Session 156: Managing Loneliness

Published May 20, 2020, 7:00 AM

The Therapy for Black Girls Podcast is a weekly conversation with Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, a licensed Psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia, about all things mental health, personal development, and all the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves.

Our favorite friendship researcher, Dr. Marisa G. Franco is back with us this week to chat about managing loneliness. Dr. Franco and I chatted about the 3 different types of loneliness, how to tell if we’re struggling with loneliness, and tips for overcoming loneliness. 

 

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Just go to Helix sleep dot com slash Therapy for Black Girls, take their two minute sleep quiz and they'll match you to a customized mattress that will give you the best sleep of your life. Now let's get into the show. Welcome to the Therapy for Black Girls Podcast, a weekly conversation about mental health, personal development, and all the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves. I'm your host, Dr Joy hard and Bradford, a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia. For more information or to find a therapist in your area, visit our website at Therapy for Black Girls dot com. While I hope you love listening to and learning from the podcast, it is not meant to be a substitute for a relationship with a licensed mental health professional. Hey, y'all, thanks so much for joining me for session one fifty six of the Therapy for Black Girls Podcast. Today, our favorite friendship researcher, Dr Marissa Franco is back to discuss how to manage loneliness. If you miss Dr Franco's earlier episode about making friends as an adult, let me give you a little bit of an introduction to her. Dr Marissa G. Franco graduated with her PhD and countling psychology from the University of Maryland in She's a licensed psychologist in the state of Maryland and an expert on the topic of friendship. She is currently writing a book on how to Make Friends as an Adult Platonic, which is represented by a Veta's Creative Management. She also writes about friendship for Psychology Today and has been a featured expert on friendship for major publications like The New York Times, The Telegraph, and Bustle. Dr Franco and I chatted about the three different types of loneliness, how to tell if we're struggling with loneliness, and tips for overcoming If you hear something while listening that resonates with you, please be sure to share it with us on social media using the hashtag tbg in session. Here's our conversation. Thank you so much for joining us again. Dr Franco, sure excited to be back. Thanks for the opportunity. Dr Joy of course anytime, so I'm glad that you're back with us today. And if you miss Dr Franco's first episode about making for instance, an adult, then you definitely want to go back and check that one out because it is an always timely conversation, but even more timely today talking about loneliness. As we are continuing through this pandemic. So can you share a little bit about maybe some of your impressions Dr Franco of things maybe you've heard from community or you know just kind of you know, people sharing online and stuff. Yeah, I mean, this is clearly a really lonely time, and I think the struggle of the loneliness now is that I don't think you can necessarily overcome this level of loneliness with all of us not seeing each other. And I think, you know, particularly for single folks, but also for like people in relationships as well, because according to the research, there's actually three different types of loneliness. One is called like intimate loneliness, where you feel like you crave is very close intimate connections like relationship partner or like a best friend. And then there's relational loneliness and that's just like craving, like those close relationships that are right above the intimate sphere, like general friends or your co workers or people you feel kind of close to. And then there's your senseit of communal loneliness, which is your sense of loneliness for a larger community that's connected to some type of purpose. And I think is really important to keep these different types of loneliness in mind, because even those of us who are quarantined with roommates or with the romantic partner, with their families, we can still feel lonely because any of those aspects of loneliness can make us feel lonely and also feeling like we don't have connections to our larger sense of community. And so I think right now loneliness is showing up in many different ways for people. But I think that like at a time like this, none of us is really immune to it. Mm hmmm. And I think it's interesting that you've identified like three different types because you're saying like, at any moment, one of those could be difficult. And I think for a lot of people were struggling with all three. Yeah, a lot of us are struggling with all three. I mean, I think the communal loneliness relates to that like larger sense of purpose, and I think that feels really hard when there's so much panic and there's so much stress, and we also can't come together in larger communities with people. So you're right, like you can be sort of um bombarded with all these three types of loneliness at once and it's it's really tough. Yeah. So you mentioned Dr for Go that you think that the loneliness might be showing up in ways that people are not recognizing. Can you tell us maybe what's to look for, Like, how do we know if it's