Transcription:
How Friendships Impact Your Health

Prakash Chandran: For many, the last few years of the coronavirus pandemic have been filled with social isolation. Self-quarantining, lockdowns, and the fear of falling ill has impacted many people's willingness and ability to build or maintain friendships. What are the consequences of this mass isolation and is there hope for those struggling to find connection?

Welcome to Happily Ever After 40, a podcast brought to you by ProMedica, where we discuss midlife health and wellbeing. I'm Prakash Chandran. And in this episode, we're discussing how friendships impact your health. Joining us today are Kevin Rigg and Tally Gallogly, licensed clinical professional and independent chemical dependency counselors working as certified employee assistant managers for ProMedica.

Kevin and Tally, thank you so much for being here today. I really appreciate your time. You know, Tally, I wanted to start with you. What is social health and how does it impact our overall health and wellbeing?

Tally Gallogly: Yes, thanks, Prakash. Social health really speaks to the connections that we all have in our lives, whether they be family, friends, coworkers or maybe a little more distant friendships at church or other organizations that we're involved with.

Kevin Rigg: One of the things here at ProMedica that we try to gather from some of the folks that we work with are what we call the social determinants of health. And we may not always think of these things when we're asking questions about transportation and finances, but all of those things also play into our social health. We also want to look at the engagement with someone's community and how important that is, as well as family and friends and our spiritual communities as well. So, that's something that we try to take in mind and we want people to keep in mind too, that social health connects all of those pieces at the same time.

Prakash Chandran: Yeah. Now, Kevin, I'd like to expand on that a little bit. You know, I know you're kind of comprehensively looking at all of the factors of social health. Is there a difference when it comes to the relationship that one has with their family versus one that has with other social connections, like friends or, you know, people in their church community?

Kevin Rigg: Well, certainly, there's often that connection. And interestingly enough, one of the things that I hear when working with folks, especially with families, is they talk about how they treat their family differently and not always more positively than what they do folks on the outside or other places in their community. And that's something that we often work with. So, there are those differences in those relationships where we tend to be more relaxed or what have you with family members rather than folks outside of our family. So yeah, there are oftentimes big differences in those things and also then the needs that those people may fulfill. My friend groups or my social group outside of my family may fulfill different needs that I may have, as opposed to my family, which may fulfill obviously other types of personal needs and so on that all of us have at some point or another.

Tally Gallogly: Yeah. And I think also it's important to note, we choose our friend groups in general, who we want to spend time with socially. You can't choose your family. And so oftentimes, there's toxic relationships in families or difficult relationships in families. And sometimes it's difficult to distance from that. And there's certainly a long history of family relationships.

Prakash Chandran: Yeah. Tally, you said that best for sure. And I know that I've definitely experienced that in my life. Tally, one of the things that I wanted to ask next was just recognizing social isolation. You know, I think I even experienced a lot of this, especially last year, and it kind of feels like something is off and I wasn't exactly sure what that was. So if you were describe how we can recognize social isolation, either in ourselves or in a loved one, how would you describe that?

Tally Gallogly: Oh my gosh, Prakash. I'm glad that you asked that question because I remember when we first got the call that we would be required to work from home. And this really horrible feeling of isolation every day, working from home it was not a good fit for my personality. I'm a people person. I'm a counselor by training, so it was very difficult and I started to feel some of the things that I see in our clients that they've gone through. With social isolation, mostly what I see is kind of a malaise or depressed kind of mood, a sadness, a distance.

It is interesting to note though, some of our introverted personality folks, they liked it. They responded well to it. Being alone, felt good to a lot of them. So, I think the impact that it had on people sometimes depended on their personality set.

Kevin Rigg: And to Tally's point, I being one of those introverted people who, as we were talking about this actually before this podcast about our different approaches to social connections and so on, and me being someone who is that introvert we're talking about, doesn't mind the isolation or the times away, that's how I recharge my batteries. But I will say, being an introvert, I have to be careful of too much time by myself. Because I think what happens with us as introverts is we get so much into our head, we lose that connection with the outside world, so to speak, and connecting with others and how important that is. Now, maybe as introverts, we don't need as much connection as what others do, but it's still so very, very important to have that. So, I think, yeah, as introverts in our own isolation, we have to monitor that and be careful and recognize when we're getting too far, let's say, into our heads or, you know, into those kind of negative places.

Tally Gallogly: Yeah. And I think for a lot of adults, us grown folks, we're already rebounding. We're pretty resilient. There has been, I think, improvements. The thing that scares me is in working with high school and young college, that working from home in classes and things like that for many of them has been very difficult. And I'm not sure of the quality of their educational experiences online and those sort of classes. I still am seeing clients that are struggling, especially the younger ones, socially.

