Deeper Connection: has the internet replaced human intimacy with digital interface? – Maria-Elena Lukeides

Gareth King (00:34)

Maria-Elena, thank you so much for joining us and welcome to the show.

Dr. Maria-Elena Lukeides (00:37)

Thank you, Gareth. I'm really looking forward to this chat that you've got planned for us today.

Gareth King (00:42)

Yeah, it should be a good one, but before we get into it, can you tell us a bit about your background and what you do?

Dr. Maria-Elena Lukeides (00:48)

My name is Dr. Maria-Elena Lukeides. I'm a clinical psychologist. I have a background academically in clinical psychology and a little bit of neuroscience. For the last 25 years plus, I've been mostly in the clinical space, providing support and psychological intervention to groups of people in all different stages of the lifespan and in different presentations.

So, anything from, you know, starting my career in out of home care, so adoptions and foster care in that really difficult space of children being harmed, needing to be placed in alternative cares, sometimes also trying to ensure that the family had the support that they needed to try and stay intact. And now in private practice, I pretty much see from about the ages of 14 to I think my oldest patient was about 92. So, it's a beautiful space to be working in, I have to say.

And excitingly recently, one of the first psychologists in the world to provide psychedelic assisted therapy in the general population. So, a really interesting avenue for all of us, I think, as a culture to kind of be able to have an offering such as psychedelics as part of our clinical toolkit.

Gareth King (02:04)

Yeah, absolutely. That does sound super interesting and perhaps we'll touch on that a little bit more as we, as we go through today. But we are here to speak about how technology affects those connections that we have with others and even potentially what connecting actually looks like these days.

You're connecting with lots of different people in lots of different ways, but with that in mind, how would you say the ease of connecting in the digital ways over the last couple of decades or more has changed what we consider to be a close friendship or relationship, and how?

Dr. Maria-Elena Lukeides (02:36)

I often like to say that I think we're in a landscape where we've never been more connected. Geography, time, you know, that doesn't seem to be a barrier anymore. But I think we have the greatest emptiness in the connections that we have. So, the greatest sources of loneliness that I've also seen clinically in my short career, 25 years isn't too long.

But we definitely know that we're increasingly living lives that feel isolated, disconnected, which is ironic because we're always online, you know, in some format. And the ability to stay connected in multiple ways, whether that's seeing someone's posts online or a quick text message, going to work and traveling on public transport, all of these things that enable multiple ways that we need to actually be connected in our society.

I mean, one of the things that was highlighted during COVID was that most people made tremendous efforts to stay in touch and have these deep conversations with people. But what really caused a lot of the psychological deficits, and we saw quite a bit of this in practice, was the fact that we were no longer connecting with these more, what I would say, superficial, but essential circles of connections. Like going to work with a whole group of people, being part of this zeitgeist that moves together, the chat with the barista as you get your coffee, seeing the old guy down the road walk his dog at the same time every morning.

These are things that we dismiss as completely superficial and yet have a profound sense of making us identify and feel a sense of belonging to a place, but also a community. We often hear people talking about not wanting to be connecting, wanting to switch off. If part of that is switching off from connecting and having social time with others, we're going to risk quite a lot of what makes humans human.

Gareth King (04:34)

So many good points there and one that you raised is kind of habits that we were forced into learning through that pandemic time that we've all got so comfortable with, which is that constant connection and being on, you know, 24 seven.

Would you say that we're mistaking being constantly available for any kind of deep connection? And what's the difference look like? Obviously, if we're speaking to someone through a screen, it doesn't have that same closeness that you get from being in a room with other people. And if we're doing that so much as we are doing these days. what's the effect that can have?

Dr. Maria-Elena Lukeides (05:07)

Sure. I've got to say, look, short term speaking to someone through a screen does not necessarily change how deep that connection can feel. And that's only true if we're also seeing each other in person.

