The Power of Social Connection: Healing and Thriving Through Support (Episode 29)

There's something about you that I can't help but smile when you smile and laugh when you laugh.

Welcome to the human intimacy podcast. Dr. Kevin Skinner with you with my friend and colleague, Marianne Michaelis. Marianne, how are you today?

I am so good, thank you. I'm joining you today from Seattle, Washington, which is not where I'm normally coming from. And it is so good to be near the beach and the ocean. So I'm fantastic.

A lot like my wife, who loves the beach.

I do too.

Yeah, it's something about bare feet on the beach. It just, it just makes me just relax. I don't know, I don't know about you, but that's what it does for me.

Well, it does for me. I lived in Florida. It absolutely does. I would say that this side of the country, the beaches are much colder.

Oh, for sure, sure, yeah. All right. Well, to our listeners, we're going to be talking about something I think you will appreciate when it comes to your relationship. We have been doing a lot of research looking at research about human connection. That's really the Human Intimacy podcast. Today our focus is on social connection, social relationships and why they're so important. We look at the research and we consistently find, Marianne, that people who have social connection, social support do better across the board. So Marianne's pulled some research. I'm going to be sharing some research. We're going to be talking about what social connection can do for your well being and help you have better physical and mental health. So, Marianne, with that intro, what are your initial thoughts?

Thank you so much. My initial thoughts actually started this morning when I was out walking my dog along the beach. As I was walking along, I saw about 10 to 15 kids all together and they had pieces of cardboard, of all things, and they were like running and sliding with these pieces of cardboard down a hill. When I grew up, we used to go ice blocking, but these kids, there was no ice involved and they, I was amazed that they could use cardboard. And, and I just watched their interactions and I saw like, they're innovative. They were waiting to, I think, go do some sea kayaking or paddle boarding, but they were just doing this non organized play and I. And they were running in and out and I just watched that and thought, oh, this is so healthy. This is what we need. A little bit later on I saw like a child care group and they had all these little kids all together walking along the beach. And all the little kids, they were maybe 2 years old, just barely walking, but they were interacting. Their needs were being met. But I just looked at that and thought, this is so healthy. This is what we need in so many places. Yet we live in a world where there's so much anxiety, where we're so enclosed and so disconnected. And so I'm coming this morning from a place of seeing life and vibrancy and connection and just the joy of play and creativity and wondering, how do we get that because we need that.

More and how do we create it more? Because I think, you know, we've grown up in a world, at least I grew up in a world where social connection was. That's how that was the lifeblood. I mean, going out on a Friday or Saturday night, I watched today's youth. I even watch adults. And, and I see a lot of isolation. I see a lot of people on their phones or on their electronic dev computers, whatever it may be, and, and really, social connection, if you're dealing with emotional challenges, it can actually be overwhelming because you begin to question, do I fit? Do I belong? Is there something wrong with me now? Counter to that, when we have social connection, I, I love that story from this morning. You've got, you know, 15 kids out there making up a game with cardboard, going down sand. But I think about the benefits. Let's just talk about it. You're outside nature's beneficial. You're playing with other peers. You're having fun with that, that. Which is phenomenal. You're getting exercise because you're going up and down and up and down. It's so. It's great for you. I look at all the benefits and think, wow, can we get more? Sign me up. Sign us up.

Absolutely. And the kids were free to step out if they needed to and come back in and join later. As I was walking back past, it was raining. It was, it was a good. It was a good strong rain that I wasn't expecting. But these kids were out there and some. There was an adult with them, running them through stretches and exercises, and they had some music on and they were just all there, even as a group exercising. You think about the bonding that's happening as they're all attuning, doing the same behaviors, working with the same goal. We're getting ready. This time they had their life jackets on and they were getting ready to go out. But it is about being part of.

