July 22, 2024 • 38 mins
This week Kat talks about Third Places and why they are so hard to come by these days.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
I started to realize that not being an expert isn't
a liability, it's a real gift. If we don't know
something about ourselves at this point in our life, it's
probably because it's uncomfortable to know. If you can die
before you die, then you can really live. There's a
wisdom at death's door. I thought I was insane. Yeah,
(00:31):
and I didn't know what to do because there was
no internet. I don't know, man, I'm like, I feel
like everything is hard. Hey, y'all, my name is Kat.
I'm a human first and a licensed therapist second. And
right now I'm inviting you into conversations that I hope
encourage you to become more curious and less judgmental about yourself, others,
(00:54):
and the world around you. Welcome to You Need Therapy. Hi, guys,
become to a new episode of You Need Therapy podcast.
My name is Kat. I am the host. And before
we get started, here is your quick reminder that although
I'm a therapist and the podcast is called You Need Therapy,
this does not serve as a replacement for a substitute
for any actual mental health services. But we always hope
(01:17):
that it can help in some way. So a couple
of weeks ago. I actually posted about this on Instagram.
If you don't follow me, you can follow me at
cat van Buren. I did change my Instagram name. I'm
walking towards officially changing my last name, and that is
one of the steps that I have taken. So if
you see that name and you're like, Ooh, I don't
know who this person is, it's me. And if you
(01:39):
want to follow me you can cat van Buren. There'll
be a link in the show notes to that. Anyway,
I posted about this a couple of weeks ago, so
some of you may have heard the story. But I
was laying on the couch watching TV with my husband
around like eight thirty in the doorbell rang and I
immediately went into a panic and as my husband up
(02:00):
to answer the door, I said, do not open the door.
Don't open it, don't open it. I mean, I was
in full panic mode. Then he peeked out the window
and realized that the person who rang my doorbell was
my two nieces and my older brother and they were
stopping by because they were in our neighborhood and just
wanted to surprise us and say hello. And honestly, unless
(02:23):
somebody explicitly tells me they're coming over. This is the
normal reaction I have to a knock at the door
or my doorbell rang. It is panic. My initial response
is to drop to the floor, to pretnomously to hide,
to wait until I like freeze until they I know
they leave. And honestly, I take that back, because sometimes
(02:46):
telling me you're coming over isn't even enough to stop
the panic. Because a couple of years ago, I heard
a knock at my door and myself and my roommate
at the time both dropped to the ground and hid,
waiting for the person to finally leave. And it wasn't
until my phone started ringing and I realized it was
my younger brother and my sister in law coming over
(03:07):
for the dinner that we had planned to have together.
I knew they were coming, and still I panicked when
somebody knocked on the door. And I'm realizing that the
panic that I have in those situations is oftentimes normal.
It is oftentimes the majority that it is scary when
somebody approaches your home, especially when you're not expecting them.
(03:30):
And I really started to wonder why, and I asked
this question on Instagram, and you guys gave me various answers,
but some of the things I was thinking about, like
has always been this way? Is it something about our generation?
Are we listening to too many true crime podcasts? Like?
What has been this shift? And if it hasn't always
been this way, what has been the shift in our
culture in our society that has made this thing that
(03:52):
seemingly I assume at one point was very normal and
welcomed so scary. And is it specific for different people
people because not everybody has this experience, and I think
there's a lot of things at play. One I had
to say before I get into this, I don't have
the real answer here, partly because I didn't do any
real research, like actual empirical research. But I also think
(04:13):
that this answer is probably more complex and nuanced. There's
not one thing that created this, because this also doesn't
affect everybody. But I do think that there is one
thing that I have been looking into that has played
a role in this and also has played a role
in a lot of the other parts of our social lives.
(04:34):
And before I started really looking into this, I was
wondering for myself if one of the reasons I felt
this way was because of the kind of neighborhood I
live in, and I don't know anybody on my street.
I know people who live in my neighborhood, but I
don't know the name of anybody who lives on my
(04:55):
actual street. And I have lived here for four years now.
I have moved houses on this street, lives in this
exact house for four years, but I have lived on
the street in the same pretty much general area for
four years. And the community that I live in is
a little different, Like there's not an HOA, there's not
like a neighborhood community center or neighborhood pool or anything
like that that I think would allow some of that
(05:17):
to happen naturally. But I do see my neighbors sometimes
we just don't speak. And my neighborhood is different in
the sense that there's a lot of diversity in it.
That could be a benefit, right regardless. I think to
me that was one of the thoughts, like, oh, do
I get scared of the knock on the door because
(05:37):
if it's my neighbor, I don't know them, And obviously
my neighbor wouldn't just knock on my door because we
don't talk to each other. If something happened like an
emergency and I needed somebody's help. I wouldn't be going
to my neighbors if I needed to borrow an egg
or some butter or something like that in the middle
of a baking project. I would drive to public before
I would knock on my neighbor's door. And it hasn't
always been that way, and I don't think that it's
(05:58):
that way everywhere. It is that way in the space
that I live, or at least it is for me.
And I was listening to another podcast on an unrelated
topic as I was working on my art project turned
uterus painting the last week and if you know, you know,
if you don't know, you can check out the real
I made on Instagram as well. But basically got this
(06:21):
jolt of energy to create this thing I saw on
Instagram that I couldn't afford. And I worked so hard
on this thing and put so many hours and really
enjoyed it. I put a lot of hours into it,
but I really enjoyed the process of it. And when
it was finished, I was so excited to go hang
it in my office and I set it up and
I immediately was like, one, this is ugly. Two I
(06:43):
found out it looked like I had painted a uterus,
so we'll be trying that again. AnyWho. As I was
doing that, I listened to a lot of podcasts while
I was working on it, and I listened to an
episode of b there in five that I actually referenced
on couch Talks last week because it was talking about
relevant to that conversation. But in that episode they also
mentioned this thing called the third place and how we
(07:06):
have a lack of them right now. So I did
what I do best when I find interesting topics, and
I went on a little deep dive. And if you're
unfamiliar with the third places, it is a term that
was created or coined by sociologist Ray Oldenberg, and it
describes a place or places that are outside of your
(07:28):
first place, which is your home and your second place,
which is work, where people go to just connect with
others and it's a casual environment where no one's obligated
to be there. Finances do not and should not prevent
someone from going to a place like this, and it's
just basically a place where you go to connect with
other people in your community for the sake of community
(07:50):
and conversation. Productivity is not part of the plan. It's
not about making something, creating something. It's literally just for leisure.
And in these places, they're going to include people you
don't know, They're going to include people you kind of
know acquaintances, and they're going to probably include good friends
that you have as well. And one of the things
that I really want to drive home there is one
(08:11):
of the requirements for this is nobody's forcing you to
show up and be there. It is something that you
get to just choose. Now, some of you are probably
going to be like, oh, I have one of those,
and some of you guys are going to be like, huh,
what I don't, And also who cares? But third places
play a really important role in helping us build both
individual and collective identities outside of the first and second place,
(08:33):
the home and the workplace. So there's more to you
than the roles you play at home and the roles
that you play at work, and what you do at
work and what you accomplish there. They are social hubs
and they really allow the space to bridge the gap
in this loneliness epidemic that we've been having. And I
know there are some people that are like I'm more introverted,
and I don't really want a ton of social interaction,
(08:53):
and so I don't really think that's necessary. And I
hear that. And also I was reading an article from
today called do you have a third Place? Here's why
finding one is a key for your well being, And
in it I'm going to read just a quote that
I thought was important and speaks to that even if
you aren't always an active social force in a third place,
(09:13):
just showing up matters. It's crucial for people to escape
from a sense of loneliness and build a sense of community.