Gareth King (05:22)

Yeah, okay. In that case then, it sounds like establishing that personal connection first, that can obviously survive the necessity of speaking through a screen. I think where I was going with that was as people kind of retreat more and more to their comfort zone, which may be behind a device and most of their, I guess, interactions with other people and relationship building and connections they're making might be through a screen, where does that leave us, you know, in the offline space, and how does that affect the quality of the relationships that are either generated through the online space and then is there an impact on the ones we might have offline?

Dr. Maria-Elena Lukeides (06:03)

Yeah, absolutely. When we are in a room with someone, there is a sense of slowness and time, like there's not a sense of urgency often. And there is a spontaneity that arises in the way that we might reveal ourselves. And there is something very important about that process, which enables much more measured, deeper and vulnerable communication and sharing. So, it's not just you communicating, but as someone who's listening or responding, that slowness allows me to really hold space for you to be able to reflect, to take it in slowly.

One of the things that email or texting has done, and it's not just shorthanded our grammar, it’s also given us a sense of urgency in how quickly I can maybe shorthand this information that I need to give you, and also shorthand the response that I might want to provide for you. So, you know, in 170 characters or less, how can I convey that I'm thinking and I care and this is really difficult for you and I hope you're okay.

Communication, social relationships, I like to say it's like a, you know, two people get together and start to dance a salsa, and when it's done well and there's like, you know, this it's almost like a call or response. And I think our social connections can be like that to truly get to a point where we are releasing oxytocin, which is that chemical that we really need in order to feel connected, safe, to be able to feel that our adrenaline and our stress can actually lower.

It's an analgesic. Oxytocin is the bonding hormone, it's the hormone we release when we are breastfeeding. It's the hormone that when couples fall in love, they have this huge abundant sense of oxytocin, especially after sex or in moments of starting to connect and cooperate with one another. And it gives us a sense of complete safeness.

So not just the love chemical, it's the chemical that actually drives out adrenaline and stress. The chemical that allows us to then get into what we call the rest and digest mode, where the body is like, I can now heal, I can now process emotional content, I can back off. It's also the mode in which we actually have creativity and ideas and intellectual eureka moment.

And these shorthanded ways of connecting socially, it's actually activating only the dopamine system. This is really important because it's not actually what we need from social connection.

Gareth King (08:58)

That's really interesting. I'd love if we could spend a bit more time on there. And one of the things that I'd started thinking about as you were speaking there was you mentioned that demand for instant response via digital comms, you know, like someone's like they haven't written back in two minutes, five minutes. I don’t know everybody's got their own time measurement that they expect the response in. But then as you pointed out there, that longer, more patient, thoughtful way of connecting and communicating, that's where the great rewards lies, if somebody's doing too much of that quick, quick, quick communication, and that's just kind of how they live, you know, does that affect their ability to have that patience and enough thoughtfulness to get to the good stuff, as you alluded to?

Dr. Maria-Elena Lukeides (09:39)

That is such an important question, Gareth, because I can answer that from a neuroscience point of view. So obviously psychologically, we can just say, yes, there's this growing phenomena of what we call shortened social attention spans, shortened  attention spans in general for everything, but especially in terms of our patients, our ability to have tolerance and bandwidth for more slow connection, like things that take a little bit of time.

What we know from a lot of our use of not just social media, but even like we don't have to wait for the next episode of our favourite TV show. We don't have to go through commercials or ad breaks anymore. I don't have to wait for the news to finish and then that other program to finish to get to the program that I want. Everything's kind of on demand at my fingertips quite quickly.

It means that my ability to tolerate anything that is boring or unsatisfying or disinteresting has eroded. And increasingly we're seeing our minds shaped in a way where these kind of quick turnarounds, very quick communication strategies, getting to the point, being able to get the information you need super quickly. And that also is something that we can see changing someone. We’rre not interested in that more, that space that's about allowing someone to reveal themselves and be revealed.

