Shownotes Transcript
Major funding for The Pulse is provided by a leadership gift from the Sutherland family. The Sutherlands support WHYY and its commitment to the production of programs that improve our quality of life. This is The Pulse, stories about the people and places at the heart of health and science. I'm Maiken Scott. Priya Volchi and Winona Guo met in high school. They were working on a project together about racial literacy.
For Priya, their relationship was about their interest in social issues, their shared experience as children of immigrants, and their desire to change the world. I found like-mindedness and many qualities that I respected in Winona.
They talked about identity and how it shapes people's lives. Their work started to take over every minute of their free time. My mom was like, "Oh, who's your new friend?" And I said, "Winona's not my friend. We're just kind of professional partners." Priya is an introvert and kept Winona at a distance.
She says their relationship was what Aristotle calls a friendship of utility, brought about by a shared mission. Nothing more. I didn't understand what a friend could be.
Their relationship reminded Priya a little bit of a New Yorker cartoon she had seen. They're two friends hugging each other and they're like, you know, it was great seeing you. If you're ever in the city again, on my block, on my street, we should definitely hang out. And so it's these ideas that they're kind of weak and not muscular relationships. And it's
So they're easy to make and easy to break. And I think our friendship started off like that just because that's the status quo. I think many of us will find my generation, Gen Z's, is crowned the loneliest generation. And so many of us will find that we have a lot of people that we call friends, but we
The bond isn't as deep as our romantic relationships or our familial relationships. And so we started out that way. But then there was a moment that changed and deepened their relationship. Priya describes it in her new book, Good Friends, Bonds That Change Us and the World. I asked her to read an excerpt. Winona, I said, spotting her in the hallway after weeks of intense work together. She turned. Are you OK?
And so in that moment where
I sensed Winona's vulnerability. I understood who Winona is more. That was kind of the moment that I connected.
Despite all the people passing us and, you know, bumping backpacks and all of these things, I saw my friend very clearly for the first time. And I kind of made a commitment that I want to care for this person as best as I can. Priya says it's that openness and vulnerability that fosters true connection between friends. This person is not legally or biologically fastened to you in any way. So there's no obligation for a
friend to be honest and vulnerable and raw and messy because you could you could drift away pretty easily societally there are a few strings attaching you to this person right and so when a friend takes the risk to be honest and vulnerable with you they're also giving you permission to be the same way with them
And this made her realize that deep friendships play a special and important role in our lives. I mean, just to put it simply, it's love, right? Friends make us laugh. They have our back. We share memories and stories. But beyond that, scientists are learning that friendships are key in keeping us healthy and thriving. On this episode, how friendships keep us alive. ♪
Ben Rine studies the neurobiology of social interaction. Connection is something that fascinated him early on. Though when he was growing up, his nose was always stuck in a book. I used to read a lot and that didn't really leave a lot of room for me for connecting with other people. I had friends, but I wasn't at the popular tables. Let's just say that.
But those popular tables is where Ben wanted to be. I remember kind of watching those tables and thinking, man, it would be so much fun to be over there. And I don't really know what happened, but over the subsequent years, I sort of
navigated my way to those tables and then by the time I was in high school I found myself talking with the most outgoing groups and surrounded by extroverts. And so I was able to navigate that. But making friends and maintaining friendships is a challenge for a lot of people, especially these days. Unfortunately,
the data suggests that people are becoming more isolated. You know, if you look at the American Times use surveys, people spend more and more time alone over the last few years. And anecdotally, almost everyone I talk to, they say, oh my gosh, it's so bizarre. My kids, they don't hang out anymore. They just go on social media and they FaceTime or whatever. They never see each other. And, you know, I think that's troubling because friendship is really important. Connection is what we are wired for. It's a basic fundamental need for the brain.
And what do we know about interacting in person compared to interacting online? Because it's still an interaction.