A group, belonging, you know, and, and as we get maybe older, those are children or, you know, whatever age they are, adolescents, we get older, and suddenly that, that maybe that younger group, our friends go different places, we go different ways. We, a friend of mine, he moved up here from California. He said, it's interesting. He said, I didn't really know my neighbors. He said, I, I came here and I, I know my neighbors. They came over and they visit and they're, you know, and, and so certain neighborhoods, people are reaching out. I, I mean, we lived in a neighborhood where we had a lot of World War II veterans for about 20 years of our life, of our married lives together. And it was amazing to me. You'd walk outside, the homes were close together, but you couldn't get around the block. And you probably would have talked to two or three different people. Hey, good morning. Or how's this? And, and hey, you know, question or it's just when you have community, you have something that's irreplaceable, a bond.

That is a bond.

It's incredible when you have people who are around you, who you're safe with. One experience I'll never forget, it was a time where it was a windy day and my daughter had been taking her doll on a walk in a stroller. And so it was two or three of my daughters, I can't remember, I think two. And the neighbor up the street, she said, I was watching our kids were playing together with your kids. And you know, your daughter was moving that and the tree branch came and it literally landed just perfectly where it missed her. Could have killed him. Absolutely could have killed him. But the instant care, the, hey, let's, let's get support. No question if there was anything in that neighborhood that there was ever a question, we knew our neighbors had our backs.

And that's amazing. I've lived in the place I'm at for almost nine years. And when we first moved in and every year we'd go over and knock on people's doors. Here's a Christmas gift. Hey, we want to get to know you. I have neighbors that never answered their door, that never like nothing, no contact whatsoever. And it's really sad because we want connection with other people. We need that.

Well, and so now let's look at this the other side. We're living in maybe the most fear produced society where we don't trust each other, where there's a lot of anxiety and a lot of conflict. And so we, we begin to question, are you safe? And really, that's been a fundamental concept that we've talked about in many of the podcasts is this underlying issue of, do I feel safe with other people? Because if I don't feel safe, I'm not going to Socially bond. I'm not going to get that social connection. And yet we are designed the podcast that we did with Dr. I did with Dr. Sue Johnson before she passed away many years ago. You know the genetic DNA she says, right. The DNA inside of us. We are, we are meant to connect.

Absolutely. We need that connection to tell us that we're okay. We look at other people. We need that acceptance. We see it in tone, in, in our facial expressions, in the touch. It's vital. Can I share some research with just a couple?

I would love. Yeah, let's get into some of the research.

So there is a somebody by the last name of Harlo who did some research on some primates. I'll probably just say monkeys because they're. I saw listed some different times and I actually am not sure 100% how to. Not sure which ones they are or how to pronounce them all correctly. But what they found was they would put some of these animals in isolation and when they were isolated some of the behaviors they saw were staring blankly, circling their cages, self mutilation. Those are some things that I see showing up in my office with my clients.

Okay, so let's, let's add to this. If you're a prisoner of war or you're in jail or prison, the worst thing that they can do to you is, is put you into solitary confinement. That they know that is a punishment to, to isolate you away from other people so you can't communicate. You have got nobody. I remember reading Dr. James or James Stockdale. He was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. And when he, he was there for seven years. I, I can't imagine being a prisoner of war for seven years. But interestingly enough because he was resistant, they, they did some very horrific things. But one of them, he said he was in isolation for I think the total of the seven years was like four years because he was pretty, he just wouldn't let them control his mind. And he said in the beginning I tried to go crazy, I tried to lose my mind. But when I couldn't I had to realize that I had to mentally think through things. And, and, and he came up with some strategies to, to go through that time frame. But we don't do well when we're alone. That's the underlying reality. Individuals, we don't do well. In fact, you can even look at the research on wolves. Lone wolves are more aggressive.

Yeah. Isn't that fascinating that the, one of the strongest forms of torture is the psychological impact of isolation. Just because we need our Pack. We need other people to help us and carry our loads with our emotions.

Yeah, I think Thich Nhat Hanh said it best. Everybody needs somebody.

Oh, I love that.

And I think that that's, that's just the reality. But let's take it a step further. You know, the work that we are in, many individuals, they deal with isolation because they're afraid that their spouse, you know, maybe there's been betrayal or there's been abuse in some form, and they're afraid to tell other people. And so they, they go in isolation. They don't, they don't talk with other people. And exactly what we're talking about they is themselves away from because they don't want others to judge them or they feel like they'd be, you know, that there's something wrong with them. And that kind of isolation, extremely hurtful to the healing process, because what really can help us heal is the power of human connection. I think that leads into some of your research. It.