Prakash Chandran: Yeah, Tally. That is absolutely something that I've seen as well. And Kevin, it's kind of interesting that dichotomy between personality types. I even saw this with my wife and myself, like I'm an extrovert, right? I get energy from other people. Whereas when she's with other people, it takes away from her. So, there's always that balance. And it was interesting watching how we went through the pandemic together. Because, in the beginning, she really liked it, but over time, as you stated, it started getting a little heavy for her. And I think just being alone and in her own thoughts without seeing her friends, you do get that disconnection. So, Kevin, if I can ask, in this world where we are maybe slowly starting to open up a little bit more and understanding the dichotomy between being an extrovert and an introvert, how can we better foster healthy relationships in our lives?

Kevin Rigg: That is an excellent question. I think to develop those kind of healthy relationships, it's finding people that we do connect with, whether that is through, probably one of the easiest places is our workplace, but we may not always mesh with those folks. Are there hobbies or interests that we have where we connect with folks? Probably, the people that I spend the most time with outside of my family are people who share the activity of running with me, so I spend a lot of time with those folks in those kind of activities. So, it could be hobbies, could be like you say our church group, it could be other social events or activities, maybe we belong to certain clubs or what have you. But I think to maintain our healthy social connections, it's about looking at does this relationship help me grow? Does it help support me in some kind of way? Or am I able to help somebody else grow? And that can be a slippery slope because sometimes we work with folks that spend so much energy trying to help others that they forget to help themselves. So I think we have to look at, does this relationship also help me grow and help me become a better person as well?

Tally Gallogly: Yeah. I also think it's hard if you've been isolating for some time and you're coming through this COVID experience. You know, some of the tips that I give my clients are to let yourself be vulnerable, make the first move, you know, reach out. I see a lot of clients that tell me they feel very lonely, and it's important to note you can have a lot of people around you and feel lonely. Loneliness and being alone are two different things. It's a challenge.

And I think also, as we grow, more into our middle age and, you know, our adult years, people get set in their ways. And you don't have these shared experiences like college where everybody's making friend groups and reaching out. So, I do think it's more difficult for folks when they enter their 40s and 50s to make, you know, new friendships and things like that.

Prakash Chandran: So Tally, I want to unpack that a little bit more because I think you're absolutely right. You know, just making friends as you grow older can prove to be challenging. So, do you have any tips for how one might go about doing that?

Tally Gallogly: One of the things I encourage my clients that I work with on this is to get active in things that they like. So Kevin kind of made reference to it earlier, whether that be hobbies or activities because friend groups tend to be around like interests and things that people share in common, that's just human nature. So, you can really increase your chances of being successful in nurturing new friends that are a good fit for you if they have these shared interests. So, that's one of the encouragements that I do. Volunteering maybe for an organization or a hospital or whatever just to get yourself out there. And again, you have to be willing to be vulnerable.

I do find that, we talked earlier about introversion versus extroversion, this is harder for introverts. And Prakash, you mentioned it takes a lot more energy for your wife than it does for you. I see that all the time with this. So with my clients that are introverts, this is a bit a heavier lift for them, to go out and do this. But that's no excuse. You know, if nothing changes, nothing changes. They need to get out there and, and try it. And so Kevin and I as therapists are often pushing people into their discomfort. You know, lean into that a little bit.

Kevin Rigg: And I think speaking specifically to older, middle-aged men, I'll say as myself, we don't often think of, you know, going out and making friends and things like that, because that may be what we did in grade school or whatever. But it is so important to do that at this age because, as Tally said, we get set in our ways. We think, "Well, I don't have time for friends" or "Friends are for kids" or whatever, but we are social creatures. We are built to be in social connections. Whether to greater or lesser degree, it's part of our psychological, and I would say even our biological need to be in social groups. I mean, you look everywhere we go, we're building connections, social groups, fan clubs, I mean, all kinds of things. You don't have to look too far to see how social of a creature we are and how important that is. And as we get older, like we're saying, we get more set in our ways and we have to remember that that connection, that friendship is so important regardless of our age.

Tally Gallogly: Yes. And it's a little bit of a red flag to me as a counselor-- Kevin and I, when we are doing an EAP assessment, one of the questions we often ask is, "How many people are in your social group that you trust that you have a good relationship with?" And to me, when it's a middle-aged person, somebody that's say my age, I'm in my mid-50s, that has a very small friend group now, three, four, something like that. And then, I always like to ask them, "Well, what was it like 10 years ago, 15 years ago?" And sometimes they've had much larger friend groups, and it's dwindled because of kind of what Kevin's talking about. They get set in their ways. They get home from work, they sit, they watch tv. And we talk about how this social determinants of health, you know, that health is impacted, that's a really good example of it, because they're not engaging in relationships that are getting them out of these ruts and unhealthy habits of isolation.