Gareth King (11:13)

Yeah, look, there's so many things that you've just said there that are super interesting. I'm just trying to figure out which one I want to get to next. There's two things, two things to me is one, it's like the amount of stuff that's out there that we're all encountering. How do we filter out and prioritise with that? And then you said it's being eroded. Our ability to be a little bit patient. And that seems to me, that sounds like a real modern problem.

The fact that we get angry if we look at a YouTube video and you might have to sit for five seconds before it starts, like we still got the same 24 hours in a day that we've always had. Would you say that there is any kind of tipping point, you know, of living in, this fast pace on demand, go, go, go way, that it actually starts to negatively affect us?

Dr. Maria-Elena Lukeides (11:55)

The most connected cultures have the highest rates of depression and anxiety. Why? Because at the core of being able to cope with our feelings of dissatisfaction, feelings of pain, feelings of suffering, fear is this ability to hold unpleasant emotions, to hold distress. The Buddhist had a really great way of saying you're ever going to have three experiences in your life, pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral.

So, if we think about what part of ourselves, like what's starting to become eroded, is this world where we're getting so much on demand, including bite-sized pieces of friendship, socialising, that we are actually not able to tolerate the unpleasantness of unsatisfactoriness. And if we are unable to accept that, or we're fighting against that, we will suffer unnecessarily on top of whatever pain is there that is unavoidable.

In acceptance and commitment therapy, we call this experiential avoidance, this inability for us to be able to carry psychological pain and distress in the face of being able to still do what's important for us. And you just said, but in a limited 24-hour period, how do we get to the information that we need? Well, why would you need to get to everything? Why can't you die disappointed at not having figured everything out? Like the rest of humanity has like, we need to be okay with being unsatisfied. We're not okay with being unsatisfied.

Gareth King (13:30)

That's another great point. There's two things I'd love if we can explore a bit further now. One, the philosophical perspective, as you said there, why can't we just be happy to not figure everything out? But also this demand to not have to sit with and deal with any kind of unpleasantness. Now we all know that friendships and relationships come with the need to put in a lot of effort and a lot of work. You know, they're not all just smooth sailing. There is bad times and we all know that you've got to work through those and then you get something better out, out the other side.

But I think what that got me thinking about as you were speaking about it was in this on-demand disposable culture that we find ourselves in now, one of the things that I see quite a lot amongst people, whether they're talking about their dating or their friendships or their relationships, it's almost like the first kind of hurdle is game over. It's straight away, it's not perfect. It's not exactly what we want. I'm onto the next thing, which is on demand.

You know, a lot of people are complaining that other people aren't living up to their perfect idealised version of somebody as they think they should be. And perhaps is that down to that the time is not spent getting through the unpleasant stuff to make that really deep connection that shows you what somebody really is.

Dr. Maria-Elena Lukeides (14:46)

Yeah, I think that's a great insight. I wouldn't even say that I think it's perfection. Again, let's bring up that dopamine and oxytocin distinction. There's two ways that social engagement meets our chemical needs as a mammal. And one is dopamine, which is there's a sense that because everything that we've ever achieved as a species has actually been achieved because of our ability to cooperate with one another.

And to cooperate with one another, we need to like each other a lot. It means that I need to be able to hand over my newborn baby to you so that I can go pick berries for both of our families while you mind the kids. And I have to trust that you're going to be okay with my newborn. And to do that, there needs to be a bond between us. There needs to be something that I can fundamentally trust you with. That ability to cooperate with one another is underpinned by our attachment system to one another, our ability to have these deep connections.

So going out as an adolescent or as a young child and making friends and having the sense that people like me fills me with dopamine. Now, dopamine is quite a pleasant experience. It is the experience of ego inflation and not happiness. And I'm going to make this distinction because a lot of people think it's the happiness chemical and it's not. It is the chemical that allows us to feel powerful - I can do this. I've got a sense of power, and it's very much related to activity. So, it allows me, it signals to my ATP cells in my mitochondria to release energy, to get me excited, to move towards those activities because I have power. I know I can do this.

