess I always had this sort of bedrock faith in it, and I had a desire really for

it to work. I mean, there were so many things I was attached to about my life. But you know, he didn't really feel the same way, unfortunately. And I think often with heartbreak, when there's a separation, like this's a romantic split, one person wants it more than the other.

And I was the one who didn't want it. I was afraid of it, and it also kind of surprised me, honestly, So you know, at one point he told me that he wanted to go find his soul mate, you know, and then I wasn't it ouch ouch, right, big ouch? And so I felt that rejection, and I felt that pain really deeply, you know, in my heart, in my stomach, in my pancreas, in my body. I had always thought that heartbreak, you know, was it was something that was in your head. There's a lot of sadness, and that

heartbreak was sort of a metaphor. But you know, as I kind of launched my investigation into what was happening to me and why I felt this way, I learned that our bodies really register this kind of pain in ways that I don't think really get acknowledged or talked about enough. Yeah, and we'll go into that. I certainly like you have a history. You have, I guess unlike you, you've got sort of the one heartbreak. I've got a whole string of them. I'm sorry, you know, it's interesting.

The biggest one was to my ex wife, mother of my son, and I look back on that as both the most difficult period of my life and perhaps the most fertile period of my life for so many things. There was so much opportunity for transformation in it. I wouldn't wish it on anybody. Yes, I can really relate to that. Do you think Eric, that it gets easier, that heartbreak gets easier the more you go through it?

Or does it get harder? Is it a cumulative this is you know, I've only had one big heartbreak, so I still don't know the answers to that. That's a great question. I don't think it gets easier. Well, no, I don't think it gets easier. I do think there is a cumulative nature. You talk about this in the book, which is that the problem with heartbreak, unlike say death right, that kind of grief that comes from that is there is a element of I must not be lovable that's

embedded in it. And when that happens multiple times, it's almost as if you're like, we'll see more evidence. You know, I've got I've got multiple pieces of evidence to back up this theory. Yeah, And it's so interesting. I have been in a really good relationship with Jenny. Listeners have heard her on the show and it's been I think six plus years, and it's been really good, and they've been six great years for me as far as my own development and all that. And I kind of wonder, like,

how would I handle heartache now, heartbreak now? And I think the answer is it would still be extraordinarily painful regardless. I just don't think it's something that you evolve past. I wonder, though, I guess the hope would be that at some point you don't buy that story anymore of

not being good enough. Yeah, I think there's that, And I think there's the other element that is an interesting question to think about, which is how much of how strongly I am affected by heartbreak has to do with things that have happened to me in the past that haven't been healed. That's right, I think that's one of the things you learned. Yes, Yes, it all comes back around. Yeah. So I'd like to think if it happened again, I would be in better shape because I had healed a

lot of things. But I still think, based on the way we're wired up, that it would be very painful. So let's talk about that. You know, one of the things you said you thought heartbreak or sadness was something that was in your brain as if it didn't exist. But what we know, and you point out, I'm gonna let you elaborate on, is that that sort of pain triggers the same places in the brain that actual, real

physical pain does. Yeah, that's right. I set out to talk to neuroscientists and uh, you know, geneticists and psychologists to find out sort of why our bodies get so kind of implicated in our emotions. And one of the things I learned there's been so much research on people who fall in love and the neurotransmitters associated with falling in love. I think it's kind of probably a fun research area. Um, your subjects are all happy, you know,

your subjects are happy, it's all sunny. But I spoke early on to Helen Fisher, who is a biological anthropologist, and she has scanned the brains of dumped people and while they're looking at pictures actually of their sort of rejecting departing beloved, and she found that the parts of the brain that get activated are similar, not exactly similar, but basically the same, you know, very similar to where we process physical pain. And also parts of the brain

light up. They're associated with craving and addiction, you know, just because someone stops loving you doesn't mean you stop loving them, and your body on some level kind of misses them and notes their absence and registers that absence, and you sort of want that back. You want those brain chemicals back, if not the person itself. Right, And in the book you mentioned multiple times there's this profound feeling of not being safe. Yes, that happens when you're dumped.

