What are the questions we should be asking about loneliness?

Loneliness is everywhere, and most of us are pretending it is not.

In this episode of Listening for the Questions, Patti Fletcher, Dan Ward, and Lynne Cuppernull take on a topic that is deeply personal, widely shared, and still difficult to talk about. This conversation is not about being alone. It is about disconnection from others, from community, and sometimes from ourselves. It is about the quiet ways loneliness shows up even in full rooms, busy lives, and successful careers.

Together, they explore why loneliness is rising even as we are more connected than ever. They look at the difference between solitude, isolation, and loneliness. They examine how cultural expectations, especially around gender, shape who experiences loneliness and who feels allowed to admit it. They also discuss how loneliness often hides behind productivity, independence, and the appearance of having everything together.

The conversation moves beyond the individual and into the systems around us. What happens when community structures weaken. What happens when relationships become transactional. What happens when independence is valued more than interdependence. These are not abstract ideas. They shape how we live and how we connect.

As always, this is not an episode focused on solving the problem. It is about asking better questions. Loneliness is not a personal failure. It is a human signal.

This episode invites you to notice where loneliness may be present in your life, how you respond to it, and what might change if we approached connection with more honesty, intention, and care.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Candace Pert: Genius, Greed, and Madness in the World of Science by Pamela Ryckman  https://www.amazon.com/Candace-Pert-Genius-Madness-Science/dp/0306831465

Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation. U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community
 https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory.pdf

Health Benefits of Hugs
 https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/the-health-benefits-of-hugging-202202162693

Psychology Today. Male Loneliness
 https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/loneliness

Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone

Baby monkey bonding with stuffed animal
 https://people.com/baby-monkey-at-zoo-goes-viral-for-having-stuffed-animal-as-friend-11908504

Available wherever you get your podcasts.

Listening for the Questions is where curiosity is our compass.

Transcript

Lynne 0:14

Hello and welcome back to Listening for the Questions. I'm Lane Cuppernal. And once upon a time, I was an extrovert on the Myers-Briggs type indicator. But as I've aged, I have definitely slid into more of a preference for introversion. I love spending time with cozy groups of people I've known for a long time. Hello to my dish bags if you're listening.

Dan 0:37

Hey everybody, Dan Ward here. I'm an engineer and a military technologist. I'm also an author, a juggler, and a punk, and I am a big extrovert. I love being with big crowds of people, and I love making new friends.

Patti 0:50

And I'm Dr. Patty Fletcher, and I can't stop giggling just for folks to know. Lynn said dish bag, not the other DB. So I am the comic on this show. I'm also a recovering C-suite executive from Big Tech, leadership futurist working at the intersection of people, business, technology, data. I am a best-selling author. And like Lynn, and folks who know me might be surprised, I went from being an extrovert on Myers Briggs to being an introvert, but I think I'm an extroverted introvert, and I probably have been all along. I love being around people and I'm exhausted at the end of the day, except for when I spend time with Dan, my favorite extrovert. I am so happy to be here with my two very good friends, um, Dan and Lynn, who make me feel always welcome in a little less alone.

Lynne 1:42

Patty has named it. Today we are gonna talk about a really important topic. We're gonna ask the questions that we should be listening for about loneliness. And as usual, we like to set the stage with some foundational questions. Uh so when we talk about loneliness, maybe we should ask is there a difference between loneliness, solitude, and being alone?

Patti 2:08

Lynn, I love that. And you know, I they sit here and go, and does it matter, right? Does understanding the differences help us know how to work through these things?

Dan 2:21

Oh, I love where you're going with this. So what do you think? Should should we answer some of those questions? Maybe, maybe just a little bit?

Lynne 2:27

Yes, yes. You know, we love to, we secretly love to answer some of the questions, or maybe not so secretly. Um, so yes, I think we should. There's a really good report that the former U.S. Surgeon General, Vivek uh Murphy, put out in 2023 that talks about a loneliness epidemic. Uh, and it's in our show notes uh for those of you who want to find it. And in it he says loneliness is more than a bad feeling. It's about social disconnection that actually makes people feel less healthy.