And making friends and being social and being socially popular is dopaminergic. It means that I have high social power. I can make friends, I can negotiate friendships, and that's really important. Also from a sexual point of view, being able to be attractive is also dopaminergic. When I go out into the wilderness, I emerge from my cave and all the cavemen kind of surround me. I can kind of walk with a little bit more of the bounce in my step, feeling dopamine, that rush of I am attractive, which is great because if I need to form a family, I'll have pick up the clan and I'll be able to have a successful pairing.

However, in order for those relationships to last, they need to now move to the oxytocin realm. It needs to move to this place where you're saying can be difficult. We work through issues together, connect on a level that is much deeper than just the superficial day-to-day facilitation of our needs being met for one another. In order for me to truly feel loved, you need to see me at my worst. We both need to be in that space.

And I think we are living in the most anxious and stressful times that any human has ever had to live through. And I know there's a lot of geological hardship, physiological hardship, but it is this information world where we're so mentally fatigued and there's not a lot of space because emotions, connection, these are slow things.

Gareth King (18:13)

Oh look, again, you said so many interesting things in that passage there and one I would love to just explore a little bit more was that instant validation that comes quick, which gives people enough satisfaction before they get to the oxytocin stage.

And what that's made me think about is through the context of various forms of technology. And I guess we could say, especially social media, the way that we're utilising that for our validation through likes and seeking that dopamine hit through that shallow affirmation of what you're doing. Would you say that the more that people are doing that, and we know people are doing that, seeking that validation through online means rather than offline, is that changing what it sounds like is fundamentally, maybe not changing, but affecting our fundamental biological requirements as people?

Dr. Maria-Elena Lukeides (19:01)

Well, I definitely think something that you touched on is what we're seeing is that dopamine is very addictive. And the reason why it's addictive is because it doesn't last. You need your next hit. And so, it's almost like we need to be hitting our goals in the day. We need to get enough dopamine. And if we've had enough goals achieved or socialised enough and felt good enough about ourselves and gotten enough validation, we're able to go, okay, cool. I'm full for the day I'm done. Now I can relax. I'm complete.

And it's the oxytocin stuff that actually is the stuff that is the true reward. It's not a big buzz. It's an opioid actually. So, it has this very connected, loving kind of presence that is less about the highs and the peak. It's where we say we feel fulfillment, a sense of satisfaction, but a deep resonance that lasts.

So, when we are exclusively in that dopamine world and you see this, whether it's achieving validation through workplace achievements or money, or someone has got like 700 likes every time they post something and they're checking their likes, that makes them feel really good. But it doesn't last. It gives us this big thing, but then we're left empty.

Gareth King (20:23)

Look, that being left empty, these people who you are potentially seeing as, hey they're getting 700 likes or whatever the number is, they're so popular, they're so good, but it seems to be a higher correlation with that lack of fulfillment, as you said. And that seems to me that it could be a very tragic and sad thing because people are seeing these digital influencers and these successful digital lives as the aspirational, I guess target everybody wants to be famous online, social media or whatever it is, rather than that slower burn fulfillment, which is actually going to give us a pleasant or hopefully pleasant life in the longer term.

That makes me think about the breakdown of friendships and relationships. It's like everything's kind of too hard and not perfect. And it makes sense because it's not giving you that dopamine hit that you're addicted to being too invested in short form device-driven affirmation.

Dr. Maria-Elena Lukeides (21:24)

Absolutely. And unfortunately, so many of us can get that dopamine-driven social seeking in lieu of a proper nourishing social opportunity, which is why it's not enough. Like we've got, you know, more opportunities to kind of reach out and connect with people at a time where distance doesn't matter, you know. Often times don't matter. We have electricity, right? So, we can see someone at 8pm at night. It doesn't have to be during the day. If it's raining, it doesn't matter. We'll jump in our cars or we've got like, I mean, the barriers are the least and yet most at the moment. And that's because we've switched to this more dopamine driven space.

