Ep. 65 Mental Wellness: Coping Skills to increase Relational & Social Intelligence in Midlife!

In this episode,  MJ shares her the theory of social and relational intelligence as well as an awesome one pager!  We all know that relationships are key to cultivating mental wellness but so often relationships can make us unhappy or even miserable. This episode explains how belonging and being known are fundamental to human mental health and outlines the progression of how relationships are formed, from sharing facts and interests to opinions, emotions, and values. It addresses the crisis of loneliness and social disconnection and offers insights into how to foster connections and intimacy rooted in mutuality. In today’s digital world this session puts words to how to make friends that are more than just a thumb up!
One pager: https://mjmurrayvachon.com/podcast-11/


Creating Midlife Calm is a podcast designed to guide you through the challenges of midlife, tackling issues like anxiety, low self-esteem, feeling unworthy, procrastination, and isolation, while offering strategies for improving relationships, family support, emotional wellbeing, mental wellness, and parenting, with a focus on mindfulness, stress management, coping skills, and personal growth to stop rumination, overthinking, and increase confidence through self-care, emotional healing, and mental health support.

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About the Host:
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with more than 48,000 hours of therapy sessions and 31 years of experience teaching her Mental Wellness curriculum, Inner Challenge. Four years ago she overcame her fear of technology to create a podcast that integrated her vast clinical experience and practical wisdom of cultivating mental wellness using the latest information from neuroscience. MJ was Social Worker of the Year in 2011 for Region 2/IN.

About Inner Challenge:
Inner Challenge was created in 1995 as a summer camp for girls, and spent 20 years being tested and "refined" by junior high students who insisted on practical Mental Wellness skills that made them feel better. Inner Challenge has been used in many businesses, and community organizations. In 2017-2018 Inner Challenge was a class for freshman football players at the University of Notre Dame. It was these students who encouraged MJ to face her fear of technology and create a podcast. Inner Challenge will soon be a Master Class available for those who want to stop feeling like crap.

To connect with MJ Murray Vachon LCSW, learn more about the Inner Challenge or inquire about being a guest on the podcast visit mjmurrayvachon.com.

Creating Midlife Calm is a podcast designed to guide you through the challenges of midlife, tackling issues like anxiety, l...