Patti 3:03

Yeah, you know, this report, I couldn't get enough of it. I earmarked it, I, you know, I read it, I thought about a few things. One, I'm gonna bring the feminism lens in here. There is a woman, Candace Purt, um, when she was at the NIH, and my friend Pamela Reichman wrote the book, uh biography on her, so check it out. But Candace, back in I think the early 70s, late 60s, when she was at the NIH, was the one who originated the uh understanding and concept that there is a direct link between mental health and physical health. And um, you know, that was kind of poo-pooed, and now we all know that. And this report is right on, right? And like with people with back pain, you know, supposedly it's 90%, you know, mental and 10% physical. So when this report came out, I was the chief marketing officer at a technology company that focused in on health and well-being at work, total health and well-being at work. And, you know, I saw all the mental health challenges. This was post-COVID, right? And the things kind of coming through that were helping with people. And, you know, one thing that I found so interesting in this report that directly related to not only mental health issues, but an increase in kind of physical health issues that I was seeing through the system is that that report said the impact of loneliness is equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day, right? And it has a greater impact on physical health than obesity and physical inactivity, the two things we've been talking about in this country in the US for, you know, at least 20 years. What do you guys think about that?

Dan 4:37

That is so amazing. I mean, what if the solution to so many of the physical health problems in the world? What if the solution to that is is social connections, is is addressing the loneliness aspect of it. And, you know, I love in this report, I love that the subtitle is an advisory on the healing effects of social connection and community. As an extrovert, I think that subtitle is amazing, but just as a human, I think it's amazing. The healing effects of social connection. So I find myself asking, like, how does social connection improve my cardiovascular health? Because apparently it does. How does social connection reduce my risk of stroke? And if I'm not lonely, does this mean I can spend less time on the treadmill now?

Lynne 5:21

Well, Dan, should probably keep running. Uh, because physical activity, the legit physical activity, also improves your health. And it makes me wonder if social connections improve our health, what might we do to increase our social connections? I mean, kind of like what's the exercise move we make to um increase our social connections? I mean, one thing that comes to mind is could you combine them, go for a run or a walk with a friend? Uh, that makes us physically less lonely and healthier, maybe.

Patti 6:02

Yeah, I love that, Lynn. And I'm thinking about, you know, my mom always used to say, right, like everything's better after a walk. And, you know, I feel that in and I think about like when I'm happiest walking, absolutely, right? I combine business meetings with with walking. I love walking with friends, but does it always have to be with the human, right? You both know how much I love my Winnie, right? My four-legged baby, who I may as well have birthed her, right? Like I that's just just you know how I feel about her. And when I'm with her, she is my best friend, right? And and I feel, I know I make her feel whole, and I know she does too. And so I'm wondering, like, what would this report say, right? About like can the same impact of physical the endorphin, you know, activities, fresh air, it's when I do my best thinking and meditating. Um, and if it's with someone, right? If that's, you know, and I know we'll talk about loneliness and and you know, is that the same as being alone? You know, the other thing, Lynn, when I was listening to you and listening to you, Dan, is like when I think about loneliness, like I feel a physical impact in my body, right? And so, like, is is it um adjust and emotional, or am I the only one who has a physical reaction to loneliness, which means my body is probably working harder internally, right? Which then the aches, the pains, all of that stuff. And when we do feel it, where do we carry it? I think that is one of the physical kind of components that could make you not feel well physically.

Dan 7:30

Yeah, I love that question about where do we feel the lonely? Where do we carry it in our bodies? Uh, and and that question reminds me of some research that shows hugs reduce pain and anxiety and depression. I mean, consensual hugs, of course. That's an important thing to be specific about, for sure. But if we can measure the health benefits of hugs, it does make me wonder about the equivalence. Like how many hugs equals a mile? And I promise I'm not trying to get out of my time on the treadmill. And and do dog hugs count? Do dog hugs count? I love that.