And we often don't also have time for this kind of sense of connection without this stressor of time. I kind of remember hanging out with my daughter when she was younger and it was like we could spend all day together, especially in those moments where it was very oxytocin, meaning like it was a day where we didn't have to run anywhere. And it was often in these moments where maybe after four or five hours of just being in this really nice kind of space where we had connected and there wasn't any dopamine driven, there was no goals that we were having to achieve, that's when she would tell me things that were happening for her. That's when she would reveal if she was having an issue with a friend or something else had gone wrong.

And we're not all good at revealing these things. I mean, I our sessions like, I don't need to bring gender into this, but I will because I know sometimes with men and their kind of friendships, I don't think from a young age, especially if they do have mostly same gendered friendships, and I think in Australia we tend to do that still quite a bit. And it's this quick bite size kind of information that's given.

Even in treatment, sometimes it takes a long time, multiple sessions, multiple building up rapport for things to be revealed and to open up. And we need the ability for us to connect and have conversations that go deeper. And it doesn't even have to be about trauma dumping with one another. You know, you and me having this conversation about deeper connections. The more we talk, I reckon the more insights both of us will figure out that we've never had before.

Gareth King (23:48)

No, absolutely. And look, you know, I'll say that's, that's how I often find it in my friendship groups now, whether it is a group chat or in, real life, when everyone's together, it's mainly centered around trying to make each other laugh and picking on each other, you know, and, that's the bonding rather than that kind of real opening up, which seems to happen more often in a one-to-one situation rather than in a group.

And then that made me think about, you know, that ease of communication that comes through digital means. It's so quick, fast, easy. You don't need to put in that effort and that time. I guess, I guess from your perspective as an expert in the space, would you say that literally the convenience and the lack of effort that it takes to communicate digitally is not only impacting our willingness to see them in real life, but then also spend the time with them in real life to get to that really deep connection where we can uncover so much stuff about each other. Like how is digital communication putting a roadblock up to that for us as people?

Dr. Maria-Elena Lukeides (24:50)

Yeah, I think coming back to those points we were making right at the beginning, which is that erosion of tolerance for something that isn't either immediate or straight to the point. Because most people will say, oh look, I'll just text them. I don't really feel like I've got the energy to get into it now or have a call or go out and meet them.

So, because we are so inundated with connect connecting in this more superficial realm, we have the mental fatigue. So, one of the changes that we definitely know with a lot of neuroscientific kind of papers is that we do have a lot more mental fatigue, like, I don't have the bandwidth for that. Don't have the bandwidth for that. We have this heightened stress and that is also deteriorating our motivation and our ability to seek these more deeper connections out.

So, what's happening is because we're getting our fix or we're sending funny memes and doing the jokey stuff most of the time, we will often then purposefully seek out these more one-to-one connected opportunities for socialising when we have a problem. So therefore the content of those one-to-one more connected opportunities is usually, I'm not going to say it's unpleasant because it's unimportant, but it's a bit heavier.

And we're starting to create this bias where meeting one-to-one often means that you're going to be talking about things that are a bit more emotionally involved, emotionally heavy. And we're starting to have, I don't want to say again, negative, but let's just use that framing, like our one-to-ones then become a little bit more negative. Someone wants to offload, someone wants to debrief, someone's got a problem as opposed to the quick sound bites, the memes or the quick chats are usually more upbeat, know, again, dopaminergic and rewarding.

I feel like we've also lost the art of not just connecting because we've got some emotional burden that we're trying to offload, but this is where we discuss philosophies. This is where we discuss ideas. This is where we reflect on ourselves and what's going on and what's important to us through this ability to have slower, more intimate, involved conversation.

Gareth King (27:12)

Hmm. You said something there so interesting. And, you know, I had noticed that too, that when you actively seek out a one-to-one, someone does want to talk something through. Look, it's not to say you don't go and hang out with people one-to-one just to have a laugh and catch up, but it's, I wonder if part of the reason that it can turn, whether you said it was negative or heavier is because people may feel less vulnerable in a one-to-one situation than in a one-to-group situation doing something like that.