Some people go to a third place just to be
surrounded by other people watch them and rest while just
enjoying the ambiance and white noise. And I totally feel
that because sometimes I don't want to be the center
of attention or put a lot of energy into something,
but it does feel nice to be around something and
(09:36):
be entertained in some way or feed off of the
social energy of others. Now, historically these kinds of places
would be like parks or neighborhood coffee shops, bars, churches,
places of worship. If you think of like the central
perk from friends, that's a third place, or the bar
and cheers. That's a third place. And while those places
(09:59):
still exist, they I believe exists in a different way
in at least my world. There is another article iuse
reading in The Atlantic, where the author Ali Conti wrote,
the Arsat's third place is a consequence of a culture
obsessed with productivity and status, whose subjects might have decent
incomes but little recreational time. Urban dwelling Americans, however, tend
(10:24):
to place work at the center of life, in part
because cities are so expensive to live in. They might
work a fifty hour week to survive, leaving little to
no time for leisure and community engagement. Unstructured quality time
with friends is replaced with a scheduled series of continuous catchups. Subsequently,
these overscheduled people lack meaningful ties with their neighbors ding ding, ding,
(10:49):
and so they patronize spaces to make those connections even
less frequently. And I think that there are a couple
big reasons that these third places are not as prevalent,
or not as available, or not as frequented. One of
them speaks to what that quote was just saying, we
don't have the time. We are living in a world
(11:11):
that is so hyper focused on success, on getting things done,
on achieving that the simple pleasure of connecting and connection
becomes something that continuously gets pushed farther down on the
to do list, to the point I think some of
us stop even putting it on the list. At the
end of the workday, you don't want to do anything,
so you stop saying hang with friends, visit somebody, have
(11:33):
a conversation. I know me, I don't want to talk
on the phone. I don't a lot of times after work,
I don't want to talk to anybody. I want to
just zone out and watch TV. And part of that
is because of how jam packed and I think strenuous
in different ways all of work can be strenuous in
all different ways. Our workdays are now where the simple
act of spending time with new people can be an
(11:56):
unnecessarily complex challenge. Right, So, if I don't even want
to talk to a friend that I know really well,
I definitely am not going to have the energy to
do something that is genuinely simple, to go and talk
to somebody. The idea of doing that has become so big,
and I think really does genuinely feel so big. We
(12:16):
make it bigger than it used to be part of
that is because we don't do it anymore right, We
haven't had the energy to do it. So then now
doing something like that feels even bigger than it would
have been if we do it more often. Right, starting
is the hardest part, so it starts to feel bigger
and harder, and really that avoidance perpetuates the magnitude of
what socialization really is, where it feels like it takes
(12:40):
more out of me than I get. And if I'm
going to do something for fun, I'm probably going to
prioritize these big things that I want to put on
my list, then the small, you know, just have a
conversation with somebody random, or go into an experience where
I don't know I'm going to get out of it.
I'm going to fill my calendar, my social calendar, with
a thing that I want to attend versus these things
(13:02):
that I could take her leave, and life in general
I think is more complex. It's interesting. We're in summer
right now, and I think summer oftentimes it's like, oh,
we're gonna have so much time to rest and see
each other and do things, But then summer ends up
being less of a break to slow down and more
of a little blip of time because we've packed so
(13:24):
many things in that space, and I have this experience
I feel like every summer where I think I'm going
to have all this time to make these random hangouts
or see people or do things. But I'm doing so
many things that I've had planned for the summer that
I don't get to do the everyday regular things. So
(13:49):
not having time is a big part why these third
places don't so much exist. The other thing is there's
so many other ways we find leisure, and I think
that has to do with just the way our society
and culture has shifted, especially with the development of different things,
and you know, think about TV and television and that
(14:10):
kind of entertainment. Used to watch an episode of a
show every week, right, So if there's a show I liked,
I would, you know, watch it on Thursday nights. And
maybe there's two shows on Thursday, and I don't know.
But now we're getting shows in entirety, right, So instead
of spending an hour watching TV, I could be watching
(14:31):
TV for five hours and not be bored. And there
could be also a million different TV shows I could
be watching because of streaming services, and let's say, you
don't even you're even watching shows like social media success
in As the world has changed, the way we have
entertained ourselves has changed dramatically with it. Instead of things
(14:51):
like bunco groups, we binge watch entire television series. Like
I was saying in one evening, that's the social thing
that I'm doing, that's the leisurely thing I'm doing, instead
of hanging out with friends and having a good time
in that way, and it feels easier, and I'm already
so exhausted from the workday, I'm more likely going to
just want to lay on the couch and do that
than have to put the effort to then go have
(15:12):
those conversations and those experiences. We can lose two hours
more than that. Sometimes scrolling TikTok instead of having an
actual conversation at a local spot, whether that's a restaurant,
a borrow coffee shop, or a community center, we can
get stuck just scrolling our phones, and instead of having
(15:33):
these real conversations with people about current events, we can
tweet at people, people that we have probably never met
and probably will never actually meet, maybe not even ever
re interact with again after we tweet at them. And
I think again, part of that's because we're exhausted, and
part of it's because our social muscles have like atrophied.
(15:53):
We haven't been working them, we haven't been using them.
And so it feels again, going to back what I
was saying earlier, doing this other stuff sometimes feels impossible.
It feels so hard when I think it used to
be like a natural instinct. Ps. As I was developing
this episode and writing some stuff down, I started thinking
(16:14):
about those bunko groups and I literally had to take
a pause and started to like, actually organize a bunko
group because I want that, Like I want those things
to feel more natural, and I want to feel excited
about them. And I know a lot of people are
doing book clubs and stuff like that. Side note three
quarts Therapy might be developing something like that soon, But
(16:36):
I also wanted something that felt more I'm more of
a lover of board games and all of that than
a reader, and it's something that I remember my parents doing,
having these monthly groups where all their friends would get
together and they would have so much fun. And we
still have those people still do that, but I want
us to have more of it, and I want it
to be like a normal experience for us versus this.
(16:58):
Oh my gosh, that sounds like so much work. I
don't want to commit to that. It's another thing on
my calendar. If socialization and community is important, then I
have to start prioritizing it so it does not feel
like it is such a burden versus it is part
of my life. It also makes me think about how
I went on a walk last weekend with Patrick in
(17:18):
a park near our neighborhood, which normally I think in
the past could be considered a third place. But we
don't really communicate or talk to anybody else at this park.
