Thank you for joining us for episode 429 of Live Happy Now.

We know that loneliness is a huge problem in today's world, and this week we're learning what we can do about it.

I'm your host Paula Phelps, and this week I'm sitting down with Dr. Randall Hansen, an author, educator, an advocate for deep healing.

His mission is to help others understand and heal from the trauma in their lives, and in the wake

of the pandemic, he is one of many thought leaders who are concerned about what loneliness

and isolation are doing to us. He's here to talk about the dangers of loneliness, what's causing it, and most importantly,

what we can do about it. Let's have a listen. Randall, thank you so much for joining me on Live

Happy Now. Paul, I'm very excited to join you on a discuss a very important topic today.

Yeah, you know, you and I are having this conversation because of something that you wrote

about loneliness. It was a, I follow you on LinkedIn and you wrote a post that really spoke to me

because there's so much information coming out right now about how deadly isolation and loneliness are.

And it's just continuing to grow. It's like even though we know what a problem it is,

it's getting worse.

So I guess to start, tell me why it was so important for you to write that post,

because you really took a deep dive into what it's doing to us.

I've just seen too many people affected by it. I have a good friend who's a caretaker for a disabled brother. And pre-COVID, he was already

sort of self-isolating as often caregivers do because they have to spend their whole time with

the person they're taking care of. But then with the pandemic, he just became further isolated.

And I could actually see, I mean, not see, but I could, I could see

his, you know, his brain changing in the sense of he was just becoming more pessimistic.

You know, he's a single guy. He wants to have a family. And so he just becoming more and more

isolated and his attitude to just become more and more pessimistic because we've actually seen, and this is part of my deep dive, but we've actually seen scientific studies and show that loneliness changes the format of our brain. So it actually is almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy if we don't make changes

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