The early stages of it for me feel a little bit like panic. Absolutely. I wouldn't call it a full panic attack, but it is a to use a word you've got in the book, hyper vigilance. Right, Yeah, you feel deeply imperiled. And it makes sense because if you think about sort of how we evolved as mammals, you know, we are supposed to feel safety in numbers. We form deep attachments that drive our every sort of behavior. And when your primary attachment partner, you know, takes off, you

literally feel alone. Your brain doesn't really make the distinction between being rejected by love and being sort of cast out of the clan to lie on the savannah and be circled by hyenas. You know, your body registers this as a very threatening state, like a physically threatening state. And so that starts this cascade of stress hormones nor panephrin.

You know that, then talk to ourselves, talk to our organs, talk to our immune systems where white blood cells get made in our bone marrow, and they're designed to be very responsive to our environment, and it turns out to

our social state. One of the researchers I talked to said, you know ourselves listen for loneliness, and when they detected, boy, they really kick into high gear because it's not a place where we are supposed to live for a long time, right, So let's talk about some of the things that heartbreak, slash loneliness does to the body. You know, we know how it feels, we can register the pain, but there are changes throughout the body that occur. You notate a lot of them in the book, So I wonder if

you could just elaborate on a couple of them. Yeah. I mean that feeling of sort of near panic or hyper vigilance sets off some very specific symptoms, for example, sleeplessness, agitation, difficulty digesting because your body is sort of gearing up for some kind of you know, fight or flight. For me, it was a lot of weight loss, my blood sugars were sort of messed up, I mean deeply messed up.

My gut bacteria was messed up. I ended up with an autoimmune diagnosis some months after the split, that was type one diabetes. And what I learned, you know, from talking to researchers, is that sometimes these autoimmune diseases do in fact have an emotional trigger. They are made worse by inflammation, and inflammation is kind of the key. So I want to talk to a psychologists the University of Arizona, David spar Up. He said to me, you know, the

story of divorce is an inflammation story. You know, I had never heard that before. And so then I met with a researcher at U c l A. And we actually analyzed my genetic markers, my transcription factors, which are

basically signatures for inflammation. And we did this at various time points after the separation, and that became kind of one of the central threads of the book, kind of looking at how myself were responding to loneliness and how they were responding to different science based interventions that I was very eager, you know, to try, in this sort

of urgent it to feel better to feel healthier. I love that aspect of the book, you've got bio markers that you're trying to sort of pay attention to to see what's working what's not, in addition to just the correlation and making the correlation to how I'm actually feeling right. And I think that naturally a lot of us will emerge from heartbreak and hopefully start going, all right, what's

this next phase of my life look like? And we start adding and building things in which I think is a natural process, and you go through it, and I just love that you're also bringing the science along with it. You know, it's interesting when you said that the story of divorces an inflammation story. There's also you're talking about heart health at a different point in the book. One of the people you quote the tragedies of life are

largely arterial, so there's actual heart aspects to this also. Yeah, it's so fascinating to me that, you know, for millennia, cultures across time have known that the heart is in some ways the seat of the emotional probably because it's, you know, one of the few organs we can actually feel, we can feel it pumping, we know it stops sometimes, you know, during crises, and people have known for a long time too that you know, of course, husbands and

wives sometimes die within a couple of days of each other or within months of each other because their heart stopped. But it was only in the nine nineties that researchers in Japan were able to start imaging the heart during heart failure to see that people were coming into the hospital with sort of symptoms of heart attack, but there was no sign of an arterial blockage, which is kind

of the standard cause of a heart attack. Instead, these people were experiencing this weird distention of the left ventricle quadrant of the part, so it was like ballooning out and then being unable to pump correctly. And they named it talk at Subo after a lobster pot which has this very bulbous head and a narrow neck, so it looked like this quadrant of the heart. So it's the stress hormones like adrenaline landing on receptors in the heart and causing it to just literally balloon out like that