And also when it comes to parks, I think a
lot of communities created these things for third places, for
shared community and environments, and as the world has shifted,
it's kind of creepy to walk up to a stranger
(17:39):
at a park now. Like if you're hanging out at
a park and you're laying by yourself somewhere, or you're
on a walk, there's a lot of stranger danger. I
think that we're experiencing as well, so that plays a
role in this. But anyway, we were walking and as
we were walking, we passed a woman who made a
casual and kind upbeat comment to us, and our initial
(17:59):
reaction was, what a strange thing to do, you know,
talk to a stranger, say hello to a stranger. And
after Patrick and I talked about the interaction for a second,
I was like, we are the weirdos. We are the
weird ones. The fact that you would complain or think
(18:19):
it's weird or like scoff or whatever when somebody says
hello and makes a friendly comment that maybe who knows,
maybe they were hoping for a conversation or to spark something,
and that was their intro into it. The fact that
I think that's weird, That is weird. Somebody was just
being friendly, And I think that kind of explained some
(18:40):
of this social exhaustion. I go to this park and
I complain about having to see people that I know,
because I so often want to go on a walk
to relax and decompress, but I want to completely disconnect
from everybody, and I don't want to have to stop
what I'm doing or share that experience with somebody. And
(19:03):
I do think that there's a time and a place
where like, yes, we need our alone time. That's not
what I'm saying at all. But I think that my
knee jerk reaction of needing so much of it or
being so exhausted by the interactions that I do have,
that I don't have space for these just leisurely, just
for joy communications because maybe I'm exhausted at home or
(19:26):
exhausted in the workplace. That I think is part of
an issue really that I see where our communities are
so divided right like I don't know my community because
I don't have the social energy to do so, when
that could bring so much more joy and help in
my life and bring us together versus create this such individualized, separate,
(19:48):
than polarizing experience we're having in our communities now. I
also think that speaking to this idea that there are
so many different ways we find leisure is part of
the issue with this is not just that we aren't
going in public to find our leisure. I think another
thing that plays into that is there are so many
(20:09):
more opportunities and options, Like there are so many options
to have and there are so many places to go
depending on where you live. Instead of just going to
the neighborhood coffee shop. I live in Nashville, there's a
new coffee shop to try every month. There are all
these new places, and it feels like the establishments that
(20:29):
have been around here the longest are closing down more
often than staying consistent because of so many of these
new places. And you know how we are. We love newness,
we love shine, we love excitement, and the safeness and
the I won't even say the health and the normalcy
(20:49):
of going to the same places becomes very boring, and
we're tired of it because maybe we're not talking to
people when we're there. Those places are going away more often,
and all these new places are popping up. And I
think that's the same with restaurants, it's the same with
your neighborhood bars. I imagine this feels different depending on
where you live. I think there can be different roadblocks
when it comes to this idea. Maybe in some role
(21:12):
places there aren't enough options, there's no options at all,
And then places like I am right now, there are
too many, and these old establishments with a nostrogia can't
keep up with these new, fancier places that are coming in,
or they're getting bought and turning into something else, and
then those places become these revolving doors. There's so many
buildings around here that stay open for less than a year,
(21:34):
and people keep putting something else in the same spot
and nothing sticks. And we've almost like lost trust in
the establishments, I think, because they come and go so
fast and they're not around long enough for a community
to really be solidified, especially at the rate that we're
going to them, right, that we're going to them regularly.
So then that leads me to this third idea that
(21:56):
I think is kind of roadblocking us into having these
third place that we used to have more regularly, and
that is just our social skills. And I think I've
layered that into what I've already said, and it sounds
weird because I feel like this is also something that
should be advancing versus trending down. But the more technology
that adds to the ease of our lives, like the
(22:20):
different streaming services, like the social media, like all these
different things that adds ease to our lives, it's also
stealing opportunity for us to develop, to develop as people,
to develop as groups, to develop our own skills in
different areas, one of those skills being our social skills.
I was talking to somebody the other day because I
(22:40):
use chat GBT for the first time, which is such
a weird thing to me. It scares me a little bit.
And I was talking about, like, how are we going
to develop our writing skills? How are we going to
develop our critical thinking skills? How are we going to
develop our problem solving skills? And we have these robots
that just do all this for us, And so there's that,
(23:01):
but it's also stealing from our social skills. And social
skills are skills. There are things that we can learn.
We can have more of a natural way of leaning
into that, just like any other skill. But it's also
a skill that can be and is often learned through
our experiences and through our communities and our surroundings, and
(23:23):
a lot of us are really out of practice. I mean,
even just the idea of small talk can be so
difficult these days. People don't know how to do it.
One because we don't like it. I could go on
a whole different conversation around that, but a part of
it is it scares us because we just don't know
how to do it and everything's awkward. And I mean
(23:44):
I'm the first to make a joke about that. I
even posted the other day about my fear of going.
As I was doing my art project turned uterous painting,
I had to go and talk to the people at
Low's and ask them to cut some pieces of wood
frame for me. That took so much out of me.
There was nerves around it for different reasons. But these
(24:05):
things that used to be so simple, going to the
hardware store and asking for some help, or being in
line the grocery store and start talking to the person
next to you, they're scary. We don't do them. And again,
like the woman that said hello to me, people think
that they're weird, and I don't think that they need
to be. And so it's interesting because one of the
most common frustrations I hear in my office centers around
(24:29):
the difficulty in finding and maintaining friendships and community in adulthood.
I think that the individualism that has helped us grow
in so many ways has also stolen an essential part
of creating a meaningful life. Like we can move to
a new city and follow our dreams, but we can't
(24:49):
go to a bar and sit down and strike up
a conversation with the person next to us. And again,
there's a host of reasons of where that comes from
and why that is but if you're asking, like, okay,
who really cares, Like yes, community, Yes, it's one of
the reasons. Maybe you're scared of the person that you're door.
(25:10):
Why does this really matter? I really think these third
places matter for so many reasons. One, like I mentioned,
the lack of these places really does play a role
in the loneliness epidemic we have been facing for the
past I don't know, decade, but we've actually been paying
attention to for the past couple of years. Like that
didn't start with the pandemic. I think it was exacerbated
(25:30):
by it, which honestly might have been a good thing,
so we did start paying attention to it. But the
difficulty of finding friendships and maintaining those friendships and maintaining
social connection, and the issue that there aren't places that
we can just show up and be seen and see
other people in the way that we used to have
these places, to me, it is something we should be
(25:51):
concerned about, Like we're so worried about and sometimes we
think we're worried about the collective culture, but a lot
of times we really do overcorrect. And this selfless versus
selfishness where there has to be a middle ground where
I want to be involved in a part of my
community and I want to take care of others and
(26:11):
I want to take care of myself those things are
allowed to coexist. I think I talked about this about
the over correctedness we do with like setting boundaries. It's
all of a sudden we're cutting everybody out of our
lives versus just setting boundaries or knowing that there I
might need some extra self care in some areas, or
people can be problematic, but it doesn't mean that they're toxic.
(26:32):
Like We've just overcorrected in a lot of ways. That
has also ripped opportunities away from us. And people don't
have to be all good and all bad all the time.
There can be a middle ground and I can still
share positive experiences with people that aren't perfect in every way.
(26:55):
I really do think that this is part of the
issue that we have dividing us as an entire country,
not just individual communities. In the same article in The
Atlantic that I referenced earlier, there was a professor at
Colorado College that was quoted saying a world made up
of atomized, physically isolated people is a world without true
(27:15):
shared reality, which is a recipe for civic disengagement, misinformation,
and perhaps even political extremism. And I'm not getting into
the politics of all of this. That's not what this
is really pointing at. It's actually pointing out the issue
with it, right. The lack of socialization within our community
is creating more polarizing divides between us. The simple conversations
(27:38):
aren't happening anymore, where we can enjoy parts of each
other and shared positive experiences before we make an opinion
that's opposite of the halo effect based on certain beliefs
that we do not share or we assume that we
do not share. We are not finding ourselves in spaces
where we are sitting and having normal, calm, less extreme
(28:00):
conversations about certain topics because we're just not having conversations
at all. And I really do think the lack of
a third space creates a lack of the wider community,
almost where community becomes a luxury and to some a
burden versus the way in which we survive. I honestly
sometimes think we're like scared of people, not in the
(28:22):
sense that like I'm scared at the person at my door.