So we have emerging data on this. You know, it's kind of new because COVID was only five years ago and that's when the research really started ramping up on this. Of course, there are studies back from like the 80s looking at like computer mediated communication and how it affects people. But recently there's been an upsurge in studies actually looking at like how do they compare to in-person interactions and that's
One thing that's important to first establish is that when people interact in person, they generally feel better after. Just a simple conversation, even if you, like there are studies showing that when people get off of the bus and they say thank you to their bus driver, they immediately report a boosted mood. Just connecting with people, even momentarily, makes us feel better. And so studies have looked at how people
that compares to virtual interactions. Do people feel better after interacting online? And that could be, you know, digitally, a phone call, a video call, a text message. And generally, they find that people don't feel as good after interacting virtually. And the less lifelike the interactions are, for example, texting is less lifelike than video calls, because there are fewer social cues, you can't see the person, you can't hear their voice.
those less lifelike interactions are like the worst of all. Like they really don't provide any benefit or very little benefit in mood. So, you know, if we're looking to enrich our mood and our life experience, then connecting face-to-face is always going to be the best. When we have a good interaction in person, what actually happens in the brain that facilitates these benefits? The way that I like to describe these benefits is by looking at the neuroscience of social reward. So,
Humans are meant to connect. We are not solitary animals, right? Some animals are solitary, like tigers. Tigers are solitary. They don't like to live in groups because they're perfectly fine hunting on their own. But humans are not solitary. We are social animals.
And one of the ways that this sort of happens, the way this manifests in the brain is this social reward system. So we inherently feel good being around others and social reward has been traced to a system that involves three neurotransmitters. The first is, you could probably guess it, oxytocin. Oxytocin is thought to be like this bonding companionship molecule in the brain.
But what oxytocin really does is it drives social reward, which means that it makes interactions reinforcing. It makes it feel rewarding to be around others. And, you know, if you think about love, I mean, you could kind of define love as just the desire to always be around someone, that their presence is reinforcing to you. You know, when they leave, you're like, oh, I wish they could be with them some more. And you, you know, you think about them, you miss them.
You could argue that this is simply oxytocin making it rewarding to be around them. And what oxytocin does, I mentioned there's three neurotransmitters, is it drives the release of dopamine and serotonin in different brain areas. But that combination of dopamine and serotonin is really powerful and really unique and interestingly effective.
you know, if you think like why is this so powerful, what's going on? One of the only drugs that people can take like a pharmacological drug that enhances both serotonin and dopamine together is MDMA ecstasy. Very euphoric and you know to think that
What social interaction does organically in our brain is hit on the same neurotransmitter systems as ecstasy. Tells you a lot about how important connection is for brain health and just for our existence. You know, it makes us happy. It seems like instinctively we know the value of friendships and connections, but we don't always.
always prioritize them. You know, if people are asked like, oh, come hang out with your friends, but you have a deadline for work, chances are we're going to pick work.
Or we're going to think, I just want to get to bed and then I have to go out there and I have to drive and find a parking spot. It's very easy to talk ourselves out of making the effort to see other people. And that seems counterintuitive. It seems like our brain should drive us to get out there and to prioritize our friends.
Totally. I mean, this is a big, important question and a big, important challenge in modern society. I think that there are maybe two culprits here. The first is, I think that society and culture broadly has been changing over the last few years. And
The brain is a prediction machine. And so based on our recent experience, the brain predicts what's going to happen next. It's always changing and updating its predictions. And when COVID happened and those lockdowns happened in 2020 and 2021,
we dramatically scaled back our social lives in general. People spent way less time interacting. They spent less time just being around others in general. And, you know, that was a huge change for the brain and its predictions.
And I think that what happened is we sort of got used to not predicting as much interaction. And nowadays, you know, you think about all the changes related to COVID that have stuck. You know, we have remote work. People can log into work from their bed. They don't interact with a single person. You know, we pick up our groceries from curbside instead of actually going in. You know, you can do pretty much anything online without interacting with a human where you used to connect with someone. And so I think
Our expectations for how much interaction we are going to have has changed. We expect less, but the truth is the demands of the brain have not changed. We still require just as much interaction. And so I think that while we may feel content in the amount of interaction we're getting, and it may be easy to say, yeah, you know, I'd rather stay in tonight. I don't feel like meeting my friend for dinner. That doesn't mean that we don't need those interactions. But so the question then is,
why don't we go? You know, why don't we feel such a strong pressure to just make it happen? One reason could be that we now engage in a lot of activities that can feel like we're connecting with others. There are many ways to obtain sort of pseudo social rewards, these like artificial social rewards that
didn't used to exist. And so instead of, you know, feeling like, you know, I can only be satisfied by going to meet a friend and having a good conversation, you can maybe get the same type of feeling from just scrolling on social media and looking at people you know and what they're doing and getting likes on your post. And then
you know, if you get sick of social media, you can turn on a TV show and watch a TV show of someone's social life and their dating life and whatever's going on. And then if you get sick of that, you could turn it off and listen to a podcast of two people having a conversation. And it's almost like you're in the room with them. And we have all these like artificial digital ways of like observing and semi engaging in social interaction that I think that those social
seem like suitable replacements for real contact, but they're not. Social interactions online are just not the same as in person. And so while it's so easy to just flake on dinner or drinks or whatever, you know, concert with your friends, it's so important to follow through with it. And I can almost guarantee that you will feel better after going to meet your friends or family or whatever those plans are.