actually loneliness that we might be struggling with. So this is a really great question, Dr Joy, because people think of loneliness just as like a sense of isolation and like I haven't had company in a while, But it's actually a a feeling of social threat and so what do I mean by that? Loneliness fundamentally alters how you perceive reality and how you perceive the world. So what the research basically finds is that we're when we're lonely. If you interact with a lonely person, they're more likely to dislike you after. Lonely people are more likely to be judgmental of other people. Lonely people are more likely to assume that other people are rejecting or criticizing them. Lonely people are ironically feel the sort of dual desires. One of the desires is like, oh, I feel the need to really connect with people, but another desire is actually the need to treat from people. And the reason that's occurring is because when you're in this lonely state, you're under threat again, and you feel like if I talk to people, they might threaten me or they might reject me. And so because of this, we have these sort of competing desires when we're in a state of loneliness where we want to reach out to people. But actually the hardest time to reach out to people is when you're in a state of loneliness, because everybody feels so threatening to you. It feels almost like inevitable that if you reach out to people, they might reject you. And so because of all those reasons, because it's like these subtle ways that loneliness affect us, we may not necessarily understand that, like, Okay, this is my lonely brain speaking, I'm assuming that my friends don't want to hear from me. I'm assuming that my friends were going to reject me. I'm assuming things like nobody likes me. I'm I'm going back to old memories that are negative in my relationships and I'm festering on them. I feel like withdrawing, I'm in a negative mood. All those things we may not attribute to loneliness and we may not even notice. Like it's sort of like a you know, like the poison with no taste. It's happening to us, but we don't even know what's happening to us. And so as I've been reading the research and understanding this more deeply, there's been, you know, times where I'm just like, oh, yeah, like I'm assuming that other people aren't gonna want to hear from me, and and actually I'm just in this bad mood and it's inexplicable and realizing and identifying that, oh, actually my loneliness can be playing a part in that, and I actually need social connection right now, and so yeah, I just want to push us to just expand our understanding of what how loneliness and affests for us, so that we can be more aware of those times when we're feeling lonely. So, Dr Franco, what you're sharing sounds very much like a hallmark depressive kind of symptom, and the idea of like a lot of the things that you know would actually help you to feel better, you maybe don't have the energy, other perspective to do. So I just want to make sure that I heard you could did you say that somebody who's experiencing loneliness, if they meet someone, they might be less likely to like you afterwards, Well, there's two things you will be less likely to like them. Lonely people actually like to hear people less. But the other thing is that when we're in our state of loneliness, you're in a state of self protection, right, You're wanting to protect yourself from this threat. But how that manifest to other people around you is that you're sort of antisocial and you're withdrawn and then and that your mean And what's actually happening is people are under threat, so they're closing off, so they're not being warmed towards others, so they're not feeling genuine they're not feeling like themselves. And so when you close off in that way because you're feeling threatened, what it comes off to to other people is that you're rejecting them. And then you're vulnerable to continuing to that psycho of loneliness. Like it's like a virus that can spread from person to person. Because when we interact with those lonely people, they tend to reference themselves more, they tend to be a lot more absorbed with what's going on in their lives. They don't ask as many questions of their interaction partner, and so what we see playing out in these lonely states is really something called an ecocentric bias. And ecocentric bias is basically like I'm so wrapped up in my pain that I don't understand that other people feel paid to that other people are suffering too, and I'm taking everything to mean something personal about me and not considering the larger context of other people. Yeah. Dr Franco, So this is mind blowing. I always love when you come with the new research because I don't know that this is something that we're always thinking about, and I feel like it would really be hard to know that this is what's happening for you. It is so hard, like I've just been just learning this is also like I don't know it's in my mind, and there's just been moments for me where I've just been like really like understanding what it's like in those moments when I feel lonely and I felt like I'm so desperate to reach out to someone to connect, but I'm so sure that if I do, they are going to reject me. And so it's and I can eat you know right now, don't. Now that I understand the research, I can be like, that's not true. This is my lonely brain speaking, but it feels so real to me because that's that's what a lonely state bails us in. That's how the only state cloaths us. M m mmm. So, of course we know a lot of Maybe the lonely