I think it turns into that, but we're just scared
of people in general, because what we do end up seeing,
because we are not sharing spaces and having conversations with
these diverse people and having communities that are not all
or nothing, we see the extreme sides of things because
that's what we're seeing on things like social media, that's
(28:43):
what's being platformed on there. And so I think as
much as we're afraid of what others think, we are
afraid of what other people think of us, Like we
don't want to get into these conversations or have conversations
about certain things. We tiptoe around things, and then we
end up avoiding them at all costs, honestly, because we
assume that the majority of how people think and know
(29:04):
and what people know and how smart people are and
all that stuff is we're comparing to that to what
we see on social media, and that's such an extreme
version of what how most people live and what most
people will know, and how most people will just work
and operate. The less I keep using the word extreme,
but it's I mean the less polarized, the less loud,
the less angry, Like the lesser of those voices isn't shared,
(29:28):
and so we're just not talking to anybody And that's
actually what I talked about last week on couch Talks
when I was talking about answering a question on a
listener who was sharing that her and her partner don't
have the same political beliefs, so they don't know how
to have conversations about it. We're so scared all the time.
But my greater point in that is that by not
having these third places, by not having these community centers.
(29:52):
When I say that, I like think of like the
old community center, like a senior citizen center or something
like that, but I just mean like community centers, like
places where people just feel safe to come and like
chat and you see the regulars, and you meet this
person their acquaintance, and then you're able to say hi
to them at the grocery store, and then maybe you
see them at the soccer complex when your kids are
having a game, and we just have a wider net
(30:15):
of human beings in real life. But the ability for
us to not have these spaces where we meet these
people and we have these conversations are keeping us in
these tighter, more almost like dungeon like circles of community.
It often feels like the communities that we're in are
(30:35):
these separate very almost like elite or exclusive social clubs
that only certain people are allowed in and out, and
it's hard to get in or it's hard to even
know where they are. We just separate ourselves so much
versus come together. And there's something to that that like exclusivity.
(30:56):
There's honestly, there's so much psychology behind that. I think
I would love to research the science of that, because
exclusiveness is attractive, Right, you want things that less people have, Right,
that's what makes certain items more like oh, there's only
three made in the world, so they're more expensive, they're
of more value. If less people are allowed into this
(31:16):
social club, they're of more value. And I think about
like the Soho houses in the different cities. It's you
have to apply to get in and if you have
a membership, and they're expensive, so only a certain type
of person can even afford to be there. That's not
a third place because money is not supposed to keep
somebody in and out of this. Anybody should be allowed
to show up and be there if they want. And
(31:38):
I even think about how fitness has changed where third
places might have been the gyms, Like when I grew up,
I grew up in a neighborhood that had a community
rec center, and to go work out at that rec
center was like two dollars, and I think there's actually
a place like that around here as well, where like
to take a class at one of these centers is
like two or three dollars versus to take a workout
(32:00):
class at these boutique fitness studios they're upwards of thirty bucks.
And I think part of that is one, it's a business,
they're making money versus they're funded by the government or
the whoever. But also there is I think a part
where people want to create that exclusive feeling where like
to be here and to be seen as special, which
(32:23):
is an issue I think that I think there is
with the fitness world, and that wellness and health should
not be a luxury or a privilege. It should be
something we are all allowed to be a part of.
That is really tough. And then when we find ourselves
in those exclusive social clubs or scenes, then we are
creating almost like echo chambers. We're either not having those
(32:46):
conversations where we're not hearing different opinions because we're scared
of each other, or we're surrounded by people that all
do think the same, and we're not having really fruitful conversations,
and so we almost get so amped up on what
we believe and everybody around us is amping up, and
then when we are here's something that goes against that,
we want to fight versus go, oh, I've never thought
(33:06):
of it that way. Tell me more, or oh, you know,
I don't agree with that, but I still might like you,
like they've become the enemy. Maybe this is why I'm
coming back to this idea that someone coming to my
door felt like an invasion of privacy, right, a panic,
a threat versus an opportunity to connect with somebody or
(33:26):
a fun surprise. There would be no good reason for
someone to be knocking on my door if I wasn't
expecting somebody. That's the thought, Like, what would the reasoning
be because that doesn't happen versus it would be a
normal part of our world, an unexpected addition to our
day versus a burden to have to talk to somebody.
It would be a good thing if we experienced it
(33:48):
being a good thing more often, but we just don't.
And because I don't exist in a world where my
neighbor might pop over, the vast majority of knocks on
my door will end up being from people that I
don't want to be there, So that's going to be
where my brain is shifting now. They might not be
all people that are going to come rob me and
murder me in my home, but they might be salespeople,
or they might be I don't know. But because that
(34:11):
is what I'm getting, I have nothing to compare it to.
And I think my takeaway through this is one I'm
going to start a Bunco group. I've already sent out
some texts and I will hold myself accountable for that,
and it will be not just like my core group
of friends. I want to invite people from different areas
of my life into that, and also the idea of
we can continue to add people to that and people
(34:33):
can rotate in and out of it. It doesn't have
to be this fixed thing. But my other takeaway is
I read this line in the article from today dot
Com and I mentioned earlier, and it said we need
physical spaces for serendipitous productivity, free conversation, and that really
just like sums it up for me. We need spaces
(34:55):
where the goal is enjoyment rather than networking for work
or gain social status, because when that's the goal of
social interaction, it does feel like work. And when we're
already exhausted by work, obviously we don't want to go
do more. We're going to resort to those easier to
relax experiences that strip us from actually really honing in
(35:16):
and developing social skills that connect us and benefit our health.
We need places where there is an us mentality right
versus a better than or a scared of or against them,
where the opportunity for unplanned moments shared is really welcomed
(35:37):
versus feared. So my challenge for you one, if you
have a third place, I want to hear it. I
want to know what it is. I want to know
what it's like. What kind of place you even live in? Right,
if you live in a big city, if you live
in a moral roural era, if you live in the suburbs, Like,
tell me about your third place. If you don't have one,
let's find one. And again, they don't have to be
(35:59):
the go group. Right, there are any places where you
can go and connect with people, and the connection can
be just a simple conversation with a stranger. And one
of the articles I was reading it was telling about
how she went, I don't know, somewhere to some meditation
group or yoga class or something. On her way back,
she saw this building. She was curious, so she went
into it and it was kind of like a social
(36:21):
club for the neighborhood, like a community bar or something
like that. And she had a conversation with the bartender
and they learned something about each other, and she enjoyed
meeting this stranger, and it actually filled her cup up
more than the yoga class she went to, which is
so interesting because so often when I'm going to the gym,
I'm not talking to anybody. I go in, I go out, like,
(36:42):
that's not where I'm even finding this. I don't know,
exposure to people that I think we expect to find
in those places now because we're so just stare ahead,
that whole individualism idea. I'm going to go do what
I need to do, and I can't have anybody get
in the way of it, where I kind of want
want to let somebody get in the way of it.
(37:03):
There's a neighborhood pizza place where I live that I love.
I would love to be one of my third places.
And I went with a couple friends months ago and
sat at the bar. Sitting at the bar is such
a fun experience and also can be really scary. But
there was the persons they at the corner that we
didn't know, and he just started talking about I don't know,
the game or something that was on TV. And we
had a whole conversation with him for our whole meal.
(37:25):
I've never spoken to him again, I probably never will
unless I run into him again. But it was fun
to talk to him and it didn't steal anything. It
actually brought some thought provoking conversations between me and my
friends later. And what if those kinds of things were
exciting versus a bummer or avoided. I don't know. Maybe
(37:46):
I would be less scared at my brother knocking on
my door. Maybe not, but I am willing to try
to find out. So find a third place, or tell
me about your third place, and let's do our own
part to shift some of this loneliness stuff. Let's create
more spaces for people to be able to connect versus
more spaces for us to avoid each other. That's what
(38:08):
I'm gonna end with. So I hope you guys have
the day you need to have. I will be back
with you on Wednesday for Couch Talks. If you want
to follow me at kat Van Buren, at You Need
Therapy podcast, at three Quart Therapy, and Top Dealers
I started to realize that not being an expert isn't
a liability, it's a real gift. If we don't know
something about ourselves at this point in our life, it's
probably because it's uncomfortable to know. If you can die
before you die, then you can really live. There's a
wisdom at death's door. I thought I was insane. Yeah,
(00:31):
and I didn't know what to do because there was
no internet. I don't know, man, I'm like, I feel
like everything is hard. Hey, y'all, my name is Kat.