Lynne 8:02

So I I'm thinking about dogs, and I'm sorry for the cat lovers listening out there, but I'm thinking about our dogs part of the antidote to loneliness. Uh, and at first I thought, well, but they don't really increase social connection, except for they do. I mean, how many times are you out walking your dog and you stop to talk to another dog person and their dog, your dog is friends with their dog? And it's it's like this whole connection. I don't know if I have a question in there or more just that I want to point out that social connection maybe doesn't have to just be human.

Dan 8:37

Oh, Lynn, I haven't thought about this experience in a long time. But when I was in Afghanistan, uh, there was a day where I got to meet a dog. It was a it was a bomb-sniffing dog, a working dog who was off duty and just wandering around the compound. And I remember what an emotional, physical experience that was. This was the happiest dog in the camp, or this dog was the happiest troop in the camp, and just delighted to like wander around and get petted. And it boosted my mood for for days. I remember writing home. I got to see a dog today, I got to pet a dog today. So, yes, I think dogs have a huge um impact on our mental health, our loneliness, our physical health.

Patti 9:19

I don't know if you've been following this little monkey in Japan. And so, this little monkey, I forgot the kind that it is, and it its mother rejected it. And then the other little monkeys in the in the zoo um were rejecting it. And so it was alone, it was really lonely. So the staff gave it this big stuffed um orange monkey stuffed animal that the little monkey would drag around. And in like it was so hard to look at these videos and see this little baby monkey, like, you know, just essentially getting literally pushed out of this social thing, had absolutely no friends, no one to take care of. Eventually, right? It's starting to make friends, they're starting like, but the sad face and just literally the depression. And you know, when we just moved this past June, my dog, who grew up in the same house, had her best friend who is her wife next door. That's right, came from just before this episode. Like, they these dogs really missed each other, right? And you know, we know that there are multiple dogs in the household, and and one, you know, is no longer with us. And so, like the loneliness epidemic, think about that for animals during post-COVID, when all these folks that was a surge in dogs, and you know, again, I'm sure cats feel this too, but dogs were or you know, monkeys, right? Where it's not just a human thing, right? For pack kind of animals or social animals, it is for all of us, right? And so it goes back to my dog gets anxiety because she's lonely, right? We get anxiety because we're lonely. And yet, if someone were to ask me, How am I, what do you think I would say to them? I'm fine. Exactly. You'd say fine. My dog is like, I'm sad, right? And there's no like trying to make it okay for me. Are we contributing to our own loneliness? And maybe we should talk about loneliness, isolation, you know, being alone and those differences. We but are we contributing to our own loneliness because we don't want to burden others, we don't want to talk about it, kind of like the questions we've been avoiding, right? Like from the last episode. But like I know I just asked 15 different questions in there, but let's talk about that.

Dan 11:34

And Patty, asking 15 questions at once, you've come to the right podcast.

Patti 11:39

I want some damn answers.

Lynne 11:42

Well, Patty, so just I'm just gonna home in on a present.

Patti 11:47

Yes.

Lynne 11:47

The question around, you know, if you were to ask me how I was feeling, we all knew you would say fine. Um what are we what are we preventing other people from doing for us by answering that question with fine?

Dan 12:05

What are we preventing other people from doing for us by answering that question dishonestly, really? Yeah, I'm just sitting with that question too. And how can we bring more honesty into our answers? Maybe the question is this would we be less lonely if there was less stigma around loneliness?

Patti 12:25

Oh if we stopped pretending, right? Because we felt like we had to. I can't believe we're not past that yet. Why are we not past that yet?

Lynne 12:37

I feel like the place where we're the most not past it, if that makes sense, is in the workplace, where we don't talk about loneliness at all. And yet CEOs are some of the loneliest people I know. What might change if leaders admitted to being lonely?

Dan 13:01

I mean, there's even the saying, it's it's a cliche, it's lonely at the top. We've all heard that, a lot of us have said it, but do we really acknowledge it and feel it and mean it? It's lonely at the top, but we still, if somebody says they're lonely, we act as if it's like their fault for being lonely.

