Angel's Authentic Action Podcast

Are We Forgetting How To Be Together?

• Gabrielle Angel Lilly

Share episode

Send us a text

We explore why connection feels harder during the holidays and how nervous system overload, shifting roles, and quick-hit technology drain our capacity to gather. We offer small, practical tools to rebuild trust, start with self-regulation, and create new rituals that fit real life.

• naming the loneliness trend and loss of trust
• stories of risk, travel, and why trust grows with shared effort
• catering vs cooking and the shame loop around time and money
• tech distraction, dissolving roles, and invisible labor burnout
• dopamine vs oxytocin and why slow talk feels hard now
• interoception as the bridge from self to others
• micro-practices to regulate before, during, and after gatherings
• device baskets, one shared dish, and better gratitude rituals
• new third spaces and a monthly three-day reset offer

I hope you'll join me for my monthly three-day resets in the Human Reboot Dojo. You can find that on the school platform. I hope you'll have to check out my sponsor, the Sleeping Dragons Company.


Support the show

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to the Authentic Action Podcast. I'm Z Gala, the Art Angel, sometimes called anti Angel, and uh it's a little bit late night for a podcast episode, but I got something on my mind that I really want to talk about, and that is connection, loneliness. Uh is anybody is anybody kissing anymore? I I think we might be forgetting how to connect, how to have human relationships. And I would think that, oh, it's just me. But I hear iterations of this from many other places, and suicide rates are going up. Uh yeah, as uh people are using words like a loneliness epidemic. So I don't think it's just me. I think there is something of a loneliness epidemic going on. And I'm I'm trying to figure out how to how to address it, how to make it better. So um I was listening to Esther Perrell, one of my favorite doctors and speakers and women, uh, speaking with Trevor Noah just yesterday, the day before, on a podcast. And she was telling a story about how she hitchhiked around with her boyfriend in the US when she first moved here, and how that really influenced her trust in people by taking risks, by by being, you know, sharing meals, sleeping in people's homes, taking that mutual risk. There was a blossoming of trust. And I just I was reflecting on how much of that I've had in my own life and how little of that maybe we have right now. There's this interesting lack of trust in my own life, and it seems like all around me, and and maybe it's as a result of not taking risks together, not struggling together. I'm not sure. Um both of Esther Perel's parents were sole survivors of the Holocaust, as in all their siblings didn't make it, and they were the only ones that did make it from each of their families. So there's this profound struggling that she came from that became the fabric of her deep interest in intimacy and human relationships. Her uh national best-selling book, Mating in Captivity, came from decades of work looking at dynamics of human relationships. So I was listening to Esther Perrell and Trevor Noah having this beautiful conversation about trust and building trust and and the dynamics of human relationships. And I was also leafing through a whole foods catering menu, thinking to myself, maybe I would just order catered food for Thanksgiving this year. Maybe that would increase the time that we got to spend together because there's this increasing overwhelming sense that the holidays are a lot of work and ain't nobody got time for that anymore. And it's it's hard to it feels like it's getting more and more difficult. And like I think turkeys cost like$50 or$100 these these days, if you're shopping at Whole Foods. Um, so I'm staring at this Whole Foods catering menu and I'm wondering if I should just order things, or I'm just kind of daydreaming about it. And then I'm thinking about, you know, how that's having a team of strangers cook our meal, and thinking, doesn't that defeat the whole purpose of the Thanksgiving meal or the Christmas meal where we used to get together and cook together, or at least uh, you know, in my romantic mind, there's this get together and cook together. In actuality, a lot of the times it was me cooking alone and other people cooking alone and then us bringing our things together, sometimes cooking together. I certainly um feel lucky to have had some very, you know, family-oriented Thanksgivings, but I've also had a lot of lonely Thanksgivings. I've had a lot of small Thanksgivings and a lot of Thanksgivings, even just by myself. Uh, you know, that that's by my own choosing. Obviously, I could make more effort myself. So when I'm thinking about the con, you know, when I'm contemplating whether or not catering or b buying catered food from Whole Foods is defeating the purpose of the holidays, I'm not coming at it from some, you know, like even though I have those romantic notions in my head, the actuality isn't that romantic. And as I said, I part of part of the thought process is well, maybe that would allow us to spend more time together and get the food we like and not waste as much food. There's a lot of, there's a lot to be said for getting a catered meal, and I may still do that. Um as I was l thinking about all of that, though, I had this loop, this thought loop, which is familiar to me, which is where I feel like some sense of shame for feeling like I don't want to cook all day, or maybe I don't have the money to, or there's this there's this shame loop that's going on between the finances of it and the time of it and the energy of it. And um, I think that many of us are going through these little shame loops, and then the end result is a lot of times we just go like, hey, let's just skip it this year, or or maybe we just get together for a short time. And I know a lot of families aren't doing that. Part of that is my particular circle, family circle, that has always been a little disjointed and has been getting more disjointed. But again, I think in the grander scheme, the bigger picture, there is a general trend towards more disconnection. And part of