150 ~ Why We Feel Lonely In Such A Connected World

Loneliness can hit hard in a world where you can reach anyone in milliseconds. We’re looking straight at that modern paradox: more texts, more DMs, more Zooms, more “friends” online, and somehow a deeper sense of disconnection for so many of us. We talk about why humans are wired for connection, why belonging is a biological need, and how curated digital life can quietly train us to settle for contact instead of intimacy. 

Catherine share's a personal story of being surrounded by thousands of people on New Year’s Eve and still feeling empty. Then we unpack what that moment reveals: connection isn’t proximity, it’s presence. We explore what “deep connection” actually means, from being witnessed and met in your truth to the nervous system experience of co regulating with another human. We also get honest about technology, social media, FaceTime, and online community. These tools can help, but they can’t reliably replace real relationship, especially when we’re looking for that full body sense of being seen. 

We go further into the practical side: how bandwidth affects your ability to connect, why living with someone is the most unfiltered form of intimacy, and why presence is the core skill. If you’ve been asking “Why do I still feel alone?” this conversation offers a grounded way forward, including one of the most important questions we can ask ourselves: where am I withholding connection? 

As we question why loneliness keeps growing while technology makes communication instant and constant. We hone in on what actually creates deep human connection and how taking responsibility for our desire changes everything.  

Episode nuggets:  
• loneliness in a hyperconnected culture and why it feels so common  
• the difference between contact and real connection  
• a New Year’s Eve story about feeling alone in a crowd  
• what “deep connection” looks like in the body and heart  
• why social media is curated even when it feels vulnerable  
• in person intimacy versus Zoom and how capacity changes the answer  
• living with someone as unfiltered connection and a dojo for growth  
• presence as the requirement for connection and why distraction blocks it  
• asking where we are withholding connection from self and others  

What helps you feel most connected? 

Transcript

Welcome To Desire Is Medicine

SPEAKER_01 0:07

Welcome to Desire is Medicine. We are two very different women living a life led by desire, inviting you into our world.

SPEAKER_00 0:16

I'm Brenda. I'm a devoted practitioner to being my fully expressed true self in my daily life, motherhood, relationships, and my business. Desire has taken me on quite a ride, and every day I practice listening to and following the voice within. I'm a middle school teacher, turned coach and guide of the feminine.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

And I'm Catherine, devoted to living my life as the truest and hopefully the highest version of me. I don't have children, I've never been married, I've spent equal parts of my life in corporate as in some down and low shady spaces. I was the epitome of Tired and Wired, and my path led me to explore desire. I'm a coach, guide, energy worker, and a forever student.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Even after decades of inner work, we are humble beginners, on the mat, still exploring, always curious. We believe that listening to and following the nudge of desire is a deep spiritual practice that helps us grow.

SPEAKER_01 1:12

On the Desire as Medicine podcast, we talk to each other, we interview people we know and love about the practice of desire, bringing in a very important piece that is often overlooked: being responsible for our desire.

Why Loneliness Grows With Technology

SPEAKER_01 1:25

Welcome back to another episode of Desire as Medicine Podcast. I am here with the lovely Brenda. We're so excited to chat. Today, we're talking about human connection. We have been talking about digestion and what it's like to really fully receive life. We've also talked a little bit about what happens when we're sort of feeling stuck in our lives and maybe what happens when we turn our stuckness and our questions to something like Chat GPT, Claude, perplexity. Like where does AI fall into all of it? And one of the things that we could almost say without a shadow of a doubt is that we are more connected than ever. And yet, as a society, potentially lonelier than ever. We have these beautiful softwares and technologies that are helping us maybe look a little bit more polished, more perfect on the outside, maybe having the world see us and perceive us in a specific way. But finding it harder and harder to see the perfection in ourselves without the filters, the magical filters that have all the shiny little, shiny little blings that take out all the wrinkles and minimize the pores and do all the pretty things. And when I feel into, we have so many ways to reach each other, whether it's text, DM, WhatsApp, Telegram, Zoom, social media, or eyes. I'm one of my favorites is to just send Brenda a voice note on my iPhone. But I'm sure we could FaceTime. I could send her emojis if I was from a younger generation. And I'm sure the emojis would even mean something because I haven't gone to all the emoji classes. But there's so many ways for us to connect with one another. And yet the loneliness is still there, the disconnection is still there. We're still sort of grasping for what is like what are we discerning from this life? And the question is, why? Like, why is loneliness becoming one of the defining experiences of modern life when we are so connected? We don't have to wait weeks anymore for a letter to reach our beloved or to reach the next town. Like you can just send a text and it gets there in milliseconds. One thing that we can undoubtedly say, and I'm sure you guys would agree. I don't even have to ask you if you agree. Like, I'm so sure that you would agree that we are wired for connection. Like we all want to belong. We all have a sense of attachment. We all want to like feel like we have our tribe, our vibe, our people. We need other humans to co-regulate. We love being witnessed and we love witnessing. We love staying in the know. I mean, the Kardashians are proof of that. Everybody knows what wants to know what the hell the Kardashians are doing. I'm not necessarily a watcher, but I'm a unique individual in that realm. Um, like we're not meant to do life alone. And connection isn't a luxury. It's not like a Louis Vuitton bag, it's a biological need. So I think the place that Brenda and I can start here is that yes, we have tons of ways that we can connect, but are those ways really connecting? I think they're like forums of contact. Like just because you are around people doesn't mean that you're connected. So, for example, we can scroll and check out comments. We can text somebody all day, we can go to a networking event, you could have like surface friendships. That's