We talked in the beginning about, you know, your elementary school and the outgoing kids and the more introverted kids. Can neuroscience help people who don't make connections as easily as others? You know, there are always those people who make a lot of friends wherever they go. And then there are people for whom that is much harder and it's more work.
What are we learning about that? Yeah, everyone lies somewhere on this spectrum of introverted to extroverted, right? It's, this is what I noticed in elementary school was that everyone's different. And I thought that was so fascinating. But that's just a natural part of humanity. And there may be some people who, you know, who want to be more extroverted. And
There's a lot of research that has been done in neuroscience sort of characterizing and finding the brain systems that are responsible for all of this. When it comes to socializing in the brain, there's a lot involved. It's not just that social reward. There's different systems in brain areas for empathy, for social decision-making, for motivation, for reward. There's all these different brain areas involved. And so...
Whether or not we can distill that all down to one single targetable system in the brain that can be leveraged to make someone more outgoing or more social is a big question. But there is some evidence that maybe that is possible. When I was at Stanford, I was studying how MDMA enhances empathy.
and it all came down to just the serotonin alone. And there are other studies from the same lab I was working in, this is Dr. Robert Malenka's lab at Stanford, where they found-- this is all in mice-- but they found that stimulating serotonin release makes the mice more social and that can be in just your standard mouse when they have their serotonin stimulated, they suddenly want to interact more with other mice
It could also be in a mouse model of autism spectrum disorder. So if there's a genetic change in the mice that resembles the genetic changes that underlie autism, then the mice are naturally or based on that genetic change, the mice are less social but when that serotonin is stimulated they become more social. So it is possible that stimulating serotonin or finding drugs that just target serotonin could enhance sociability.
and maybe push people upward on that spectrum of introvert to extrovert. But there's still more research to be done on that to determine if that's the case. Ben recently finished a book on this topic. It's coming out later this year. It's called Why Brains Need Friends, The Neuroscience of Connection.
Ben is a busy guy, and I wanted to know how he prioritizes friends in his life. You know, it's just sort of something that I do. I don't really know how to explain it, but I always prioritize interaction until I feel that I'm kind of saturated. And everybody gets to that point, by the way, you know, where you're as extroverted as you may be. You get to a point where you're like, okay, that's enough. I literally just got back the other day from a family vacation with my in-laws. We were there for six days.
I'm ready for a day of solitude and I'm like a nine out of 10 on the extroversion scale. So until I get to that point, I always try to, you know, meet friends or call friends or have interactions because not only does it make me feel so good, but when I don't have that and when I fall too deep into a sort of
solitude pit, I really feel bad and it can really affect me. Can you describe a bit more what you feel like when you don't have those interactions? You said you feel bad or you feel blech, but what is that like? What do you notice? I feel a bit sad, actually. I feel tired and I feel sad. I think it makes me feel
Almost like I got a bad night of sleep kind of thing. And I tend to get very stressed as well where I'm much more irritable. I'm more sensitive to little things. I get a frustrating email or something like that and I'm just so much more reactive to it than I would be otherwise. But for me as an extrovert, interaction gives me energy. I find it very...
refreshing to connect with others. And so when I don't have that, I just feel like flat. I feel flat and groggy and just sort of unmotivated. It's funny. Yeah. It's just as you were saying that I usually work only one day a week from home. And then I think, oh, this is going to be good, you know, because on some level working from home is nice. But
But every time I work from home, I end up being so much more stressed out. And I just feel like I'm racing against the clock the whole time and I barely get up and I'm like, ah. And I do think it's because I don't have those interactions to offset the pace of work.