that is very much rooted in where you're watching or listening to me right now, which is um all these wonderful new forms of technology that we have that can take our attention, that can give us that quick dopamine hit, and that makes it so that you know the drunk uncle or grandma telling the same story at Thanksgiving or Christmas is even harder to endure when we just want to scroll on our phones, we just want to get that quick dopamine hit. And while it's tempting to think that it's just me and I'm the one being antisocial, I think that we're forgetting how to be together collectively a little bit while we're distracted on our phones and and you know, just just there's just wave after wave of new things, new shiny objects that are taking our attention. And I think we might really be forgetting how to be together. And I'm not trying to be an alarmist. I'm wanted to bring that to the conversation because I think there are things we can do to turn that ship around, so to speak. When I think about the holidays, uh, I remember, you know, laughter, burning things, lumpy mashed potatoes, eye rolls, sometimes the same stories told for the hundredth time. And we had rolls also, like it or not. Um, there was usually the person who always hosted. There's the one uh who always brings the calabacitas. That's me. There's the one who arrives early to set the table and help out, and there's the ones that show up late with the half-wrapped pie. Um and we may have complaints, we may have even secret resentments, but we also had this shared script that brought us together. We knew where we stood more and less. And now many of those roles seem to be dissolving. Gender expectations are shifting, family structures are changing, our health is plummeting in many cases. The designated hostess is often burnt out. And as I mentioned, turkeys cost like a hundred freaking dollars in some cases. So traditions that weren't healthy are being questioned and dismantled, like just stuffing our faces isn't necessarily the tradition that we want to hold on to or carry carry forward. There are many old patterns that just don't fit, and we haven't quite built new ones yet. So a lot of us are quietly opting out. We're making things smaller, we're simplifying, we're ordering in, and we're avoiding the people who drain us. We might say we're just going to keep it low-key this year. And what we really mean is I don't have the energy to hold all of this together anymore, and I'm exhausted. Part of what's happening here is structural. There's the family roles and the economics and the pace of modern life, but part of it is deeply biological, neurochemical. Our brains were wired in a world shared tasks and shared time, cooking over a fire, walking side by side, mending things, singing, telling stories. Those kind of experiences flood the body with connection chemistry, oxytocin for bonding, serotonin for mood and belonging, warm endorphins that show up when we laugh or lean against someone we trust. And nowadays, much of our day is spent chasing tiny disembodied rewards like notifications, likes, short videos, DMs, little dings, and red dots and numbers, ding ding ding. Social media and online life feeds us lots of quick dopamine hits, tiny bursts of something new, something exciting, something salmy. And dopamine isn't bad at all. We need it. But when that becomes the main flavor of our days, our nervous system starts to recalibrate. And then when we sit down at the holiday table with people who talk more slowly than TikTok and say the same thing they said last year, our whole system goes like, ugh, this is boring. I can't handle this. Where's my phone? And then maybe we think we're being terrible, impatient humans. But much of this is just conditioning. Our reward circuitry has been overfed on quick hits and underfed on deeper connection. And when you add chronic stress on top of that, financial pressure, the news cycle, health concerns, parenting, the general sense of the world is on fire. And now holidays, our basic stress chemistry is running hot. When we're in that state, gathering with people, especially family, can feel less like, yay, community, and more like my body thinks I'm walking into a battlefield. I've got to armor up, and I'm not sure I even want to go. And from there it doesn't take much. One weird comment, one old pattern, one drunk uncle, and suddenly we're dysregulated, and everyone goes back to their corners, feeling a little more alone. We're not broken for feeling this way. We're overloaded. And we're trying to navigate a completely different relational landscape with a nervous system that thinks in terms of campfires and village life. And there's another layer too. Rolls and resentments. For years, often decades, one person in the family, usually but not always, a woman, has done the invisible emotional and logistical labor, planning, buying gifts, remembering birthdays, hosting, smoothing over conflicts, keeping traditions alive. And if that person never gets real support, appreciation, or rest, they eventually do what any overextended nervous system will do. They shut down. I just can't this year. I don't want to host, I don't want to cook, I don't want to orchestrate everyone's feelings. When that happens again and again, gatherings disappear. Not because there's no love, but because there's no capacity. And then we look around and say, Wow, nobody gets together anymore. How come everybody's so disconnected? As if it's a mystery, when in some ways it's perfectly logical. Our old scripts don't work. The new ones aren't written yet. Our nervous systems are fried. Of course we're retreating into our phones and into our private little routines. Of course we're choosing predictability over potential chaos. But that deeper, quieter part of us knows that we're wired for connection. It's still there. It's still whispering. We need people. We miss each other. There has to be another way. So where do we start? I don't think the answer is to shame ourselves back into cooking everything from scratch or force ourselves into big gatherings that feel unsafe or draining. We're not trying to cosplay 1950. We can't unknow what we know about harm and boundaries and burnout. I think the first step is much smaller