Bonus: SYSK TRENDING – The Crisis of Loneliness and How to Fix It

Thirty-six percent of Americans — including 61% of young adults and 51% of mothers with young children — say they experience “serious loneliness.” Nearly everyone has felt that ache at some point: the quiet sense of isolation, of being unseen or disconnected, even when surrounded by people. Humans are not wired for isolation. We are built for connection. Yet modern life — with its screens, busyness, and fragmented communities — often pulls us further apart. Psychiatrist Dr. Edward Hallowell joins me to explain why loneliness is far more than a bad feeling. It impacts physical health, mental health, motivation, even lifespan. He shares why connection is essential to thriving — and practical ways to rebuild it in a world that makes isolation easy. Dr. Hallowell is the author of ⁠Connect (https://amzn.to/3GxgwQw),⁠ and he also has a bestselling book on ADHD called ⁠ADHD 2.0 (https://amzn.to/3AVKgVI). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Mike Carruthers?

  Loneliness is a huge topic of concern today. You see, loneliness isn't just a feeling, it's a health risk. You can be married, employed, surrounded by people all day long, and still feel that quiet sense of disconnection. Most of us shrug it off as if it's normal. It's not. Chronic loneliness does more than dampen your mood. Research links it to higher risk of heart disease, weakened immunity, cognitive decline, even a shorter lifespan. Some experts say the health impact of loneliness rivals smoking 15 cigarettes a day. So what's really happening? Why is loneliness so biologically powerful? And why does modern life seem to make it worse, not better?

• 0:45Mike Carruthers?

  In my conversation with psychiatrist Dr. Edward Hallowell, we'll explore what loneliness does to your brain and body, and more importantly, what you can do to break out of it. And that conversation begins right after this.

• 1:01Mike Carruthers?

  Now here's something that might be worth a minute of your time. How would you like $1,000 to spend on shopping? Especially with the holidays coming. Well, the people behind Shopify have a shopping site called shop.com. And to celebrate the new shop.com, they're giving away $1 million in shop cash. But not to one person. A thousand people will each win $1,000 in shop cash. And shop.com is actually a really clever idea. It brings lots of different stores together in one place. So instead of bouncing around from website to website, you can search across stores,

• 1:44Mike Carruthers?

  find what you're looking for, and track your orders, all in one place. Clothes, electronics, gifts, things for the house, all kinds of stuff. And whether you win or not, it's worth knowing, but with 1,000 chances to win $1,000, I'd certainly take a look. Enter to win the $1 million shop cash giveaway from now until November 1st. Just go to shop.com. There are so many ways to win. That's shop.com. Shopping designed around you. No purchase necessary. Restrictions apply. Official rules available at shop.com.

• 2:29Mike Carruthers?

  Loneliness is a feeling I suspect you have felt, everyone has felt, and it is a terrible feeling. So I thought it would be a good time to tackle the topic of loneliness and how to get rid of it. And there is no one better to discuss this, I believe, than Dr. Edward Hallowell. Ned is a psychiatrist who wrote a great book some years ago called Connect, in which he really explored the topic of loneliness and the need for connection. He also has written several other books about distraction and ADHD. His latest is a bestseller called ADHD 2.0. Hey Ned, thanks for being here.

• 3:08Speaker 01

  Hello, Mike. Nice to be with you.

• 3:11Mike Carruthers?

  So what is loneliness? How do you define it? How do you look at it?

• 3:15Speaker 01

  Lonely is a lot different from being alone. You can be alone and not lonely. You can be alone and, you know, reading a book, listening to music, entertaining your fantasies and favorite hopes for the future, and you're not lonely. But you can also be lonely, and that's the active presence of absence. It's like you're feeling what isn't there. It's a terrible feeling. You're feeling that here I am alone, no one's with me, no one likes me, no one cares about me, or so-and-so died, or I miss my dog, or I wish I were back home. You feel what you're missing.

• 4:00Mike Carruthers?

  I love that definition, that you're feeling what isn't there, because as soon as you said that, I could feel it. I mean, that's exactly what it is. It's that absence of something that you want, or need, or miss, or something.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  And it's a terrible feeling, you know. It is really bad for you. You know, in fact, the Surgeon General defined loneliness as the number one medical problem in the United States today. Not cancer, not heart disease, loneliness. And most people don't realize how bad it is for you. In fact, social isolation is as dangerous for early death as cigarette smoking. Most people have no idea about that. If you ask them to list risk factors, they'll say cigarette smoking, obesity, genetics, don't wear your seatbelt. Nobody puts down loneliness, but my gosh, it's right near the top of the list. And if people would make it a priority to connect, I call it the other vitamin C, vitamin connect. It is the most powerful

• 4:58Speaker 01

  force that most people don't make use of. I urge people, you know, if you go to the supermarket, talk to the guy at the checkout counter. He needs it, or she needs it as much as you do.