state has been kind of provoked by us having to shelter in place and maybe being more withdrawn from our support systems than we would usually. Are there other things that might lead to people feel in this way, Yes, certainly so. I think A point that I wanted to make too, is that loneliness lived outside of us, right when we don't get enough social contact, we're not interacting with people, but it also lives within us. We carry the baggage of loneliness within us based on our past experiences. And what do I mean by that? You know, me, you, other people. We can all have the same stretch of like five hours where we're alone. Some of us are going to experience it as loneliness and some of us are not. And the question is that's been answered a little bit by the research is who is going to experience that alone time as an expanse of loneliness and who isn't it going to experience it as maybe, oh, this is some time alone that I can enjoy. And it really depends on things like your self esteem, Like the research shows that your self esteem affects your feelings of loneliness, such that if you have low self esteem and you go through these periods of alone time, you're more likely to experience it as loneliness. Things like your mental health. If you have poor mental health and you're experiencing alone time, you're more likely to experience it as loneliness. And so our experiences of rejection, our experiences of neglect, our experiences of um just negative social interactions that we carry with us inside of us, and we project those into empty spaces of time where it feels like this eftiness. We fill it up with assumptions about people's rejection to us, even though nothing is actually happening and we're not actually interacting with people. And so I think you know, in the process of getting over loneliness, we need to think about how do we tackle the loneliness outside of us through finding people to interact with and also how do we tackle the loneliness within us? How do we look deeply at the baggage that we carry that makes us feel that in those times when we're alone, were suddenly flooded with all of these negative memories of negative experiences that we've had with other people. And so are there some thoughts about like how we start tapping into that. Yeah, certainly, obviously we have therapy. I mean I think certainly therapy can make people feel less lonely, which is really, you know, ironic, because it's this time outside of therapy when you're thriving more and you're feeling less lonely. There's also a few techniques that I've come across in the literature. One way is to turn your loneliness is into active solitude. So when people feel more control over their alone time, then it feels less lonely to them. So for example, if I'm like, oh, I have five hours of free time, I Am going to watch YouTube and do it and do it yourself video and this will be like my hobby time or or yeah, if you turn it into like this is my time to you know, do my knitting or do my crocheting. If you turn it into like this is like actual time that I'm going to use and that I feel in control of for some type of purpose. Then you're going to feel less lonely. In terms of like also handling the loneliness that's inside of us. There's this interesting technique it's called the third person. It's gonna make you feel really goofy when you use it, but I think it's actually really effective again, Dr Franco, the third person person technique. Yeah, So basically what you do is you the third person. So if someone's going through loneliness, I might say, like, Marissa feels really lousy right now, Marissa feels like no one wants to hear from her. Wrissa feels so lone. And what that does is it actually, um at the neurological level of your brain, your brain is being less triggered because you have separation from that emotional state. You are then in the state where you are watching the cloud of loneliness happening in your brain instead of just being a part of it and feeling it. So if is goofy, but I actually want to encourage people to try it because it's a form of mindfulness. It's a way to use language to engage in mindfulness, where like, instead of the threat overtaking you, you are now in a position to watch the threat that might be happening inside your body, separate yourself from it, and feel less triggered by it. Mm hmmm. And I wonder if there's a part of the third person activity where you would also talk about like what the person might do to feel less lonely. Yeah, so maybe turning get into that purposeful action that you talked about in the first example. Yeah, I totally agree. I think you know, it can certainly bring you to a state where you have more of the wherewithal to go and reach out to people, because obviously that's ultimately what we want to do to cure our loneliness, reach out to people and connect. But it's again like the hardest time to actually do that is when we feel loneliness because of all this ways that like loneliness and threat just hijacks our brain and hijacksually assumptions out of the world. So I think the third person technique can also be a strategy are taking a step back and also being able to talk yourself through what you need to feel better, what you need to get out of this lonely state. So, Dr Franco, this might be perhaps a throwback to your first episode here, but I think a lot of people do really struggle with not necessarily having people to reach out to. So if they recognize the loneliness in themselves and they've done you know, what you're telling them to do, but they realize, like, who