Kira Asatryan

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 Kira assitry On, a certified relationship coach, author, blogger, loneliness expert, and speaker. She loves to speak publicly on the topic of loneliness. Kira has spent her coaching career researching, pondering, and reflecting upon what specifically makes relationships feel good or bad. Her book is called Stop Being Lonely. Three Simple Steps to developing close friendships and deep Relationships. Here's the interview. Hi, Kira,

welcome to the show. Hi, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to have you on. Your book is about loneliness in our culture. And one of the things that I've been saying on the show a lot lately is more and more I've realized how important human connection is defeating the good wolf. So I'm really excited to get more into your book and some of your suggestions around how we can do that. But let's start with a parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson.

He says, 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 grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second, and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, grandfather, which one wins?

And the grandfather 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. That's the first time that I had heard that parable. I really love it. It's very simple yet profound um for me. You know, I do a lot of work with people who are experiencing loneliness and social isolation. And for me, the bad Wolf is a lot of times it's about shame or about out fear

of making one self vulnerable to other people. That's what it was for me, and my good Wolf was a lot of self acceptance and kind of trust that other people would like me if I revealed, you know, parts of my my inner self. Yeah. And your book certainly talks about being intentional about taking those chances with people. Yeah, it's come up a lot, actually, you know, trusting that things will work out okay if you if you reveal aspects of yourself. Uh. And I think that's more of

a challenge for some people than other. Some people just put it all out there and it's natural for them. But but I and many others are in the camp of being concerned that if we reveal our inner world, that it'll be rejected or somehow, you know, turned upon. You say that there is you know, in contemporary society, we have sort of a new type of loneliness. Can you describe what you mean by that? Yeah, So loneliness in the past was was more of a rare event. And what I mean by the past was when we

lived in more more traditional communities. Um And, typically you had to really do something wrong, or you had to leave and try to join another community, or something unusual had to happen to feel chronically lonely. Um. But chronic loneliness is becoming more and more common in modern society. I think a lot of us know this actually kind of intuitively, that modern society is making people lonely. Um And.

And the new loneliness that I talked about is not so much literal isolation, meaning like you don't have people in your life. It's more that you feel like the people that are around you really don't know you and they don't really care about you very much. You say that the cure for loneliness is it sounds sort of obvious on one hand, but I think you're being very specific about it. You say that it's in in closeness. You use that word very specifically in being clo with

other people. What does closeness mean in the sense that you're using it? You're right that I did. I I deliberated over what that word should be For me. Closeness means direct access to another person's inner world, and it's it's created through doing to two types of things. The first one is knowing and the second one is caring. And I'm happy to talk more about what those mean. Sure, yeah, why don't you go ahead and explain them both a

little bit more so? Knowing is is about kind of establishing the what I call the mental connection with another person. So it's really about seeing somebody from their own perspective and and allowing them to see you from your own perspective, which is actually kind of different from how we usually get to know people. UM. It tends to be pretty surface, is one thing, in like normal day to day life. UM. And we also tend to kind of like ascribe our own labels to other people and make a lot of

assumptions about people, UM, which doesn't really facilitate closeness. We're seeing them from our view of them, not necessary early their view of themselves. Exactly. Yeah. And then and then caring is about being interested and invested in their well being. So it's not necessarily about you know, being concerned about them or being worried or what have you, which is where a lot of people go with like being emotionally invested in somebody, um, but it's just really being present

and available to them emotionally. One of the things that you talk about the idea of closeness is that a lot of us have been taught to care about people. So that's the second aspect of closeness, knowing and caring. We've been taught to care about people by worrying about them. I think we all know why. That's probably not good for ourselves to worry. Why is that detrimental in us

being close to other people? Yeah, it's very interesting. It's like there there are times in places where being worried

might be the right reaction. But if if you're trying to be close to somebody through worrying about them, it has the effect of usually pushing them away because it will prompt the other person this impulse to be like no, no, everything is fine with me, because they don't they don't actually enjoy seeing you uncomfortable or they it feels like you're sort of implying weakness in them or something like that, right, And it it also is kind of becomes I have a person in my life who I will not name,

but um is the situation becomes it's and it's not Chris, he's looking at me, it's not Chris. Um where any situation suddenly becomes about how it affects them. Yeah, totally, and all of a sudden, like but I'm the one that's got the problem over here. But I think that's very common. I was really struck by you sort of calling that out as one of the ways we think we get close to people but actually causes distance. Yeah. The classic example not to call out the moms of

