We've Never Been More Connected...So Why Are We So Lonely? | Dr. Jody Carrington

We're more connected than ever before... so why does it feel like everyone is exhausted, anxious, overwhelmed, and lonely?

This week on Girls Gone Wellness, we're joined by renowned psychologist, bestselling author, and speaker Dr. Jody Carrington for one of the most thought-provoking conversations we've ever had.

Together, we unpack why we're living through a loneliness epidemic, how constant notifications and technology are keeping our nervous systems in a perpetual state of stress, and why our brains simply weren't designed for the way we live today.

We also dive into:

• Why loneliness, not mental illness, may be the bigger crisis.
• What social media is really doing to our brains.
• The importance of emotional regulation (and why you can't just tell someone to "calm down").
• Modern dating, relationships, and why connection feels harder than ever.
• Practical ways to regulate your nervous system and reconnect with yourself and the people around you.

This is one of those episodes that will make you look at your phone, your relationships, your daily habits, and even your own nervous system completely differently.

If you've ever felt burnt out, disconnected, or like life just feels... heavier than it used to, this conversation is for you.

Connect with Dr. Jody Carrington:
Website: https://www.drjodycarrington.com
Instagram: @drjodycarrington

SHOP GIRLS GONE WELLNESS MERCH

If you loved this episode, don't forget to subscribe, leave us a review, and share it with someone who needs to hear it.

Use code GGW20 for 20% Stay Above Nutrition products (US & Canada)!

You can check them out here

Don't forget to follow us on Instagram @girlsgonewellnesspodcast for updates and more wellness tips. You can also subscribe to our Youtube Channel @Girlsgonewellnesspodcast to watch our episodes! Please subscribe to our podcast and leave a review—we truly appreciate your support. Let's embark on this journey to wellness together!

DISCLAIMER: Nothing mentioned in this episode is medical advice and should not be taken as so. If you have any health concerns, please discuss these with your doctor or a licensed healthcare professional.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:06

If you're doing all the right things, eating clean, taking the supplements, following the skincare routine, and you're still breaking out, bloated, burnt out, or just feeling off, you are not the problem. The problem is that the wellness world wasn't built for real women with real bodies, real stress, and real questions that deserve better than vague advice and viral wellness trends.

SPEAKER_03 0:29

Welcome to Girls Gone Wellness, the No BS podcast cutting through the noise with science, sass, and zero shame. I'm Jeanette.

SPEAKER_02 0:36

And I'm Victoria, and we're naturopathic medical graduates who didn't just wake up one day and decide we were into wellness. We've spent the last decade learning the science, doing the clinical work, and graduating with the degrees.

SPEAKER_03 0:48

This isn't just another influencer podcast. We're not here to sell you a greens powder or to tell you to balance your hormones with seed cycling and good vibes. We're done with fear-mongering around food, detox teas, clean beauty BS, overpriced supplements that you don't need, and the biggest lie that you are the problem when it doesn't work. No, we're flipping the script.

SPEAKER_02 1:10

This is Girls Gone Wellness. Smart, sexy, science-backed, and built for women like you. We live in a world where we are constantly connected. We have unlimited access to information, endless ways to communicate, and yet somehow so many of us feel more overwhelmed, more anxious, and more alone than we ever have before. Today we are joined by psychologist, speaker, and best-selling author, Dr. Jody Carrington, for a conversation about the loneliness epidemic, what constant notifications and technology are doing to our nervous systems, why connection is one of the biggest predictors of our health outcomes, and what we can actually do to feel more grounded in a world that never seems to slow down. Whether you're feeling burnt out, struggling with anxiety, navigating relationships, or just trying to understand why life feels so much heavier lately, I really think this episode is going to give you a completely different perspective. So grab a coffee, put your phone on, do not disturb if you can, and let's get into it. Welcome to Girls Gone Wellness, Dr. Carrington.

SPEAKER_00 2:48

Thank you for having me back.

SPEAKER_02 2:51

Thank you so much for fitting us in your calendar. I know you are so busy. You told us you're three coffees in, so we are all set to go.

SPEAKER_00 3:01

Yeah, that's usually the best start to a podcast when you can say I'm three coffees in and it's been a shit show of a morning. So let's just dive in.

SPEAKER_02 3:11

I love it. Very on brand for our podcast. So that's great. Um, okay, we're gonna dive right in. This is kind of it's it's a sad topic. We're gonna make it fun. We're gonna have fun here today. But I feel like in this age of being so connected and having so many modes of connection, we are somehow like the loneliest people ever. Am I being dramatic when I say that, or do you think something has shifted socially?