Transcript

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW: 0:00

Welcome to the podcast today. Last week, I taped an episode with a wonderful woman who shares her journey of leaving a marriage where her spouse was a narcissist. I hope you listen to episode 60 when it drops, because it truly is one of my favorites. In preparation for that episode, I shared with her the theory of creating healthy relationships that my colleague, Toni Henke Wheeler I created many years ago. Let's be honest, what we all want is to belong. We want to be part of a family, a workplace, a community, and friendships where we feel seen and valued. We also want to do that for and with others. Today, I am sharing with you. My theory of social and relational intelligence. Good relationships are a must for our mental wellness. I hope you enjoy this episode as I share this tool that Toni and I created,one of my proudest professional accomplishments. This episode also has a beautiful one pager. A visual representation of this theory. You can find it in the links or on my website, under Inner Challenge one pagers. If you have listened to episode 11, this information will sound familiar because I'm using much of that episode with some new edits, cause my listenership has grown and I think our need for one another, just continues to deepen as we live in this complex time. As I said, if there's one thing being a therapist has taught me, it is we desire to belong. We first belong to a family. Of course, families come in all shapes and sizes, but that's how we start. Families are not perfect, but from the beginning of time, they have been our best solution to our deep desire to belong. In adolescence, our quest to belong becomes a bit more complicated as we work to belong first to ourself by turning inward and exploring the question who am I, and simultaneously In our teen years, we're testing the waters of new social groups where we hope to fit in and feel a sense of belonging. Groups such as sports teams, theater and dance ensembles, online gaming, social groups and forums, after school jobs, clubs, and even a barn full of teens who love horses give adolescents a place to belong. In adulthood, we bring our drive to belong by creating a new family. Or perhaps what I call family ship. Friends that become like family. We connect to civic and church groups, or take part in activities, be it golfing, book club, bingo night, or social protesting, or barbecue competitions. All deepening our sense of belonging. Perhaps this is why the pandemic has been so difficult on mental health. So many of these groups, so many of these activities have been put on hold or even stopped altogether. Yes, belonging is not only good for our mental health, but it is essential for the wellness of the families and communities, be it civic, educational, or work. So for mental wellness, belonging is not optional. It is essential. Belonging is what gives our life meaning, purpose, fun. It allows us to have a sense of being loved, a sense of adventure. We crave to belong. Yet when it comes to belonging, something has gone terribly wrong. Even before the pandemic, in January 2020, Cigna Health released a study. The three in five adults experience loneliness and social isolation. This is the highest level of loneliness ever recorded. Again, this was before the pandemic. Another reputable research study said that 54 percent of Americans feel that no one knows them well. Wow, that is more than half of Americans. This is a crisis. I think people think being known just happens, that they really don't need to know how to do it because it's just such a natural part of what humans need, like breathing. I do think our need to be known is natural, but I think it requires understanding how we first come to know ourself and then how we come to know another. This knowing ourself and knowing others is what I call social and relational intelligence. So let's explore how we can cultivate this most essential task. Being known is essential to the human experience in interacting with ourself and others. We do it in a way that is either connecting or disconnecting. Connecting means we cultivate relationships with ourself and others that are rooted in understanding that reflects curiosity, safety, support, and authenticity. When we are in relationships that feel disconnecting, there's often a lot of judgment, uncertainty. And this causes us to not feel safe. What I want to share with you is a process that Toni Henke lCSW Wheeler and I came up with more than 30 years ago that helps us understand the progression of being known and coming to know another. I want to walk you through the imaginary unfolding of a relationship between two college freshmen who meet for the first time when a computer pairs them up as roommates. Yes, relationships just happen, but inside this natural instinct is a fascinating process. Understanding this process helps us to become better at relationships. Let's begin. These two 18 year olds get an email from their school with their new roommate's name and contact information. So each of them have their own private initial first reaction. Maybe one is excited that their roommate is from a big city or nervous that they're from a place that they've never heard of. This is usually how relationships begin. We have a first reaction and to be honest our first reaction to another person. Often tells us more about ourself than that other person and that can be helpful to remember. As many of us know, the roommate journey is full of growth and needs to be a mutual process where both people are willing to learn about each other and in the process will learn an awful lot about themselves. So without anyone telling them, each person sets out to know the other and to let the other know them. This process often begins by sharing facts. The two roommates share their names, their hometowns, how many siblings they have, what they intend to study, what their high schools were like. Most of us are pretty good at sharing facts. The roommates then naturally move to sharing their interests with one another. One says, I think I'll try out for the band, I play the trumpet. The other says, Ugh, I'm not musical at all. I love sports, and then shares that was one of the reasons they chose this school because they had such a great intramural program. They continue to talk about what music they like, favorite shows and video games, the whole time noticing when they share similar interests and when they do not. As they share this personal information with each other without even knowing it, their brain is always scanning for safety. Does this person feel safe? Not necessarily in a physical way, but emotionally, psychologically, socially. Sometimes our mind registers as safety with thoughts like I think I got pretty lucky with this roommate. But often, the body tells us first. Maybe after a few conversations, we notice that our body is relaxed. Oh, this seems like it will be okay. Or maybe, after talking to one another, one of the roommates feels a pit in their stomach and just a sense of not feeling so comfortable with this person. Before you know it, move in day comes and they begin to share in a more personal way their opinions. As they share their opinions, they begin to assess, often without really being conscious of it, if each of them can be open to the other person's opinion. For example, they have to figure out how to set up the room. If one person says, I really want