Yeah, it does. So with these, with these animals, these monkeys, when they introduce them back into social interaction, they didn't know how to interact and many of them died after they refused to eat because they just didn't know how to do it. And they also found, which I, I found really fascinating, that the social touch was really impactful. So for animals, grooming each other is a really important part of their social interactions. And they found that the animals that had more grooming partners, their brains were much bigger in a lot of areas. And those who didn't have that, they had greater levels of anxiety and lower fertility rates. And, and I, I think all of that just plays right into what we're talking about. I, I see so many of my betrayed partners who like that. PTSD criteria C is isolation and avoidance and the shame that comes with feeling like I can't connect with anybody, I can't tell anybody about this. So I have to sink in and, and kind of go through the motions. But I'm not really living my life because I can't let people in. Means I'm carrying all this pain by myself, you know.

And here you are talking about the betrayal. I was doing research on individuals who've experienced and been through divorce, and I was looking at what, what is most helpful in the healing from a divorce. And interestingly enough, the things, the variables don't change. The people who made the best progress after divorce, meaning they're happier, they're more well being, even their, in their physical well being. There were two core factors. One is that they had at least one person that they could talk to, and two, they had group support. Those were the one and two factors of what was most helpful for people going through divorce. Again, it's just over and over and over again. When we see the research, it simply is people with support, connection bonded, they do better.

And that makes sense when we're looking through a. When we're looking at how our nervous system reacts. So when we're in a ventral place, which is our heart and brain are connecting, that we're in this place where we're calm and we're able to connect. We're curious, we're creative. This is where social interaction happens, where we can explore. But when we don't have that base, we're usually in a fight or flight place. Which means I'm looking at the world through distrust. Can I trust you? Are you safe? And if we've been betrayed or divorced or, or whatever happens to us, there's so many labels we can put on this. But when we're not having healthy connections and support, we are usually stressed and are. I think you said in one of your books, but when we look through the world through poop stained glasses, everything looks scary and unsafe.

That's right now, no, I want to address something here because this is for everybody. This is not. Nobody, I think, is immune to this.

Right. So.

So we, you know, we talk about people who've been in abusive environments or their partners acted out, been unfaithful, infidelity. But it's interesting to me to look at the other side of it. The person who acted out in many instances after the betrayal, they. They get a part of this isolation because their partner doesn't want to connect with them. And now they're in this state of. My behaviors triggered a response, so my partner doesn't want to be with me. And, and there is this journey now that of learning to deal with your own emotions. Because when we're in isolation, Dr. John Cacioppo, in his book Loneliness, really interesting read. But he talks about when we are lonely, we're more prone to eat more, we're more prone to drink more, we're more prone to do unhealthy things for our body and our mind because loneliness is that powerful. In fact, loneliness at its highest degree is as bad as smoking a pack of cigarettes every day.

Isn't that fascinating?

Unbelievable.

Yeah. Can, Can I share with you a little bit about the rat Park?

Yeah.

That really leads into this. There was some research done in the 1970s by Dr. Bruce Alexander. And he took rats and he stuck them in an environment where they were alone and they had two options of water. They had plain water, they had water that was laced with drugs. And what they found were, was that these rats that were in this isolation place, they would just die of overdose from the drugs. They didn't want the plain water, they would just drink the, drink the, the water lace with drugs when they took these rats and then or other rats obviously because those ones had passed away, they had died. When they put rats into a. What they called rat park where could roam around, they could play, they could interact. It was, it was like Disneyland for rats. They still had the two options for water but there they could have sex, they could socialize. What they found is some of the rats inter. Intermittently they st. They still went to the, the drug laced water but for the most part they didn't, they didn't need it. The difference was that social connection took away that need to have that pain numbed.