SPEAKER_00 3:41

Yeah, so a couple of things. So we are indeed in a loneliness epidemic. And I think that, you know, so many times as a psychologist, so I practiced for 25 years now. Um, and I started out really understanding working with the RCP. Actually, I was a um civilian member of our National Police Force. I was really interested in organizational stress and trauma and what that looks like for people. And then I did my residency in Nova Scotia and I had to, I had to do a rotation with kids. They made me. Um, and they're like, you know, you have to work with kids. And I was like, I'm not a fan. Um, and I'm still not a fan. I have three of my own, so I'm kind of coming around, but I'm uh I really like big people. And so uh, but interestingly, I fell in love with, you know, understanding our lack of understanding around the developmental approach to trauma and like what makes people happy and successful, and you know, how imperative relationships are, particularly um when we're little, what that does to sort of our understanding and sort of imprint of um what happens to the body, you know, what how we sort of manifest all those things. And so my first job was on a lock psychiatric inpatient unit for kids uh at the Alberta Children's Hospital, which is sort of one of our center of excellences here in Alberta. And um, it was so fascinating because I had done at that point 13 years post-secondary education, and I've been trained to ask this question all the time: what is wrong with this one? What is wrong with this one? Right. And so you can imagine if you're in a lock psychiatric inpatient unit um at the age of 10 or 15, even, there's lots of things that are wrong with you. The files were thick and the diagnoses were deep, and nobody asks the question, um, what happened to this one? And Bruce Perry, you know, has subsequently written a book about it, which uh and with Oprah, which is brilliant work, and and really just sort of shifting the narrative in the medical model, which is, you know, what is wrong with this one? And here's a litany of things that, you know, we can outline um to what happened here. And that sort of shifted everything for me. And I left there after I met my husband. Um, he we were both old at this point because he has a PhD in um ruminant nutrition. And um he we we were old, so we we had kids really fast. And um we had three under three. So I I got the first one and we were like thought we knew everything, and then we felt so competent. And then we got uh twins just spontaneously, which was so fucking great. Anyway, they're they're amazing now, they're 13 and I love them, but like holy mother. I was like an independent, did all my thing, like 38. I had three kids under two, and I was like oh, no thank you. So my personal husband was like, we need to move closer to my mother. That's how I'm gonna help you. And I was like, mm-hmm. So we ended up in this little town called Old Alberta, Canada, where we've lived for the last 13 years and it's been a dream. And um, I really, really love it. So I opened a private practice and then I started to consult with schools and you know, had used all of my work with um, you know, tertiary care patients and being I worked with child and family services for a long time, and I really love like the hitters and the kickers and the biters and the ones to tell you the F off. I love those babies. And um, so it worked out really well doing consultations with schools and foster care and health services and all the things. And then, you know, people were just like, Can you speak about this? And I'm like, Yes, absolutely, bring your people. And then that turned that was almost 15 years ago now. So I've written three books and I travel globally speaking to humans about being human. That, you know, to your question, the idea is that, you know, we've never been, despite the fact that we've never had such access to resources or research, for the first time in history, we are dying faster from emotional illness than we are from physical illness for the first time in history. And we are noticing such a rampant increase in things like anxiety and depression and um ADHD. And so people are like, oh, we are obviously in a mental health crisis, right? We're killing ourselves, suicidal completion and ideation have never been this high. La, la, la, what's happening? It's a mental health crisis. And Vivek Murphy, who is a former surgeon general in the United States of America, was the first to coin the term a loneliness epidemic. He said, Listen, I don't think we're in a mental health crisis. I think we're in an understandable human response to a loneliness epidemic. And that just rang so true for me because the only thing I know about humans after 25 years as a psychologist is this. Number one, whoever created us said, and I don't care what you believe in, Jesus or Buddha or Yahweh or the creator, the Big Bang, however, we got here is humans. We're way more alike than we are different. In this human race, we all start in exactly the same place and we all end in exactly the same place. Nobody gets out of here alive. So race is a social construct, gender identity is a social construct. We all start, everybody listening here today started started and will end in exactly the same place. And whoever created us, whatever you believe, said, I'm gonna make you neurobiologically wired for connection in this human race. Okay, you disconnect from an infant, they die. No matter how good we get at the AI, we will never automate relationships. The neurochemistry that happens between two people. And so I often say this to many organizations that I speak to: the only AI that's gonna matter if you want to build a successful business right now or keep your family safe and connected, the only AI that's gonna matter is authentic interaction. And that's the that's the first rule of this human race is we're neurobiologically wired for connection. You we we will never automate that. Two, despite the fact that we're neurobiologically wired for connection, the second rule is like a curveball. Whoever created us, they were like, despite the fact that you're neurobiologically wired for connection, the hardest thing you will ever do in this human race is look at each other. And we've never had so many opportunities to look away. Those of us in the healthcare field feel like we're pretty good at it, that we're like, yo, no, we look at people all the time. We actually don't. It is estimated that our great-grandparents looked at their children 72% more of the time than we look at our babies today. And why that matters is rule number one. We are neurobiologically wired for connection. The only way you learn how to be kind and inclusive and how to regulate emotion is somebody has to show you. And we are now in a paucity of connection.

SPEAKER_03 11:47

Oh my gosh, we could go so many different directions with that intro. That was amazing. So many things to talk about. I think like we hear, we hear a lot. I know I hear from like my grandparents or like older generations. I would say, like, oh, your generation, you're all anxious, or like you all have mental health problems, or like we never had any of that when we were growing up. And I think like, what do you have to say about like that kind of conversation? Because I know we hear it a lot. Like, I know probably it's from social media and like the how our society is, you know, kind of wired this way, but I think there's other things that come into play too. But I would just love your thoughts on that kind of whole conversation.

SPEAKER_00 12:25

Yeah, I mean, I have it every day. So I I love that. I I often open conversations with people, you know, whether it be like in an organization or a school setting or um, you know, a hospital setting and agriculture. I do a lot of speaking in the world of agriculture. And so we got a room of people, you know, and I say to me, Are you worried about kids these days? I don't say to me, I say to them, are you worried about kids these days? Tell me about kids these days. What do you notice if you've been a teacher for more than five minutes? If you've been a parent, if you like, what have you, is there been a change in kids these days? And everybody is always, always unequivocally, across organization and industry, across countries, they're always like, mm-hmm, oh my, we kids these days are anxious and disrespectful, and they don't know how to work, and they're always on their phones, they're uh overscheduled, they're underprepared, and like it goes on and on, right? Like they're life-sucking Caillus that if you're you guys are probably too young to understand the cartoon caillou, but anyway. No, yeah, I loved Caillou. Yeah, God, I hated him so people are always like, oh my god, kids are just like, there's no hope. Okay. So then um, then I always follow that with this question. What have you noticed about the big people? Have you noticed the change in parents these days or even grandparents these days? And people like, they're overwhelmed, they're always on their phone, they're disconnected. It's interesting. You see, the the kids are not the problem. I've assessed and treated over a thousand kids in our country, and not one time have I met a bad one. Not one time have I met a kid who doesn't have the same hopes and dreams that you and I did growing up. Uh, in fact, when I sit with our kids, our three, so our twins are 13, our oldest will be 16 in August. Uh, I've never had so much hope. We we have so many conversations around our kitchen table that was not safe to have around um my kitchen table as a child that just one generation ago. And I think what's really true these days is that if the big people aren't okay, the little people don't stand a chance. We have witnessed a massive shift in one generation. And listen, I I don't want to romanticize earlier generations because I understand that like many things were wrong, but that one thing that is different, every generation evolves, which is sort of how we sustain humanity, right? We have to grow and be better and do better uh theoretically. And so people who've come before us have witnessed massive change in terms of like technological advances, sure, but things like you know, running water and electricity and penicillin. So there's been massive changes historically, but we have never witnessed this degree of the pace of change. So if you think about, you know, in I think about this, I buried my dad 387 days ago. Okay, so he died of dementia at 74. He was the most like relational human I've ever came across. I had a front row seat as his daughter to what it meant to build relationships. And I am so disappointed in myself these days because I hate, like, hate's a strong word, but I like I I do like I fucking hate people most of the time. Like I, which is a problem as a psychologist, you know, because I'm just like I'm overwhelmed with people. I'm like, what are you talking about? You are so dumb. Like, really, are we gonna start here? And and I'm just like, I'm I'm sad about that for me, right? Because I'm like, I used to, I used to like people. And so I've spent a lot of time in this last year without him sort of trying to figure out how he maintained his love for people, even you know, with dementia. I was rolling him down the nursing home sort of corridor, and he's way he didn't know who he was, but he's waving to the people and he's trying to start conversations. You know, he loved people, and so here's what I I've come to understand is that, like in one generation, he would come home from work and nobody would get him. He could, he could leave work and nobody had access to him. And so now we are the first generation of doctors, we're the first generation of parents, we're the first generation of leaders where people have had this much access to us. And the only thing that has not been updated is the human operating system. Everything else we have witnessed a massive shift in, right? How people, you know, you and I will wake up for the first time in history and check our phones before we even pee. We're checking nothing. And you know this as doctors. I mean, what happens to your nervous system? Like, it here's a tip for free. There's nothing in that email that's gonna lower your cortisol.