to bunk the beds, but the other says, Oh, I get that would save space, but bunk beds freak me out. They have reached a point of knowing each other where a difference has occurred. And they have to figure out if they have the social intelligence to work out this difference. Maybe yes, maybe no. Yes, looks like one of them is saying, Oh. Why does that freak you out? No looks oh, you'll get used to it. Don't be a baby. Do you see the difference? When we share our opinion, we're actually taking a pretty vulnerable step and sharing a part of ourself that isn't a fact. Something that can be disputed. But a part of ourself that is unique and personal. When people get curious and not judgmental about why we hold that opinion, We often feel a sense of connection to them. When people ignore or become judgmental about our opinion, we tend to shut down or push back, both, which are disconnecting. This process is fairly automatic, something we tend to not notice. But by me telling you to watch for it, you can become more aware of when it happens and learn how to respond in a more connecting way. Instead of glossing over a person's opinion or difference, you can become curious by saying something like, Oh, what about sleeping in a bunk is uncomfortable for you? Then maybe your roommate will say, It isn't that it's uncomfortable, but rather I'm a really light sleeper, and no matter what I do, I always hear the person moving around at night, so it wakes me up and I cannot get back to sleep. No reason for judgment. But rather understanding that bunking is like a shoe that does not fit this person. Most of us are pretty good at sharing facts and interests, but our social intelligence begins to break down when it comes to sharing or listening to opinions. We either have lots of fear of being judged, so we don't tell people our opinions, or we're really crummy at hearing opinions and valuing them if they are different than ours. Both of these responses create social disconnection. We must become very intentional when it comes to learning the skill of honestly stating our opinions, and of equal importance, being curious and understanding when it comes to the opinions of others. Our opinions, which also include our preferences, help us in answering the question, Who am I? For some people, they easily know their opinions and preferences, but for others, to know or state their opinions is very difficult, especially if they grew up in environments where differences were not allowed. But trust me, this can be learned if you set your mind to it. Of course, right now, our culture is very divided about opinions. We all have a chance to learn to state our opinions and to hear other opinions in a connecting way if we have the courage to do the goal of social intelligence is connection rooted in curiosity and respect. I urge people to do right, respecting others opinions instead of trying to be right, getting others to agree with their opinions. Let's go back to the roommates as they continue to get to know one another. Of course, the process of coming to share oneself and know another is not linear. It's more like a spiral where we continue to share more parts of ourselves as time goes on. We don't share all our facts, interests, or opinions the first week we meet someone. Yet, if there is enough safety, we continue to share more of who we are. We may even continue to move into sharing our emotions. Our earlier podcast, we talked about learning to name, tame and aim our feelings. This is half of the equation when it comes to emotions and social intelligence. The other half. Learning to honor and respect another person's emotions. For most of us, our emotions make us feel very vulnerable, which means we don't typically share what we feel until we trust the person. We trust that a person can hear our emotions when they show us that they won't make fun of what we feel. When they don't tell us how to fix our feelings. When they also don't tell us why we shouldn't feel the way that we're feeling. We trust someone with our emotions when they often don't then begin to talk about themselves. Telling us about a time when they felt just the same way. And lastly, we feel comfortable sharing our emotions with someone when they have shown us over time that they will keep them in confidence and not blab them to the world. Yes, we create lots of social connection when we can share our feelings with each other and they can provide for us understanding, empathy, and support. Of course, this is a two way process. What we want from others, we certainly want to give them. I have a beautiful example of this. Once when I was doing Inner Challenge in a small group for college students, one of the students shared that after his parents dropped him off at college, they had separated and filed for divorce. Everyone in the group could feel his sadness. His head dropped and his eyes filled with tears. One of the students in the group was his roommate. He got up, put his arm around his shoulder and said, Oh, I'm really sorry. I didn't even know this and I've been living with you. This is too much for you to carry on your own. I could see the student stay with his sadness. For about 40 seconds, he took a deep breath. He looked at his classmates and he said, Thank you. Another student said, My parents are divorced, and it's really hard. The student responded by saying I've known for years that this would happen. They just stayed together for me, so it's really not a big deal. Another student responded by saying it's still really sad, even if you knew it was going to happen. The connection and support in this room was incredible. They helped him hold his loss, gave him some physical support with a hug, and when he tried to minimize it by saying, I knew it was going to happen, they stayed the course of connection with him. The respect and mutuality in the room was a parent. They had passed the test of being vulnerable with one another, of holding a deep hurt and honoring it. The whole process took about two minutes, but the benefits from those 120 seconds lasted the whole semester. He was brave for sharing his emotions and they were courageous for helping him carry them. This is the real pain of loneliness. We are not meant to carry our hurts by ourselves. And most of what we need is exactly what these students gave him. Mirroring. Yes, that is hard. Physical touch. Just a hug around the shoulders. Empathy. I know your pain. And permission. to grieve as long as it takes. Did I happen to mention that these students were 18 year olds who played football, bad asses as teammates, and bad asses as friends. In sharing our emotions, we are looking for this type of social intelligence. Sometimes we find it, sometimes we don't. When we don't. We most likely will pull away from sharing our emotions with someone who does not know how to honor and respect them. This does not need to be the end of the relationship, but rather, we really reconfigure the relationship. We are at a level where we can share facts and interests, but may choose to not share the deeper parts of ourself, such as our opinions and emotions or values. As we come to know another person better, we naturally share with them our values. Our opinions and emotions are information about who we are that change fairly regularly, but our values are more steadfast. I think of values in terms of character values, the values we define as being a good person, and lifestyle values, those values that guide