Well, and that's no different than that study where they found this has been quoted many times. I'm not going to quote it perfectly but they were having people do the threshold of pain. They put their hand in a cold bucket of ice water and the people who had a trusted friend or loved one holding their hand while they had their bucket or their hand in a bucket of ice water could keep their hand in there longer. Yeah, there is some incredible biological function that we can go through pain, suffering when we are thinking about people that we love. One of, one of my favorite stories with that the survivors Club, Ben Sherwood many years wrote, wrote a great book and he was talking about this airplane, airplane pilot who he was on a routine test route and something happened in the planes malfunctioned and they started speeding up and they could not slow down, could not slow down at all. And the story is that, that he and the co pilot had to eject. But when you're going that fast, you generally don't live. It's just, it's. It's just too fast for the body to eject anyway. So he and his co pilot ejected and it instantly killed his co pilot. But he found himself going down into the ocean cognizant that he had broken his. One of his arms and both of his legs. And here he is falling and he's pulling on his cord so he can, you know, and over the ocean and he lands just burning up because of the salt and the wounds and he lands and the rubber raft is right there and he, he's Kind of attached to it, but he can't get in it. And. And so here he is, and he's. He's just trying to get in. He's got one arm, and it's only that arm he can use. And he's like, I. I don't know if I'm gonna make it. And what's so interesting about this story is that, I mean, he's, you know, goes up first try, and the wave comes and throws him off. He's up a little bit, and another wave comes and knocks him off. At this point, he's like, if I don't get it this time, I'm done. And he says this, just this one last hope. And he said, I imagine my wife pregnant and. And my sergeant or my. My leader going and telling her that I got killed or in a plane crash. And he said, I couldn't imagine it. And so he said, with everything inside of me, I'm thinking about her and my little girl that's going to be born. And he said, all of a sudden, from behind me, came this wave and put me into the raft.

Wow.

A powerful story. But. But the. The concept. Who are you thinking about when you need someone. Something the most? You're not thinking about a job promotion. You're not thinking about, you know, your house or the cars you're driving. You're not thinking when you're. When you need something or someone to keep you fighting. It's usually a person. It's people that you're fighting for.

Yeah. That. You know, as I do trauma work with my clients, we do a lot of work with finding attachment figures. Whether they're real or imagined, it doesn't all. It doesn't really matter. But just being able to visualize or see somebody with you in that scary moment or somebody with you just to stand next to you. I had a client who was going through some health problems, and they had gone through the health problems previously. And the first time through, they didn't tell anybody. They didn't ask anybody for any help. And they told me it was the worst thing, the hardest thing they'd ever done in their entire life. It was so painful. And one of the things that we worked on, when it came back around a year later, we were working on this client asking for help from other people. And due to trauma in their past, that hadn't been their pattern. But as they reached out and asked for their spouse to go, you know, they. They told the medical people, I'll only do this if my spouse can be with Me, because it was so bad last time. I just don't even want to do it. But if you'll let my spouse be, be with me. And this time when they did it, they said it was fine. It was absolutely fine. Night and day difference. And so whether it's a real person or whether it's even somebody that we're visualizing being next to us, there's a power there. So I love that story that you.

Shared and I want to share something that I think we have a lot of listeners who've been hurt so deeply, they don't know who to trust. Just yesterday I was talking with a person who. Man, I listened to the story of this person and my heart just. It was just so, so much loss, right? Not only was their spouse betraying them, but they had lost a parent in the last month simultaneously, you know, just being disconnected from her own family because of the loss of the father and the conflict in the family. And there was just. There was simply was no support. And we were on is just a short conversation and the, the emptiness. I said to her, if I can give any advice, don't, don't fly solo now. If you need support, let's find a group. Let's find. Let's find a way for connection to occur. Because again, we're going through some of the most difficult times. And if we're doing it by ourselves, we begin to question everything. Is society safe? Can I trust anybody? But when you find a person or people who you can trust, everything begins to lighten up. Everything. I can talk, I can open up, I can communicate. I feel validated. I don't feel so isolated. I don't feel so alone. So to those of you who feel absolutely alone, there are people who genuinely will care. It's just finding them in the right places. And you may say, well, where we can, we find that there are many meaningful groups available in your area online. There are many. But my strongest invitation is don't fly solo, please.

