Why Deep Trust is Key to Countering the Loneliness Epidemic
As I wrote a few weeks ago, it has been 42 years since loneliness was first named a national epidemic here in the United States.
And in 2023, former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy came out with an advisory report detailing the impacts of this ongoing, slow-moving crisis: how roughly half of American adults now experience measurable levels of loneliness, that loneliness leads to massive upticks in health risks such as dementia and depression, and that our use of social networks tends to give us access to a high quantity of potential relationships without necessarily creating the conditions for increasing the quality of them.
All in all, it's a pretty bleak report to read.
So how do we navigate this reality as we seek to create change in our communities and society-at-large?
Building Trust-Based Relationships
The best answer I've come to is this: in the context of mass loneliness, we create small pockets of deep trust – an alternative reality, if you will.
As has been shown again and again, changework happens most effectively within the context of trusting relationships. When we listen to a close friend take a stand on an issue, we’re more likely to question our own stances than we are when listening to strangers. When we see a colleague we know and trust putting in the effort to make sure they aren't misgendering folks, we're more likely to do so as well.
(Trust and relationality are also a key part of why Indivisible’s new approach to political canvassing is statistically more impactful than old forms of door-knocking and get-out-the-vote campaigns.)
The social psychologist Jonathan Haidt refers to this as moral capital – the communal container of trust, accountability, and buy-in that makes honest conversation and the voicing of diverse opinions within a group possible.
In his book Rising Out of Hatred: The Awakening of a Former White Nationalist, Eli Saslow tells the true story of Adrianne Black, the godchild of KKK Grand Wizard David Duke and assumed heir to the white nationalist website “Stormfront.”
Deemed a “leading light” in the white nationalist movement, Adrianne went to New College in Florida – the same one Governor Ron DeSantis just took over – and her world was flipped upside down. But it wasn’t because students all across campus were protesting her presence (which they were.)
It was because she found herself invited to weekly Shabbat dinners with people she had been taught to despise, who would patiently listen to her and engage in conversations with her, question her, challenge her, but all within a context of built trust. She experienced for the first time in her life a space where she was held accountable for her beliefs, challenged directly, but never kicked to the side or removed from the community.
And she changed, completely giving up her white nationalist beliefs, beginning to engage in actions of repair, and dedicating her life to countering the movement she had once claimed as her own.
Now – this was a very specific person in a very specific context. I’m not so sure I’d be able to be as patient as the folks around that table, especially as she shared her harmful comments and beliefs.
But the point is: they developed a small pocket of deep trust that created the conditions for her mind to shift.
The Trust Meter
In her book We Should Get Together, Kat Vellos shares this helpful visual:
It feels that often we spend so much time talking about the weather, complaining about our jobs, or future-freaking based on the immediate news of the day, we never get much deeper.
So how do we?
Based on what I've been reading these past few weeks about loneliness and trust, here are three core ways we can deepen trust with each other:
Honesty: modeling vulnerability; saying the thing that needs to be said; having real talk
Solidarity: listening to one another's hopes, fears, secrets, and wishes; committing to being present alongside another; honoring and affirming life and value
Shared Experience: centering commonalities and creating communal stories; encountering ups and downs together
When we think about making change in our communities – big or small – building trust is always a good place to start: practicing being a bit more honest, leaning into acts and statements of solidarity, and centering our commonalities and shared experiences.
That, in and of itself, would be a pretty radical change in many of the communities I've been a part of – but it would also create the conditions for more effective change in the future.