unknown 17:14

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 17:14

So before you even pee, we're shh shh spike in our cortisol, which is um a like you guys know this, but like what what cortisol does is it's a stress response hormone and it shoves your shoulders up to your lobes, and it gives a little bump to your blood pressure, right? Which would indicate to our nervous systems three generations ago that we're kind of in danger, like that something isn't safe in this moment, right? So, like maybe there's a cougar or somebody's gonna get us, you know? So your body sort of goes on high alert to go, like, oh shit, pay attention. Okay. So now this is happening in our bedrooms before we even pee. We're checking our email. And there's nothing in there that's gonna lower the cortisol. There's nothing in there that's gonna be like, you know what, thank you so much for serving humanity in the naturopathic world of medicine. We're just a gift to Toronto. No, if only right? Like people are complaining, they're not showing up to work, you gotta study, you've got this, and then many of us have signed up for spank, so we remember we're fat, and like all of this shit is happening before we even get out of bed. Now I'm mad. And so then we jump into our socials. First generation of humans who have access to social media, okay? And social media is not social, it is only designed to keep you there. It's a very lucrative business to keep us disconnected from each other and keep us connected to a tiny box. And it's so beautifully curated that everybody you love and everything you're interested in is there. It's also everybody's highlight reel. So you're not even peeing yet, and you're scrolling everybody else's highlight reels. Okay. Now, if you if you're old, you start in Facebook, and if you're medium, you start in um Instagram, and if you're a bit more hipper, you go straight to TikTok. Okay. And there you are laying in your very safe bed, scrolling through other people's highlight reels. Okay. And you're like this, oh Jesus, look at that bitch. She's already working out. And again, your shoulders are up here, and you're like, I need to drink more collagen. And like, this is how I this is how I woke my husband before Christmas. He was asleep, and I was scrolling to the people of old Alberta, Canada. And I said to him, Erin, we need family pictures. Like wearing creams. Everybody's wearing creams this season. I was like, you probably don't even own anything that's cream. And I'm I'm mad, I'm mad because he doesn't even own anything that's cream. He only got plaid because he's a farmer. And what a dumb choice. I should have married, you know who I could have married, and then this is happening. And then we have to come out into our kitchens. Guess who's in our kitchens? Our children. And they're asking dumb questions, you know, like where's my lunch kit? I don't know. And I'm supposed to screw the people of Canada and I'm mad. And then I strap on an Apple Watch, right? Because I'm trying not to get the dementia, so I'm gonna close my rings. And when I put that on my wrist, who has access to me? Everyone, everybody, my father-in-law, my team. Um, my my kids are all in sports, and so they have an application for us parents now called Team Snap. And there's not many versions, so which it's a very thorough application to keep you you know connected to practices and games and all the things. There's also a parent chat function, which means there's a psycho-lunatic parent on every single team. I don't care if your kids playing triple A hockey or like rodeo 101, it's like there's a lunatic on there that uses that all day long as like what time's the game, what color jersey? Oh my god, shut up! And it's so it's like a cortisol shooter, you know, like the average person gets 147 emails notifications a day.

unknown 21:19

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 21:20

What happens to our neurochemistry every time? I mean, you guys know this, you know, you know, you're studying, you're in the middle of like beginning to build the practice, all the things. When you get an email notification, are you just like, yes, like more business? No. Your nervous system is like, shit, so 147 times a day, that's coming down. We're the first generation of history that have done this. I mean, I got an entire PhD on microfiche. I had to go to the universe. This sounds like the uphill both ways conversation of our forefathers. But anyway, there was a break in my nervous system when I would have to walk to the library. There, Sundays were a day of rest. Um, everything would shut down at six o'clock. I couldn't get groceries after six o'clock at night. All of those things were very critical to this human operating system that allowed it to reset and rest at a much greater degree than we are seeing now. And I don't want to romanticize historically what has happened, but we have never ever seen rates of anxiety and depression this high. Suicide is only on the rise because the nervous system cannot regulate. And the big people have never been this dysregulated. So, my greatest concern is for the next generation, not for the children and they being problematic with access to social media or technology. It is the in the I we've never before had to focus on big people. I I spoke at the United Nations and I said the question to me was what do we do about this mental health crisis? And I said, here's the three things. If I had all the money in the world and all the power in the world, I would invest exponentially in three groups of people. Parents, particularly foster parents, teachers and police officers. Those who hold the most dysregulated among us, those who are charged and have chosen in their respective professions or roles to regulate people, to show them how to do it. If they are dysregulated and they're some of the most underfunded, overwhelmed groups in this moment, if they're not okay, the people they serve don't stand a chance. And here's what is true about that is that you can't tell anybody how to calm down, you have to show them. You can't tell anybody how to be anti racist or inclusive or kind, you've got to show them. And when you're overwhelmed and your nervous system has never felt this ride, we are gonna have a massive gap in being able to teach the next generation how to.

SPEAKER_02 23:44

Mm-hmm. It's interesting as you were talking. I was thinking about a couple of things. There's so many ways we can go with this. Um, Jeanette, I don't know if you remember, we we took a trip. So Jeanette and I just had a whole year of studying for board exams, which I think was one of the loneliest years of my life because I sat at this laptop all day long studying. And we decided we were gonna take a four-day trip out west. And I told my work, listen, I need these four days off. I really need it. And we went out and we were at Moraine Lake, arguably one of the prettiest sites I've ever seen in my life. And I got 46 messages on Slack from work. And I just remember, like I shortly after quit my job because it was I can't subscribe to that. I get it that that's the generation we're in, but I can't. I was at my absolute limit, probably because of the studying and all of the other things too. But it's it's just not natural for people to have that much access.

SPEAKER_03 24:49

Yeah. And I can tell you, like, oh, like don't worry about it or whatever, but you can't, it's one thing to say that to someone, but you know.