and sort of freak out. So we know now that takatsubo makes up about five probably of all heart failures, you know, showing up in the hospital. About five percent of those cases will result in death. Another twenty percent will result in you know, continued sort of cardiac risk. And we know that especially middle aged, post menopausal women are about of the patients, which is kind of interesting. So there's there seems to be something protective about the

estrogen sort of counteracting that adrenaline. But we know that people suffer this kind of heart failure after the death of a spouse or the death even of a pet um. Sometimes it's after the death of a sports team. Your particularly their cases in the literature, men suffering this when their sport team loses the World Cup, and sometimes it just seems to happen, you know, for no known reason.

But this is really interesting. There are cases that really spike after a natural disasters when there's a lot of you know, adrenaline. That makes sense, And there's just recently a new study showing that cases have spiked during the pandemic during COVID interesting, especially in women. So do we know of any things that make any factors that make us more susceptible to the really damaging effects of heartbreak

or of having like heartbreak tear us up more? Is there anything that sort of says like, people like this or have had this happen or this sort of thing are more likely to have like just heartbreak to feel catastrophic, versus people who might say, well, you know, yeah, I mean again, I'm not saying anybody's gonna be like a big deal, right, but I seem to be one of

those people. For whatever reason, it was earth shattering to me, right, And I had friends who yeah, it was painful, but it did not seem to just devastate them in the same way it did me. And I just don't know. Is there anything that explains that sort of difference. Yes, you know, we know that their personality traits that seem to make people both more resilient and a little bit

less resilient. You know, the data is not destiny here, but in general, people who on personality tests, you know, sort of registers being a little bit more neurotic, a little bit more introspective, a little bit more anxious, you know, sort of tend to ruminate and cognitively engage, you know, with their emotions are going to be harder hit, you know,

by some of these emotional blows. And also we know that people who have had early life traumas and childhood traumas are going to be more susceptible, you know, to

future challenges. But I was so encouraged to talk to Paula Williams at the University of Utah who said, you know, yes, we know heartbreak is is really hard, and we know that especially you know, people who split up after these long term relationships and divorces um do have higher risk for early death, They have higher risk for depression, they

have higher risk for metabolic disease, for cardiac disease. I mean, it's it's kind of a grim littany frankly, but we also know that there are certain traits that make you more resilient. And this was the really heartwarming news to me. You can actually cultivate some of those traits and try

to become better at them. And the one that was surprising to me and change the trajectory of my whole reporting over the two or three years of this book, which she said, the people who can really engage with beauty, people who can experience awe on a regular basis, who can cultivate all these are the people who seem to be able to make more meaning and sense of their tragedies.

They can create more connections between their frontal cortex, which is kind of their seat of their self concept, and their sensory and motor parts of their brains in a way that helps them create meaning, helps them find respective, helps them experience conflicting emotions like yes, utter pain, but also wow, joy and beauty and possibility. The people who might be able to find a kernel of optimism and that that became true for me throughing the course of

my journey. So I just glommed onto that as life saving advice. Not only could I experience beauty, but she was telling me that I could get better at it. The trait you're describing is often considered on a standard personality test. How open are you to new things? Right? How open are you in general? And there's a lot of people that say, you know, where you land on the personality test is sort of where you are, like, these things don't move right, they don't tend to move much. Yeah,

you're stating that either introverted or you're not right. Yeah, And so you know, openness to new experience and the ability to find beauty you're saying, is trainable. What are some of the ways to do that well, she's a huge fan of starting early. So for example, childhood art education. You know, it's just a tragedy really that we don't have more of this, you know, in our schooling system

in the United States. But this kind of developing an appreciation for art and for beauty is a lifelong gift that's going to help you survived the blows of life. And so, you know, wonderful if we could start that early. But with things like awe and beauty, you know, it's sort of like a mindful practice. You can go out, you know, around your block, and you can say, Okay, I'm gonna like find some things that are beautiful on this walk around my block, and I'm gonna look at