Absolutely. I mean, it's kind of funny. While I was writing my book, I took sort of a sabbatical, I suppose, and really just sat at home and focused on the book for months and months, as long as it took me to write the book.
And that was one of the most isolating periods of my life where I was so used to seeing people in the lab and whatever, connecting with people all the time. And there were sometimes weeks where I would just wake up, sit on my computer, write the book, do research for the book,
go to bed, same thing every day, just sitting at home. And I felt horrible. Like it was so bad. And it was really tough because I was trying to work on this huge project that was really important to me. And I really struggled to focus. I struggled to find motivation at times. And so I tried to fill up my schedule when I wasn't writing with interaction. And it was just sort of the perfect reassurance that, you know, what I'm writing about is very real, at least for me.
Ben Rine is a neuroscientist and the chief science officer of the Mind Science Foundation. His forthcoming book is called Why Brains Need Friends: The Neuroscience of Connection. We really need to start thinking about socializing as one of the core pillars of health. You know, people realize, oh sure, you know, interaction's good and, you know, maybe I feel better after interacting. But I think that there's really been this missing piece of like biologically why. You know, people can understand
why exercise is good for you or why sleep is good for you or why, you know, diet, it might be good for you, but really why is interaction important? And so that's really what I was trying to get at in Why Brains Need Friends is to hit on those pieces to help people really understand like what actually happens when we do or don't interact and how does that contribute to brain function?
We're talking about friendship. Coming up, we'll try to help one woman make new friends. You know, we're like, "Oh, I had so much fun. Like, you know, text me, let me know." And then it just doesn't happen. Later on, we'll meet two friends who love spending time with each other, but neither one of them can really remember their adventures. If you had told me that we had gone to Disney together, I'd be like, "Yeah, okay." I believe that happened. That's still to come on The Pulse.
This is The Pulse. I'm Maiken Scott. We're talking about friendship and why it's so important.
When you're growing up, making friends is usually easy. You're surrounded by other kids at school, playing sports, or at the playground. But then, as an adult, making new friends gets harder. When do you find the time and the energy to put yourself out there? And even if you do, it can seem like nobody is hiring for friend positions.
People are busy with work and family, or they already have a group of friends who've known each other forever. So how do you make friends as an adult? Liz Tang has been interested in this question, and she decided to find somebody who is looking to make friends and to see if she could help them with a research-backed approach. Here's Liz.
I met Riley Sawyer for the first time around the middle of February. It was a gray, slushy day, and we were meeting at a coffee shop near her apartment in North Philly. Riley? Yes, nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Riley is 25, tall, pale, and pretty, with dyed red hair and a lip piercing. On that day, she was wearing sweats and looked a little out of breath. She had texted me earlier to say she was running late.
her dog wasn't feeling well. How are the dogs? Oh, she's good. Her tummy has just been a bit messed up, but like, she's okay. Nothing to worry about.
Riley moved here about a year ago from her hometown of Tucson. She'd had plenty of friends there, but she was bored. And I would go to the same places all the time. And like, that's how I got to know a lot of people and made a lot of friends was just by repetitively going to like the same bars because there's nothing else to do there. And so after a bad breakup, she decided to pull up her stakes and move across the country. It was a real gamble on Riley's part.
But over the past year, she's learned a lot. How to be independent and self-reliant. How to be okay with being alone. But lately, she's been feeling lonely. That's how I found her. Through a post about the trials of moving to a new city. She'd also recently gotten laid off, which meant work wasn't an option for socializing. And so far, most of her other efforts to meet people had been falling flat.
For instance, Riley tried going to a neighborhood bar, where she would often meet people she liked. I will hang out with them for the night. They'll invite me to come hang out with them and their friends. And, you know, we're like, oh, I had so much fun. Like, you know, text me, let me know. And then it just doesn't happen. She tried platonic dating apps like Bumble BFF. I never met a single person from Bumble. And that was if I was lucky enough to even get a reply from people. And it's like,
Making friends should be easier than dating. And at a couple points, it felt like she was really getting somewhere. There was an older guy from the bar, for example, who she got friendly with.
Until it turned out he was looking for more than friendship and a girl she met in a local Facebook group. We got along really well. We understood a lot about each other on a personal level. Until a recent messy night at the bar. She like got upset with me because I was talking to people at like a bar and she felt like she couldn't get my attention. So she like ran away from me. Long story short, the friend stopped texting her back.