• 5:09Mike Carruthers?

  So help me understand why, what it is about loneliness that makes it so dangerous? Is it the loneliness itself? Or when you're lonely, you tend to do bad things like drink more, smoke more, eat more? Or is there something inherent about loneliness that is harmful?

• 5:28Speaker 01

  All of the above. When you're feeling lonely, your immune system suffers, and you are putting out stress hormones that are caustic. And then what you also said, you're inclined to try to fill in the emptiness with things like online gambling, or drinking, or drug use, or dangerous liaisons, or dangerous business deals, reckless going online, connecting in chatrooms where you don't know who you're talking to. And it's really just about people trying to find a meaningful ways of connecting. And I can't tell you how many patients I've prescribed

• 6:10Speaker 01

  a dog for. I mean, dogs are the world's great. I dedicated my last book to dogs. I said, it's no accident that God spelled backwards as dog, you know, it's a, dogs are the world's best connectors. And, you know, so if you have a dog, chances are you're not going to feel lonely, or nearly as lonely.

• 6:29Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, and anybody who's ever had a dog knows that that relationship is very fulfilling. But it's still a human dog relationship. It isn't the same as connecting with people.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  And in fact, I tell people, young people, what is the purpose of growing up? What is the goal of growing up? And the answers I get are like, get into the best school you can get into, lay the foundation for making a good living. And I say, no, no, the purpose, what you want to do while you're growing up is fall in love. You want to fall in love with a person, that's fine, but with a subject, an idea, an activity, an ant, the great entomologist E. O. Wilson, who just died, fell in love with ants in a parking lot in Alabama because he was a lonely kid. So he went out to the field next door and started studying ants and became one of the great entomologists, professor at Harvard, author of many books.

• 7:28Speaker 01

  And but it was born out of his feeling lonely as a kid in Alabama, and he found his companionship in ants.

• 7:35Mike Carruthers?

  But what is the reason, do you think, that people have such trouble connecting with people? Because, you know, there's a lot of people, there's like billions of them. So you would think that connecting with people would be easier than it apparently is. Why do some people find themselves lonely?

• 7:53Speaker 01

  The reason people stick with loneliness is they're afraid. They're afraid of being rejected, they're afraid of being sued, they're afraid of saying the wrong thing, you know, in this age of PC, everyone's afraid to say the wrong thing. They're afraid of looking stupid. And so they hold back, they hold back on life out of fear, and they create their own little bubble, their own little prison, which is toxic.

• 8:18Mike Carruthers?

  And so you said a few moments ago that you need to connect and that one thing you could do is, you know, talk to the cashier at the store or wave to the person next to you. That's not really a connection, that's just a kind of a polite hi, how are you, see you later. So how does that help?

• 8:35Speaker 01

  Well, it actually is a connection. You'll get a little, you'll get a little drip of dopamine when you do that, you'll get a little affirmation. You can wave, you can wave to a stranger all clear across the parking lot. If it's a snowy day or something, you say snowy day and he waves back. It takes a half a second. That is a connection. It's not a lifelong connection, you'll never see the person again, but don't, don't take it lightly. Small talk is very big talk. Small talk is the route into deeper relationships, for sure, but it all begins with small talk. You know, the, the strong silent man is a lonely man on his way to a heart attack. You know, it's a, it's not a good recipe. So make the little chit chat, make the don't take it lightly. It's very, very, very important.

• 9:22Mike Carruthers?

  I remember hearing, and maybe it was from you and we've talked in the past, that that intense pain that loneliness causes is evolutionary, that we're not meant to be that way. We can't survive if we're all alone. And that that's a motivation, a push to get rid of that feeling. And the only way to get rid of it is to go connect with people.

• 9:46Speaker 01

  It is so true. It's wired into us. It's wired into our endocrine system. Even, you know, any of you listeners who've had children, the moment you give birth, either through, you know, the normal way or through adoption, the moment you become a parent for the first time, nature sees to it that you enter into a permanent state of psychosis. Your whole body changes. Your brain changes. You fall madly, insanely crazy in love with this little peeing and pooping machine whom you don't even know. And yet you've almost instantly become not only willing, but eager to give away your time, your money, your sleep, your dignity. And, you know, you gotta be crazy to do it. And you say, this is so much fun.

• 10:31Speaker 01

  Let's do it again.

• 10:32Mike Carruthers?

