The Science of Aging Well: How Your Beliefs Affect Your Health
GRACE? Actually, it’s more like taking ChARGE
After I wrote my initial post, I realized that I was prioritizing the elements of Doctor Love’s prescription in a way that didn’t line up with her acronym. With all due respect to the good doctor, let me introduce you to a re-branded prescription: ChARGE—which stands for choice, altruism, reciprocity, gratitude, and enjoyment.
Ch = Choice (or maybe Change)
When we notice we’re experiencing feelings of loneliness, the most important thing we can do is understand we have a choice. Like hunger or thirst, loneliness is a signal from your body (or more accurately, your mind and body working together as a coordinated entity; there’s not really a clear division between the two) that you’re lacking a vital nutrient. Just like hunger is a signal that you need to eat and thirst that you need to drink, loneliness is a signal that you need to get meaningful human connection.
In my earlier post, I linked to a video featuring Julianne Holt-Lunstadt, one of the foremost loneliness researchers, where she talked about the importance of being intentional about seeking out and making connections. Over the past few years—in the aftermath of the pandemic and as a result of the death of several dear friends—I’ve made it a point to ask, as I plan out my coming week, what I’m going to do to establish and/or deepen meaningful connection with other people in my life. And not only do I make social connection a recurring category on my to-do list; I do likewise for my “done” list (more about that later, under the gratitude heading).
In her book Wired for Love, Doctor Love devotes a chapter to loneliness.[i] This includes her GRACE prescription (which I’ve re-labelled ChARGE). Under the Choice heading, she writes: “When we look at psychological interventions for lonely people, changing their attitude and outlook has more effect on their loneliness ratings than increasing opportunities for social contact.”[ii]
The remaining components of ChARGE all involve, in one way or another, that important aspect of attitude and outlook.
A = Altruism
“Be a part of something bigger than yourself,” writes Doctor Love. “Helping others, sharing your knowledge, feeling a sense of mission– all this will give you a feeling of self-expansion that is similar to what people experience when they’re in a loving relationship.” She cites a 2018 study that found volunteering two hours or more a week was associated with a significant reduction of feelings of loneliness on the part of recently-widowed older adults.
That study set the age threshold for “older adult” at 51, which is the age I attained less than a year after my first wife died of cancer. At the time, I had heard some grim statistics about the risk of adverse health effects—up to and including death—for recently-widowed men[iii], and I had a gut instinct that retreating into my cave to lick my wounds wasn’t the best way to beat those odds.
So, I volunteered to help out my church’s youth pastor (a recent college graduate) with the high-school youth group, which at its peak had over twenty members. I attended their weekly meetings, went midnight-bowling with them, got dragged along to a rock concert, and served as overnight chaperone when they went to work at an inner-city soup kitchen. Over the two years I was with the youth group, I did experience an adverse health event (I was hospitalized for a deep vein thrombosis), but being connected to this community of young people proved to be an important factor in my being able to get through that rough patch.
R = Reciprocity
Back to Doctor Love’s book, here’s what she has to say about reciprocity, the next element in the loneliness prescription: “By making opportunities to share just a little bit of yourself, you’ll receive in return a mood boost and a bit of stress relief that can build up over time.” To illustrate that point, she introduces us to the work of Professor Barbara Fredrickson, one of the pioneers in the field of positive psychology.
The key concept here is “positivity resonance.” As Professor Fredrickson puts it in her 2013 book Love 2.0: Creating Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection, positivity resonance involves “first, a sharing of one or more positive emotions between you and another; second, a synchrony between your and the other person’s biochemistry and behaviors; and third, a reflected motive to invest in each other’s well-being that brings mutual care.” Our wellbeing is highly dependent on a steady diet of micro-moments of positivity resonance. You can read more about positivity resonance here, or you can watch the extended—but engaging—video embedded here.
So, what can we do to increase our daily dose of micro-moments of positivity resonance? Professor Fredrickson suggests this two-part practice:[iv]
- “Each night, for a few weeks, review your entire day and call to mind the three longest social interactions you had that day. Thinking of these three interactions all together, consider how true each of the following two statements is for you: * During these social interactions, I felt ‘in tune’ with the person(s) around me. * During these social interactions, I felt ‘close’ to the person(s) around me.”
- “Recall how energizing and rewarding it can be to really connect with somebody, sharing a flow of thoughts and feelings with ease. As your day unfolds, seek out at least three opportunities to connect with others like this, with warmth, respect, and goodwill.”
For quite some time, I’ve been in the habit of doing daily and weekly reviews of what I’ve done to maintain and improve my wellbeing along the five dimensions first outlined by the Gallup organization. I’m working on making this practice a regular part of those reviews.
G = Gratitude
Speaking of practices, here’s what Doctor Love recommends under the Gratitude heading: “Every day, try writing down five things that you truly appreciate. Studies show that such simple exercises can significantly improve subjective well-being and reduce feelings of loneliness.”
Five things? Personally, I think that’s asking a bit too much. Three things, on the other hand? That I can manage—although I don’t do the Three Good Things exercise as frequently or in as much detail as the Greater Good Science Center recommends. But I do find that, when I’m experiencing periods of low mood or disconnection, even making a short “3GT” (Three Good Things) bullet-list in my personal journal every day for a couple of days can help me get back on track.
I’m now going to say something many of you may find weird and/or unsettling—but bear with me. I’ve been a hospice volunteer for more than seven years, and that experience has probably done more than any other to deepen my sense of gratitude.
Part of it is because, as research has shown (see here), reflecting on your mortality enhances gratitude for the life that you do have. But mostly, it’s because of the special connection I’m able to develop with the patients I care for (not to mention their families). At the most critical time of their lives, I get to provide them companionship, comfort, and even enjoyment. For example, over the months I spent with one patient who was an avid sci-fi reader but had a neurodegenerative condition that made it difficult for him to read, I was able to read all of Dune to him. I had another patient who was originally from Seattle and enjoyed watching comedy shows, so after a while we’d make watching a different episode from the early seasons of Frasier a part of our weekly routine (and his wife wound up watching along with us). I’ve made it a point, when concluding a visit, to tell my patients: “Thank you for our time together. It’s been an honor and a privilege to visit with you.”
E = Enjoyment
The thing about reading Dune or watching Frasier with my hospice patients is that it was something we both enjoyed. And that takes us back to Doctor Love’s final point about enjoyment: “Sharing good ideas and good times with others helps increase positive emotions and reduce loneliness.” This has to do with a phenomenon known as “interpersonal capitalization” (key references, courtesy of Doctor Love, here and here): When good things happen, people will often tell others about it, and in doing so they boost their mood and their relationship with those they tell. And those people, in turn, will benefit from that sharing.
The bottom line: It’s good to do something enjoyable, but it’s even better to do it with others. That’s why when my wife and I are planning an outing—to a restaurant, a concert, a movie—we ask ourselves who else can we share this experience with? And we try to rotate amongst friends and acquaintances. That way, we don’t keep it all to ourselves, and we strengthen our existing ties.
Wrapping it all up
As our current Surgeon General has said numerous times: Loneliness is like hunger or thirst. It’s a signal we’re missing something vital, namely connection with others. And that means we need to take charge of the situation, to get beyond our selves and reach out to others.
[i] See the section starting at page 136 of the print edition.
[ii] She cites this study.
[iii] I’ve been unable to track down the relevant stats I read back then, at the turn of the current century. But I can tell you that a recent study found a 70% higher mortality risk for men (versus 27% for women) in the year following death of a spouse.
[iv] Full disclosure: I cribbed this from a secondary source.
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