the world, but everybody. Everybody goes to their mom. Yeah. I do too, and I love my mom. But it's you know, it's a it's an instinct when you're very One of the things that we talked about in those social sciences is like being being a meshed with another person and and that can that that has some negative repercussions. When you feel like you know the well being of somebody else, it's really is really about you. Yeah, you

talk about that and maybe we'll get to it. You describe the idea of relationship a sort of a separate thing between two people that doesn't engulf them. And I don't know if we'll get that far into all the all the stuff I want to talk about, but you definitely address that later in the book. Um, it's sort of a cliche these days people talk a lot about it, but I would be interested. You know, we all talk about how technology is causing this distance and loneliness between us.

From your perspective, what is it about technology that can cause distance between us even when we're around other people. Yeah, there's a couple big ways that technology has kind of inserted itself in our relationships. The first one is that it's just made it less necessary to be around people. And and in some ways that's nice, Like it's wonderful for you know, working parents to have flexibility in terms

of where they work. But when you're not physically with people as much, it's just harder to to get close to people. You have to really make an effort to set up time to to see people. Is easier to let relationships just lag if you're not if you don't need to go see them. The other one I talk about in the book is very it's very Silicon Valley because that's where I live, and I grew up here, and I do work in that field as well. And all of our devices are totally based on the principle

of efficiency. And the more that we spend time waiting for a bus playing on our phone, or waiting for our food to arrive playing on our phone, the more we get used to like this type of interaction that's incredibly efficient, um, and it becomes harder and harder to have patients with real people. Yeah. Yeah, I totally relate with that. I mean, I've read the various books and and and heard the various things about, you know, what

technology is doing. I still don't feel like I can quite put my finger on exactly what spending so much time with my phone does, but I feel like it when I'm spending a lot more time looking at it in every every turn, it it weakens me in some way that I can't quite name yet, but I definitely can feel it. Yeah, it's a feeling that a lot

of people are feeling. And you know, at the same time, like people tell me these beautiful stories of reconnecting with an old friend over Facebook and it became this great relationship. So it's there's there's another side to it too that you know, technology in a way is just a tool, and it's about how you use it. Do you use it to to encourage close relationships or to like kind

of avoid you know, real face to face interaction. Yeah, I think that any idea that we're gonna technologically go backwards. I always think that people are like, well, we should be like we were twenty years ago. I always feels like a failed effort. That's just not the way that the world moves. So the question then becomes, Okay, this technology is a part of our lives, how do we

use it skillfully and wisely? I mean, this show wouldn't exist without the internet, you know, and and the thousands of people that are listening wouldn't hear this without you know, technology and the internet. So I believe strongly and it as a really powerful tool. But like any tool, you can use it wrong. Like a hammer, you can you can use it to hammer and nail, or you can use it to hit hit your hit your producer and

engineer who's sitting nearby. That's exactly the the analogy that I used a couple of days ago, and then and then the person I was talking to was like, you might not want to say that. When we think about loneliness, people tend to go right towards the idea of love, like love is the best way to conquer this loneliness. And I'm going to, uh, I'm going to quote you here and then ask you to elaborate. You say, the notion that love is a reliable solution to loneliness is

a myth, because, simply put, love is a mystery. Closeness, however, is not. Yeah, this kind of hearkens back to when we first started talking about closeness and why did I pick that word? At first, I gave a lot of thought to it, it being you know, is it love, um, because I'm a relationship coach and I love love and all that stuff. Um. But but the but the key for me was that it's not terribly reliable and we

really don't know what causes it. Um. In a in a way that I think we have a much better idea of what causes to people to feel close to one another. And of course, you know I talked in the book about how you know, you can love people over ask distances, you can love people after they die, and that's like a to me, that's more of a magical, mystical experience than than the type of closeness that I'm

talking about. Yeah, I have to say you your reference in your book, and I had seen it elsewhere the way that somebody I can't remember where he's from, but can can cause people, you know, to fall in love or a very reliable way to induce the feeling of love and people. Can you describe that experiment or that story. I just think it's fascinating. Yeah, I know, I love

it too. Yeah. The man who came up with it is Dr Arthur Aaron, and he he essentially brought couples, well to individuals, not not pre existing couples into his lab and had them ask each other thirty six questions

and then look each other in the eye for four minutes. Um. But it's really the questions part that was interesting to me, because essentially what it is is accelerated knowing it was it was questions that were that went incrementally deeper into the other person's needs, values, what motivates them, you know, what do they care about? In this world, um, and

carrying tends to follow that, right. I Mean, there's that old saying of the you know, the surest way to stop hating somebody is to learn a lot more about them, you know, to hear their whole story is usually one of the quickest ways to to feel empathy towards someone totally and and also to reduce assumptions and prejudices against them. Yeah, yeah, it's uh. You know, there certainly are relationships where you can care about somebody but not know them very well.