Contact Isn’t Connection

SPEAKER_01 5:05

lots of contact, but very little connection. And I'm gonna take this opportunity to like share a story. Brenda loves stories, so I'm sure she's gonna love this one. I don't I don't even know if she knows it or not yet. One year, I think it was like 2025. No, I'm gonna take that back. It definitely did not happen in 2025. I was 25. It was a New Year's Eve. I was at the Delano Hotel, I think it was like one of Madonna's hotels in Miami, and I was celebrating. And I was surrounded by thousands of people. I think it was like 4,000 people at the venue. And as the clock struck 12, which at that age it was like such a big deal. I was with one of my best friends, and we were with other friends, but it felt so empty. Like the whole experience felt so empty. And I said to myself, Oh, I never want to spend a New Year's like this again. I like recognized at that age, and I think back then we had beepers and flip phones, so don't come for me. There was no other form of connecting with people back then. I thought, wow, how can I be around this many people and yet feel so grateful that this particular friend was with me and yet have this sort of lonely sensation at the same time. And I thought, oh, because I am technically surrounded or in a room with strangers during a time or an evening where I would have liked for it to be a lot more meaningful. And up until that age, I just didn't know better. And I think once we know better, we do better. And ultimately, that's what Brenda and I want to talk about today. Like, where do we know better, where we can do better in the area of connection?

SPEAKER_00 6:46

I think we all have our own version of a story like that. That's such a great story about New Year's Eve. Wanting something, going somewhere, because of what you think it will give you, a feeling of connection and belonging, which is like so basic that we all want. And then it doesn't hit. I love that that you were 25 in that story. And it sounds like it was a really foundational experience that showed you something. It was like, oh, being around all these people doesn't actually give me that feeling of connection. I've had similar experiences. We want really deep connection. And what is that? What does that even mean? Like when I think of deep connection, I think that we want to share our hearts, be who we really are, like share the truth of our souls, laugh, have fun, like let out our playful side, our real side, whatever wants to come through, let out you and be seen and met inside of that by another person and feel theirs, feel their silly, feel their truth, feel their whatever they want to share. There's nothing like that. It's the best. It's the best of the best of the best. What's better than that? I traded New Year's Eve big party for small intimate connection a long time ago as well. There's nothing like it. And yet we live in this world where we have all kinds of quote connection. We have different ways to contact and connect with each other, these ways that simulate this thing that I was just talking about, this deep connection. And I think that those things are there for us to connect and have connection. But was it ever meant to replace that feeling of deep connection that you feel with a human? Is that what it was trying to do? Is that what people use it for? Is that what people are trying to get from it? Because I think if you're trying to get that deep sense of being seen and felt online, it's like going to the hardware store for bread. Is it possible? Yes, it is. But consistently over time, in place of human relationships, no. That's where it falls short in the expectation. So if people are sitting in their rooms not leaving their house, people are doing that, probably not listening to this podcast. They're feeling isolated and alone, disappointed. We have more mental health issues than ever. These things are all connected. I think you're pointing to a really great question.