Riley even signed up for a virtual Make Friends in Philly event, only to discover the night of that the organizers were MIA and all the other people in the chat room were living in different cities. It seems like Riley could use some help. So we called up an expert for advice, psychologist Marissa Franco, who's written a book on the science of making friends called Platonics.
I decided to get right to the point. So how do you make friends as an adult? Yeah, so the first misconception that we have is that friendship just happens organically. And we have this misconception because as kids it does.
Kids have a lot of, in sociologists speak, repeated unplanned interactions with one another. Ones where they're able to be vulnerable. All crucial ingredients for making friends. But as adults, we don't really have these settings. We might see people at work every day, but we're not often vulnerable at work. So what that means is if we're relying on the same set of assumptions we had when we were kids, we're going to end up lonely.
What that means, Marissa told us, is that to make friends as an adult, you have to be intentional. You have to initiate contact, ask people to hang out, which Marissa said is a scary prospect for most people. But I like to tell them about research on something called the liking gap. The liking gap is a phenomenon discovered by social psychologists in which most of us underestimate how much other people like us. People like you more than you think.
Which is why one of my big tips for making friends is to try to assume that people will like you. - This advice isn't just a feel-good way of amping people up. Marissa says it's based on another psychological concept called the acceptance prophecy. - This finding that when people are told they're liked,
They become friendlier, warmer, more open, even when that idea was initially a lie. And so it becomes this sort of self-fulfilling prophecy, reinforcing loop, whereas the opposite's also true. When we think we'll be rejected, we become cold, we become withdrawn, we don't reach out or make other people feel accepted, which then leads us to be ultimately rejected. So put yourself out there and assume that people like you. But of course, being liked doesn't automatically lead to friendships.
There's a gap between acquaintance I enjoy and friend I can call to hang out. And that is where Riley has found herself stuck for months. We told Marissa about Riley's recent friend-making attempts, starting with the neighborhood bar. But the problem is that those people will sort of end up being like a friend for a night, but there won't be an ongoing connection. So what advice would you have for Riley for next steps?
Well, first, Riley, I just want to say it sounds like you're doing a lot of great stuff already. Putting yourself out there, initiating, like a lot of people don't even get there. So congratulations. But even when you're doing everything right, Marissa said, sometimes people just aren't accepting new friends at the moment. The key is to set up the optimal conditions for success for when you do come across people who are available for a connection.
And that starts with repetition. One thing that I would suggest for you, and this is a commitment, so you got to be ready for somewhat of a commitment, is often when it comes to making friends, I tell people to join something repeated over time.
And so instead of like a one-off meetup, like, is there a league you can join, a class you can join, which capitalizes on something called the mere exposure effect, which is our, when people are familiar to us, we like them more, they like us more. So is that something that you've tried?
I think that's something that we are currently sort of figuring it out and working on. Since our first meetup, Riley and I had been compiling a list of classes and events that she might be interested in checking out. But so far, she hadn't gone to any of them. This may be very redundant to you, but for folks that are listening, when you join a group, you overcome something called overt avoidance, which means we're scared of being around people, so we stay home.
But you also have to overcome covert avoidance, which means that you have to not just show up, but engage with people when you get there. So sometimes we show up and we're on our phone. We're like, everyone else is so clicky. No one's talking to me. And that might be true and it might be scary and it might make you nervous, but
But you have to be the one to say, hi, I'm Riley. How are you enjoying your day? Tell me about, you know, how have you liked this group? You know, the more that we help other people belong, the more that we end up feeling like we belong. I know I have more of an anxious attachment style. And so I know I can go somewhere and I can talk to anyone. But pushing myself into like a group, I'm like...
Oh, they already have their friends. Like, they don't need me to come in and sort of join in or what have you. Like, they won't want me, as you were saying. So that is definitely something that I have struggled with. Marissa told us that Riley's feelings are totally normal and said that one way to combat them is to think about the things that make you a good friend, the things you have to offer to other people.
And then we talked about one other hurdle Riley's been facing, the dreaded follow up. Riley said that a few times now she's met people at bars. They have a really good connection and fun night.