I'm a human first and a licensed therapist second. And
right now I'm inviting you into conversations that I hope
encourage you to become more curious and less judgmental about yourself, others,
(00:54):
and the world around you. Welcome to You Need Therapy. Hi, guys,
become to a new episode of You Need Therapy podcast.
My name is Kat. I am the host. And before
we get started, here is your quick reminder that although
I'm a therapist and the podcast is called You Need Therapy,
this does not serve as a replacement for a substitute
for any actual mental health services. But we always hope
(01:17):
that it can help in some way. So a couple
of weeks ago. I actually posted about this on Instagram.
If you don't follow me, you can follow me at
cat van Buren. I did change my Instagram name. I'm
walking towards officially changing my last name, and that is
one of the steps that I have taken. So if
you see that name and you're like, Ooh, I don't
know who this person is, it's me. And if you
(01:39):
want to follow me you can cat van Buren. There'll
be a link in the show notes to that. Anyway,
I posted about this a couple of weeks ago, so
some of you may have heard the story. But I
was laying on the couch watching TV with my husband
around like eight thirty in the doorbell rang and I
immediately went into a panic and as my husband up
(02:00):
to answer the door, I said, do not open the door.
Don't open it, don't open it. I mean, I was
in full panic mode. Then he peeked out the window
and realized that the person who rang my doorbell was
my two nieces and my older brother and they were
stopping by because they were in our neighborhood and just
wanted to surprise us and say hello. And honestly, unless
(02:23):
somebody explicitly tells me they're coming over. This is the
normal reaction I have to a knock at the door
or my doorbell rang. It is panic. My initial response
is to drop to the floor, to pretnomously to hide,
to wait until I like freeze until they I know
they leave. And honestly, I take that back, because sometimes
(02:46):
telling me you're coming over isn't even enough to stop
the panic. Because a couple of years ago, I heard
a knock at my door and myself and my roommate
at the time both dropped to the ground and hid,
waiting for the person to finally leave. And it wasn't
until my phone started ringing and I realized it was
my younger brother and my sister in law coming over
(03:07):
for the dinner that we had planned to have together.
I knew they were coming, and still I panicked when
somebody knocked on the door. And I'm realizing that the
panic that I have in those situations is oftentimes normal.
It is oftentimes the majority that it is scary when
somebody approaches your home, especially when you're not expecting them.
(03:30):
And I really started to wonder why, and I asked
this question on Instagram, and you guys gave me various answers,
but some of the things I was thinking about, like
has always been this way? Is it something about our generation?
Are we listening to too many true crime podcasts? Like?
What has been this shift? And if it hasn't always
been this way, what has been the shift in our
culture in our society that has made this thing that
(03:52):
seemingly I assume at one point was very normal and
welcomed so scary. And is it specific for different people
people because not everybody has this experience, and I think
there's a lot of things at play. One I had
to say before I get into this, I don't have
the real answer here, partly because I didn't do any
real research, like actual empirical research. But I also think
(04:13):
that this answer is probably more complex and nuanced. There's
not one thing that created this, because this also doesn't
affect everybody. But I do think that there is one
thing that I have been looking into that has played
a role in this and also has played a role
in a lot of the other parts of our social lives.
(04:34):
And before I started really looking into this, I was
wondering for myself if one of the reasons I felt
this way was because of the kind of neighborhood I
live in, and I don't know anybody on my street.
I know people who live in my neighborhood, but I
don't know the name of anybody who lives on my
(04:55):
actual street. And I have lived here for four years now.
I have moved houses on this street, lives in this
exact house for four years, but I have lived on
the street in the same pretty much general area for
four years. And the community that I live in is
a little different, Like there's not an HOA, there's not
like a neighborhood community center or neighborhood pool or anything
like that that I think would allow some of that
(05:17):
to happen naturally. But I do see my neighbors sometimes
we just don't speak. And my neighborhood is different in
the sense that there's a lot of diversity in it.
That could be a benefit, right regardless. I think to
me that was one of the thoughts, like, oh, do
I get scared of the knock on the door because
(05:37):
if it's my neighbor, I don't know them, And obviously
my neighbor wouldn't just knock on my door because we
don't talk to each other. If something happened like an
emergency and I needed somebody's help. I wouldn't be going
to my neighbors if I needed to borrow an egg
or some butter or something like that in the middle
of a baking project. I would drive to public before
I would knock on my neighbor's door. And it hasn't
always been that way, and I don't think that it's
(05:58):
that way everywhere. It is that way in the space
that I live, or at least it is for me.
And I was listening to another podcast on an unrelated
topic as I was working on my art project turned
uterus painting the last week and if you know, you know,
if you don't know, you can check out the real
I made on Instagram as well. But basically got this
(06:21):
jolt of energy to create this thing I saw on
Instagram that I couldn't afford. And I worked so hard
on this thing and put so many hours and really
enjoyed it. I put a lot of hours into it,
but I really enjoyed the process of it. And when
it was finished, I was so excited to go hang
it in my office and I set it up and
I immediately was like, one, this is ugly. Two I
(06:43):
found out it looked like I had painted a uterus,
so we'll be trying that again. AnyWho. As I was
doing that, I listened to a lot of podcasts while
I was working on it, and I listened to an
episode of b there in five that I actually referenced
on couch Talks last week because it was talking about
relevant to that conversation. But in that episode they also
mentioned this thing called the third place and how we
(07:06):
have a lack of them right now. So I did
what I do best when I find interesting topics, and
I went on a little deep dive. And if you're
unfamiliar with the third places, it is a term that
was created or coined by sociologist Ray Oldenberg, and it
describes a place or places that are outside of your
(07:28):
first place, which is your home and your second place,
which is work, where people go to just connect with
others and it's a casual environment where no one's obligated
to be there. Finances do not and should not prevent
someone from going to a place like this, and it's
just basically a place where you go to connect with
other people in your community for the sake of community
(07:50):
and conversation. Productivity is not part of the plan. It's
not about making something, creating something. It's literally just for leisure.
And in these places, they're going to include people you
don't know, They're going to include people you kind of
know acquaintances, and they're going to probably include good friends
that you have as well. And one of the things
that I really want to drive home there is one
(08:11):
of the requirements for this is nobody's forcing you to
show up and be there. It is something that you
get to just choose. Now, some of you are probably
going to be like, oh, I have one of those,
and some of you guys are going to be like, huh,
what I don't, And also who cares? But third places
play a really important role in helping us build both
individual and collective identities outside of the first and second place,
(08:33):
the home and the workplace. So there's more to you
than the roles you play at home and the roles
that you play at work, and what you do at
work and what you accomplish there. They are social hubs
and they really allow the space to bridge the gap
in this loneliness epidemic that we've been having. And I
know there are some people that are like I'm more introverted,
and I don't really want a ton of social interaction,
(08:53):
and so I don't really think that's necessary. And I
hear that. And also I was reading an article from
today called do you have a third Place? Here's why
finding one is a key for your well being, And
in it I'm going to read just a quote that
I thought was important and speaks to that even if
you aren't always an active social force in a third place,
(09:13):
just showing up matters. It's crucial for people to escape
from a sense of loneliness and build a sense of community.