SPEAKER_00 24:56

Yeah. Yeah. And and we're too new into this system because, like, listen, um, introduction of the smartphone, I'm sorry, was 2006, introduction of the forward-facing camera was 2009. We didn't see a decline, a measurable decline in the mental health of humans until about 2014, 2015. Okay, so it took a while, which is true. I mean, we thought smoking was good once until we started to gather the data after, you know, decades. And it's like this is now, we're just sort of now going, oh shit. And Jonathan Hyatt was sort of the first guy, he wrote The Anxious Generation to sort of call attention to the fact that, you know, the nervous systems of children can't navigate the amount of like the the horse is out of the barn, which is how he speaks about it, which is very true. I mean, when I had our son in 2010, our oldest, I was like, oh my God, we got to get him on technology. Like, he needs baby Einstein. And like I can remember him at Christmas at three years old, like running an iPad, and all of us be like, oh my God, that's so amazing. And now we're just sort of like getting the information and the data that would suggest, like, oh my gosh, it is stealing the opportunities for social development, for boredom, for the brain to take a break and a rest. And when we don't, you know, we're we're giving cell phones because of peer pressure, you know, to 10-year-olds, because we've also never had this many single-parent households. We've never seen this rate of, you know, there's there's a significant decline in siblings and access to grandparent and grandparent-like figures. So we're using communication devices to stay on top of what we used to have a village to do. And when that becomes younger and younger, I mean, our our twins are 13. The rule in our house is that you don't get a cell phone until you're 14, if and when you deserve it to be true. The amount of pressure that I'm getting from my 13-year-old twins, who are very privileged humans, let's just be clear, that they cannot believe that they're the only children in the land, the large land area, who do not have access to a cell phone. And I'm like, oh, really? Now they have iPads, which allow them to communicate to their friends sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 27:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:08

But mom, we are we're we're iPad kids. I mean, which is apparently the equivalent of death. And I I'm just like, I understand how easy it is, particularly when you're trying to keep your kids happy and regulated and all the things to just be like, okay, you know what? Okay, fine. Don't use it for these certain things, which you know then instantly they have access. I mean, on their iPads too. So I'm not no hero here, but access to things that we would never expose our children to in real life, right? They could Google a beheading, they have access to any pornographic site that would show them things that their brain can't make sense of right now, and instant access to all of those things. So John's right in Jonathan Height is so correct in, you know, sort of becoming the voice of reason for so many of us that sort of just went like, whoa, this is fantastic. Now we're like, shit. I think where we also need a major conversation, and this is the hope for me in this next book, is really about what are we doing for the big people. Because I, my mom, who was the, I think, quintessential mom, she I felt so lucky in so many ways to have her as a mother, now as a grandmother, is equally as disconnected as I am. She's on level 5,067 in Candy Crush. And so, you know, there's your grandbabies, and she's like a lovely human, and she's like, you know, on the iPad, just like the rest of us are, you know? And so so much of that village is also disconnected in a way that we've never experienced before. And so it's a it's a call to action right now. The urgency around this is really fantastic to me. Around the responsibility for those of us, middle agers, um, parents, grandparents, to come back to the table, to understand the importance of showing up at hockey rinks and soccer fields and watching our kids' games and looking after teachers so they can be more present in the classroom. Curriculum doesn't matter right now. And you know, that's kind of difficult when school boards are hiring me to have conversations with them. But I'm like, listen, I think you should sell a Chromebook on Kijiji that you've provided to the students, like just take one or two and and and get like 400 bucks and and buy a high-quality meat tray for your staff. And if you ever see what happens when you bring a high-quality meat tray into an elementary school or a high school staff, like they they'll leave the kids unattended. They can't even believe themselves. They they're they're jumping over people to get the hummus and the cubasaw, and and they're in the staff room, like looking at each other, going like, holy shit, you still work here.

unknown 29:59

Huh.

SPEAKER_00 30:01

There's very few opportunities for them to reconnect and even have that place of like, okay, right? This is why we see a higher um sort of um, if I take the first responder world, for example, which you're probably more familiar with, I spent a lot of time as a police psychologist looking at the degree of physical distress and emotional distress. If I were to just take three, um police uh EMS and emergency room physician, we see emergency medical services personnel far more affected by their job than even ER docs. Why? Because there's nowhere to put it. In a hospital setting, you often have nurses, those who have an emotional language, um, who historically have typically been women, um, still a vast majority of people there. You need somebody to do what my okay, so my favorite quote of all time, I'll tell you this. It hangs over here. It's in my clinic, it's also in our kitchen. It's by a dead guy named Ram Doss. He said this, we are all just here walking each other home. Nobody gets out of here alive. Your role as naturopathic doctors will be the the legacy you will leave will be in the in the walking. How you navigate humans through some of their hardest times. Rarely will people come to you when shit's going well. Rarely do people come to me and say, like, I'm I'm doing great. I'd just like to see a psychologist for wellness. Yeah. Generally, it's like, oh, I think I got bipolar. I I want to, you know, should I leave my husband? Should I quit my? I don't know. My job is to walk you home.

SPEAKER_03 31:51

Right.

SPEAKER_00 31:51

Your job is to get people to tune back into their physical bodies to really understand what's happening here. And we know the body keeps the score. And in this very noisy world, our jobs have never become more important because it really is the slowing down of the nervous system to come back home. And what I think is so interesting about that is really sort of rewriting the script for our patients for humanity around how we do that again, how we go into the best parts of us before we can ever consider serving or going out. And just putting that cycle on relentless repeat. And people say this to me all the time: is it really that easy? Go in, go out, put it on repeat? Yeah. Because the only thing that has not been updated is the human operating system. We are not any more complex in this system than our ancestors were.

SPEAKER_03 32:44

I love that. Um, I want to just talk about the phone social media aspect of things just to put this to bed. But obviously, like the phones and the constant simulation is affecting us mentally. Like we we all know that. But like practically speaking, like, do you think that it's enough to put like screen time limits? Like, what are like practical tips that you like to give? Like, is it enough to just like not check your phone in the morning? I know some people are like, oh, I don't check my phone for 30 minutes and then I'll check it, or I won't check it after 5 p.m. or like what are some like things that we can kind of put into our day-to-day routine that we can help with this kind of stuff?

SPEAKER_00 33:23

I think the greatest contribution for you and me in this next season is to have relentless conversations about the nervous system. Relentless conversations about what it means to feel emotionally regulated. The only system that has not been updated, and we've never, we don't talk about this nearly enough. We talk a lot about behaviorism, we talk a lot about, you know, what are the things I need to do to meet a limit or a criteria. What we don't talk a lot about is what it means to regulate a nervous system. So you know this. You can drink all the kale, you can do all the yoga, but if you do it in a dysregulated body, it's a waste of time. And so I think there needs to be a reintroduction to what it means to truly go in. And so if I were to think about what that looks like in real life, I often say this, okay, I want you to consider right now in this moment, wherever you're listening to this, to just drop your shoulders, to drop your tongue from the roof of your mouth, or more importantly, to sort of relax your jaw. One of the most primitive responses to stress is we lock our jaw. And historically that made sense because our ancestors would do that when the bad guys were coming over the hill to be prepared for hand-to-hand combat. Okay, so remember, we still live in the same nervous system that our ancestors did. And so now what locks our jaw is like an email notification or a watch notification. So we spend the vast majority of the day signaling to this nervous system that the bad guys are coming. Okay. So if we were to reverse engineer that, I often say to people, I just want you to experience this in your body for just a second, right? Drop your shoulders, relax your jaw. Just as an aside, too, I'll tell you this. Um, the Canadian Dentistry Association has said we've never seen this much increase in TMJ.