I will, unfortunately go back to the parent example because that's that's kind of a classic thing. Um. But but people who have those types of relationships can feel that something is not quite as close about them as as somebody who has both the knowing and the carrying aspect going. Right.

So in your book you discus ribe really how to know someone, how to be close to someone, and what the skills are that it takes to do that, a question that I didn't really see in the book, and I'm curious about because I get it often, particularly in this day and ages, you get people who are a little bit older. You know, you're out of college, you're you're working a career and you you moved to a new city and you just don't know anyone, and it

just seems harder and harder to make friendships. It seems like they're easier to form when you're younger. What do you tell people who are sort of in that boat? What is what is some of the ways that they can try and you know, work with that loneliness it's in their life. Yeah, it's a it's a hard problem to face and a lot of people face it these days because people move to cities all the time now where they don't know anybody. Um. There are a couple

of tips that I usually go to. The first one is to start where you are, so meaning if you moved to a new city to attend a school, you know, look for like minded people in your school. If you if you went for work, start at work and try to make some connections at work. Um, if you really know nobody, one thing that I like to suggest is I call them friends in laws. So you may not know somebody there, but one of your friends may have

a friend who's where, who's near where you are. Um, and you can kind of leverage your pre existing social network too to meet new people. But but it's it's the third thing I would say, which is a little more like you know Fluffy is also just be patient with with the whole situation, because it's it's very likely that you will feel lonely for a little while if

you if you transplant yourself. In the book, you describe a lot about becoming sort of like you said, they're about becoming closer with people who are already there, like how do you build closeness with co workers? And what are some myths we have about what we can and can't do their how do you build closeness with, say a schoolmate. The thing that you talk about is this idea of watching for something and another person that interests you and then having then taking deliberate steps to try

and foster that relationship. So what does that look like? Say I'm I'm in a new city, I've got a new job, and there's a you know, there's a guy that I work with, you know, he's in some meetings that I'm with occasionally, and you know, I just sort of have a sense like, oh, you know, I'd like to get to know this guy better. What what are this? You know, what are some steps from there that don't look incredibly creepy or strange. Everybody is fighting this battle

against the creepy factor. It's totally true. And and also this is a sidebar, but I think I think men face it more more than women do. I think that women feel quite a bit more comfortable approaching another woman and kind of like going on a friend date. I think it's harder for men. So, but if you're in that situation where you know you're a guy and there's another guy who you feel like you could be friends with, I would start with work talk, but but I wouldn't

leave it at work talk. So if there were a way to, you know, ask him if you wanted to go get coffee and talk about this thing that we're working on. But then but then throw in a couple questions to gauge, you know, is he interested in willing to kind of reveal little bits about what's going on with his life outside of work. Right, you talk about, you know, being willing to reveal some of those things yourselves.

And we had a woman on the show. I don't know if you're familiar with her work, Glenn and Mountain Doyle, and she writes a blog called Momastery that's largely targeted at mother's But she said something on this show that just kind of blew me away, and it's it's stuck with me ever since. She said, because she is known for just giving way too much information about herself, way too fast, Like you know, her husband's always like giving her the cut, you know, the cut sign at parties.

But what she said is when you stay on the surface with people, it's really hard to connect because everybody's surface is different. But if you're willing to go just a little bit deeper, it's a lot easier to connect with people because deep down, we're very much all the same. And I was really struck by that, and it really does mirror my experiences in life when I actually take a moment and go a little bit further than I might normally in a casual conversation. I find that so

often reciprocated in really positive ways. I do too. I do too, and I talk a lot in the book about how to ask questions that that get at these deeper conversations. But but the other avenue works works well too, which is just sharing something about yourself that you may not have. It very often makes other people feel more comfortable sharing about their own lives too. Yes, let's head into questions, because that was another area. Had you talk

about questions either being too soft or too hard? What does that mean? Yeah, the too soft kind of question is the kind that just dances on the surface. It's it's the kind that's that's asking about the trivialities. You know, what are you going to be doing this weekend? Oh that's cool, Okay, bye? You know they what's new? What are you working on? It's you know, they're a comfort