  We're talking about loneliness and we're talking about it with Dr. Edward Hallowell. He is a psychiatrist, author of several books, and one of which is called Connect. Hiring the wrong person is expensive, but it's also exhausting. Because now you haven't solved your problem. You've created a new one. You've spent time interviewing and training somebody, but it's the wrong person and it's just not working. So when you're hiring, you don't just need a person. You need the right person. And that is a job for indeed sponsored jobs. Sponsored jobs helps you reach candidates with the skills and experience

• 11:16Mike Carruthers?

  and other qualifications you're looking for and boosts your job and search results. So the right people are more likely to see it. In fact, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed are 95% more likely to report a hire than non-sponsored jobs. So give yourself a better shot at finding the right person. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. When you need the right person to cut through the chaos, this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help get your job

• 12:01Mike Carruthers?

  the premium status it deserves at indeed.com/podcast. Just go to indeed.com/podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need the right hire fast? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. So Ned, it's my sense that around Valentine's Day, you know, Valentine's Day is wonderful for people who have a Valentine to celebrate it with, but that for people who don't have a Valentine or who don't feel connected, who feel lonely, it makes the loneliness even

• 12:44Mike Carruthers?

  worse to watch all these other people celebrate all the love in their life.

• 12:48Speaker 01

  Absolutely, they do. My advice to you is maybe take that holiday as a chance to developing some kind of connection that can become meaningful. Maybe it's a time to get a dog, or maybe it's a time to go back to church or synagogue, or maybe it's a time to take up some hobby that you've wanted to take up, even something as simple as crocheting or cooking, or, or, you know, starting a little garden inside your house. Or, you know, there are things you can take up that will, that will serve as points of connection. And then you can find other people who are interested in that, you know, and, and, you

• 13:27Speaker 01

  know, one of my favorite lines, I use it all the time, it really, it's a line to live by. Never worry alone.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  So when you're feeling upset, worried, concerned, reach out somehow. Doesn't have to be in person. It doesn't have to be, you know, against your grain, but don't worry alone. That's when bad things happen. That's when you do self-destructive stuff. That's when you feel intense despair. That's when people commit suicide, you know, when you're worrying alone. So never worry alone is a really good watchword. And another thing you can do is when you're feeling these bleak, black moments where you're sort of ruminating. We know from brain science, there's a certain network in the brain that takes over. It's called the default mode network, the DMN, which I call the demon. What you want to do is don't feed the demon.

• 14:22Speaker 01

  And what do you feed it with? Your attention. Well, do something else. Fry an egg, dig a hole, do a crossword, do something else. Shut off the DMN's oxygen supply, which is your attention. And by the way, the reason that we feed it is contentment is too bland. You don't say he or she was riveted in contentment. But you do say he or she was riveted in despair, loneliness, misery, foreboding. It's riveting and that's why you keep feeding it with your attention. You gotta be ruthless and shut it off. Redirect your attention onto something else. And it literally can save your life if you do that. But try to keep those two phrases in mind.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  Never worry alone and don't feed the demon.

• 15:10Mike Carruthers?

  That is some really great advice because everyone who has ever, and I assume it is everyone, has ever worried alone, knows that when you bring somebody else in on your worry, it somehow, it somehow lightens up.

• 15:24Speaker 01

  It's magical. It's magical and it really is. Suddenly the worry turns into problem solving. It is magical. It's like my thought experience. Imagine you're standing in a big, dark warehouse by yourself. You feel terrified, paranoid. If you're there with someone, you laugh. There's something about the presence of another person that instantly, as you put it, lightens the load. And the next thing you know, you're problem solving. How do we get out of here?

• 15:54Mike Carruthers?

  I've heard it described as a paradox, really, that we are with social media and the internet, we are more connected than ever. And yet, a lot of those social media kind of connections aren't real connections and exacerbate the problem of loneliness, because you're connected, but not in the way that people used to be connected. What do you think about social media connections? Is it that? Is it exacerbating the problem?

• 16:24Speaker 01

  I take issue with that point. It's all a matter of how you use it. My family, for example, uses social media to great advantage. We have a, you know, I don't know what the word for it is, but we're all on the same little platform and we send each other messages. And it facilitates, deepens, human connection. Now, the danger is when it replaces human connection. That's the danger. So it's all a matter of how you use it.

• 16:50Mike Carruthers?

  It would seem that because loneliness is so painful, and a lot of people suffer that pain in silence, it must be because, at least in part, that it's just so difficult to get up and go try to connect with people. It's just really hard for them to do. So what's your advice for those people who would love to connect, but just don't even know where to begin?

• 17:18Speaker 01

  I'll tell you a quick story. Do we have time for a quick story?

• 17:21Mike Carruthers?

  Sure, of course.