this flower. There's a way to sort of and I love this micro dose off that I learned about um from a study that I participated in where there's an acronym for a w E where the A is attention. So you know, on your walk or as you're going through life, or even inside your house, you know, if you have a house plant, or you have an incredible meal, or you're looking at your baby, you know, attend right,

just pay attention to that. And of course philosophers talk about this all the time, that attention is love and love is attention. You know, don't space out while you're looking at this beautiful blossom. And then did double is for weight? So stay with it, stay with that attention, and the E is just exhale, just two breaths, exhale, you know, so you may be staying with this moment

of beauty for a couple of breaths. You know. It's like a one minute practice, and if you do it a couple of times a day, there is some emerging data showing that it really does improve people's well being. It improves their moods, it improves their feeling of purpose in their lives, gives them some perspective. We know that the science of AWE is so interesting, also relatively new field of study. But in the presence of something beautiful, we are kind of naturally pulled out of our own thoughts.

Our rumination sort of stops dead for a minute when the moon comes up, or when we notice, you know, the owl in front of us on the path or whatever it is. And I've had that experience where I've been just you know, so lost in some kind of conversation that I'm thinking about that I had, and then this owl jumped out in front of me on the trail and it was like, WHOA, completely stop thinking about

what I was thinking about. Um, I felt, you know the presence of something beyond myself, right, and that in itself is an incredibly helpful just feeling of connection on perspective. Yeah, I love that acronym usage, and I love the idea

of you know, the weight and the exhale. Reminds me of Rick Hanson, who talks about a practice, you know, taking in the good, which is pretty much the same thing, right, if you're having a good experience, stay with it a little bit, you know, give it favorite, you know, give it a little more attention. There are other attentional exercises that I think can be very helpful in this regard to which is things like, you know, I often play

with seeing the edges of everything. What would be an example of that, Well, if I'm looking out my window right now, I mean I've looked out this window ten thousand times, right, And what we know, you know about the brains sort of predictive nature, right, is that there are some people believe that I'm not even really registering what's out there. At some level, right, my brain is sending down a prediction of what it expects to see. My senses are sending up what they do see, and

if they match, I never have to process it. So something like looking at the edges would just be like, let me look at the edge of everything I see? Where are the edges of that building? Where the edges of that tree? It just causes me to have to actually looks interest or you could do this with color, you know, let me see all the green that's out there. It's a way for me of I think of actually looking. Yeah, it pulls you into some kind of process that's not

about your head, that's right, that's right now. The thing that you're talking about, though, is that is the element that goes a little bit beyond that, which is how do you then go from that sort of mechanical thing into a little bit more of a state of almost a creation. Right. But as they say, you know, I think Mary Oliver said it best right that you know, attention is the beginning of devotion, right there you go, yep, you know, so how do we devote ourselves to something?

We pay attention to it? And I think you know, My Zen training talks so much about this, about just the ordinary thing. If you give it enough attention, it will come alive. And I think you do get better at it the more you do it. Yes. For example, I'm during the pandemic one of my little rituals when you know, we all felt so house bound and isolated, and I would walk every night to go look at the sunset, and it just became, you know, this automatic

part of my day. It's like, oh, time for the sunset. I'm gonna run, run down the street and go look at the sunset. And it's when you do that, it's impossible not to sort of drink it in, you know, like this bomb. It just you you become better at doing it. I think so you found over that time that you began to develop the skill of appreciating the sunset more. Yeah, I'm really trying to sort of access the a in it as well, to find myself stilled

by that beauty. And then the other interesting thing that happened is that there were a number of my neighbors doing the same thing, and so you know, I would see the same people every night, and I felt closer to them. You know, I didn't know them. But but pretty soon I did, and we would say hello and and so it became not just this personal awe experience, but it became a collective experience, which was incredibly comforting