Some people go to a third place just to be
surrounded by other people watch them and rest while just
enjoying the ambiance and white noise. And I totally feel
that because sometimes I don't want to be the center
of attention or put a lot of energy into something,
but it does feel nice to be around something and
(09:36):
be entertained in some way or feed off of the
social energy of others. Now, historically these kinds of places
would be like parks or neighborhood coffee shops, bars, churches,
places of worship. If you think of like the central
perk from friends, that's a third place, or the bar
and cheers. That's a third place. And while those places
(09:59):
still exist, they I believe exists in a different way
in at least my world. There is another article iuse
reading in The Atlantic, where the author Ali Conti wrote,
the Arsat's third place is a consequence of a culture
obsessed with productivity and status, whose subjects might have decent
incomes but little recreational time. Urban dwelling Americans, however, tend
(10:24):
to place work at the center of life, in part
because cities are so expensive to live in. They might
work a fifty hour week to survive, leaving little to
no time for leisure and community engagement. Unstructured quality time
with friends is replaced with a scheduled series of continuous catchups. Subsequently,
these overscheduled people lack meaningful ties with their neighbors ding ding, ding,
(10:49):
and so they patronize spaces to make those connections even
less frequently. And I think that there are a couple
big reasons that these third places are not as prevalent,
or not as available, or not as frequented. One of
them speaks to what that quote was just saying, we
don't have the time. We are living in a world
(11:11):
that is so hyper focused on success, on getting things done,
on achieving that the simple pleasure of connecting and connection
becomes something that continuously gets pushed farther down on the
to do list, to the point I think some of
us stop even putting it on the list. At the
end of the workday, you don't want to do anything,
so you stop saying hang with friends, visit somebody, have
(11:33):
a conversation. I know me, I don't want to talk
on the phone. I don't a lot of times after work,
I don't want to talk to anybody. I want to
just zone out and watch TV. And part of that
is because of how jam packed and I think strenuous
in different ways all of work can be strenuous in
all different ways. Our workdays are now where the simple
act of spending time with new people can be an
(11:56):
unnecessarily complex challenge. Right, So, if I don't even want
to talk to a friend that I know really well,
I definitely am not going to have the energy to
do something that is genuinely simple, to go and talk
to somebody. The idea of doing that has become so big,
and I think really does genuinely feel so big. We
(12:16):
make it bigger than it used to be part of
that is because we don't do it anymore right, We
haven't had the energy to do it. So then now
doing something like that feels even bigger than it would
have been if we do it more often. Right, starting
is the hardest part, so it starts to feel bigger
and harder, and really that avoidance perpetuates the magnitude of
what socialization really is, where it feels like it takes
(12:40):
more out of me than I get. And if I'm
going to do something for fun, I'm probably going to
prioritize these big things that I want to put on
my list, then the small, you know, just have a
conversation with somebody random, or go into an experience where
I don't know I'm going to get out of it.
I'm going to fill my calendar, my social calendar, with
a thing that I want to attend versus these things
(13:02):
that I could take her leave, and life in general
I think is more complex. It's interesting. We're in summer
right now, and I think summer oftentimes it's like, oh,
we're gonna have so much time to rest and see
each other and do things, But then summer ends up
being less of a break to slow down and more
of a little blip of time because we've packed so
(13:24):
many things in that space, and I have this experience
I feel like every summer where I think I'm going
to have all this time to make these random hangouts
or see people or do things. But I'm doing so
many things that I've had planned for the summer that
I don't get to do the everyday regular things. So
(13:49):
not having time is a big part why these third
places don't so much exist. The other thing is there's
so many other ways we find leisure, and I think
that has to do with just the way our society
and culture has shifted, especially with the development of different things,
and you know, think about TV and television and that
(14:10):
kind of entertainment. Used to watch an episode of a
show every week, right, So if there's a show I liked,
I would, you know, watch it on Thursday nights. And
maybe there's two shows on Thursday, and I don't know.
But now we're getting shows in entirety, right, So instead
of spending an hour watching TV, I could be watching
(14:31):
TV for five hours and not be bored. And there
could be also a million different TV shows I could
be watching because of streaming services, and let's say, you
don't even you're even watching shows like social media success
in As the world has changed, the way we have
entertained ourselves has changed dramatically with it. Instead of things
(14:51):
like bunco groups, we binge watch entire television series. Like
I was saying in one evening, that's the social thing
that I'm doing, that's the leisurely thing I'm doing, instead
of hanging out with friends and having a good time
in that way, and it feels easier, and I'm already
so exhausted from the workday, I'm more likely going to
just want to lay on the couch and do that
than have to put the effort to then go have
(15:12):
those conversations and those experiences. We can lose two hours
more than that. Sometimes scrolling TikTok instead of having an
actual conversation at a local spot, whether that's a restaurant,
a borrow coffee shop, or a community center, we can
get stuck just scrolling our phones, and instead of having
(15:33):
these real conversations with people about current events, we can
tweet at people, people that we have probably never met
and probably will never actually meet, maybe not even ever
re interact with again after we tweet at them. And
I think again, part of that's because we're exhausted, and
part of it's because our social muscles have like atrophied.
(15:53):
We haven't been working them, we haven't been using them.
And so it feels again, going to back what I
was saying earlier, doing this other stuff sometimes feels impossible.
It feels so hard when I think it used to
be like a natural instinct. Ps. As I was developing
this episode and writing some stuff down, I started thinking
(16:14):
about those bunko groups and I literally had to take
a pause and started to like, actually organize a bunko
group because I want that, Like I want those things
to feel more natural, and I want to feel excited
about them. And I know a lot of people are
doing book clubs and stuff like that. Side note three
quarts Therapy might be developing something like that soon, But
(16:36):
I also wanted something that felt more I'm more of
a lover of board games and all of that than
a reader, and it's something that I remember my parents doing,
having these monthly groups where all their friends would get
together and they would have so much fun. And we
still have those people still do that, but I want
us to have more of it, and I want it
to be like a normal experience for us versus this.
(16:58):
Oh my gosh, that sounds like so much work. I
don't want to commit to that. It's another thing on
my calendar. If socialization and community is important, then I
have to start prioritizing it so it does not feel
like it is such a burden versus it is part
of my life. It also makes me think about how
I went on a walk last weekend with Patrick in
(17:18):
a park near our neighborhood, which normally I think in
the past could be considered a third place. But we
don't really communicate or talk to anybody else at this park.