But then when she texts them later to hang out again, the conversation kind of dies on the vine. I just want to depersonalize that for you, which is like, I really think of making friends, like putting your hand alongside like the Jenga blocks and being like, which one is going to move here? And a lot of the Jenga blocks don't move. And that is just so normal. Like it just doesn't mean you've done anything wrong.
I think the only challenge is to not internalize that and generalize it and think nobody's going to respond to me because this one didn't work out. And so it might not be that you're doing anything wrong as much as you need to find that pool of people that are really ready for connection like you are. After talking with Marissa, Riley and I were feeling optimistic.
So that night, we planned to hit our first event, Drag Bingo. It seemed to check all the boxes. It happens regularly, every Thursday night at an axe-throwing bar. And it's something Riley really loves. She is obsessed with bingo. B1. And our next one is after B1. We have 071. 071. I arrived late at the bar, feeling guilty that I'd left Riley to fend for herself.
But I found her sitting with a woman in her 30s and a guy in his 20s, each of them with at least three bingo cards in front of them, as a tall drag queen called out numbers at the front of the room. What is B-11 in Spanish? Beyonce. It ended up being a fun night. By the time I left, Riley was deep in conversation with a guy. She texted me later that night. Thanks again for coming. I think I've made a friend of sorts.
I called her the next week to get the full report. So how'd the rest of the night go? Did you guys end up having a good time? Yeah, no, it was...
It was good. If you're detecting some hesitancy in Riley's voice, you're right. As it turns out, she and the guy made a night of it, bar hopping till late, and then going back to Riley's to watch a movie and have a little cuddle. No funny business, though, she said. And then, like, we texted back and forth a little bit, but
Like, we hadn't texted in a few days. And then I went to Drag Bingo last night, and he seemed in, like, a really weird mood. As in, awkward and standoffish. She left that night not knowing what his deal was, but sent him a text message leaving the door open. If he ever wanted to talk or hang out again, she was around. He never did.
It was disappointing, but not unexpected. Turns out the guy was also a recent transplant currently going through a divorce. Maybe not the best timing for a new friendship. So Riley and I made plans to press on. Soon after, though, something big changed in her life. She got a job, receptionist at a hotel, which was good news for her bank account, but bad news for our mission.
Her shifts went from 3 p.m. to 11 p.m., which meant she wouldn't be able to go to the vast majority of classes and events it would put on our list. Finally, a week or two later, Riley texted me about an event that was happening on one of her nights off, something called Skip the Small Talk.
It sounded kind of like platonic speed dating with a twist. The moderator would provide meaningful question prompts so people could dive right into the deep stuff. We made plans to meet there that night, but pretty quickly, inertia struck.
Texting back and forth, we wondered, are people actually going to show up to this thing? And is it really a good way to make friends? Because online reviews say it's kind of awkward. Long story short, we talked ourselves out of going. Both of us were relieved, partly out of what Marissa, the psychologist, called overt avoidance or fear of people, partly out of laziness, and partly because life is busy and tiring.
Before we knew it, the month we'd set aside for our friend-seeking quest was up. So we decided to have one last chat to debrief. So for me, first of all, I realized that I like totally underestimated how long it takes to make friends as an adult. Like even if you're going to a class or something, you're really only going to be seeing those people like maybe once a week.
So it's going to take a bunch of repetitions before you build up that rapport. And then the other big challenge I've been thinking about, at least for people like you and me, is just getting out of the house. Because you do have a job and you have responsibilities and you have limited time and energy. It's just hard to be an adult and try and make friends. Balancing...
your work with your social life, with your home and everything like it's,
next to impossible if you aren't like 150% on top of everything all the time. I asked Riley if she still feels motivated to get herself out there. She said if something she was really interested in popped up, she would probably check it out. But like, I don't know about searching for that right now. You know, it's at least
At least until I'm able to like better organize the time that I do have and feel like I'm actually like living a little bit more and not just working and sleeping. So we didn't achieve the results we were hoping for. But I think we both also realized that making friends as an adult is a marathon, not a sprint. For some final words of wisdom, I turn back to Marissa, the psychologist.
She told me even though we hadn't yet found any new friends for Riley, the time we'd put in hadn't been wasted. I think you can't judge yourself by the outcome here, but only by the process because you're not in control of the outcome. And the process, you really put yourself out there and you initiated and you built new skills.