• 17:22Speaker 01

  Oh, great. Okay. Well, so I consulted some, 20 years ago, to the Harvard Chemistry Department, because they had a, their most gifted graduate student committed suicide and left a note explicitly blaming Harvard. As we looked into it, the Chair of the Department, Jim Anderson, a wonderful man, basically put his research career on hold to figure out what was going on. And we discovered it was one of many suicides in that department in the previous decade. And the reason for it was, the community was horribly disconnected. It was like, it was like a dungeon. It was just, there was no connection. And it was, everyone was paranoid. There were two coping styles: work harder or get drunk. And most people did both every day.

• 18:07Speaker 01

  So you had an entire department of, with five Nobel Prize winners in it, and some thousand brilliant little genius post-docs and graduate students, miserable, because they were so disconnected. So we had to figure out a way to connect them now. With, you know, that group of people, really smart, often middle European, barely English speaking, uh, very high IQ folks, you, you, if you said, let's have a mixer, nobody would show up because it's not in their comfort zone. And so we had to figure out, how do you bait the trap? How do you bring people out of hiding? Because they were hiding, they were paranoid. Well, uh, you know, the, one of the universal answers to that question is food.

• 18:49Speaker 01

  So we'd reach out to the best restaurants in Cambridge and we'd cater the weekly buffets, uh, where, you know, there'd be wonderful, good food. There'd be some beer and wine and these, these introverted shy grad students would come out of hiding for food. And the next thing you know, they get talking to one another in spite of themselves. And the next thing you know, there's a softball team, there's a symphony club, there's a, they started putting, uh, wax boards next to the elevators. So instead of making small talk at the elevator, they could draw equations and tell each other what they were working on. You meet them where they are. And lo and behold, uh, over the course of the year, we really changed the culture of that department.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  So it's a grim statistic, but it's very significant. There have been no suicides since. The proudest award I ever got was the chemistry department gave me the department medal. I'm the first non-chemist who has ever received that, but, uh,

• 19:46Mike Carruthers?

  Well done.

• 19:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you. But I, it was, it really drove home to me. Number one, how lethal disconnection is. I mean, literally people dying, but how, how plantable it is, how startable it is. Because it's in every, even the most introverted, reclusive person wants to connect. Loneliness hurts everybody. So if you, you just have to find the right way. And like in, in our case, food was, was the, was the catalyst. Food was what got the ball rolling. Then, then people jump in and take over. And the next thing you know, the, the town can go from being isolated and separated and paranoid, as so many places are these days, to connecting.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  Maybe you have a block party, maybe you have a yard sale, maybe you have a. You know, let's root for the local team movement or something that people can join in and connect with each other without making them self-conscious about it. That's the key. Most people don't want to sit down and talk about their feelings. They're afraid of that. It makes them feel very awkward. But if you give them some task to do, some project to jump into, and some food to eat, and even better, some wine to drink, you've got a connection thing going. And it's so great to see it happen because it's what people need. And you just see them brighten up like a Christmas tree. I mean, it's just, it's a wonderful thing. And it can be, you can start it truly anywhere.

• 21:16Mike Carruthers?

  Well, and there's so many ways to reach out to people if you're willing to take the risk. I mean, you certainly have your phone and you can text and there's other electronic ways to just reach out and touch someone.

• 21:29Speaker 01

  Zoom, I mean Zoom has been a godsend. And you with your podcast, I mean, you are doing a tremendous service. You have a big following. That's a huge service. It's, it's, people don't realize, I mean, you have regular listeners and that's a big deal. And they don't, they don't understand by, by listening to you, by tuning in regularly, they literally are extending their life. I mean, that is a proven fact. Reducing social isolation extends life. And what you're doing with your podcast is a wonderful way of reducing social isolation, you know. So, yes, it is ironic that we have unintentionally conspired

• 22:11Speaker 01

  to create circumstances where one of the things we need absolutely most is really hard to get, but it is not impossible to get. And that's why I'm saying, use your imagination, but reach, you know, another, another, you know, reach out to someone you're on the outs with. Forgiveness is a wonderful tool for connecting. And, and, you know, forgiveness is a gift you give to yourself.

• 22:35Mike Carruthers?

  Well, anyone who knows that feeling, and I assume it's everyone who has had that feeling, that deep sense of loneliness, knows how horrible it is, and I think this is such an important conversation to have. Edward Hallowell's been my guest. The name of his book is Connect, which he wrote several years ago, and I promised him I would mention his new book, which is about ADHD, called ADHD 2.0. And you can find a link to those books in the show notes. Thanks for coming on and talking about this. It was good to hear, and it was a lot of really good information. Thank you.

• 23:10Speaker 01

  Thank you, Mike. I really appreciate your having me on. You're a terrific, terrific host.