and you know, a really nice antidote to loneliness. If you can experience that kind of unselfing in the presence of other people, I sort of amplifies it, I think. So it sounds like you had a location that multiple people agreed was an optimal place to watch a sunset from. Is that accurate. Yeah? So I live in Washington, d C. And I'm about I don't know, five blocks or so from the bluffs overlooking the Potomac River. So it's one of the few places where you you actually can get

a little it of a vista. Got it. It looks west and there's the sunset. Wow. I mean it just you know, some nights it was it was lame, but usually it was pretty right. Yeah, So let's move into Now we've talked about what heartbreak is, how difficult it is for us, the things that does to us. Let's talk about where did you start to turn for healing. I don't think we're going to get through all of it,

but maybe you know, highlight a few key places. Sure, I became so motivated to try to do what was kind of science based in my kind of urgent bid to get healthier, and so I turned, per this conversation with Paula Williams, I turned to spending a lot of time in nature, trying to focus on beauty. I went on a wilderness trip to even try to kind of crank up the volume on the awe and the immersion. So I embarked on a thirty day wilderness trip. Um. I did half of it alone, which has kind of

um some unexpected results. I would say, actually it was good in some ways, it was not as helpful in other ways. I did some E. M. D R therapy, which is supposed to be good for emotional trauma, and there's some interesting emerging research about that. And I did some psychedelics, actually working with a clinician in a therapeutic setting. Again too, I would say heightened the awe kind of dose that I was trying to go for. And and there's a lot of science there, of course, and it's

really helpful to me. So let's start with nature. You wrote a book called The Nature Fixed, which was all about how nature is healing for us and critical for us as humans. Did you find yourself naturally? Just? I guess that's that's a funny sentence, naturally coming to nature, Like you just kind of knew it and you went to it. Or was it a case of sort of having to rediscover that. I was so primed already to

think that nature could be helpful. Having written The Nature Fix, I felt like I was leaning on every lesson I learned from that book, not just because you know, the subtitle of that book was how to be healthy, Happy, are Healthier and more creative. Now I felt like I needed it to survive. You know. It was a whole different level of kind of need, and so it was an intuitive place for me to try to seek help.

But in that book, I only talk about sort of the dose curve of nature immersion up to three days. Like I end the book with the so called three day effect, talks about the interesting things that happened to your your brain and your body after three days aside, And I felt like, Okay, but I see a lot more than three days, because this is a really big heartbreak. I'm going to go for thirty days. So what were the aspects of that that felt really healing, and what

were the aspects of that that felt more challenging. Well, I did half of the trip with other people and half of the trip alone. So the first half was the half of other people. And you know, for me, I loved the planning the trip, even the logistics of an expedition. I can actually pull you out of kind of the limbic parts of your brain and forced you to sort of, you know, be really cerebral in a

way that's helpful right to deep emotions. And then I also just wanted to spend good times with my friends and family. You know, I felt so much comfort from being surrounded by them. I had all of these friends and family who signed on, and so I felt very supported by them. You know, they were helping me kind of self actually, but also they just also really liked being on the river, you know, and so it was kind of a lot of jolly times. I would say,

it was sort of jolly and fun. And then everyone disappeared and it was like, Okay, now I'm going to do the really deep work here. I'm gonna learn how to be alone because I have not ever in my life been alone since I met my husband when I was eighteen, I'm gonna learn to access bravery since I'm scared of this future that looks so different and so it feels so insecure. I wanted to feel the metaphor of paddling from one destination to another. Tell listeners about

what the trip was real quick. Yeah, So it was thirty days down the Green River in Utah. Starts in southwestern Wyoming and then um flows through a lot of Utah to merge with the Colorado River in Canyonlands National Park. It's one of the sort of premier river trips you can do in the United States where you can be on the river for that long. You know, most of it is through public land. You need a series of permits to go through these different canyons. Um they're different