And when you do find the right people, they're not going to get away from you because you built these skills of being able to initiate. She said it's important to remember you can do everything right and still not get the results you were hoping for because that other person, they're a random variable.
And so even me that studies this stuff, sometimes I'm trying to make a new friend and it doesn't necessarily work out. And that is the normal part of the human experience of making friends. This is a struggle for everybody.
And the less you internalize it, the better you are going to be at making friends over time. But, Marissa says, the most important thing for Riley right now isn't necessarily how do I make friends, but rather how do I take care of myself?
Because really, when we go through hard experiences that end up stressing us out, what helps us in the long run is to go back to our secure base, the things that rejuvenate us. And that can be a connection with nature, a connection with something spiritual, a connection with the divine, a connection with people that already feel really safe in your life. And I hope that you can do that really unapologetically. Having hope is not being certain of the outcome that will definitely make friends.
but knowing that an outcome is possible, that we could make friends, and that is certainly still possible for you. That story was reported by Liz Tong.
We're talking about friendship and why it's so important. Coming up, two good friends who love to spend time with each other, even though they usually can't remember much of what they did. A lot of times when you get together with friends and you reminisce about past experiences, it forms a bond. With me and Tom, it's not what our friendship is based on. I think it's just the connection that we have.
That's next on The Pulse. The Commonwealth Fund supports The Pulse and reporting on health equity. The Commonwealth Fund, affordable quality health care for everyone. This is The Pulse. I'm Mike and Scott. We're talking about friendship.
In November of 2010, Tom Dixon was a pre-med student on his way to becoming a child psychiatrist. He was also into running half marathons at the time. One day he was out on a run when he was struck by a car. I've been told that an officer arrived and he asked me my name. I said, Tom Dixon.
"Do you know where you are?" I said, "Tom Dixon." And then he asked, "Where are you from?" And then I said, "Tom Dixon." I believe that I had some blood trickling down from my head.
And that's when they called for the ambulance. Tom suffered a traumatic brain injury, which has had lasting effects. He has epilepsy and severe episodic memory loss. It's like how some people feel about TV shows. You know the characters, you know the overall dynamic.
Yet, I don't remember the details of what happened in each episode. Because of his memory issues, he had to give up on his dream to become a child psychiatrist. I know overall who I am and my life, but the specific details are very hard or impossible to recall.
In 2004, Rachel Robinson was in her early 20s. She had just finished grad school, she was working as a software engineer, and she loved to go out salsa dancing with her boyfriend. But she was also having problems with her memory and focus. And then a serious health issue emerged. While I was at work, one of my coworkers actually found me in the parking lot. I was laying down behind a car.
Rachel saw a neurologist. She found out she had been having undetected seizures. And soon after, she was diagnosed with epilepsy. A lot of things that I would do with seizures earlier on were lip smacking, some moaning. And then after 30 seconds to a minute, the seizure would pass. And for me afterwards, I'm usually very confused. I might not know where I am or I might not know who the people are around me.
My seizures were starting at my right temporal lobe. What it progressed to was me having a couple dozen seizures a month. Tried some medications, didn't work. Tried another, tried another, tried another. Rachel had surgery to curtail the seizures, but it didn't completely stop them. She eventually had to give up salsa dancing and even attending events with music because they could trigger the seizure.
Both Rachel and Tom were looking for support and connection. And that's when they met, 10 years ago, at a retreat organized by the Epilepsy Foundation of Eastern Pennsylvania. Rachel had trouble remembering events and people. She used her phone to record notes and pictures for all of her contacts.
Going into my phone now, and I just opened up my contacts, pulled up Tom Dixon. Here I have a picture of Tom. He's got glasses on and a big smile, which is totally Tom. So I probably asked him, hey, can you take a picture for me so I can remember who you are? By the time Tom and Rachel met, he had developed an app called Meemery. It's a digital memory that he could use to document and search the events in his life that he couldn't remember.
All right, so now I'm pulling up Meemery and I'm going to go ahead and search for Rachel Robinson. Am I allowed to joke and say that she owes me $500? The first entry that has her full name in it, May 20th, 2016, Rachel Robinson typing here and she typed...
