"I Just Want to Hide Away" - How Connection is Needed During Depression

In this podcast, I talk about how having good relationships can make you feel happy. I also discuss the importance of setting boundaries when you interact with others. The podcast explains how bonding, trust, and connection affect your brain. I also share stories about dealing with feeling anxious or being rejected by others. Throughout the podcast, you are encouraged to be kind to yourself.

Citations
The Joy of Movement: How Exercise Helps Us Find Happiness, Hope, Connection, and Courage, by Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D.
Priya Parker

Your next episode:  How Do I Stop Self-Criticism?

Transcript

 Today, I'm talking about the importance of bonding and community. Hi, this is Shelley Treacher from Underground Confidence.

This is part four in a series about how to cope with the shift into autumn. And as you can hear, I have been struck by what happens in autumn. The cold and flu season has hit me.

But because I've been on a break for a couple of weeks, I didn't want to leave the podcast any longer. Lest you should forget about me.

And people tell me that they like the way my voice is at the moment. So I'm keen to do a podcast for you today. Despite my voice. 

So far in this series, what I've talked about is challenging your thoughts and working with how you feel about disappointment. I've talked about managing stress and validating how you feel and I've talked about movement and how much that can help.

Today I'm talking about community because being with other people can really help you get through the winter. And it's something that can be tricky for some of my comfort eaters. On the subject of my voice, two of my clients recently said...

Just hearing your voice helps me to reconnect with the things that I've learnt here.

And I know that some people have my voice in their heads.

So I'm going to use this as a vehicle to explain how this works with comfort eating recovery. Comfort eating recovery, as far as I'm concerned, is a gradual lifelong process.

One of the first things that you learn in recovery is that you're not going to get a quick fix for how you feel. And that's what the comfort food has been providing, a quick fix.

The basic ideas behind everything that I teach,

And what I believe truly leads to a deep recovery,

is learning how to be compassionate to yourself. To how you feel, to how you may have developed. To all the things that you've learnt, particularly in your early relationships. To all the pain that you may have suffered. All the trauma you may be experiencing.

And to the difficulties that you encounter along the way as you're trying to give up comfort eating.

Ultimately, the aim here, and what actually happens, is that you start to feel more confident. And you learn who you are, and what you want, and what you need. All of which gets suppressed with comfort eating.

So my voice is here to remind you,

 Even in its current state,

to ask yourself how you could be kinder to yourself. This is going to go so much further than being critical, or frustrated, or feeling shame.

And even those feelings that you have, which I know can't be stopped sometimes, need compassion.

So that's the quote for today 

dealt with. if you're ready to go deeper with your comfort eating recovery. I really encourage you to join my community at underground confidence in the app stores. 

In the last podcast I talked about the benefits of movement on your mood, on depression. We know that if you do that movement with another person,

this can give you even greater benefits.

What happens when you move with somebody is it builds that connection that you have with them. It builds trust, it builds strength. The brain chemicals that are released during exercise enhance bonding and trust and connection,

which in turn makes it easier to connect with others. It gives us a sense of belonging. There have been studies to show that the quality of conversations is also higher if you're talking and walking at the same time. Oxytocin is released and that's the chemical that helps you to bond,

but also dopamine is released, like I said last time. This together with the oxytocin and the feelgood factor of walking with somebody helps you to associate reward and pleasure with that activity so you'll be more inclined to want to do more of it.  

Serotonin is also released when you're hanging out with your friends.

This is a great regulator. It helps to stabilise your mood. 

And endorphins are released as well. This is the body's natural painkiller, but also associated with pleasure. Putting it really simply, the better your quality of relationships with the people that you're with, the more endorphins are going to be released, and so you're less likely to feel any pain that you're experiencing.

I would say that's both emotional as well as physical. And so here I'm alluding to a distinction between healthy and non healthy connection. Or social interaction. I know that many of the people that I see whose comfort eating has come about through some kind of developmental trauma or difficulty in relationship

Rarely ask for support and perhaps are even scared to make connections. I saw a little meme by Priya Parker who wrote The Art of Gathering.



She said that it takes 30 meetings with somebody to consider them an acquaintance or a colleague or a friend even. But she said it takes 300 meetings to really bond and feel comfortable with that person.  By avoiding people, there's a lot we might be missing out on. I know the greatest meaning in life comes for me.

In the deepest bonds I've got with my friends. As I've explained many times, I've got a history that may have meant that I would avoid people too. And to be honest, I am a bit of a loner.  But I've also made it a bit of a mission to find my people. What I experience over and over again with my clients is that they would love this.

And they work towards it. And I see it happening for them. So the thing to be working on here is of course boundaries. To make it okay to move away from some people. To say no. Which I have done podcasts on in the past. I feel like I'm constantly working on my boundaries. And unlike the glossy magazine idea, perhaps, of therapy, this is an ongoing process.