zone for most people, I would say. But then the too hard question is the kind that feels either like you've broached something that's just way too personal, or you've asked it in a way that sounds um like you are accusing them of something. So one of the one of the tips, and I actually didn't really come up with this tip, it's a classic life coaching tip is don't ask why, um, because why can instantly sound like

you're interrogating somebody. So almost any why question can be turned into a what or a how question, and then it feels much more balanced. So give me an example of that. Well, my favorite one and I probably overuse it, but my favorite one is if you were going to ask somebody, well, let's say you're having a conversation and they say, I'm going to go sailing this weekend. Okay, So the first thing that might come to your mind is why do you like sailing? That could very easily

be transformed into what do you like about sailing? And it and it feels like like a trivial change. But if it were about something more, you know, serious or controversial or anything than sailing, that the why do you like it can feel like an implication that you shouldn't like it. Yeah, your example in the book is really good. Like you, you know, you you take a romantic partner home to meet your parents, and afterwards one of your parents says, why do you like her? Instead of what

do you like about her? I mean the difference there is very profound. Why do you like her? Sounds like you know, I'm questioning your judgment and what do you like your about? Or is a much more And you use this word inviting question right exactly? Yeah, that is how I think about it. Yeah, I like that idea. So any why question can be transformed into a water or how And then you also say your favorite catch all question if you're trying to think of a good

inviting balance question is what does that get you? Yeah, my husband is obsessed with this question, like, yes, is it way too much? But but an example of when of when it would be a sensical time to use it is if like, let's say you just met somebody and they're talking about how they they just left their job. So if you ask them what does that get you? It opens up this whole like reasoning for why they

did something. So maybe maybe they left their job to spend more time with their kids, or maybe they left it because you know, they weren't feeling appreciated or something. Um, it's just it's it's a very elegant way to to get at the motivation be high and a decision. You talk about diving deeper on once. So if Chris and I are in a conversation he says he wants this thing, I can just hear that and I can have my own assumptions of why he wants that. You call it

the want assume misunderstand cycle. Yeah, what are you driving at their? Yeah? So well, why did you ask such a question? You don't have to deal with me. It's okay, I won't feel interrogated. Um. Yeah, But so the the human mind is is pre wired to make assumptions about people in situations and things, and and it's an impulse that we kind of have to fight against when you're

trying to see somebody from their own perspective. So, if you've just met somebody and they say, you know, I want to buy a new car, and you think, oh, cool, like I want to buy a new car too, we have something in common. You actually may not, because there's a whole litany of reasons why somebody might want to buy a new car, and and you know, that particular example, it may not lead to anything that you know, dramatic

about the person, or it may not matter. But there are opportunities that come along all the time where we assume that somebody's deeper reasons for doing something is the same as ours. So it's back to this asking another question about what does that get you? Or Um, the first question that comes to mind is why do you want to buy a house? Yeah? Well, what what does

the house get you? Is a perfectly good question I would do in that particular situation, I would do a couple of questions to not be like the weirdo who's asking weird like coaching questions. But but but I would ask you know, I would do a little bit of the surface stuff, and I would ask, you know, where are you looking to buy? How big? What have you? And then maybe you know who would live with you

in the house. Okay, then I'm then I'm going to learn a little bit about what that person's like relationships are like, or what's important to you about that neighborhood or exactly. That's a great one. So and in general you talked about I'm always interested in questions because I ask a lot of them. UM's port of doing this job.

But you described that the main thing with the question is to have an inviting mindset, you know, is to sort of be asking them in such a way that you're trying to really invite the other person into a conversation if you can con just like hold this intention.

It's coming from a place of being curious about the other person and and not not trying to, you know, find things that are like you in them, because that's a again, that's a natural impulse that the human brain has is to find similarities and and there are relationships that could be wonderful out there in the world with people who aren't exactly like you. Yep. So the book, a lot of it is is talking about getting to know people better, and then you you get into how

do we care for people better? And and it starts to get into more about how you work within a relationship with somebody, whether that be a parent or a child, or a lover or a friend. And you've got a line that I absolutely love, which is, separate the person from the problem. I know, don't you love that? I do explain it for people who don't automatically get it because it seems fairly straightforward, and then maybe elaborate on

it a little bit. Sure, Yeah, separate the person from the problem is actually it's a principle that comes from business negotiation, of all places. But when when I learned about it, I thought that totally has to do with regular relationships as well. Um. And essentially, what it says is that when two people are in conflict or somehow different in some type of way, or have different opinions on something, it's extremely hard to come to a resolution