would I even reach out to? Then what would be the suggestion there, Like if like a name or a list of names don't readily become available. Yeah, so I think now it's actually a really good time too. I like to say, wake up your sleepy relationships or rekindle old friendships. I think a lot of the time, we know that from the research that the number one reason my friendships end, it's not because there was any sort of malice or resentment or a big fight or conflict. It was just we fell out of touch. And so now we have more of that time to be intentional about reaching out to and being in touch with other people and setting aside that time to rekindle things. And so I think if you're finding yourself like who can I reach out to? Who do I have to reach out to? Don't think about who you have right now. Think about who you've had throughout your entire life, and those are the types of people that you can wake up those relationships again. And I think when it comes to making friends, I really like the idea of rekindling old relationships because we're allowed to jump start the friendship process. And when we wake up an old relationship, because we already have memories, we already have vulnerability, we already have tie together there. These are all the things that deepens friendships and makes us more comfortable within them. And so I think that can be really good idea for people that are just feeling like, oh, I feel so lonely, but like there's nobody I can talk to. You that there's people look back at your at the timeline of your life. Who could you have talked to five years ago? Who could you have talked to when you're in college, and take the initiative to reach out and waking up those old relationships. And I want to be clear, you're talking about relationships that ended just because we just stopped talking, not where there was active maybe boundary crossing or something actually happened. We're talking about people that you just kind of like, oh, whatever, happened to that person exactly good. So something else that you mentioned that, I think a lot of people kind of have this question. Is there a difference between being alone and loneliness? Yes? Yes, and that is just the emotional balance of the experience. So does it feel good to us or does it feel really bad and really negative to us? And so when our isolation is starting to feel bad and bring us into a bad mood, then it's going to be something that's more like loneliness. Mm hmmm. And I often hear people talking about having difficulty kind of just tolerating being alone. But I don't know if that's the same thing as a loneliness or if that is something else at play. Interesting mm hmm, Yeah, I mean I think that that likely happening a lot of different for a lot of different reasons. Maybe one is loneliness, but maybe it's also like a um, not wanting to deal with something else, or you know, there could be some other emotional things going on for people who struggle with like tolerating their own company so to speak. That's true. I mean, I would just encourage people to be curious about, you know, what's coming up for you when you're alone? What is what is hard about it? What feelings are coming up for you? Are their memories that are coming up for you? Like what exactly is it about the alone time that is that is getting to you? So it sounds like when you talked about like the definition and how like the lonely brain kind of tricks us. It sounds like it is really about the threat that we will be rejected or is the threat something else. I think that you're right, you know, on the money, it's this threat that we are going to be rejected. And I think what it becomes with loneliness is really the threat that we are rejectable. Like loneliness lowers are OFLF esteem, it lowers our sense of self worth and when it comes to overcoming loneliness, this is a technique that I forgot to share. But like in the research on on psychological resilience, there's three things that make us resilient to situations. One is we don't personalize it, so we don't take it to me, I'm lonely because there is something wrong with me, because I'm a horrible person, because nobody wants to hang out with me. So if you can keep yourself from doing that, then you're going to be in a better state. The other is prevalence. So prevalence is basically, I'm lonely. So everything in my life sucks, my job sucks, my family sucks. It's like it's my Loneliness is basically sinking into the nix and crannies of everything about my life. And so if you can keep yourself from engaging in that, that prevalence and being like, Okay, I'm lonely in this moment of time, it's going to pass, and there's also good things about my life, then that's great. The last thing for our psychological resilience is the idea of persistence, and that's the idea that I'm gonna be lonely now and I'm gonna stay lonely forever. And so when people believe that, it's a lot harder for them to bounce back from their experiences. So when it comes to in general, like trying to be resilient to difficult circumstances, loneliness being one of them. I would encourage people to do three things related to the three piece, and that's don't take the loneliness to me that you suck or there's anything wrong with you or you know that you you are a deficient or you know that you aren't worthy. We are all lonely right now. The second thing is, even though you may be feeling lonely, there's also probably other things about your life they are going right, whether that's you know, your health or your job, or you have a close thread or someone in your life they care about that cares about you. And the other is really remembering this is not, you know, a persistent state, This is not our normal state. Feeling like you're going through a lot of loneliness right now doesn't mean that it's gonna last forever. And at some point this is gonna let us for us all. Oh, I love that, and you know I love a good alliteration, the three piece. So something else that I think, um, I've heard community members talk about is feeling lonely even in the midst of maybe being sheltering in place with their families. Can you speak to a little bit about that, right because it's not like you wouldn't think like, oh, you have a you're in a house fuld of people, but people still are experiencing a loneliness. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, certainly, there's like there's definitely a strand of threat of loneliness, that is, you know, being loneliness around the company of others. And in some ways, I think that form of loneliness is even harder because when we see other beings, we assume that we're going to feel more connected or close to people, and so it's it's this sort of contrast that reminds us, Wow, I'm really lonely. Even though other people around me, I still feel lonely. And so I think there's this way that loneliness actually is a way of feeling misunderstood, Like being misunderstood is a form of loneliness. And as I tell deep into the research, Dr Right, I also realized that being kind of touch with yourself, feeling inauthentic is also a lonely state, Like if you don't feel like you're in situations where you can express the truth of who you are, where you feel comfortable, where you feel like you're really you, like that lack of authenticity, that in authenticity, Like that's one of the ways that the sort of lonely in a crowded room phenomenon manifest for us. Mmmm, yeah, it's likely, I mean and it's likely some of that threat that you're talking about playing out right, Like, can I really share this part of myself with these people even though they're in my house together and I would expect that I could be close with them. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure. Yeah, the lonely brain is probably not helping the lonely in a crowded room phenomenon. It's just, you know, it's just like depression, where it's the real, the real sad part of the tragic part of it is like, not only is it a hard state to go through, but it literally takes away all of the resources that we have to get out of it. And so that brings me to another tip for getting over your loneliness. Plan for your loneliness, or you are lonely. So if you're like my partner is gonna be away this weekend, I am going to have a house to myself, or you know, I know that I tend to get lonely right before bed when you're it's during the daytime, when you're you know, when you're I don't know, having your zoom calls and feeling a little bit more connected. Put time in your scanual for later on when you're gonna be lonely to find time to connect with people, because when you're in the state of loneliness, the way that the lonely brain works, it's just gonna make it really hard for you to reach out when you need it the most. So that's a really good point, Dr Franco. And something that I think that is going to be unique about the time that we're living in now is that so many of us, I think, are just feeling so fatigued with the zoom calls right, because it feels like you're on it for work, then we're on it for school, then we have happy hours on zoom right, birthday parties, and so I think a lot of it is so much, so much Zoe, and so I think, you know, for a lot of people, they're kind of like hitting a wall in terms of like, Okay, if I have to do this for work, it feels like I really don't want to be on camera on a call anymore to connect. Are there other things that you might suggest for people who are just kind of feeling fatigue with all of the you know, zooming that we're having to do. There are a few things that I would suggest. I mean, I was reading this New York Times article, and it was about how like zoom actually fatiguous because of the slowness and feedback makes it, our brain use more energy to process other people's faces. We don't get the sort of automatic reaction from other people in the same way, and that like basically is very cumbersome for our brain. So even like switching to a phone call may be helpful. But one other point that I want to make is that you know, for me, I have my partner staying with me. I feel very lucky to have my partner with me. But we'll spend hours watching Netflix together and I will feel I won't feel connected, Like it's we're next to each other, we have shared a couch. We don't necessarily feel connected to each other. That's why I want to say, um that it's not necessarily about spending time with each other, but it's about how we connect. Like, you want to connect in particular types of ways that make you feel close and connected to other people. And so even if that's over zoom, it's gonna make the zoom a little less exhausting if you connect in particular types of ways that are deep and replenishing. And so I'm actually releasing a series on YouTube. It's called The Connection School, where I take people through different ways connect more deeply. Yeah, yeah, but those are those are things like just I guess first peak, like um, being really vulnerable with people. If you're like talking to your friends and you're not actually sharing if you're struggling with something, or the how hard this is for you, If you're trying to