SPEAKER_01 35:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:18

Um the the and and again, so people are like, oh my God, well, it must be the stress, which is true, but it's the nervous system signal that you're not safe. So people are now using Botox injections like rapidly to dec to unleash, unlock their jaw.

unknown 35:35

Crazy.

SPEAKER_00 35:36

Um, but the data just further suggests to us that this is what this is a nervous system conversation, not a behavioral conversation necessarily. Okay. So let's drop this, drop this, wiggle your toes, and let your gut out. And take in two deep inhales and an exhale. This is Andrew Hubenbrunn's work. Go like this. That is the greatest breathing technique to single to your body that she's safe or they're safe. And it's interesting because you'll know when you do this, what does it sound? What does this feel like in your body when you go like this? It feels like a sob. Yeah. Yeah. And we sob deeply like that when we're going to release things. And so, again, when you do that, and the reverse engineer of that is to do drop your shoulders, watch your jaw, watch your that is a regulated body. And when you start to indicate to your body in that moment, it starts to believe in that second that it's safe. And many people will get tired. When I do this, like uh on stage, um, I can watch that a number of people who really sink into this will start to yawn. And this happens at the end of any deep trauma work that I've ever done. I know it's successful when I can get even somebody with the most severe PTSD. If at the end of a session that we've done some trauma work in, EMDR, ART, some of those very um some of my favorite interventions, um, really just indicate to the body that they're safe in that moment. And my favorite conversation at the end of a session like that is if somebody says to me, Can I just stay here and nap? When you get tired, it is the first time in the history of a very long time that um you've indicated to your body that they're safe. And you can imagine, you know, for both of you, uh, I remember the time, you know, where studying is happening all the time. There's like so much pressure. Everybody's worried, you know, like what are you gonna do? Oh my god, is this and we're now looking after normally, you know, at this age, our parents, our own children, trying to develop our own relationships. And so we've got so much on our plates that we rarely, and now we're connected to Apple watches and smart rings, and all the our phones are near us all the time. So we're like this, and we're studying often on a computer, so you have access to all of your notifications, da-da-da-da-da. That we rarely do this on purpose. So I started to think about what is go in look like, and it means like for me, it's like putting the word shoulders on a sticky note on my bathroom mirror, on my computer screen, um, really on purpose, having cues that every time I sort of step into our garage, which is where we park in our house, that before I come through the garage door, I need to regulate my system just for 20 seconds. So a couple of those two deep inhales and an exhale, can I remind my nervous system that even though I've held other people's stuff all day long, in this moment I'm safe. My babies are safe, I'm home in a place that we've created for our family very deliberately. Can I remind myself of those things? Um Richard Branson, I think, has also come up with this very interesting thing. Um, considering three things around tech, he was like tech-free zones, tech-free times, and tech sabbaticals. And I really like this concept. So he he said, as you sort of talked about on purpose, what is best for our nervous systems is to wait an hour before you wake up and to check any tech, which is sort of impossible for many of us, not impossible, but like we feel like it's impossible for many of us. Um, an hour before bed. So not bringing devices into your bedroom, um, which is so wild when we do this. And so I've I've done this, I've I've attempted to do this at least one night a week, okay? Where I read a book before bed instead of watching a show. And what that does to your nervous system is remarkable. You'll fall asleep faster and go deeper more quickly than if you um just continue to take all of the inputs of a physical screen, right? Because you're using your eyes, your sound, the all of the things that are sort of dysregulating your nervous system. That's what a good show, like Dateline, is supposed to do. And the vast majority of us are now very invested in in true crime. Yeah. Um because all day long we've been overwhelmed. So we don't want to watch something that's gonna be like so cute, like some little rom-com. We want to watch murder. So we want to lay in our bed and watch Vanessa from Tallahassee, Florida, go to the bar alone and she's gonna die. Again, we're in our beds watching this shit, and your body doesn't know that Vanessa's not in your bed.

SPEAKER_01 40:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:24

You know, you're watching Narcos, and Pablo Escobar, the greatest Colombian drug dealer of all time, is murdering people. And you're just like, oh my god, go, Pablo. And then at the end of the day, you probably get this because so many of my patients say to me, like, I don't know what's wrong with me, I can't sleep. Yeah. We've spent the rest of like, maybe it's the depression, maybe, maybe you're going through the change.

unknown 40:49

No!

SPEAKER_00 40:49

We're the first generation of humans to have cortisol ramp this high, indicating to ourselves that we're on the precipice of danger all day long.

SPEAKER_02 40:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:00

And there is no script in place yet on how we undo that, how we regulate that. And so the reverse engineer to that is really for me focusing on that go-in piece, really, lots more conversations for those of us in your profession and mine to be really breaking that down in terms of what that looks like to get regulated in your own nervous system. And then we go out, then we give it away, then we understand that it's not just a selfish endeavor to regulate, that when you're regulated, you have access to empathy and kindness and to use our privilege for good, which is to do little things in our world, like wave at our neighbors, hand out a compliment, buy somebody a coffee in this very lonely world. That's how we reconnect in this disconnected space. And then you put all of that on relentless repeat. You will never arrive. That is the cycle that is life. Um, but being able to serve this universe in any capacity is predicated on the go-in, and we're not very good at that.

SPEAKER_02 42:01

It's funny because we're in this world of everybody wants a hack to get anywhere. Yeah. And so I think it's just the easy question is like, okay, so should we just put screen time limits on and like, should we do this? And it's like nobody's focusing on that regulation piece, right? Right.

SPEAKER_00 42:18

So hard. Just make it real piece. Yeah. Yeah. And it is so hard, right? Because it is so sexy not to. And in our overwhelmed nervous states, we just want something easy and fun and safe and something to entertain us. And so, John, again, back to John's work, John Heid's work, he's like, You, we've never seen two things in humans right now, like we're seeing to this degree right now. One is sleep deprivation, and two is attention fragmentation. So, sleep deprivation, you can understand, really affects the way that we're going to be human. Because the more tired you are, the less I have a runway for bullshit.