when you view the other person as the problem. Um. And if you can make the separation in your mind that the person that you're speaking to is you know, deserving of of love and respect and all that stuff, and the problem is something separate from either one of you that you can eliminate. Then the whole conversation becomes different, and it's it's quite awesome. Yeah, the way you say, and I'll quote you again, you say, separating the person from the problem allows us to go easy on the

person and hard on the problem. This is a profound shift. We no longer need to be trapped in the conundrum of whether we should treat the person who's disappointing us or upsetting us nicely or sternly, whether we should show him love or tough love or just yell, intimidating conjole. Always treat the person with love. Always treat the problem as if you're determined to destroy it. Yeah, yeah, I like that. And then you talk about the fact if you do that, then you're back on the same side exactly.

That's a that's a very big deal. This is something that I most of my coaching has to do with couples, and like newly engaged or or married couples, and that this is a big, big thing that I emphasize is as much as possible be on the same side, we might need to engage you to do some podcast Partner Consulting, Ship Consulting UM and you you talk about that the couples tend, you know, successful couples tend to do something and it's one of my favorite I did a mini

episode on it called the fundamental attribution error. You didn't call it that, but it's the same thing, which is that you say, happily married couples tend to attribute undesired negative spouse behavior to situational characteristics, then the specific dispositional characteristics of the spouse, and the fundamental attributionary is exactly is sort of the exact opposite that when you do something wrong, I assume it's your personality, and when I

do something wrong, I know the circumstances behind it. Yeah, it's a very difficult pattern to break out of once you start believing that you know, problems that are caused in the relationship are due to the other person's character or personality. Yeah, it strikes me though, that I see how you can get mired in that you know the personality of the other person, and we get mired into

relationships where that gets really hard to break. It does seem though that within a relationship would be one place that you'd at least if you tried, you'd have the data to be able to dispute it where you could if you fostered the closeness with someone else, you could start to hear more about those situational things and start to hear that and to be something you could do with someone versus a lot harder with a stranger somebody you don't know. Well, it's easier in one way, but

but harder another, If that makes sense. Yeah, I do understand that. Yeah, yeah, I agree. So you say that there are four skills that we need to foster closeness. So both in looking at myself, like, okay, I want to be closer, here's four skills I need to have, but also in looking at people that we want to invest with getting closer with What are we looking for both to cultivate in ourselves and to see in someone

else before we invest in getting too close to them? Yeah? Well, the big one for knowing for sure is the ability to to self disclose, and what that means is just both comfort ability saying anything about their personal lives and also being receptive to somebody else talking about their personal lives. And and you know, every time I say it, I

feel like we can't everybody do that. But but when you run into somebody who really deflects or avoids going into anything that's not you know, readily apparent or something they would tell anybody. Um, those people definitely do exist, and you know, not that they are you know, to be avoided or anything, but it's going to be hard to get close to them. Um. And then on the on the caring side of things, that's all about having

the capacity to to feel and express emotions. Um. A lot of people call it empathy, and I talk a little bit about empathy in the book. Um, but empathy is a confuses people, including myself, from time to time

what that really means. So in the beginning, when you're kind of determining if if somebody could be a good closeness partner or not, really just look for, you know, do they have feelings about anything, and can they express feeling about anything ing like I love my daughter so much or what have you, you know, because that's at least they can go there within themselves. And so this is a way if I go back to I'm lonely. I want to meet people or I want to build

relationships with people. This is sort of a way to to start to wait into those waters, to be looking for these sort of things. And if there's no reciprocation there, maybe that's not the place to put all my energy. Yeah, that is also that is one of the skills on the list as well, is somebody being willing to reciprocate. I call them moments um, but all all that that means is that they're willing to both put their attention on you and allow the attention to be on them

at times as well. Excellent. Well, I think that brings us to the end of our time. The book is called Stop Being Lonely. Will have links to your book, to your website, to all your various Twitter feeds. Will also have a download of a couple of my favorite quotes from the book available in the show notes, and that will be when you feed dot net slash Kira k I r A. Thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. I really I really enjoyed the book and I think I think I

got a lot out of it. Of course, thank you so much for having me. This was a lot of fun. Okay, excellent, take care, okay, bye bye. You can learn more about CIA assitry on and this podcast at one you Feed dot net. Slash Kira that's k I r A.