pretend that everything is all right right now, then you are robbing yourself of the ability to feel connected and to feel seen and also to get support, right because if people don't know you're going through stuff, and then they're not gonna be able to pride you with support. And so part of what I would recommend is like, so if you're not telling people how you're really feeling, you're robbing your relationships in two ways. One is the experiences of vulnerability makes us feel close to people. It makes us feel connected to people. It is what takes away our sense of loneliness. When we are more vulnerable, then you're more likely to get something out of an interaction that makes us feel more connected. And the other ways that it robs our relationships and our feelings of closeness is that if people don't know we're going through something, they're not able to support us. And getting that sense of support is also part of what makes us feel connected. And so what I really want to suggest that people is like, be really honest about your struggles with the people that you're close to you right now, Like this is not the time to, you know, try to pretend that everything is okay. The second thing that I want to just suggest to people is the power of reminiscing. And this occurred to me. I was talking to my friends I've lived in Trinidad and Tobago when we were talking about our trip there and all the fun we had and Trindad today go there's like parties into the morning and they're called like breakfast sets, and we're just reminiscing about all of that, and I just felt so good, and I realized that, like you don't have to travel physically, you can travel mentally too. Even though we can't leave our walls, we can travel across time by like reminiscing about different experiences with people. And when I looked into the research, it actually found that reminiscing is an effective intervention that has been found to combat loneliness. One thing. And the other thing that I found is reminiscing actually makes us more resilient to stress. So there's this interesting study where they had people stick their hands in ice cold water and then they were given the opportunity to reminisce, and then, um, they felt less cortisol, which is like the stress for moment we all have. And so reminiscing makes us more resilient. And I think, you know, with the ways that this pandemic is probably affecting our mental health, I think it's a really good idea and it is one way to feel more connected with people. Mmmmm, I love that idea. Yeah, And I think that that is also an opportunity, like you mentioned, kind of rekindling quiet or sleepy relationships right like that you start thinking about like, oh, remember when we had this experience, you know, hope you're doing well or something like that. That's yes, I kind of wake the relationship up right exactly. So are there are other things that we haven't covered that you feel like are particularly important for people to know, especially right now? Oh yeah, there is one thing that I wanted to say too, and this is like the third method for for overcoming loneliness. Books within us and outside of us is the idea of focusing on others. Like Honestly, what the research finds is that when we focus on others, it makes us less lonely. And it also finds that when we're lonely, we focus more on ourselves. And so being able to check in with other people, ask how other people are doing, or even do something kind for like your friends, like I don't know, write them an email and asked them how you're doing, or give them some sort of random acts of kindness like I set my friends some um some Ramen soup because I knew she was going through a lot. And so actually focusing other people like it takes the lens off of ourselves, and it makes us feel more connected, and it makes us feel less lonely. And it's also a way to kind of jump over the feelings of like deep vulnerability and fear and mistrust that we have of others, Like we need to share ourselves, but we also feel like other people are going to we're suspiciously. We're more suspicious and paramoid about other people because of the lonely brain. And so I think a way to like overcome that is that if we just focus on other people and how they're doing. We don't have to go through that threatening process of finding a way to trust people even when we're like overcome with the lonely brain. And so I think that's also a really great way to overcome your sense of loneliness, like just turn your attention to other people. And I think from a psychological perspective, it's something that I used to talk to clients who recently went through breakups, because we know when we go through stressful experiences, what it does is it it makes our lens on the world very tiny. We are completely absorbed in that experience of stress that we're under, and whether that's loneliness or whatever else, it is like that's what threat does to us. And so one way to get out of that sense of threat is we need to expand our world. We need to make a world look a lot larger. And usually that's a lot easier because I go to the gym in the morning, I go to work, I have all these different scenes throughout my day. It expands my world. It gets me out of the sense that my whole world is this one experience is stressed. And so one way that we can sort of expand our world, so that stress takes up a tinier portion of it. The loneliness takes up the tinier portion of it. Is we focus on other people, and we focus on being kind to other people, and we focus on what we can do for other people. And