SPEAKER_01 42:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:59

And then I get more divisive politically, economically, I get chippier. I dig in to one side of the spectrum, and then have no access to the benefit of the doubt, have no desire to understand what the opposing political party even talks about because they're dumb. And we then just collaborate or gather on our social media platforms, people who look like us, sound like us, and talk like us, which you can imagine, despite the fact that we've tried very hard to have conversations about anti-racism and feminism and how do we sort of debunk the divisiveness of the world, it is a breeding ground for divisiveness. Because in our overwhelmed, sleep-deprived state, I just block and bless everybody who doesn't believe what I believe. And so the fight, and Brene Brown has said this historically, which I think is one of her like finest lines of all time. She said, People are hard to hate close up. Yeah. And when we're working from home more often, when we're doing assessments from home more often, when we are automating everything, it's becoming even even this stat will get you in Toronto. I I love this. This is a Canadian statistic. 72% of all restaurant orders ordered in a restaurant from a restaurant last year were not eaten in a restaurant.

unknown 44:19

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 44:21

Isn't that crazy? So you think about like the night, the vibe that is downtown Toronto, that the scene of exposure to like sights and sounds and different cultural traditions, and you know, even being served, you know, my daughter serving you at a restaurant downtown and her like screwing up her order. And you, as a kind human who's not sleep deprived and wants to care for the world, just says to her, Okay, baby girl, it's okay. Hey, don't worry, write it down next time, okay?

unknown 44:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:49

And you would teach her that lesson because we're just walking each other home. If I said to her, take down everybody's order, she'd be like, no, nobody writes shit down, mom. I'm not writing stuff, you know, and you giving that, you do you understand? So, like, that's just a small example, but like the lack of exposure to people really requires this like sort of natural understanding of how we, the rhythm of relationship, is something that you can't teach. You gotta go through a breakup to learn how to survive it. You gotta, I mean, this anti-bullying rhetoric is always exhausting for me too, because kids are assholes, people are assholes. You have to learn how to deal with that. And it's not, I mean, I'm not saying like the extreme versions, and people will come at us for this probably, but I like it is a rite of passage to learn how to deal with negativity, to learn how to lose. And when everybody just gets a fucking medal, yeah, take away the opportunity to learn what it means to be second place or eight. Place and how you know from a coaching perspective, that's sad. That's hard. It sucks. I know you wanted to win the candy trophy, but you're shitty at hockey. So maybe you should try harder, or maybe you should play chess. Like you shouldn't say those things, but you know what I mean. Like it's like you know, I I watch like some of the hardest things I've ever had to do. Both of our my middle guy is a big lacrosse hockey guy, and will say to me, We've never won anything. He plays like middle age, he's been cut from like double-A teams, and then so like, you know, whatever. And like some of our hardest moments is when he's laying in bed after he's just been cut and he's sobbing. And like, I want to throat punch those goddamn evaluators. I want to go back out there, be like, You think you think number 13 is better than my son? Show me, show me the date, like that. I because I don't want his heart to break, right? Yeah, and the greatest lesson is we then get to go through all the hard things. I know this is, I know it's shitty. It sucks, buddy. I don't want to play for this coach, I don't want to play in this team. I know. Yeah. What's the hardest part? Come back home. That teaching of emotional regulation is far more important than any team he will end up on. Because the vast majority of anything in in sport, right? You know, 0.08% of kids will make it even to the NCAA level, like any college, junior college level, right? So we're we're basically coaching our kids to play in the beer league, okay? To to understand how to regulate emotion, how to what happens when a ref makes a bad call or you get cut from a team or you have an asshole coach or something happens in the those are the lessons that are really critically important. And unfortunately, or fortunately, I mean, my husband is a volunteer coach, I've coached hockey my whole life. It's like you you typically get a lot of emotionally dysregulated humans just trying to do the best they can. And so they do with the best of intentions, you know, telling kids they're not, you know, skating like a girl, or they're being, you know, they bench them and there's no conversation around how to regulate emotion. The intention is fantastic. And it used to work more effectively even one generation ago because we had much more proximity to each other. Now we come into those dressing rooms far more dysregulated than we ever have in history. So we need to have a conversation with big people about the importance of regulating first, collecting and then directing.

SPEAKER_02 48:02

Mm-hmm. It's interesting because you had said this at the beginning of the episode too. It's not the kids. And I think it's so easy to say, like, oh my gosh, like kids can't handle loss anymore. And we used to, you know, I remember like being a competitive dancer, some of the things that we had to deal with, like not getting into the group you wanted to be in and whatever. And it's so easy to just be like, wow, kids can't handle it. But it's not the kids, it's the big people wanting to protect, like it's a good intention. They want to protect the kids, but it's actually affecting our ability to emotionally regulate, right?

SPEAKER_00 48:38

Mm-hmm. And I think it's like, you know, again, right? Like if we're if our nervous systems as parents, as big people, have never, as aunties and uncles and cookums and, you know, whatever, like if we've never been this overwhelmed, the job of little people is to lose their minds. The job of big people is to walk them home.

SPEAKER_01 48:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:57

And the chaos is necessary to learn the calm. You don't come out with emotional regulation strategies. You actually do. You we all get three for free, as you know, fight, flight, and freeze. Um, and that is developed in the very most primitive part of our brain, in the limbic system. Um, all mammals have that. What separates humans from most other mammals is we have the prefrontal cortex that wraps around the limbic system. And that houses everything we've ever learned in our lives, right? Like how to use our words, how to be kind, how to apologize, any cultural tradition, any language you speak, any musical instrument you play. Okay. And Dan Siegel, who's one of my favorite psychiatrists, said, I want you to think about this like a lid. You know, that prefrontal cortex is like a lid that wraps around the limbic system. When that lid is on, you have access to everything you've ever learned in your life. When you bring a baby home from the hospital, what they do to let you know they need something is they flip that lid. They lose their friggin' mind, right? They get back to only fight, flight, and freeze because that's all they have. They don't have anything up there yet that just says, like, listen, mom, I'm gonna need a bum change, or like, get me out of here, grandma's voice is annoying. They lose their friggin' mind, and the job of big people is to walk them home in a very universal response to a crying infant, which is a regulated or which is a rhythmic exchange like this. Hmm, okay, okay, okay, okay. And every time we put that lid back on, we're creating a neural pathway that allows them to regulate when we're not there. And you can imagine if the big people's lids are flipped all the time, they have no capacity to give that to the next generation. Not ability. They they're still wonderful humans when they're regulated, but we're really missing incorporating a script for emotional regulation for big people in a time where we just offered so many things that dysregulate us.

SPEAKER_02 50:41

My gosh, this conversation is incredible. I knew it would be good, but I didn't know how. Like, I I am not one to say I'm speechless because I'm very rarely speechless, but I do feel like I'm like, oh my God, like this is just I haven't heard anybody talk about it like this.