Prakash Chandran: Yeah, absolutely, Tally. And something that you said earlier really resonated with me and I wanted to share something. You know, I'm 41 years old and, in October of last year, my friend and I were just talking about how hard it's been to be isolated. He just recently moved to Chicago. This is a friend from college, and I said, "You know what, let's just plan something. Let's put something on the calendar." We all have lives, we've got kids. But if we don't put something on the calendar, we're not intentional about it, it's never going to happen. So in January, just this past Martin Luther King, I went to visit with five of my college roommates. We all agreed that we were going to go to Chicago in January, which believe me, is extremely cold. But the amount of therapy that we got from being together, from being with one another, from sharing what we're going through, just being vulnerable, it's indescribable. And on the plane ride home, I was like tearing up because of really how good I felt, like I didn't even realize how how much I needed that. But it all starts with that intention, just saying like, "Let's put something on there. It doesn't matter where we are or the climate, we just need to be together and we need to be vulnerable with one another" and wonderful things can come out of that. Tally, is that something that you're seeing with your patients?

Tally Gallogly: Absolutely. And I would add to it, you also gave effort to it. Many folks are sitting around thinking about what they should be doing or old friendships that they have, and they don't act on it, they don't move on it. The difference, Prakash, you put the effort into it. That wasn't easy for you. I mean, there was some things you had to do to make that happen. And it was a big payoff for you emotionally. Wonderful story you just said. And one of the things we work with our clients on is to put that effort in. And sometimes I use the words getting out of a rut, because I think an awful lot of folks kind feel like they're stuck.

Prakash Chandran: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Just as we start to close, one thing that I always like to ask-- and Kevin, we'll start with you. You know, you've probably helped so many patients, and you've seen a lot, especially through this isolation and what people are going through. What is one thing that you know to be true that you wish more people knew before they came to see you?

Kevin Rigg: That's an excellent question. This might sound kind of corny, but I wish at times some of these folks could see themselves the way that I see them when they come in with strength and answers to questions that they're asking, but they already have a lot of those answers to the questions and a lot of strengths that they don't even recognize that they have. If they could see that in themselves, I think they would be so much happier, maybe, healthier, maybe more courageous in some of their actions, more willing to take on certain challenges maybe in their life or things along those lines. But so many people come in maybe because they didn't have anybody in their corner or they didn't have anybody who believed in them. But those traits and those maybe even some cases values are there, but they don't recognize them or see them, for whatever reason. And that would be maybe one thing that I would wish that they may be a able to see or know before they even came to see me.

Prakash Chandran: Yeah, that's beautiful. Tally, I'll ask you the same question. What's one thing that you wish more people knew before they came to see you?

Tally Gallogly: That they can do this, whatever the things that we're working on. I think one of the challenges that people are dealing with across the board is the self-confidence to be who they want to be. And usually, it's kind of self-defeating, self-limiting doubts that they have and negativity, negative thoughts. Oftentimes, I like to have them kind of do an inventory of their thought life and kind of tell me what percentage of it is positive and affirming and good stuff, and what percentage of it is what I mentioned earlier, limiting and self-defeating. And I think we have habits of the way that we think, and it's oftentimes pretty ingrained and sometimes goes back to our childhood. So, that's a long answer to a short question. But I think that's largely to some degree what we do in EAP counseling, is encourage people to strive to be victorious over their challenges.

Prakash Chandran: Well, Kevin and Tally, I think that is the perfect place to end. Amazing conversation today. And you know, I've heard once that the actions that you take are a vote for the type of person that you want to be or the environment that you want to put yourself in. And so, it's so important for everyone out there to be intentional about the environment you want to create and to put in the effort. And you are worth it and you can do it. So Kevin and Tally, thank you so much for your time today.

Tally Gallogly: Thanks, Prakash.

Kevin Rigg: Prakash, yes. Thank you for your time and the opportunity to talk.

Prakash Chandran: That was Kevin Rigg and Tally Gallogly, licensed clinical professional and independent chemical dependency counselors working as certified employee assistant managers for ProMedica. For more information about this topic, you can visit promedica.org. If you found this podcast to be helpful, please share it on your social channels.

Thanks for listening. I'm Prakash Chandran. And until next time, stay happily ever after 40.