Patti 13:19

You know, it's it's it's interesting. So, so a few thoughts on that. I remember, you know, coaching and being a leader, right? I've been a leader most of my career and most of my life, and um not a manager, a leader. And one thing I've always been very adamant about is I am not your therapist. I'm not your mother, right? When someone works for me. And so they they bring all their stuff to work. And you I did in very intentionally, although very human and supportive, it was not going to be a relationship where I was going to pretend to be anyone's therapist, right? So my job is to sweep the debris out of the way. And so, you know, I'm sitting here going, have I contributed to loneliness? The thing about leadership, I have been in the C-suite. I do sit at boards. It is lonely at the top. And if we think about Maslow's hierarchy, you know, survival is at the bottom, and at the very top is self-actualization. I think about it as a mountain and not a pyramid. And so what happens when you climb the mountain? Less oxygen, less people conditioned, less oxygen, less people conditioned until you get to the top. And so part of the challenge with the loneliness piece there, and I'm wondering, is it because so few of us were there? Is it because as leaders, if it doesn't look like I know what I'm doing and I can't handle it, and especially women, I'm not going to open my kimono that far, right? But mostly when I think about the loneliness, I had nobody I could really talk to who had been down this path before. And luckily, I started joining organizations with women who were, you know, a few years or or beyond that ahead of me. So I was finally able to get, you get what I'm going through, right? You were, you had mom who are teenagers, you were taking care of your mother, you know, who had Alzheimer's, you were, you were navigating this, you had to deal with the board on that, you had to go deal with the SEC on that. And so you are dealing with major complexities and also, you know, other people's money, right, as investors and people's jobs. And, you know, part of me is just going, that's just part of the job. And but then I'm listening to you, Lynn, and going, but does it have to be? Right. And there are performance coaches out there, there's a whole industry out there that's trying to serve this need for people, but it's about performance, not about humanity. It's about fueling me around things like loneliness and physical health so that I can perform optimally. It is lonely at the top. And is that just kind of the price you pay to be at the top?

Dan 15:59

Yeah, I love that, Patty. So much to unpack there. You know, we say it's lonely at the top, and the question that comes to my mind is does it have to be? Like, does it have to be lonely at the top? Do we've just sort of assumed that and we've accepted that, or are there alternatives, like many of which you just described? And then if we think of you know, the leader's role in an organization is to set the tone for the organization. Now I'm wondering, do lonely leaders build lonely organizations? And if the leader was less lonely, would the organization as a whole be healthier?

Lynne 16:29

Yes, Dan, you've got me thinking, is loneliness just one person, right? Is loneliness solitary? Or is there such a thing as collective loneliness? And and does and what does it look like? How do you know that a team or an organization is experiencing collective loneliness?

Dan 16:54

Collective loneliness, I love that phrase.

Patti 16:56

Collective loneliness. I just wrote that down. I have my pencil, I'm gonna put it in pen. You know, and but for me, then it keeps going back to but therefore, what is the role of the workplace? Right. And so we had talked a few episodes ago about it being kind of the last safe haven where we can talk about things, right? And that's true. However, um, I might get fired, I might get let go, I might have to fire you, I might have to let go. Work is changing so fundamentally that kind of full-time employment, you know, is is probably gonna be for the very few, right? And instead it's project level, so you're not always working permanently, like that's a different kind of leadership that's gonna be required there. And so part of me is do we continue investing in that, knowing that that's gonna change and how do we roll with the punches? And so one of the conversations we had was um ChatGPT released in a report around how people are using the number one use case for Chat GPT from its users is mental health related. It's basically therapy. But has this helped us or hurt us in terms of connection? Where are you guys thinking? What are the questions we should be asking when it comes to how AI can help us solve this problem? Not for everybody, but for ourselves.

Lynne 18:11

Well, and Patty, I think I want to go back to the the question you asked, which is is AI helping with loneliness or is it making it worse? And we should just challenge our own biases as we listen to that question. Because I know in my head I had an answer. Uh, and I think that we just shouldn't assume we know the answer to that question or or that the answer is obvious.