SPEAKER_00 50:57

Really? That's awesome. Yeah, it's it's really it's really kind of great. And I think our our like our call to action around here is to really like how do we start to create the scripts for what we we can conceivably do in an over so we don't continue to sort of like blame us big people who are already tired. We're like, you want more from us? Yes. Like we we also cannot do any more for the children, right? So how do we sort of honor that we are in this place in our nervous system? So we didn't ask for this. We didn't ask for this degree of technological advancement. And it's and it's an honor to witness it. I mean, I I love you'll know this, you know, in your in in for sure the medical profession. I mean, I hope that we live long enough to see a cure for cancer. I think because of technological advances, I hope we get to see, you know, pan creatic cancer isn't a death sentence. It is something that we, you know, that I think about even our children, you know, their opportunities to face time with their grandparents all the time. You know, when my dad was dying, they didn't, you know, we couldn't physically get them there all the time, but they still got to see him. And so those technological advances aren't the problem. Yeah, it's how we use them that becomes the issue because the hardest thing we will ever do is look at each other. And we just need to, I think, consider more opportunities to allow that to happen. To really that's our call to action in the go-out phase. Are we waving at our neighbors? Are we showing our children? You know, I told you last night I did a fundraiser for make a wish. And it's a Monday night, it's two and a half hours away from our children's school. And I said to my husband, we're bringing the kids. And, you know, I need their help. I need them to meet people and greet people and watch their mom be magic. Yeah. And then panic and watch as all the shit goes wrong and people complain because I said fuck on stage, or you know, something happened and they're like, Oh my God, mom, you shouldn't have talked about milk shooting out of your. I was like, zip it. You know, so like it's like all of those things that I think are really, really critical in sort of allowing, you know, gifting the next generation, whoever that is, you know, your nieces, your nephews, whoever. I mean, my both of my nieces were in the audience, like all of those things I think are are beautiful opportunities to remind our villages that we're just we're doing this together, you know? And moms really are one of the loneliest groups right now. And it's like, you can't do it all. Who's your village? Who will be the one? You know, and it's usually the best friends, moms that are some of our greatest supporters, right? You know, like and that and that's become so critically important to us. Like the in our very big position of privilege, like, yep, bring your friends home at lunch. Yep, uh, like everybody can come at you. Yep, I'll drop, you know, and my mom was here not very long ago, and like live, my daughter um comes in with like five friends at lunchtime, you know, and they're just like bust through the door, and like three of them are in the pantry, like ripping, and my mother's like, oh they are they not asking? And I was like, mom, actually, that's on me. Like I have said to all of their friends, like, if you need snacks, the pantry's yours. And she's like, that they don't even ask. I would be mortified if my grandchildren went into somebody's house and did not ask. I said, me too. But your grandchildren have never had to worry about whether they have a lunch or not. And I'm not one to ask all of these kids if they have enough for lunch. If they need to eat, they can eat, right? She's like, okay, I understand, but just really, can we still teach the manners? I said, Yes, we can. Yes, we can. So it's like it's this interesting sort of space of like, we are now mothered by a group of humans, and this is true every generation, but particularly this in the sort of the dramatic shift that mothered by a group of people who have no script for how we do this. And so we now, you know, could depend on that historically so much to assist in that process. But we're now caught in between a generation of women that are um, you know, that have a skill set that is not entirely applicable and access to 48 million opinions like this for very from very uneducated people dressed in creams, staying saying stupid shit that they have no authority to be commenting on. Like, you know, we're scrolling wondering, you know, if our kid has ADHD, and like there's stupid things going like, did you, did you have a dolphin-assisted pool birth?

unknown 55:22

No.

SPEAKER_00 55:22

Oh, you didn't. Okay. If there was no marine life present, then this one's gonna have the ADHD. You know, like stupid shit like that exists everywhere. And it looks very credible. They got a website, you know what I mean? You're like, fuck me. Like, and so many times people will now come into your practice and like they'll tell you what's wrong with them. And you're like, buddy, okay, uh, good job. Let's just take a B here. Okay. And you know, in in our respective professions, you know, people tell me all the time they think they got borderline, or particularly their ex has is narcissist all the time. That's the thing here. And just a tip for free, not everybody's ex can be a narcissist, okay? Um, but so it's like it's it's really sort of gonna be this this attempt at even, you know, speaking to professionals about the importance of regulating first and then assessing and then treating. Because it's like you can't get to a good assessment if you don't regulate first. And we're often called to treat. So we're we're making up conversations all the time, like, okay, you're anxious, obviously. Okay, some take some deep breaths. We need to put you on this. Like, no, no, no, no. Maybe you don't need to take deep breaths if you're getting the shit beat out of you every night. Like, I'm gonna need to figure out the assessment first, right? And so the regulation is a new addition to, I think, a professional responsibility, whether you're a teacher or a police officer or a naturopathic doctor, regulate first, then assess, and then treat. If safety is an issue, all better bets are off. I don't do any of those things, right? Because if I'm in a professional role or I'm as a parent, take in charge of safety matters more than anything. But that happens in about 0.2% of anything we're called to do. The other 99% of the things that we're gonna do really need to have a conversation around regulate first, assess, and then treat in that order.

SPEAKER_02 57:10

I like that. I wrote that down to refer back to. That's great. Um, you had mentioned that the hardest thing we will ever do is look each other in the eye. And it has me thinking about modern dating, online dating. We're not looking each other in the eye, even if we wanted to.

