Doug Noll argues loneliness in young people stems from lifelong emotional invalidation, not social media. A Cigna study of 20,000 adults found nearly half feel alone and a quarter lack understanding. Noll demonstrates affect labeling, a listening technique that validates emotions, as a practical antidote.
Chapters
So I was floating, floating around thinking about young people today, and take a look at this first quote, which I think is really interesting. When people are disconnected at 16 or 18, it's not a spontaneously occurring event. In other words, the behaviors we're seeing at 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 is just not coming out of the blue. It's not because they're in adolescence. It's an accumulation of all of the events in their lifetimes, experiences in their family, and any trauma you faced. And I would include in that as, uh, abuse number one, emotional invalidation. So when you see kids today, teenagers, and they are completely disconnected or alienated from their lives and from their families and from their friends, I'll guarantee you that they've been deeply, deeply emotionally invalidated by their families over a long period of time. Remember, we program babies. Babies are not born with emotions. Emotions are part, part of our cognitive programming that occurs starting at 18 months, and if the babies are not properly exposed to positive emotional feedback, and most babies aren't, then they're gonna— they're not gonna be able to connect with people. And the fact they don't connect with people means that they're gonna feel deep experience. So this is a Cigna study that was— that just came out a couple weeks ago, and it kind of hit the mainstream press today. And take a look at some of these statistics. Um, nearly— this is a study of more than 20,000 U.S. adults 18 years and older. So now think about it. If this is— if these are 18 years and older, this loneliness stuff doesn't just happen when you turn 18. This is stuff that's been going on for a long, long, long time, all the way back into early childhood. But take a look at these statistics. Nearly half of the Americans report sometimes or always feeling alone or left out, 46 to 47%. 1 in 4 Americans rarely or never feel as though there are people who really understand them. And now you see the value of affect labeling. You've all experienced affect labeling, that when you are deeply listening to somebody else's emotional experience, they feel listened into existence. That's the antidote. 2 in 5 Americans sometimes or always feel that their relationships are not meaningful and that they are isolated from others. One in five people report that they rarely or never feel close to people or feel like there are people they can talk to. In other words, they don't have anybody to write to. Over a fifth of, a fifth of our population. Americans who live with others are less likely to be lonely compared to those who live alone. However, this does not apply to single parents or guardians who, even though they live with children, single parents are more likely to be lonely. Interesting. Only around half the Americans have meaningful in-person social interactions, such as having an extended conversation with a friend or spending quality time with family on a daily basis. And this is where I think it really gets interesting. Generation Z, these are the kids that are coming up now that are— we, we would call them 0 to 22. They're not millennials, they're the generation behind the millennials. Millennials are 23 to the late 30s. They say the Generation Z kids are— is the loneliest generation and claims, claims to be in worse health than older generations. And the other thing that's really interesting, which is counterintuitive to what we all might think, and that is that social media use alone is not a predictor of loneliness. Respondents defined as very heavy users of social media have a loneliness score that is not markedly different from the score of those who never use social media. And here's the— if you want to go get, get into the study, this is not the study itself, it's the Cigna press release about the study, and then the study cited in there. Let me put this up in the chat room so you guys can click on it and get it. Last Friday, a week ago Friday, I taught a very— a mini workshop on this to a bunch of millennials who are being trained as steward leaders in their communities. And I was asked to come in and just basically teach them the basic skills in 2 hours. And I kind of laughed and said, yeah, right. But I worked, I took them through the theory and then gave them, did a demo. And the demo was always so interesting, you know, it always happens. Like, I have this woman come up and she told me the story that was of a toxic work environment that she was in, and I helped her process all her emotions. And she was processing a lot of emotions that she didn't even know she was having. And I Got her IAFIC labeler and got her calmed down and exactly and almost tears coming down, you know. And so we finished and I turned to the group and I said, well, what do you all think? And there was some little 20-something out there that said, that was the rudest thing I've ever seen in my life. Who the hell do you think you are? What old guy do you think you are? I mean, the typical response. And I turned to the woman that was my willing partner and I said, well, how did you experience that? And she said, that was the most amazing listening experience. I've never had anybody listen to me so deeply before in my life.— and the 20-something in the room, she couldn't believe it. She started attacking the woman saying, "No, that can't be. You're lying," because she couldn't accept that it was possible to connect with another human being so quickly and so powerfully in such a deep way because of her own pain that she's probably dealing with. Now eventually she came around. About an hour later after they started practicing a little bit, she said, "Oh, I get it. This really does work." but it took her an hour of practice before she could finally figure out that there was really something here. But her first knee-jerk reaction was, "That's wrong, that's rude." That's what makes this challenging and interesting, is that the initial reaction of people when they see this work is that it just flies in the face of what they think is normal listening.
