The Power of Connection: A Solution to Stress?

Be honest and think with me about your coping mechanisms to manage work stress.

See if any of these sound familiar: a quick donut in the doctors’ lounge, even though you’ve sworn you’re going to cut back on sugar; doom-scrolling for “just a minute” on Instagram, only to find that 30 minutes has gone by; drinking three or four glasses of wine before, during, and after dinner because your glass is never empty; bingeing on Netflix for four hours on a day off.

All of these quick fixes give us little hits of dopamine, and we instantly feel better. The problem is, that “better” doesn’t last. It’s not sustainable much beyond 10-20 minutes.

So, we look somewhere else, or back to the same place, for the next hit, and the next, and the next, and if we can’t get satisfaction when that craving arises, we snap at a colleague or yell at our kid or flip off someone in a traffic jam who cut in front of us. A fundamental thought loop underlying all of this for me sounded like, “I deserve this”…..whatever “this” might be, from the list above, and well beyond.

It turns out there is a better thought to consider in these moments, and it’s actually a question, rather than a statement: What is it that I need, right now?

I learned an important answer to that question a couple of weeks ago when I was privileged to attend This Naked Mind Institute’s five-day training on Affective Liminal Psychology in Tampa, Florida. I was in a room with 110 people, most of whom I did not know at all going in, but there were about 20 of whom I have known, some for two years, albeit only on Zoom. While our relationships had been purely virtual, they had been intimate, and deep, and intense, and rewarding, and grounded in love.

Fundamentally, our relationships began with, and are nurtured by, ongoing connection. The reward of meeting these intimates in-person for the first time was a dopamine overload that I could not have imagined if I had tried.

Someone much smarter than I once said that the opposite of addiction is connection. I lived that in Tampa. Back in my own day-to-day life now, I am noticing that I have reverted to my old isolationist patterns a bit. I had a zoom call with one of my intimate friends this morning, and within 15 minutes, I was completely restored, fed, joy-filled, smiling.

I wonder, then, if the opposite of burnout and personal moral injury might also begin with

connection. We live our professional lives surrounded at the nurses’ stations by colleagues but encased in our individual bubbles-of-armor to hide our internal struggles with shame, with guilt, with fatigue and overwork, with coping, with weakness and guilt, and yes, even on occasion with addiction. We are alone in crowded rooms all day long.

Let me posit this to you, then: What is it you need, right now, as you’re reaching for your scotch, or your facebook account, or your amazon shopping cart.

I wonder if, in this moment of your craving, all you need might be connection.

Could connection be the solution to stress? Let me know your thoughts.

Jenie x