us in determining how we prioritize our life. Both our character and lifestyle values are initially given to us by the family we're born into. We don't really think of them as values, but more like who our family is and what our family does. When we are young, values are more shown to us than told to us. In adolescence and young adulthood, we often go through a period of exploring and questioning the values given to us by our family. Deciding which ones will take into adulthood, and which ones will adapt or leave behind. With social change occurring so rapidly, we cannot expect the values of one generation to be passed down and liked to the next generation. It takes a lot of social intelligence to navigate so we can stay connected even if we don't share all the same values of the people we love. From the perspective of mental wellness I encourage people to look at the values that our culture holds as important. Do these values contribute to your mental wellness, or do they put you on a treadmill where you find yourself chasing money, beauty, and power, three destinations where the end line will always keep moving? Our culture often emphasizes competition instead of collaboration. Competition is about being the best or being right, while collaboration is about connection, understanding, and belonging. I am all for competition on the sports field or at the National Spelling Bee, but we need to see how our competitive spirit is damaging our social intelligence when it is applied incorrectly. A little values education goes a long way. I like people to ask themselves, is this value life giving or life sucking? Do I feel better about myself because of this value? Or do I feel less about myself? Do I treat others better because of this value? Is this value causing me to think too much about myself and not enough about others? This type of reflection is not an either or process, but often a matter of degrees. You may be trying to get all A's, but if you blow off buying your sibling a birthday present, maybe your value of doing your best is a bit. Out of balance. Values when it comes to social connection help us become a better person by giving us guidelines to live by while simultaneously connecting ourself to care about others and the community we live in, which again mirrors the original definition I shared with you for mental wellness. So back to the college roommates. As the weeks have gone on, they're doing pretty well with each other. They've learned more facts, realized they share interests in the Wednesday night movie, made good progress on sharing opinions, and they work with differences innate to living with someone. They've also shared some good emotional vulnerability around being homesick. They've learned that they have similar values about caring for their families, doing well in school, and being moderately neat and taking care of their belongings. They both work hard, have work study jobs, and even spend money in similar ways. They differ when it comes to drinking and smoking pot. One loves to party on the weekend, the other not so much. They also differ when it comes to religion. God is very important to the weekend partier, having grown up in a church where summer mission trips helped his own personal and spiritual formation. God and church are completely foreign to the other, and they've had some conversations about God and religion, but not many. Since neither of them really have ever talked to anyone does not share their value. They don't really have the words to talk about it and somewhere deep inside it feels a bit threatening. So they just push it aside. Yet, they are making room for this difference. This is the value of being exposed to people who have different values than us. It helps us grow in the area of diversity and inclusion. The roommate who does not believe in God or religion actually corrected someone who said, those people who believe in God are out of touch with reality, where before this person would have joined in. and laughed and said some kind of comment that was derogatory. This time he just said, hey, we need to let everybody have their own values. So you can see the progression and the mutuality of social connection. We create relationships with others by sharing facts, interests, opinions, emotions, and values. Of course, we don't do this with everyone, We can sit on a plane and talk about facts or interests, but never dive into our emotional life. We might have a coach, a boss, or professor. Where we share some facts and interests and opinions, but not too much about our emotions and values. This is really to be expected in relationships that are more hierarchical than mutual. Yet, in our quest to belong, we must have some people who really know us. If the data is correct, in 2020, 54 percent of the people said that they don't have anyone who knows them well. This is terrible. And the consequences of this type of statistic would need its own podcast just for us to really understand how devastating this is in every area of our life. We want to do our best to not be in that large boat, and we also want to do our part to keep it from sinking with so many of our fellow humans in it. Social intelligence is rooted in mutuality. We must give to others what we want them to give to us. I've seen a real decline in this value of mutuality. It is not unusual for me to have a client who's very clear on how others have failed in meeting their relational needs without this person ever looking at what type of friend, spouse, employee, or family member they are. Let me end our conversation about social intelligence with talking about Intimacy. This is one of my three favorite stories from when I taught Inner Challenge. Once in a class, I listed on a PowerPoint the above parts of sharing ourselves with another. Facts, interests, opinions, emotions, and values. I then clicked on the words Opinions, Emotions, and Values and changed them to red ink. I asked the students what we call these three things. I could see them really pondering. And then one of the students jumped up and said, I know this. I laughed and I said, Then what do we call it? He said, I don't know what we call it, but I know it. It is what we all want. I said, we call it intimacy, as only an 18 year old full of enthusiasm can do. He literally jumped up, looked at his classmates, pointed his finger at them and said, see, I was right. This is really what we want. We want intimacy. Yes, we want to be known. We want to be able to share our opinions, to share our emotions, and to share our values, and have someone understand and respect them. And we want to do the same for another. This relational intimacy is the antidote to loneliness. We cannot find intimacy with a movie, a video game, the perfect pair of boots, a huge bank account, a new car, a trip to an exotic location. We can only find such connection with each other. And we cannot find it by ourself, but rather if we set out to know who we are so we can genuinely share ourself with another and spend the time to allow them. To genuinely share who they are with us. Our lives are full of things to do, shows to watch, TikTok videos to make. But in the end, what we really crave is social connection. Rooted in self awareness shared mutually in a spirit of respect and curiosity, and it leads to intimacy. As you go through your week, challenge yourself to put some effort into cultivating intimacy. With a few people in your life, this is your inner challenge.