permitting agencies, including Indian Reservation. So it's you know, it's logistically complicated. For the solo piece. I was in Canyonlands National Park for most of that, also some Bureau of Land Management land and so um there's only one resupply point in that two weeks, one road that goes in,

so I had to sort of line that up. You plan the food, and I felt like I just needed to mark this passage in my life, you know, by doing something kind of um grand and something that would harry me, you know, through this passage into what I thought would be kind of a better story of myself as literally the pilot of my own boat. You know, metaphors were just irresistible to me. And so what were the good and bad parts of those fifteen days. I

think that I did access a lot of bravery. I think I felt like, Okay, I can be alone, I can take care of myself, I can be self reliant. But I also had this realization that I don't want to be I don't want to be alone. I don't want to take care of myself. I learned that it through the absence of having other people around me, that the value of having other people around you is to

help you not feel so bad about yourself. You know that if you tend to go down these dark rabbit holes, it's the company of people you love who helped pull you out of that. You know. It's one of the tremendous values of our social you know instincts, but you know, beyond that, we are healthiest when we don't just rely on ourselves. It's kind of our cellular super fuel as a species, that we do help each other, and so if we deny ourselves that opportunity, we're just not going

to kind of hit our real potential, I think. And those were all big revelations for me, because I don't think I had wanted to rely on other people so much. I think I did want to kind of embrace a kind of self reliance, you know, this is the myth that we're all sort of fed from such an early age. I also wanted to connect with people through dark emotions, you know. I think I had been taught that dark emotions aren't necessarily something you want to share with other people.

Nobody's comfortable with. UM, let's just put on a happy

face and keep going. And I found myself so resisting that and wanting to sort of have more authentic connections with people in my life that necessarily involved expressing that I think earlier on and this is certainly my journey also in this which was earlier on my view of spiritual development, of getting healthier, of being psychologically well, all that was kind of there was an element of self reliance in it, and there was an element of psychologically

healthy people don't need other people, right, sort of a codependency, right. The opposite of codependency. Codependency was saying, you know, you lean on other people too much, you cared too much what they think. It's it's what rules your life. That's a problem, and certainly it can be. But more and more I'm seeing people talking about the fact that we are social creatures that do need each other and there

is a healthy way to do that. Not only is there a healthy way to do it, it is healthier for us to do it, to find connection, and that we thrive best in connection with other people. And it just seems that that is a theme that is coming

up more and more. I love it that people are talking about this more, and in some ways, I think, you know, one of the silver linings of the pandemic is that we have realized the value of connection more and we've kind of fallen on our knees a little bit and said, yeah, this is a hard time, let's talk about mental health. I think those are really really positive developments. But I also worry about especially younger people now, who do you consider themselves the loneliest demographic, which is

so interesting. They're the most anxious, They're the most lonely. They're the most concerned about their mental health. I worry about them, and I think that they live in very challenging times where they are not making the authentic connections maybe that we sort of grew up with in the absence of the internet, in the absence of social media. Yeah.

I think there's another element to that that I think is interesting, which is there's an idea out there that stress becomes stress when you perceive it to be harmful to you, or let me say that differently, stress becomes harmful when you perceive it to be harmful. Right, And I'm going to make another analogy, which is sleep. Right.

I've rebelled a little bit in my own head and with people close to me a little bit with what I refer to as the sleep police, right, because now everybody is saying, like, you've got to get eight hours of sleep or you know, you'll you'll get the bubana plague next week. Right. I get the over correction saying, look, this is really important, but I have restless leg syndrome,

and when it kicks in, I don't sleep well. And so now I'm not sleeping well, and all I'm hearing all the time is how destructive it is to me that I'm not sleeping well. And I worry that all this research about how bad it is to be lonely could be doing the same thing to people who are already lonely, and now they're being added to that is oh god, how bad is it for me to be lonely?