SPEAKER_01 9:40

You've formulated it in the sense of like, did these things really come in to get us more connected? And that's uh a great version of the question of like what actually makes us feel connected. I'm thinking of, you know, when you get really invested in a TV show and you're familiar with the characters. I know there are plenty of actors that say, Oh, I'm trying to think of Cam,

Curated Lives Versus Real Intimacy

SPEAKER_01 10:05

the guy from Modern Family. Like he says that people come up to him all the time talking to talking to him as if he's Cam from the show. He's like he's an actor, like he is not Cam 24-7. We get attached to the character that we know from the show that's there to entertain us. But when we're scrolling and we're seeing people from our lives, or even six of I wanted to say generations, but that's not the six deviations. I don't know, what would it call like six circles out or six levels out? Six degrees of separation. That's it. Six degrees of separation out. We don't really know-no those people. They don't really know us, and they see a version of us. So, yes, they're getting a glimpse of something that's happening. It's like the highlights reel. That's a better way of saying it. We we have a lot of points of contact with people's highlights reels or people's low-lo reels. Like there are people that posts about really uncomfortable things that are happening in their lives and they're sharing some things from the depths of their soul, but still they're just snippets. It's nothing like using your bread analogy, breaking bread with someone, really being in person, connected with someone. Even us, Brenda and I, we record and we drop weekly, but it feels super different when she and I, she feels different to me when I see her in person. And my assumption is that I feel the same because how could it not? We're living and sharing the same air when we're together. We're sort of in each other's proximity, feeling each other's energetic space. And yes, over Zoom or software, what we use Riverside when we're recording, we have a sense of one another, but she's somewhere in her space, I'm somewhere in my space. And the overall connection point is very different than if we were in person. Is it better than not having it at all? Absolutely. Like I love that we're able to do this. And would it feel different if we had our own studio and we were recording, say, in person? I 1000% think so. What actually makes us feel connected? I would say in person is a lot faster than over software, for sure. Like in person is going to trump, let's say, FaceTime for me. And yet, if I have low bandwidth, FaceTime is probably a lot better than in person because in I wouldn't be able to be super present. It's like there are certain things that have us feel more connected. And then there is the very real truth of being human and only having X amount of resources to be out and about and connecting with people in the real world. It just is. But a lot of these gadgets and the things that we use and the scrollers and all this other has us feel as if as if we have the ability to do it more often or deeper, I guess is a way of describing it. I'm thinking pre-Instagram, pre-these things, pre-Zoom. If you wanted to have a cocktail party or you were having some form of connection at your house, you were doing it maybe once at most, twice a week, but you're not hosting every day. Like there is a certain amount of connection that we can take, and there's a certain amount of downtime that we want. So there is a real barrier to connection when we're talking about live in-person connection. And yet, live in-person connection has really has this feeling very connected, but only when you're really close to those people that you're connected to or have deep relationships with. The space felt very grand, and yet my experience wasn't necessarily matching the environment. And I was able to pause and ask myself, why is that? So I think we want connection and we want to put our attention out on other people. We want to be able to also put attention on ourselves. And I think there's a reality check that we can only raise those levers so high based on our capacity. 100%.

SPEAKER_00 14:56

I've heard people say, oh, you can't have really high quality connection over Zoom or FaceTime, or you can't really feel anyone. Oh, I could never do coaching over Zoom or anything. And I don't think that that's true. That hasn't been my experience. Now it's true, there's nothing like in person. That's the real authentic human experience. But I think as someone who is a feeler and I know how

Presence As The Core Skill

SPEAKER_00 15:25

to open my system and feel other people, you can a hundred percent do that over technology if you're skilled and you've practiced it with people in person. You can do that. But I've I know people who don't agree and they haven't had that experience. So that's worth saying. And there's just nothing like being in person. And I also want to say to something you said earlier about Instagram and social media where people are posting the real things about their lives. Maybe they're posting the good things, maybe they're posting the mundane things, maybe they're posting the difficult things. It's still all curated. Even when I post, oh my God, I had a really hard time about something, it's still curated. I'm choosing what I want to share. And do I share every down that I have? Absolutely not, or every difficult experience. It's curated. And so when you're in a relationship with someone, especially living with someone, a living relationship, whether it's like a partner, kids, whatever your family situation is, if you have that, that is the most intimacy because there is nothing curated about that. That's you and them letting out their real true selves, all the things all the time, not curating. Oh, I want to show me blowing my nose, but not me clipping my toenails. No, you get it all. You obviously can close the door, but you're just getting more of a full, well-rounded experience of another person, and they are of you as well. And I think that's what makes it really challenging, you know, is the intimacy that comes from the realness of being in a house with someone 24-7. Maybe not literally. You're going to work or you're having other experiences, hopefully, and other relationships. But that relationship of connection is super real. And you get to know each other. And to me, that really expands my own capacity and has always in letting myself be seen, which is something that I deeply want and is a part of connection for me. And also seeing somebody else for who they truly are. That shit is hard. It's hard. Judgment comes in, what you like, what you don't like, what you want to put up with, what you don't, what you like, what you don't, like your preferences, like all of it. So that's like a form of connection that's super real.