And also when it comes to parks, I think a
lot of communities created these things for third places, for
shared community and environments, and as the world has shifted,
it's kind of creepy to walk up to a stranger
(17:39):
at a park now. Like if you're hanging out at
a park and you're laying by yourself somewhere, or you're
on a walk, there's a lot of stranger danger. I
think that we're experiencing as well, so that plays a
role in this. But anyway, we were walking and as
we were walking, we passed a woman who made a
casual and kind upbeat comment to us, and our initial
(17:59):
reaction was, what a strange thing to do, you know,
talk to a stranger, say hello to a stranger. And
after Patrick and I talked about the interaction for a second,
I was like, we are the weirdos. We are the
weird ones. The fact that you would complain or think
(18:19):
it's weird or like scoff or whatever when somebody says
hello and makes a friendly comment that maybe who knows,
maybe they were hoping for a conversation or to spark something,
and that was their intro into it. The fact that
I think that's weird, That is weird. Somebody was just
being friendly, And I think that kind of explained some
(18:40):
of this social exhaustion. I go to this park and
I complain about having to see people that I know,
because I so often want to go on a walk
to relax and decompress, but I want to completely disconnect
from everybody, and I don't want to have to stop
what I'm doing or share that experience with somebody. And
(19:03):
I do think that there's a time and a place
where like, yes, we need our alone time. That's not
what I'm saying at all. But I think that my
knee jerk reaction of needing so much of it or
being so exhausted by the interactions that I do have,
that I don't have space for these just leisurely, just
for joy communications because maybe I'm exhausted at home or
(19:26):
exhausted in the workplace. That I think is part of
an issue really that I see where our communities are
so divided right like I don't know my community because
I don't have the social energy to do so, when
that could bring so much more joy and help in
my life and bring us together versus create this such individualized, separate,
(19:48):
than polarizing experience we're having in our communities now. I
also think that speaking to this idea that there are
so many different ways we find leisure is part of
the issue with this is not just that we aren't
going in public to find our leisure. I think another
thing that plays into that is there are so many
(20:09):
more opportunities and options, Like there are so many options
to have and there are so many places to go
depending on where you live. Instead of just going to
the neighborhood coffee shop. I live in Nashville, there's a
new coffee shop to try every month. There are all
these new places, and it feels like the establishments that
(20:29):
have been around here the longest are closing down more
often than staying consistent because of so many of these
new places. And you know how we are. We love newness,
we love shine, we love excitement, and the safeness and
the I won't even say the health and the normalcy
(20:49):
of going to the same places becomes very boring, and
we're tired of it because maybe we're not talking to
people when we're there. Those places are going away more often,
and all these new places are popping up. And I
think that's the same with restaurants, it's the same with
your neighborhood bars. I imagine this feels different depending on
where you live. I think there can be different roadblocks
when it comes to this idea. Maybe in some role
(21:12):
places there aren't enough options, there's no options at all,
And then places like I am right now, there are
too many, and these old establishments with a nostrogia can't
keep up with these new, fancier places that are coming in,
or they're getting bought and turning into something else, and
then those places become these revolving doors. There's so many
buildings around here that stay open for less than a year,
(21:34):
and people keep putting something else in the same spot
and nothing sticks. And we've almost like lost trust in
the establishments, I think, because they come and go so
fast and they're not around long enough for a community
to really be solidified, especially at the rate that we're
going to them, right, that we're going to them regularly.
So then that leads me to this third idea that
(21:56):
I think is kind of roadblocking us into having these
third place that we used to have more regularly, and
that is just our social skills. And I think I've
layered that into what I've already said, and it sounds
weird because I feel like this is also something that
should be advancing versus trending down. But the more technology
that adds to the ease of our lives, like the
(22:20):
different streaming services, like the social media, like all these
different things that adds ease to our lives, it's also
stealing opportunity for us to develop, to develop as people,
to develop as groups, to develop our own skills in
different areas, one of those skills being our social skills.
I was talking to somebody the other day because I
(22:40):
use chat GBT for the first time, which is such
a weird thing to me. It scares me a little bit.
And I was talking about, like, how are we going
to develop our writing skills? How are we going to
develop our critical thinking skills? How are we going to
develop our problem solving skills? And we have these robots
that just do all this for us, And so there's that,
(23:01):
but it's also stealing from our social skills. And social
skills are skills. There are things that we can learn.
We can have more of a natural way of leaning
into that, just like any other skill. But it's also
a skill that can be and is often learned through
our experiences and through our communities and our surroundings, and
(23:23):
a lot of us are really out of practice. I mean,
even just the idea of small talk can be so
difficult these days. People don't know how to do it.
One because we don't like it. I could go on
a whole different conversation around that, but a part of
it is it scares us because we just don't know
how to do it and everything's awkward. And I mean
(23:44):
I'm the first to make a joke about that. I
even posted the other day about my fear of going.
As I was doing my art project turned uterous painting,
I had to go and talk to the people at
Low's and ask them to cut some pieces of wood
frame for me. That took so much out of me.
There was nerves around it for different reasons. But these
(24:05):
things that used to be so simple, going to the
hardware store and asking for some help, or being in
line the grocery store and start talking to the person
next to you, they're scary. We don't do them. And again,
like the woman that said hello to me, people think
that they're weird, and I don't think that they need
to be. And so it's interesting because one of the
most common frustrations I hear in my office centers around
(24:29):
the difficulty in finding and maintaining friendships and community in adulthood.
I think that the individualism that has helped us grow
in so many ways has also stolen an essential part
of creating a meaningful life. Like we can move to
a new city and follow our dreams, but we can't
(24:49):
go to a bar and sit down and strike up
a conversation with the person next to us. And again,
there's a host of reasons of where that comes from
and why that is but if you're asking, like, okay,
who really cares, Like yes, community, Yes, it's one of
the reasons. Maybe you're scared of the person that you're door.
(25:10):
Why does this really matter? I really think these third
places matter for so many reasons. One, like I mentioned,
the lack of these places really does play a role
in the loneliness epidemic we have been facing for the
past I don't know, decade, but we've actually been paying
attention to for the past couple of years. Like that
didn't start with the pandemic. I think it was exacerbated
(25:30):
by it, which honestly might have been a good thing,
so we did start paying attention to it. But the
difficulty of finding friendships and maintaining those friendships and maintaining
social connection, and the issue that there aren't places that
we can just show up and be seen and see
other people in the way that we used to have
these places, to me, it is something we should be
(25:51):
concerned about, Like we're so worried about and sometimes we
think we're worried about the collective culture, but a lot
of times we really do overcorrect. And this selfless versus
selfishness where there has to be a middle ground where
I want to be involved in a part of my
community and I want to take care of others and
(26:11):
I want to take care of myself those things are
allowed to coexist. I think I talked about this about
the over correctedness we do with like setting boundaries. It's
all of a sudden we're cutting everybody out of our
lives versus just setting boundaries or knowing that there I
might need some extra self care in some areas, or
people can be problematic, but it doesn't mean that they're toxic.
(26:32):
Like We've just overcorrected in a lot of ways. That
has also ripped opportunities away from us. And people don't
have to be all good and all bad all the time.
There can be a middle ground and I can still
share positive experiences with people that aren't perfect in every way.
(26:55):
I really do think that this is part of the
issue that we have dividing us as an entire country,
not just individual communities. In the same article in The
Atlantic that I referenced earlier, there was a professor at
Colorado College that was quoted saying a world made up
of atomized, physically isolated people is a world without true
(27:15):
shared reality, which is a recipe for civic disengagement, misinformation,
and perhaps even political extremism. And I'm not getting into
the politics of all of this. That's not what this
is really pointing at. It's actually pointing out the issue
with it, right. The lack of socialization within our community
is creating more polarizing divides between us. The simple conversations
(27:38):
aren't happening anymore, where we can enjoy parts of each
other and shared positive experiences before we make an opinion
that's opposite of the halo effect based on certain beliefs
that we do not share or we assume that we
do not share. We are not finding ourselves in spaces
where we are sitting and having normal, calm, less extreme
(28:00):
conversations about certain topics because we're just not having conversations
at all. And I really do think the lack of
a third space creates a lack of the wider community,
almost where community becomes a luxury and to some a
burden versus the way in which we survive. I honestly
sometimes think we're like scared of people, not in the
(28:22):
sense that like I'm scared at the person at my door.