Dan 18:39

Right, or that there is an answer. What if what if there's more than one answer to that question? And speaking of questions, and I'm going to get super meta here, especially for this podcast, what do we primarily do with AI as we ask it questions? But I wonder does the practice of asking questions make us less lonely? Particularly asking other humans, you know, there's an opportunity to kind of build social connections. So, can asking questions help us build social connections with AI or with humans? And does that then make us less lonely? And then really, what kind of questions should we be asking and to whom, if we want to use questions as that exercise to get back to what Lynn was asking earlier, if questions can serve as the exercise to build social connections, what questions whom, when, what how do we actually put that into practice?

Patti 19:31

You know, it's interesting as I'm listening to you and thinking how we started the conversation around introverts and extroverts and extroverted introverts. Are introverts more likely to be lonely or feel isolated or no, because that's not how they're fueled, versus an extrovert who might feel lonely or isolated because they're not among the people. And, you know, therefore, you know, Dan and Lynn, you're right. There is no one answer. There are multiple answers. But can we talk of this kind of go back to personality types? Because I think that's important. And I do want to go down the path of the difference between loneliness, isolation, and kind of how that's feeling for you all. Because I think that's really the guts of what this is.

Dan 20:14

Yeah, so there's a great lyric in a song uh by the band Dawes where he says, the only time I'm lonely is when others are around. He's probably an introvert and he feels isolated in this larger group. And so, yeah, this idea of being alone, being alone isn't doesn't correlate with being lonely. Loneliness is when he's in a big crowd and feels socially disconnected from all these people. So, yeah, the only time I'm lonely is when other others are around is just uh a fascinating insight into into his own psyche, and I think probably a lot of people have that experience as well.

Lynne 20:52

Yeah, Dan, I think I think you're on to something there. This idea that loneliness is it more about the absence of social connection than it is about physically being alone, right? We we can choose to be alone, but the absence of social connection is something that maybe we we want it and we're not choosing not to have it.

Dan 21:18

Yeah, and as an extrovert, I love my alone time. I really do. And my time with people recharges me and regenerates me, but that alone time is also an important thing. And I don't feel lonely when I'm by myself, except for when I do, right?

Patti 21:34

Yeah. And I I want to bring in, and you know, again, I'm gonna do this before Dan gets to, and that's feminism. We often have to contort who we are to fit into a system not meant for us, right? So not be our most authentic selves in a world that says, be authentic. And so when I think about the times I've been most lonely, I have been surrounded by people, but I was not able to be who I was. And it didn't matter if they accepted that version of me or didn't, right? If I'm able to just be myself, I'm in flow and I'm not lonely, right? And what I've noticed is when I'm feeling those kinds of inauthentic challenges or things don't feel aligned, that's when I self-isolate. But does that resonate with you too, you know, in terms of the loneliness factor and your authenticity?

Lynne 22:26

Yes. And I think what you're kind of coming to is this question of like whose loneliness are we talking about? How does loneliness show up differently based on gender? I mean, Patty, you talked about gender. Um how does it show up differently depending on age? Culture. I think some cultures are uh more effective at social connection than the American culture is. Uh, so how does it show up differently?

Dan 23:00

And and I want to put a pin in that just for a moment and jump back to something Patty said. I wonder what if loneliness is about being socially disconnected from ourselves almost more than being socially disconnected from people around us? Are we maybe less lonely when we are most free to be our authentic selves? I wonder if that freedom to be authentic and to be fully who you are is sort of the key to those social connections that that sort of prevent the the harmful effects of loneliness.