And to the extent that any of those things help us take positive change, right to the extent that the sleep police helps somebody to go, you know what, this five hours of sleep nonsense I'm doing isn't really a good idea. I should put more effort into getting sleep really positive. To the extent that knowing how destructive loneliness is to us helps us move towards positive direction. I think it's helpful, but I worry about a tipping point

with all this stuff. I think you're right, but loneliness is such an interesting emotion because you know, it's subjective, right, so so you can be in a marriage and feel lonely, can live in a house full of people and feel lonely, and yet it seems to have a very highly adapted reason, which is that it is a signal, you know, the feeling of loneliness tends to make us feel like there's

something we don't have that we want. There's a disconnect between um, what we want, what we have, and by noticing that and feeling it, it actually is supposed to. I think propel behavior drives us to seek a little bit of comfort or a little bit of connection. The irony, though, is that if you feel lonely for too long, it kind of does the opposite. It makes it harder for you to have connection because you're more suspicious of other people,

maybe feel worse about yourself. It's one of these emotions, sort of like heartbreak, that I think exists for a reason, but can also kind of morph into something more destructive if it lasts for too long. That's a really great point. It turns into something that's harder to get out of the longer you're in it. And what I find really interesting is, you know, you just stated something, which is that kids these days, you know, teenagers are considered the loneliest.

Now forever, it's been senior citizens, right, senior citizens were you know, it was just very clear they were the loneliest. And we understand why, right, Their partners are passing away, their friends are passing away, they don't have a job, right, they're isolated in in ways, But it is sort of stunning that kids feel that way. Now, I'm not even sure what to do with that information. I don't know either, but I think we need to pay attention to it.

I'm really concerned about it me too. I'm concerned that the people who generally have the most energy to solve that problem don't feel like they can solve it. You know, youth does have an energy of I feel like, the ability to make things happen. And I get when you're seventy, it's much harder to be like, all right, I'm going to go to three social events today. Right, you're tired. But when you're eighteen, that's a different thing. And so, yeah,

I'm with you. I find it somewhat alarming. Yeah, it's why I feel, frankly so motivated to talk about the things that can help build resilience, such as authentic connection to other people but also to the natural world. You know, I really do believe that by helping young people connect to nature, by helping them get out of their own anxieties a little bit, you know, I do very strongly feel that it's part of the solution. Yeah, I do to. I remember my last bad heartbreak, and I remember exactly

what I did. I just made a last minute decision to go to this nature retreat in Ohio for like four days. And it's basically it's entirely off grade. You're you're by yourself more or less except meals are provided for you. And it was transformative for me. It kicked off something really valuable in my life. And you know, nature was certainly a big part of that. So I think that is one path in did your research lead you into other paths out of loneliness for people? Yes?

So you know I told you that we did this experiment where we looked at my white blood cells for markers of inflammation and also for markers of virus fighting ability, which is something you really want when you're going into

a pandemic. And I worked with this researcher, Steve Cole, who has in fact done a lot of interventions with populations where he's looked at their immune cells and how they may improve after, for example, they try zend meditation or after they try volunteering in schools, And what he has found is that where he sees the best improvements in people's immune cells, immune profiles is not necessarily when they report feeling happier or kind of more mirthful or

they're able to seek more pleasure. He says that he sees the biggest improvements in they feel like they have meaning in their lives and purpose in their lives. And that's not the same thing as waking up every morning, you know, feeling amused totally and sort of you know, um calm. It's this kind of larger right north star. And so I thought that was fascinating and also not something that we hear of as an antidote to heartbreak,

an antidote to loneliness. You know, it's not necessarily being with other people's feeling like you're doing something worthwhile, Like there is a y that you are answering in your life and eventually, ideally that will lead to feelings of connection with other people. Yeah, my experience, I mean, I have sort of a close firsthand experience with that, which was in a a which was a big part of

my life for a long time. That was the foundational element, right, which was to work with other people who were struggling with what you were struggling with. And that's not exactly what you're saying. But what it was was purpose, it was service, and it was connect exactly. The line that I remember was nothing so much ensures immunity from drinking than working with another alcoholic. There's some a people out there who are gonna be like, you didn't quite get that.