SPEAKER_01 18:08

The joys of sharing space with someone. The ups and downs that come with that.

SPEAKER_00 18:14

And there's a lot of ups, too. Yes. Yeah. I mean, there's so many ups, right? And it's not just all clipping toenails, you know, it's hanging out, having dinner, co-regulating at the end of the day, or watching a show, or whatever you're doing, you have someone there, and it's all these qualities that we were talking about earlier. Being witnessed, having another person to bounce ideas off of. And also, if you want to get super nerdy about human design, like I know the whole Jerry Maguire, you complete me thing, people have a lot to say about that. But in human design, there is something to say about that. You know, with the different gates and you actually complete things in each other. We can access different parts of ourselves. We can access the full range of who we are as a person in relationship with other people in a way that we cannot do on our own. Being a monk on a mountain versus being a monk in the city is a very different situation.

SPEAKER_01 19:11

100%. I think the beauty of being with someone in the same space and training yourself to always, or for the better part of always being connectable. That's a training in itself, like real life training. Because one of the biggest things that connection requires is presence. Let's say you have a friend that's going through a hard time or you're feeling stuck and you're putting your attention out on someone. That's intentional. You're like intentionally putting your attention on someone. And then there are moments where we're super inward, you know, where it's just attention on ourselves. And we could be inward having attention on ourselves while also sharing space with another human. And how do you stay present to that other human as well? Connection is going to require attention on the other person, attention on yourself, and presence. Like that is a PhD in itself. Because you can't connect if you're distracted, if you're trying to multitask, if you're being performative, or if you're fixing something, if you're like listening to them talk and you're getting ready to talk, you also can't, as you're preparing for that, you we are not present when we're thinking about what we're gonna say. It just that's not. But it's so beautiful to be in a space with someone where you can be seen. And to a certain extent, if you are having a living arrangement with someone, that person is somewhat approving of you because otherwise they wouldn't be sharing the space with you, right? And it's a great dojo for that. You get to have some time with yourself while also sharing the space with

Where We Withhold Connection

SPEAKER_01 20:55

another human. When we can't put our attention on other and we come back to ourselves for self-connection, and we're checking in with our body, our feelings, our desires, one of the fastest ways to come back because connection with others can be difficult and connection to self can be difficult too. Like sometimes you might be going through a hard time, you're just kind of over it. You don't want to feel. And we're not gonna go into all the ways that we can distract, but I'm sure everybody gets the idea. Instead of, and when we're feeling that like lonely sensation, we can become really grippy and be like, oh my God, how do I get more connected? How do I get more connected? My partner's not paying attention to me, or whatever that urgency, like whatever that urgency voice is sharing. And one of the things we want to invite you to today is like, where are we withholding connection? Like, where are we not wanting to be with ourselves or our partners or our friends or family or community? Like, where are we the ones that are literally blocking connection? When I think of that night way back when, when I shared the story about being 25 and being there and saying, oh wow, I don't feel fully connected. Like one of the ways that potentially I could have upped my connection at that time was yes, I had one BFF, but what if I got to know the other women that were there with me as well? What if I got to be interested and ask really curious questions to get to know them and to start feeling connected, more connected to my tribe? Like that was available. I didn't know how to do it, you know, 25, something years ago, but I would definitely know how to do it today. And this is one of the things that's calling us forward. There are so many techs, there are so many forms of contact that we get to be with now. How can we actually be more connected with the forms of contact that we have? And Brenda, you shared something gorgeous. Like, yes, you do have the ability to feel, and you have had the experience where even if it's over Zoom or FaceTime, you can still feel connected to the other person. And where can all of us do a little more of that? Because ultimately we are filling our own cups. Because as humans, like we are wired for connection. So it's only going to help us to be more connected to self and other. Like it will have us feel better in the long run. So please, please, please, please let us know what actually has you feel more connected. Hopefully, this sparked a little bit inside of you where you could revisit what your connection points are and if there's something that somewhere where you're either contributing to that connection or not. And what do you actually prefer to create for yourself there? May you continue to be the woman that has what she desires. Thank you so much for listening. Bye for now.

SPEAKER_00 23:52

Thank you for joining us on the Desire is Medicine podcast. Desire invites us to be honest, loving, and deeply intimate with ourselves and others.

SPEAKER_01 24:00

You can find our handles in the show notes. We'd love to hear from you.