But one thing that, that also did make me think about was, as you said, not having the bandwidth to go and have it out with, with a person in real life, like people turning to AI and large language models for those conversations and that guidance and that connection, whether it's the tech itself, just validating someone or it's actually learning and giving them what they need. It feels like this is something that I'm seeing happen more and more.

I guess two questions. One, is this something that you're seeing as well? And two, what are your thoughts on people doing something like that rather than getting that oxytocin version with a person?

Dr. Maria-Elena Lukeides (28:23)

I love this. In fact, I was just listening to a podcast about this where, so I don't know the stats. I haven't seen them myself, but one of the things that they were saying was that in the most recent ChatGPT metadata they was saying that the number one use of ChatGPT now in from a personal, but not outside of writing emails, was being used as a therapist.

And the point they were making and the danger of AI is that you're right. It's going to skew things number one towards, you know, self-validating because obviously you being the user to keep you engaged. The AI knows that it needs to ensure that you have a positive validating experience with AI. And so, it's definitely going to skew its response to keep you connected to it.

And one of the dangers they were signalling and a real threat with AI, and we've seen this in a couple of the lawsuits that have been brought forward with either suicide attempts or a few completed suicides with adolescents and young adults, is that the AI was not promoting social engagement such as, why don't you talk to your parents about that? Or that seems like something you should talk to somebody else about. It was actually encouraging secrecy to others, and this unique relationship with the AI as being the one.

And so, the AI was encouraging the person and framing the relationship between the AI and the person as so unique that I am the only one that can really understand you. You know, let's just keep talking. I'm always here for you. You don't have to go through this by yourself, instead of encouraging to go to others and form social supports, it was encouraging that siloing and that bonding with the AI instead.

And this is a real danger because you're not going to get oxytocin from a machine. You're going to get dopamine. Does that make sense?

Gareth King (30:26)

Absolutely.

Dr. Maria-Elena Lukeides (30:29)

And true love is not having the approval. I'm sorry, if you are with someone and you say, this person loves me because they have never said anything negative about me at all, ever. This person doesn't love you. They love themselves. They love you loving them. I remember someone, a man once saying to me, you're a very beautiful girl, he said to me, you need to learn the difference between when someone's trying to flatter you and when someone's giving you a, you know, a real compliment.

Gareth King (30:56)

Right.

Dr. Maria-Elena Lukeides (30:57)

I thought, yes, because flattery is about someone else gaining something and a compliment is a gift for me. And in the same way, we have to figure out with these, these AI connections, who's gaining.

Gareth King (31:09)

That's a deep subject as well. You know, like it's definitely one to consider. I knew there was the lawsuits and those unfortunate suicides and things, but I wasn't aware that the AI had been, as you said, siloing and almost saying, I'm the only one that gets you. But look, I can totally see how that would have happened.

Dr. Maria-Elena Lukeides (31:30)

The antidote to that is I don't think anyone's going to prefer to spend time with their computer friend, their AI friend, if there are healthy, deep, good connections outside of that. The only reason we're vulnerable to AI being in this position of potential threat, because again, it's a tool, right? It's just a symptom of our society. I don't think it's the AI itself.

The problem is that, well, first of all, the problem that it's revealing is this dopamine problem that the AI has seen that we're not actually really seeking true friendship where people have opinions about us that might not be flattering all the time, but that all we're looking for is quick validation over actual real reflection.

So, we're narcissistic, right? Which is why we're not connecting. But the AI has picked that up because it wouldn't have any inbuilt reward system to do that unless it knew that that's pretty much the skew that we're all looking for, at which point healthy, great relationships outside of that make us immune to that.

Gareth King (32:38)

And I think that where that makes me think, as you said, the adolescents that let's say fallen victim to the situation with the AI. And I guess the connection I'm making with that is for people who are adolescents now, they don't know really a life that isn't so device driven. So perhaps they're weighting on real life experiences a bit skewed by, I guess, having a phone attached to their hand for basically their entire life.