And I would add to that. This conversation is so imperative. The research shows that for us to heal and recover, we need social support, period. And yet I find myself struggling so much to help my clients break the barrier or get over the obstacle of the fear of I don't want to show up and, and not fit in. I don't want to show up and have people see me. I'm so embarrassed about this. I have so much shame about this. This is so embarrassing. I have clients who are, at times, I've had clients who are in their elected Public officials or they may be, who are high profile clients. And there is so much shame and fear about what if someone finds out, I will lose everything. And that shame, that fear, fear is so paralyzing and it blocks my clients from getting the support and the healing that they need because they're so afraid deep down at the end of it of, of if people find out, I will lose my relationships and I will be alone and lost, you know, and.

What we're referring there to is the action of shame. Right. Again, when we're in shame, we almost always struggle to be relational. Patricia Young, she wrote in her book Treating Chronic Shame, something to the effect of shame is always relational. And, and so when our shame is elevated, then, then we begin to question our relationships, whether people will be there for us, whether we can trust people. So just looking at the research here, there's so much to support it. I, I think there's one more research here that I'd love you to share. It's actually a theory and I'd love you to share that theory if you could. It's by Dr. Jill Manning and Dr. Wendy Watson Nelson.

Yes, I would love to share this. I think this is what Dr. Manning did her dissertation on. She's got a couple of different research articles. It's called Caved. C, A, V, E, D. What they found in their research is they interviewed individuals who'd been betrayed in the western US and Canada and just did some qualitative research trying to understand what their experiences had been. And what they found was that the, they found five factors that were really important for healing from, from betrayal, trauma. And they called it caved. The C stands for connection, the A stands for advocacy, the V is for validation, E is for education, and D is for direction. So they found that people who had been betrayed in their primary relationships needed that number one thing was connection. And what I read through the research was that the highest thing that they found was the shame and the isolation of people once again showing up and not being able to show up authentically. So I've got this secret that I've got to share which pulls me apart, which makes me different from you. And nobody understands. And so I can't tell you because I need to protect the people in my life. And so I am on a little island. And so they need that, that connection is just to have other people to say, me too. I can't tell you how many times I've had a client who's been in group come back to their session and say it was like she was reading my diary. Oh, my goodness. And all of their defenses had. Had left from there. The advocacy is really about having somebody to support you with your boundaries. Somebody to say, no, you're thinking right, you're being gaslit. Yes, you need to say, that's not ok. Because oftentimes when we're in trauma, we're surviving and we need outside voices to help us really see our reality from outside. And that's part of that validation as well. Like, you can do this and this is really hard. And helping to see the world through the right lens. And then the education of how I can, how to create the boundaries, how to understand what's happening, how to find the healthy tools to manage my emotions and pain. The D that that direction is also looking for, like being able to find the resources and the help and the connection and support.

What I really like about that is everything that we look at in, in our research is that when people have support so that connection all the way to the D of direction, we often had people come to us and say, I. I need to know which path to go down. I need to know, you know, can you show me how this is done? And having been in this field for so many years, we start to see patterns over and over again. And one of my favorite stories related to this was just that I. I shared it in my TED Talk, the Other side of Infidelity. But it's a story of this person who had moved up to the state of Utah where we live, where I live, and literally it was just to get away from her partner. She had nobody in our community that she knew, but she liked our yoga therapist and she wanted to participate in therapy at our center. And so it was just one of those days where she came in and she'd had a disclosure, a forced disclosure, where her husband's in that situation was the last part of their relationship because he revealed to her that he had been cheating on her again while she was gone, kind of out of resentment. And so that day, just heartbroken. She, you know, she was a little bit late and she's getting ready to leave. And I'm just after her is my betrayal trauma group. And in this group, I don't know, there was a big group because it was started off being educational. And so they're all waiting in the lobby and she opens up the door and she sees all of these betrayed partners. And. And she's like. And I, here I am alone. And she goes up to schedule her appointment and I invited them into my Group room. And I thought, there's no way she can go home by herself today with what she just went through. And so I paused and I invited her to come back and, and I didn't say anything. I didn't say her name. I just said, hey, I just need to let you guys know this good person has just had the most painful disclosure. They collectively stood up and one by one they embraced her. Some of them exchanged numbers with her and as she was getting ready to go, they said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Mind you, this was a 12 week closed group. I normally don't let people in once we get past two or three weeks. And they stopped and said, wait, wait, will you stay with us today? And she got this look. And that look was worth. I don't, I mean it's weight and gold. It was incredible look. And they said, no, seriously, stay with us today. And she did. And then they said, don't, you're welcome every week after this. And so she stayed in that group and it developed friendships in some of those situations she ended up like one of their husbands went out of town, they invited her over and they had dinner together. Other others, they did some traveling together and, and she found her team, she found her tribe. And it started. She. Because that group did things that I can't do as a therapist, I can't give her that hug, I can't exchange numbers. That's not my role. But the power of that group, I mean to this day, that's one of the most those moments where I see the power of it and the long term influence. I mean, she called me up a few years later. I mean, we continued working. She called me up a few years later and her life was in such a better place. And that's the power of a group.