SPEAKER_00 57:25

Oh my God. Okay, listen. Can we get into this a little bit? Yes, I am not jealous at all of people who are in this dating world right now. Number one, again, the human operating system has not updated since I was on the market or our grandmothers were on the market. Okay. And if you we're not designed for this much choice. We, if I take us back, and again, not to romanticize historically, but if I were to take you back to like my mother's day, my mother's time, right? You had two options. The Jones boy up the road, okay. So he was kind of fat, but he could cook. Or like the Lawson boy, you know what I mean? Like he was fit, fucking lift a truck, he's dumb, but he was hot. And so then you had to pick, you know, who would fit into the family system the best. Now, like, and again, relationships have always been difficult to maintain. We can talk about this and they always will be, right? If you've you've spoken to anybody who's been married, my husband and I have been married for 18 years. It is so hard. And it's always been hard, okay? Because the depth of relationship takes forgiveness and repair and work. The Gottmans have done probably the greatest amount of research in the space, 45 years of marital research, and they would say it comes down to one thing. The greatest predictor between couples who make it and couples that don't isn't how much sex you have, isn't how much alike you are, isn't how much money you make. It is your capacity or lack thereof to repair. Not when things go wrong, or sorry, not if when things go wrong, but when. And conflict is part of any healthy relationship. What you do with it matters. And to be able to navigate relationship in a healthy way, conflict in a healthy way, you need some capacity of emotional regulation. And so what I'm looking for in a partner often, or when I'm thinking about, you know, the importance of these conversations, is somebody who can stay the course when things go rough. Somebody who has a capacity to say, I'm sorry, and not end that, not follow that up with a butt because it erases the apology, you know? So in this online dating world, you know, dating apps are not dating apps. They are like meeting apps. Dating requires you to sort of suss out somebody and navigate that sort of conversation. And it's very hard to settle on somebody because you're like, oh shit. I I mean, many people, as you know, are on dates checking if they've got any more matches. Right. So, like, you're already like, oh, this guy's pants are too short, he's got a lisp. Um, I don't think this guy brushed his teeth. We're like, fuck, next, you know. And we've never seen such a high, the highest rate of divorce right now is women over 50. Because we are now quickly understanding that we have done a disservice. I don't know if we're understanding this, but this is the truth. We've done a disservice to 50% of the population. We have not given them an emotional language. Those who are men or identify as men uh have not had the same access to an emotional language that we have provided for our daughters. And historically this made sense, right? Women were the nurturers, they stayed home, they had access to sort of soft, gentle things, whereas like we needed this dragon slayers and the infrastructure builders. So we're like, you got this, fucking right. But we would always come back to a kitchen table this big. So we had proximity. So we didn't necessarily need that emotional language to the degree that dramatically we've needed it now in the last 10 years. Highest rate of suicide in our country by a landslide is middle-aged white men. By a landslide, three out of four. That exact cohort has the most privilege on the planet. White, straight, able-bodied, and with a penis. You have access to the most privilege on this planet irrefutably. Okay. And that exact same cohort by a landslide is killing themselves at a much higher rate. White men, even over men of color. Um, and I was interested in that particular piece of data, and I was like, how calmly? Because you think marginalized humans have so much more on their plate. It's interesting, the data would suggest that when a a man of color enters a room, right? Particularly in a sea of white men, they are looking for community. They're seeking somebody who looks like them and sounds like them. They inherently in their bones for safety, historically, but also they understand how to build community in their bones. White men enter a room looking for competition. And historically you had somewhere home to go to, right? You had a mother, a grandmother, or somebody who could envelop you in that way and not necessarily make you say your words, but they would rub your back or get you a snack or do all of those nurturing things that would regulate your nervous system. Okay. So you didn't have to necessarily do that now. Marginalized humans um have inherently in their bones an understanding of how we build community. They will be our smartest, most trusted companions as we attempt to sew this glow back together. Because they know how to do it. And we, I mean, white women step on the the shoulders of women of color historically under the guise of misogyny. Um, we debilitate, uh, debilitate's not the right word. We uh desecrate, we undermine anybody who um doesn't look like us, sound like us all the time under the, you know, bias is rampant. Um, even if, you know, I mean, I think about my racial bias is deep, deep, deep, deep, deep. Uh, you know, my unlearning of indigenous experiences in our country has been massive. I got a PhD in this country and not one time did I learn about the residential school system. Not one time. Children in care in this country, uh, across provinces, but generally they uh are about 70% of kids in care right now are indigenous across our provinces and they only make up 10% of the population. Not one time in my way privilege did I go like, what the fuck happened here? No, like you if you tell a group of people that they're a piece of shit uh their whole life, that you attempt to uh a cultural genocide, uh your capacity to reintegrate and believe in your bones that you're worthy will take multiple generations, particularly when bias is so rich. So it is so interesting to have the conversations about what it means to create a healthy dynamic. And it is always, all in all ways, back to human connection.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:49

We talked about a lot today, and we have to have you on for a second talk because there's so many, so many ways we could go with this conversation. But I do want to end off the conversation on a little bit of a high note. Um, what gives you hope about people right now? What gives you hope about the next generation, our future? Where can we go from here?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:09

I love it. Okay, so I have never had this much, I've never had this much hope for humanity. Um, I've never been so excited to be alive. Um, it it's never been easier to build a business or be successful. And I'll tell you why. Um, because the bar is so low. You actually don't have to be great right now. Like the call to action isn't to do anything dramatic, it's only to do the next best right kind thing. And if you have that in you today, you can not only change a life, you can save it. And and what I need from you and me today, if you know, if we're in the same community and we're raising babies together or, you know, walking each other home, all I need you to do today is give somebody a compliment at a grocery store. I need you to drop your shoulders. I need you to give the gift of, you know, putting something healthy or good in your body, of getting some sun on your face, of doing the little things that will bring us back to the best parts of us. Because I don't think uh we've we haven't lost our ability to be great. This is still a gorgeous human race. Um, many of us have just temporarily, I hope, lost access to it.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:15

And so our job is to just find our way back home together.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:19

I love that. I think it's funny when people ask us, are you worried that AI is gonna take your job? I don't think Chat GPT is walking any of us home.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:28

I am not. We'll try.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:29

We'll try. But yes, you're right. You're right. You're exactly right.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:34

This was absolutely incredible. Honestly, I can already say this is my favorite episode we've recorded in the past two years that we've recorded and we've recorded with some amazing people. So thank you so much. Um, tell us, I know you have your book Feeling Scene. You're writing your next one. Give us a little bit of the details about the book, where people can buy it, where people can follow you online, yeah. When it's their tech time, not when it's their tech first time.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:00

Yeah, exactly. Right, right, right. Um, I um yeah, I love your community to be a part of ours. Everything is at drjodycarrington.com. And then um we're on you know, all the socials. Feeling scene was the last book, uh, Kids East Days was the first one. And the next one um is gonna be called, I think, the best in us, and it's a liberation for the brilliant and the broken and the bone-tired.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:20

I love it. Thank you so much, Dr. Jodi.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:24

Uh, thanks for having me. It was an honor, girls.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:33

Thanks for listening to Girls Gone Wellness. If this episode made you feel seen, smarter, or just a little less alone on your wellness journey, send it to a friend or tag us on Instagram at Girls Gone Wellness Podcast.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:45

Before you go, take a second to leave us a review. It helps more than you know, and it helps more women like you find their way to wellness that actually works. Want more? Head to Girls Gone Wellness Podcast.com to be the first to know about new episodes, exclusive merch drops, and everything we're building behind the scenes. Because feeling good in your body shouldn't feel like a full-time job. It should feel grounded, confident, and maybe even a little sexy too.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:09

We'll see you next week. Until then, trust your body, question the noise, and don't let anyone tell you you need fixing. This is wellness on your terms.