and much more intimate. We start by learning how to be with ourselves again. And here's a truth that keeps circling back to me. It's the same skills that let you sit with yourself kindly, that are the same ones that let you sit with other people kindly. And as we're becoming more disconnected from each other, we're becoming more disconnected from ourselves. And we can remember ourselves back home, back to ourselves and back to each other. I like to use song and voice. Sometimes it's a poem, a story. One of the things I'm doing is creating community and teaching skill sets that can help you re-regulate your nervous system so that you can reconnect to yourself and be available for connection to other people. When you can notice your breath without freaking out, you can notice another person's emotional state without immediately taking it on. And when you can feel the tightness in your chest and stay with it for a few moments, you're less likely to explode at your aunt or disappear into the phone because someone said something triggering. When you can hear your own need, I need a five minute break, or I'm actually not up for this conversation right now. You can draw boundaries before you're in full shutdown. This is nervous system work. It's also connection work. There's a fancy word for one piece of it, interoception. And it basically means your brain's ability to sense your inner world, your heartbeat, your breathing, your gut sensations, your emotional tone. When we practice paying attention to those signals gently and regularly, the brain regions responsible for this inner listening strengthen. That gives us more emotional regulation, and that gives us more capacity to be with others without drounding. So before we talk about reinventing our holiday traditions or saving the world's relationships, I think we should start here. Can I be with myself a little more honestly, a little more softly today? Can I take three slow breaths before I walk into the room? Can I feel my feet on the floor while that family member is talking instead of leaving my body entirely? Can I hum quietly to myself in the car after a long visit and let my nervous system know it's safe now? Small things, but small things add up. And from there we can begin to experiment with new kinds of togetherness. Maybe the Thanksgiving meal is still mostly catered, but you can choose one simple dish to make with someone else. You can chop vegetables with a friend or a kid or a partner with music on and no phones and let it be imperfect. Maybe you can decide on one hour, just one hour, where everyone puts their devices in a basket and see what it looks like to actually look at each other while you eat. Maybe you create a tiny ritual like going for a walk after dinner or asking one real question at the table that isn't. So what are you grateful for if that phrase has lost its sparkle? Although I think it's still a good phrase. And I want to give a pinky finger asterisk, little shout out to Dr. Huberman, who recently did a podcast about gratitude practices and pointed out that there's actually a greater effect from feeling others be grateful towards us, that feeling like we've done something that deserves gratitude and having someone express gratitude towards us is profoundly more effective than listing the things that we're grateful for, even though that's a practice that many of us cultivate, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that practice, and I I find it helpful myself, but I would challenge us all to practice receiving gratitude. It you might find it surprisingly challenging. And so if you find yourself sitting around with some friends and family and you're up for it, maybe practice telling each other why you're grateful for them and practice receiving that gratitude and just notice how that feels. I don't think we need giant dramatic gestures. I think we need more little experiments that send a signal to our bodies and our brains that connection matters. I'm willing to make a bit of space for it again. And this is in many ways what I'm building with the human reboot camp and dojo, my online groups, my monthly three-day resets. I think we need new kinds of third spaces, not just gyms and co-working spots, but places where we can practice being human together, practice regulating our nervous systems, practice honest connection, practice rest and play. The three-day reset is my way of offering a small held container for that practice. Three days to gently tend to your system using sound, breath, simple rituals to support sleep and digestion and tools to help you stay a little more coherent in the middle of the holiday swirl. Not a full-time retreat, not an extreme cleanse, just a little extra bandwidth in the form of three 30-minute sessions. It's a little extra calm coherence, a little a guided experiment in being with yourself so that being with others feels less like bracing and more like possibility. You get to choose what your holidays look like. You can cater the entire meal or cook every dish by hand. You can gather a big crew or keep it tiny. There's no moral hierarchy here. What I care about for you and me is the state that we're in when we're doing it. Are we overwhelmed, brittle, and checked out? Or are we at least a few percentage points more resourced, more rooted, more able to show up as ourselves? We may have forgotten how to be together for a while, but our bodies remember more than we think. With a little support, with a little practice, and with a few new rituals, we can begin to remember too. I hope you'll join me for my monthly three-day resets in the Human Reboot Dojo. You can find that on the school platform. I hope you will remember to give yourself a little grace this holiday season. Whatever else you do, whatever else you're into, try to treat yourself like someone that you love. Try to remember that reconnecting to yourself is literally just a heartbeat away. And when you reconnect to yourself, you automatically feel more connected to others. Thanks for joining me today for the Authentic Action Podcast. I hope you'll have to check out my sponsor, the Sleeping Dragons Company, and my human reboot dojo group over in the school community. Thanks for stopping by. Ciao for now.