I've read research that says that group work can be more impactful and more effective even than individual therapy because there's just so much healing that comes from not. Not being the only one, from having your story validated. And if I can just add to that, it is hard. It can be really hard. Like if that hadn't happened, if there hadn't been that opportunity, she would have been lost, scared, lonely. She would have probably really struggled. I had a client in a very similar situation who had just moved to a state and her, she had, she was afraid of her ex coming to find her and it was not a healthy situation. And she went to church and she didn't know anybody, but she turned and looked around and said, there's an older couple, and they look nice. So she just went and said, can you be my friends? I, I just need somebody. If my ex shows up, I just need somebody to come over. That's all I need you to do. But I think recognizing too that we have an inherent as human beings, a compassion towards others. And when someone says, can you help me? We say, yes, that's an honor. It's such a sacred honor to be able to hug someone when they're in pain and to hold their pain with them. And we need those opportunities to give as well as to receive.

This is a topic I think we could continue to talk about. I, I've seen the power of, of groups. We've talked about that. We've talked about individuals who've been isolated, finding a personal friend. We've talked about the model that you described, the caved model. Marianne, are there any final thoughts that you have today that you'd like to impress upon us and our listeners?

My bottom line is seek out for support. Seek support. There are lots of places you can Google support groups for whatever it is that you might be struggling with. You can also turn around and look and say, there's somebody who looks like they might be friendly and ask them for help and support. But my, my bottom line is to step outside. We all need social support and connection, so look for what you need. And also if you're in a place where you can look around to those who look like they may need your love and support as well.

You know, one of the things I do when I'm working with clients who are really struggling there, I say, I just want you to make a list of people in your life who have been safe. And some people, they, they really can't think of, of hardly anybody. But most people know it was a teacher, it was a neighbor, it was an aunt or an uncle, it was a grandparent, it was somebody, just somebody, a friend from high school. One, one more story. And this was, I was doing this with an individual. And she said, you know, I, I don't have anybody. Everybody in my inner circle, I don't trust anymore. And I said, is there anybody in your past? And she said, I had a high school friend. Her and her family were just, just, they were, they saved me in high school. And I said, could you reach out there? And she said, I can try. Not only did she reach out, they connected. They ended up, they were lived in different cities. They ended up meeting together for get together. And it was one of those times where she's like, it was a game changer. It was a game changer because we had so much history together in high school. She knew me, she knew my life, my story and she was a godsend. So I look at this and I really think we might not know today who that person is and you might not know today but when you participate in a group or when you reach out to somebody past present there is a significant power if you want to increase your physical and mental health. Social connection is a core component of it.

Such a great topic had this discussion. It's so needed. We all need this.

Thank you so much for your time Marianne. Thank you to our listeners. I hope that this has given you some insights into ways that you can improve and strengthen your connections here at Human Intimacy. Our deepest desire is to help you create and find and create the intimate bonds that you long for. Thank you so much much for listening today.

Thank you.