But it's close. Um, it's close, And so yeah, I agree. I think that's so important. The other thing I've been thinking about, I think a lot about how do people build community? How do people go from being lonely? You know? How does this happen? And one of the things I've

realized recently is that it's not that I realized. I found some research recently that said, you know, in order to make connection with a new person, right, So if you've already got existing connections, right, nurture them, right, But if you need to make new ones, you're just like I just don't have any in my life where I have very few and I need to make new ones. It takes a lot of time, it does. And so what I see a lot of people doing, and I've done this in the past, is I go, all right,

you know what, I gotta find some connection. I'm going to go to the local meditation group because I'm interested in meditation. There'll be people there that are like me, and that's how I'm going to do it. And I go once or twice and I don't feel connected because that's not how it works. And so then I go, this isn't working and I give up, or I do a volunteer thing that only happens once or twice, and

that's not enough time either. So you know, one of the things that I've been talking with people about is really saying, you know what, pick a couple of things, but it's going to take a commitment. It's going to take I've got to keep going even when I'm uncomfortable, even when I feel like I don't fit in, even in the beginning, because it just takes a certain number of hours. You know that the research is different on

how long it is. And I'm always skeptical of like, you know, twenty one day is do a new habit, right, Like it's it's so variable. So it takes more than seeing somebody twice for an hour, that's right. And I think that there are other ways to connect and to feel connection. I mean, you know, face to face with other people is one way. It's a great way. But you can have a meaningful connection with a pet. You can have meaningful connection. And I'm really big on this

with nature. You know, if you have a sort of favorite spot or a couple of spots where you can go where you get to know the seasons and you get to know the birds, and you get to know you know the patterns of the water or the rocks. You know. It sounds a little goofy to say it, but I think there's some compelling research here showing that when people can feel connected to the natural world, it

can be a great antidote actually for loneliness. Yes, I think that's a really important point to kind of keep coming back to. It's not only other people. There are lots of ways to connect. And even back to what we were talking about earlier around beauty and art. I have deep connections to pieces of art, pieces of music. Things exactly do feel like connection. You know, they are valuable.

So I guess, like the great trifecta, you know, to sort of um sum it up, the great trifecta of kind of heartbreak antidote or loneliness antidote seems to be this sort of beauty plus connection plus purpose. I think it's very hard to rely too much on one of those over the other. It seems to be, you know, in combination, it seems to be sort of a pathway into ultimately feeling a sense of belonging, feeling like the things that you do matter, and ultimately, of course, increasing

your capacity for love, which is really what it's all about. Well, I can't think of a more beautiful place to just kind of wrap up. That was a great summary there, Beauty, purpose, and connection. I want to take a second and let you share a little bit about there's an audio version

of your book, which I think is really exciting. One of the things that's so great about so many of these books like yours is you talk to so many interesting people, and we get you sort of giving us that in in the writing, but I think in the audio book we can actually hear these people. Right. Yeah, thanks so much for asking about that. I'm I'm really proud of this audio book that we made. That's very unusual.

As I went around reporting the research for this book, I had my tape recorder and I taped everyone I talked to. I also taped myself in an audio journal.

I taped my friends. I taped my therapist, and so when we made the audio book, we decided to actually pull that tape into the book, so it's not just me reading the text, it's actually these real conversations layered in as well as really beautiful music and sound design, and so it feels like a very immersive, I think audio experience, and I hope people will check it out. And it sounds like a lovely companion for being heartbroken,

I hope. So, you know, I really wanted the book to be hopeful, because I think that heartbreak is, you know, as as difficult as it is, it is a path to transformation. And how lucky you know that we can get that. Well. Florence, thank you so much for coming back on It is always a pleasure to talk with you. You two. Eric, thank you so much for having me. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You

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