Patti 23:33

Yeah, I mean it's the basic human need, right? Feeling seen, feeling heard, feeling understood, feeling embraced, right? Or at least accepted. And how could I ever feel that way if I'm not just being me, right? And is not just being me kind of going back to, you know, the lying to ourselves, or like, how are we getting in our own way by saying I'm fine? Is it not giving others the chance because I've been so conditioned to believe, you know, I'm too loud, I'm too this, I'm too that. And those things might be true, you guys. Um, but but but right, someone out there is gonna love it. But but I do, I wonder, it's like this vicious cycle. Shouldn't those be the things we're really talking about? And by the way, that's part of the leadership isolation as well, because you have to, you are told, and you kind of do, have to put this persona out there, you know, so people have confidence in you. And isn't it interesting we look at leaders in tough situations? And it's only okay for men to be vulnerable and be seen as a strength, but if a woman does, she's weak. And so, you know, those were a lot of the things that I had to face, right? And that my counterparts did.

Dan 24:40

Yeah. So so let's talk about conditioning, like you mentioned. You know, a lot of us Gen Xers, we had a lot of practice being alone by being latchkey kids as we were growing up. And and now a lot of people are shocked that we're fine being alone. So, what is the Gen X experience of loneliness like now compared with the Gen X experience of being lonely when we were kids?

Lynne 25:00

I'm thinking about loneliness and the left out, right? So I feel like they're cousins being left out of something. And remember, you you knew you were being left out if um there were like 20 bikes at somebody's house outside their house on the lawn, and your bike was not with their bikes. And and I feel like now it's social media, right? If everyone sees that on Instagram or or probably Snap, or I don't even know what people are using uh that are young, uh, but they see that everyone is somewhere and you're not there. Is that is that a part of loneliness? Is this um not being included?

Patti 25:39

FOMO, right? It just does it at scale and and instantly. And isn't it interesting that it's not just teenagers, right? I have women my own age going, but we're part of this friend group, and I just saw that they all went to St. Lucia and I'm not in those photos. And the whole group has the whole, do we post photos or don't we post photos? And do we right? Like it's it is crazy how it taps into those teenage angst kinds of I'm being left out. And Dan, I love you brought up Gen X because I'm proud about many things. I'm proud of the year I was born, I'm proud of being a Scorpio, I'm proud of being a woman, I'm proud of being Gen X, right? Oh, and then our median. Um, and so, so like those things are awesome. And we really were raised in the school of hard knocks, right? Our parents, like we all joke now, right, had to have that, you know, it's 10 o'clock, do you know where your kids are thing? Because they didn't realize they had children. And so, like, you know, we're just you were out in the morning, it didn't come back until nighttime, right? And it didn't matter you were in the woods. I think because we did have to figure so much out on our own. And so I'm wondering now with my own parenting, where I tried to make things, I wasn't a helicopter mom, but the times I did step in, I don't know if I gave my daughters the opportunity to develop healthy coping mechanisms where they would have to figure stuff out on their own, or they were bored and had to figure it out on their own. And, you know, is our generation contributing to the Gen Z and Gen Alpha generations around they are far more lonely and yet they have access to so many more people we never had access to because we didn't have the tech.

Lynne 27:14

Well, I think I know what maybe one of our future topics is going to be, which is what are the questions we should be asking about generational differences? Uh, because we could we could be going on and on today. And I'm sad to say that that is our time for today. We really hoped that you enjoyed this time to be together and that you're thinking about the questions you can ask about loneliness. Um, how are you socially disconnected from yourself? And maybe within your team or your organization, just ask somebody to meet for coffee.

Patti 27:52

I love that. Lynn, I hope you go to coffee with me. So thanks for listening to our pod, everyone. And we really do hope that you will take some time in the next few days to get together with the people in your life you want to be surrounded by.

Dan 28:10

And I just want to say thanks to both of you, Patty and Lynn, for spending this time together with me. I feel more socially connected with you both. And that is lovely, and I'm sure is a boost to my cardiac health. So today's episode was sponsored by the U.S. Surgeon General. Okay, not really, but that'd be cool, right? Uh, we do hope though you'll read that advisory on the healing effects of social connections. The link is in the show notes.

Patti 28:32

Our music was composed by Jake Cuppernal.

Lynne 28:35

Our cover art was created by Matt Graham.