It's a beautiful, warm, sunny day. It's been awesome talking to you today. You are a great guy and I've only known you for a few hours. Smiley face. Let's stay in touch. Tom is a very quirky guy. Tom is a super fun, super warm person. And he is a joke teller. He loves telling jokes. We always wind up laughing.
It's nice to have a friend who can really understand some of the challenges that you're going through. Knowing Tom, spending time with Tom, like made me feel, well, not alone and hopeful. He still has his challenges. I still have mine, but we're both, we're living. Let's go ahead and see how my friendship with Rachel has changed over the years.
And of course this is going to pull up a ton of entries. So here's one: "At my suggestion, Rachel Robinson watched with me here at home an episode of the 90s animated Batman cartoon series, and I'm glad she enjoyed it too." "We are now in Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. That's back in November of 2022."
It really means a lot to me to have records of memory because the feelings are still there, even if your organic memory is not. I don't feel as empty as I would otherwise, as compromised as I would otherwise. I think the reason Tom and I hit it off so well is because we both have partners. So we understand maybe some of the challenges that come up in relationships. He understands everything.
how our partners, they love us, but they also worry about us. There is a burden. One kind of story is like if I'm in the shower and let's say I drop the soap, my husband is going to come into the bathroom. Are you okay? I always shout out, I'm okay. I didn't have a seizure. And I think I said that story to Tom before and we vibed, we understood because that's how it is.
I am married. Rachel is married. Being in a couple, it can be pretty sometimes funny, the experiences that you may not recall. So over time, our friendship has evolved. It's grown. Him and Lindsay, me and Greg, we went to Florida a couple years ago.
But I don't remember specifics. I just know that we had a good time. If you had told me that we had gone to Disney together, I'd be like, yeah, okay. I believe that happened. But myself on my own being able to recall that is pretty difficult.
If I step outside of Meemery, my sense of Rachel is that we are very buddy-buddy. One of my nicknames for her or for each other is Brain Bud. Brain Bud. I don't know how we got around to this.
But he is my brain bud. Because it's been years now, I expect it to be a very comfortable and relaxing dynamic when we're hanging out together. I feel like she's a great person in my life. When you are seeing somebody again,
You already know. Do you do a nod? Do you wave? Do you say like, wow, it's been so long. Do you give that person the hug? So that already exists without a specific memory. It's a cohesive narrative that you've already formed over months or years.
A lot of times when you get together with friends and you reminisce about past experiences, it forms a bond. With me and Tom, it's not what our friendship is based on. I think it's just the connection that we have. It's strengthened by the things we do together through our shared time together, our experiences, whether we can remember them or not.
Something that my husband and I do a lot are game nights at home. There's going to be some snacks. There's going to be a lot of laughing. So sometimes we'll invite Tom and his wife, Lindsay, over for game night, and it'll be just the four of us. The last time they came over for game night, I think we played poker. It's just so relaxing having him over. I could see us being lifelong friends.
Right now I am searching for my most recent entry regarding game night. February 28th of this year and it was Texas Hold'em Poker. My wife won so congratulations. Maybe I can see an entry where she doesn't win.
Life with disabilities can take various forms and people follow your lead a lot when it comes to disabilities. You set the parameters. What I figured out after my accident is that people don't really care so much about you remembering the individual things that happen if you express just how much you care.
if you help them to feel consistently warm, consistently good. What people are looking for in friendships is comfort, support, recognition. If you put in the effort to reinforce a relationship, people are very understanding. They will come to you.
That was Tom Dixon and Rachel Robinson. Their story was produced by Justin Craymon and edited by Misha Gajewski. You can hear the original version on the Story Collider podcast. That's our show for this week. The Pulse is a production of WHYY in Philadelphia. You can find us wherever you get your podcasts.
Our health and science reporters are Alan Yu and Liz Tan. Our intern is Najee Greenidge. Charlie Kyer is our engineer. Our producers are Nicole Curry and Lindsay Lazarski. I'm Maiken Scott. Thank you for listening. Stand by me. Stand by me. Stand by me.
Behavioral Health Reporting on the Pulse is supported by the Thomas Scattergood Behavioral Health Foundation, an organization that is committed to thinking, doing, and supporting innovative approaches in integrated health care. WHYY's health and science reporting is supported by a generous grant from the Public Health Management Corporation's Public Health Fund. PHMC gladly supports WHYY and its commitment to the production of services that improve our quality of life.