Sometimes I'm good at it, sometimes I'm not.  I remember talking to my supervisor recently about an occasion where I felt I lost my boundaries.

I went out for an evening with somebody and I didn't speak up about where and when I needed to eat. So I got cold and hungry and a little bit out of my head. Just through talking this through with my supervisor. I realised that it was possible for me to speak up about this kind of thing, and even perhaps to talk about it in retrospect to the person, which I did actually, and they were very accepting.

Encouraging even. The physiological sign for me that I'm losing my boundaries is I get slightly breathless and dizzy as if I haven't got enough oxygen and I get tired.  The reason I'm telling you this is because you might have something similar.  Freshly renewed with this information, which I've got to say I have to revisit over and over again.

This is not the first time I've realized this, and this again is how it goes with therapy, with self reflection. You can't hold it all at once consistently forever because triggers can be powerful things that take you way off course.  But so armed with this information, I went on a salsa holiday. This was such an interesting experience of community.

One of the things that sticks most in my mind from my Hakomi group training,  () that's a body centered psychotherapy approach), was that groups, at some point in the middle of their process, descend into chaos.

And by the middle of the holiday, I've got to say that looked to be true. My experience of the first few days is that people were quite sensitive, myself included. All of us feeling out our way where we belong in this community. The exercise of dancing must have helped us enormously to bond. But then it looked like it got too much for people.

Myself included. Armed with this information about my boundaries, I quite consciously spent time checking in with how I felt, and having time alone. There was one incident  When I approached a familiar group of men, I approached them quite openly in friendship. But they were quite terse, and almost aggressive with me. I separated myself pretty quickly. My first instinct was to be offended and hurt. But having separated, I kind of realised that this was more to do with them and how they were feeling in the group.

And through spending time alone and with people who I knew liked me, I regained my sense of self confidence. It did me a whole load of good to just separate from the men. So I bonded with some women who were gentle and lovely and empathic.

I can only guess that in this time my chemical levels increased. My oxytocin, my endorphins, my serotonin,

and my dopamine levels. Rose up again.

And I found everybody so much easier to deal with after that.

So much so that by the end of the holiday, I was quite sad to leave. But felt I'd had an enriching, full experience. So coming home wasn't that bad after all. 

Social anxiety is the fear of being judged critically. In my line of business, this means you're already doing that. You're already judging yourself harshly.

And thinking that other people are thinking that of you. So this may need some understanding. 

Do you put yourself down in company? What unkind things do you say to yourself in social situations? Likewise with a fear of rejection, it leads back to self rejection.  Could you be kinder to yourself?

 Ultimately, you deserve to feel proud of your difference and good about who you are, whether alone or in company. We are creatures who want to connect and find community. 

We also need to co regulate with each other. But we need to do it in our own way. So be gentle with yourself and you'll be where you need to be. 

 And know that you are part of a greater nation who all feel the same.



And who may all be feeling difficulty this year and this time of year.

 

So to finish, as autumn brings change and uncertainty and difficulty to manage, remember that you have the power to challenge your thoughts, to push your limits, to manage your stress, to stay active and to build a sense of community.



Embrace this reset or this shift  

as an opportunity for growth, renewal, rest and connection. 

 Today I've talked about the importance of making community connections as a way to get through the difficulties of winter. First, I talked about how comfort eating recovery is not a quick fix process, , but it's a process that needs you to be compassionate with yourself.

Then I talked about healthy and unhealthy connections

and how this relates to boundary making.  I then talked about the chemicals that are released when you're in a healthy connection. I gave you a couple of stories from my life about how I coped with connection, boundary making and community.

And I talked about the difficulties that can come up in community and connections. 

Next week, I'm going to be talking about money and how we might be able to shift our attitudes towards money so that it's far less of a stressful issue and therefore perhaps not so triggering to comfort eating.

If you want to go further with me now, please join my community at Underground Confidence in the Apple and Google app stores.

As well as the community that you can join I've got a really in depth course there. That's actually very cheap for what it is.  This course will show you exactly how you're eating is emotional.

And it's a really good way to start on your journey to recovery. It'll give you some great questions to keep asking yourself. Before I launch my bigger program before the end of the year. If you want to receive the first information about that, please be in touch.  Thank you so much for bearing with my voice today.

And just as an aside, I know a lot of you are very caring people and will ask me if I'm okay. I am actually okay. I haven't felt ill for a week and a half now, but I have just had this mucus stuck in me. And it's affecting my voice clearly, but I feel fine. So thank you for, thank you for your concern.

Hopefully next week, I'll be back to normal. Have a great week. I'll see you next Thursday. This has been Underground Confidence with Shelley Treacher.