I think it turns into that, but we're just scared
of people in general, because what we do end up seeing,
because we are not sharing spaces and having conversations with
these diverse people and having communities that are not all
or nothing, we see the extreme sides of things because
that's what we're seeing on things like social media, that's
(28:43):
what's being platformed on there. And so I think as
much as we're afraid of what others think, we are
afraid of what other people think of us, Like we
don't want to get into these conversations or have conversations
about certain things. We tiptoe around things, and then we
end up avoiding them at all costs, honestly, because we
assume that the majority of how people think and know
(29:04):
and what people know and how smart people are and
all that stuff is we're comparing to that to what
we see on social media, and that's such an extreme
version of what how most people live and what most
people will know, and how most people will just work
and operate. The less I keep using the word extreme,
but it's I mean the less polarized, the less loud,
the less angry, Like the lesser of those voices isn't shared,
(29:28):
and so we're just not talking to anybody And that's
actually what I talked about last week on couch Talks
when I was talking about answering a question on a
listener who was sharing that her and her partner don't
have the same political beliefs, so they don't know how
to have conversations about it. We're so scared all the time.
But my greater point in that is that by not
having these third places, by not having these community centers.
(29:52):
When I say that, I like think of like the
old community center, like a senior citizen center or something
like that, but I just mean like community centers, like
places where people just feel safe to come and like
chat and you see the regulars, and you meet this
person their acquaintance, and then you're able to say hi
to them at the grocery store, and then maybe you
see them at the soccer complex when your kids are
having a game, and we just have a wider net
(30:15):
of human beings in real life. But the ability for
us to not have these spaces where we meet these
people and we have these conversations are keeping us in
these tighter, more almost like dungeon like circles of community.
It often feels like the communities that we're in are
(30:35):
these separate very almost like elite or exclusive social clubs
that only certain people are allowed in and out, and
it's hard to get in or it's hard to even
know where they are. We just separate ourselves so much
versus come together. And there's something to that that like exclusivity.
(30:56):
There's honestly, there's so much psychology behind that. I think
I would love to research the science of that, because
exclusiveness is attractive, Right, you want things that less people have, Right,
that's what makes certain items more like oh, there's only
three made in the world, so they're more expensive, they're
of more value. If less people are allowed into this
(31:16):
social club, they're of more value. And I think about
like the Soho houses in the different cities. It's you
have to apply to get in and if you have
a membership, and they're expensive, so only a certain type
of person can even afford to be there. That's not
a third place because money is not supposed to keep
somebody in and out of this. Anybody should be allowed
to show up and be there if they want. And
(31:38):
I even think about how fitness has changed where third
places might have been the gyms, Like when I grew up,
I grew up in a neighborhood that had a community
rec center, and to go work out at that rec
center was like two dollars, and I think there's actually
a place like that around here as well, where like
to take a class at one of these centers is
like two or three dollars versus to take a workout
(32:00):
class at these boutique fitness studios they're upwards of thirty bucks.
And I think part of that is one, it's a business,
they're making money versus they're funded by the government or
the whoever. But also there is I think a part
where people want to create that exclusive feeling where like
to be here and to be seen as special, which
(32:23):
is an issue I think that I think there is
with the fitness world, and that wellness and health should
not be a luxury or a privilege. It should be
something we are all allowed to be a part of.
That is really tough. And then when we find ourselves
in those exclusive social clubs or scenes, then we are
creating almost like echo chambers. We're either not having those
(32:46):
conversations where we're not hearing different opinions because we're scared
of each other, or we're surrounded by people that all
do think the same, and we're not having really fruitful conversations,
and so we almost get so amped up on what
we believe and everybody around us is amping up, and
then when we are here's something that goes against that,
we want to fight versus go, oh, I've never thought
(33:06):
of it that way. Tell me more, or oh, you know,
I don't agree with that, but I still might like you,
like they've become the enemy. Maybe this is why I'm
coming back to this idea that someone coming to my
door felt like an invasion of privacy, right, a panic,
a threat versus an opportunity to connect with somebody or
(33:26):
a fun surprise. There would be no good reason for
someone to be knocking on my door if I wasn't
expecting somebody. That's the thought, Like, what would the reasoning
be because that doesn't happen versus it would be a
normal part of our world, an unexpected addition to our
day versus a burden to have to talk to somebody.
It would be a good thing if we experienced it
(33:48):
being a good thing more often, but we just don't.
And because I don't exist in a world where my
neighbor might pop over, the vast majority of knocks on
my door will end up being from people that I
don't want to be there, So that's going to be
where my brain is shifting now. They might not be
all people that are going to come rob me and
murder me in my home, but they might be salespeople,
or they might be I don't know. But because that
(34:11):
is what I'm getting, I have nothing to compare it to.
And I think my takeaway through this is one I'm
going to start a Bunco group. I've already sent out
some texts and I will hold myself accountable for that,
and it will be not just like my core group
of friends. I want to invite people from different areas
of my life into that, and also the idea of
we can continue to add people to that and people
(34:33):
can rotate in and out of it. It doesn't have
to be this fixed thing. But my other takeaway is
I read this line in the article from today dot
Com and I mentioned earlier, and it said we need
physical spaces for serendipitous productivity, free conversation, and that really
just like sums it up for me. We need spaces
(34:55):
where the goal is enjoyment rather than networking for work
or gain social status, because when that's the goal of
social interaction, it does feel like work. And when we're
already exhausted by work, obviously we don't want to go
do more. We're going to resort to those easier to
relax experiences that strip us from actually really honing in
(35:16):
and developing social skills that connect us and benefit our health.
We need places where there is an us mentality right
versus a better than or a scared of or against them,
where the opportunity for unplanned moments shared is really welcomed
(35:37):
versus feared. So my challenge for you one, if you
have a third place, I want to hear it. I
want to know what it is. I want to know
what it's like. What kind of place you even live in? Right,
if you live in a big city, if you live
in a moral roural era, if you live in the suburbs, Like,
tell me about your third place. If you don't have one,
let's find one. And again, they don't have to be
(35:59):
the go group. Right, there are any places where you
can go and connect with people, and the connection can
be just a simple conversation with a stranger. And one
of the articles I was reading it was telling about
how she went, I don't know, somewhere to some meditation
group or yoga class or something. On her way back,
she saw this building. She was curious, so she went
into it and it was kind of like a social
(36:21):
club for the neighborhood, like a community bar or something
like that. And she had a conversation with the bartender
and they learned something about each other, and she enjoyed
meeting this stranger, and it actually filled her cup up
more than the yoga class she went to, which is
so interesting because so often when I'm going to the gym,
I'm not talking to anybody. I go in, I go out, like,
(36:42):
that's not where I'm even finding this. I don't know,
exposure to people that I think we expect to find
in those places now because we're so just stare ahead,
that whole individualism idea. I'm going to go do what
I need to do, and I can't have anybody get
in the way of it, where I kind of want
want to let somebody get in the way of it.
(37:03):
There's a neighborhood pizza place where I live that I love.
I would love to be one of my third places.
And I went with a couple friends months ago and
sat at the bar. Sitting at the bar is such
a fun experience and also can be really scary. But
there was the persons they at the corner that we
didn't know, and he just started talking about I don't know,
the game or something that was on TV. And we
had a whole conversation with him for our whole meal.
(37:25):
I've never spoken to him again, I probably never will
unless I run into him again. But it was fun
to talk to him and it didn't steal anything. It
actually brought some thought provoking conversations between me and my
friends later. And what if those kinds of things were
exciting versus a bummer or avoided. I don't know. Maybe
(37:46):
I would be less scared at my brother knocking on
my door. Maybe not, but I am willing to try
to find out. So find a third place, or tell
me about your third place, and let's do our own
part to shift some of this loneliness stuff. Let's create
more spaces for people to be able to connect versus
more spaces for us to avoid each other. That's what
(38:08):
I'm gonna end with. So I hope you guys have
the day you need to have. I will be back
with you on Wednesday for Couch Talks. If you want
to follow me at kat Van Buren, at You Need
Therapy podcast, at three Quart Therapy, and Top Dealers
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