I really love that approach because it not only tackles our own loneliness, but it tackles another person's loneliness. Like we're helping, We're doing two things at once to to stave off loneliness. So I think if you're feeling lonely right now, ask yourself, like, what is something lovely and kind that I can do for another person? And that will help you too. I love it. I'll still think that it's a nice call to action for other people to make sure you know, of course, we are all trying to survive this thing and you know, trying to be okay. But I also think that when you have the bandwidth, it is important to kind of think about who am my circle? Haven't I heard from? Right because what you've described is that people may need to reach out but may have difficulty doing that right now. So when you do have a little bit of bandwidth, thinking about, Okay, who haven't I heard from in a while? Who can I just let know that I'm thinking about them, which might didn't give the opportunity for somebody else to say, hey, I'm not feeling rejected because this person reached out to me exactly, Like knowing that is our motivation to check it on people even more. And you know, loneliness is contagious from one person to another, but so is joy. And I think this is not a time to straight jack at your joy, Like if you are feeling joyful, I send videos as to my friends like, hey, I'm in a good mood right now because the may B and c Like this is the time to share your sense of joy because I think you know, I bought a house through this whole process and I posted about it on Twitter, and I was like, I don't know if I want to post about this because it feels like joy is like I don't know, it's like, um disrespecting or blast blasphemous towards all of the sorrow. But I realized that like joy is not the opposite side of sorrow, you can experience both at the same time. And for me, this experience of joy was softening the blow of the sorrow instead of undermining it. And so I think like you can also, like I don't know, spread love, spread affirmation. If You're in a good mood and you feel like I'm feeling so much love for my friend right now, like tell them, like spread that out throughout your network. I love it. I love that, Dr Franco. So you mentioned that the YouTube series is starting. Is the first episode up now or is there somewhere we can like be ready to follow? Yes, Um, you can look up Dr bors and g Franco as YouTube for my Connection School. It's gonna take you to a few weeks that you could spend with your friends and activities that you can do to deepen your relationship. And um, I also have a newsletter. Uh so if you go to Dr Marrissa g Franco dot com, you will find you'll be able to sign up for my newsletter I share if you're fascinated or as I am, with the research on connection and you'll get a little bit of it every month. Um, you can follow me on Instagram or on Twitter. Dr Marrissa g Franco d R M A R I S A T f r A n c O. And yeah, I just wanted to send like empathy and love to everybody right now, and you know, remind you if you're feeling lonely, it's it's it's not you. And I just really hope that some of these these tips and tricks and these understandings can really help folks deal with something that feels so inevitable. But it's such an active love to like distance ourselves from other people right now. Absolutely, Dr Franco, And of course we will include all of that in the show notes. Are there any other books or resources you will suggest people to check out related to this? Yeah, so there's a new book called I think it's called Together. I think it's His name is d bec Murphy. He was like, oh, yeah, I read his book. I think he has a lot of good and helpful insights on like staying connected at this time. So right, I would add that to my list from okay perfect, Yes, And like I said, if you missed her first episode, then this is a perfect time to go back and listen to that one because you shared lots and lots of great information. Thank you, You're welcome. Well, thank you again for joining us today, Dr Franco. I really appreciate it. Always happy to be here. I'm so glad Dr Franco was able to join us again this week. Don't forget to visit the show notes at Therapy for Black Girls dot com slash Session one fifty six to get connected to Dr Franco's YouTube page, are to check out the resources she shared, and please share your takeaways with us on social media using the hashtag tb G in session. And don't forget to share this episode with others in your life who might enjoy it. If you're looking for a virtual therapist in your area, be sure to check out our therapist directory at Therapy for Black Girls dot com slash directory. And if you want to continue digging into this topic and connect with some other sisters in your area, come on over and join us in the Yellow Couch Collective, where we take a deeper dive into the topics from the podcast and just about everything else. You can join us at Therapy for Black Girls dot com slash y c C. Don't forget to show our sponsors some love by going to helix Sleep dot com slash Therapy for Black Girls to get up to two hundred dollars off your mattress order and two free pillows. Thank you all so much for joining me again this week. I look forward to continue in this conversation with you all real soon. Take it care. N b wop Wop Wood

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The Therapy for Black Girls podcast is a weekly conversation with Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, a license 
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