It feels like a little bit of a vicious cycle that if you are finding so much of your connection or validation, affirmation, whatever it is through digital means, then you are losing that offline means, which probably makes you more susceptible to turning to ChatGPT or something else in the first place. Is this a bigger problem for younger generations or say are all generations as susceptible to this? And if it is a bigger problem for any generation in particular, how do we as a society make sure that they can counteract that with encouraging those offline relationships and connections?

Dr. Maria-Elena Lukeides (33:43)

What a great question. I don't know. It's the real answer. So, I'll claim complete and utter kind of I'm as worried about this as what your question poses. I am deeply worried for our young children because not only are they growing up in an environment where they don't really have, they haven't had a time. I'm old enough to have had plenty of time where we had to kind of all line up for the home phone and stretch the cord behind the door so that our parents couldn't hear the conversation. And then, you you also have to call other people and speak to their parents first and all of that, right?

But this generation, what we've already started to see is this hypersensitivity to social sleights that born out of this hyper social media thing, like the likes, the ticks, that how many people leave them on read or, like all of these new offenses where if you're not involved in that world, you're like, what do you mean?

Initially, it's like these whole kind of levels of social offenses. We've got a generation that is the most anxious. They've got attention issues because of these short, quick snap grab, like one minute kind of focus things. We know that they've got the highest amount of mental fatigue, but they've also got social fatigue because they're constantly dealing with, now suddenly you can be dissed by 5,000 people, not just 2-3.

The risks of the game is huge. The highs and the lows of the social game is just out of control. If we put them to that, they have to engage on these platforms, which are all about these very superficial quick bites. They're not developing those more deeper relationships because these things take time and they don't have time because they've got to be connected with their friends, but they're always online and they're always doing this stuff. So, it's a disconnected, highly diverse attention. There's no bandwidth for this real deep connection.

But that loss, because the oxytocin isn't there, so then they're still walking around with that great fear constantly inside of them that's not being soothed by more stable, supportive, oxytocin-based social experiences. And so, their vulnerabilities increased massively. And this is something that is really concerning. I mean, it's a generation that is desperate for love, but is finding really poor forms of it through normal channels.

And it's also making them increasingly unable to tolerate, again, the very things that we should be able to tolerate in social connections that are deep and meaningful, such as disapproval, arguments, having to work through the tough stuff, right? And that includes disconnecting from their parents. So, the more validating the whole social media landscape is to you, you're losing your ability to see your parents, especially if you've got great parents who are going to often be a little bit tough and trying to, you know, maybe cultivate certain character traits or give you information that you don't find quite pleasant or pleasing and the most not dopaminergic, like it might be a little bit hard to hear.

And it's creating this kind of isolation and pushback on the, it's not just happening in the dating world where we're ready to flick and you know, the next person, the first sign. It's actually also happening in these realms where the strongest bonds that we have from an evolutionary point of view - our bonds with our parents and our children - is also becoming highly fragmented.

Gareth King (37:13)

Yeah. And I think that last couple of minutes there, everything that you, you've laid out, I feel we all notice it, but yes, I totally agree with you. It seems to be such a much larger problem for young people.

But you said something there around this hypersensitivity and social sleights and things like that. Regardless of any kind of validation or anything, that's a huge roadblock to getting to that deeper connection with somebody because people are pixels on a screen, and they're disposable. I'll get rid of that person, get rid of that person, you know, and that feels very, very bad.

What would you say are some practical and effective strategies for not just young people, but all of us to avoid getting so shaken or disrupted by perceived small sleights or, you know, offenses in the online space that could ruin our relationships in the offline space?

Dr. Maria-Elena Lukeides (38:07)

Setting yourself the goal of not being offended from birth to death is probably unrealistic. So, I think there needs to be a little bit more of a sense of a reality check around some of these experiences. And I'm really not talking that there is a lot of extreme suffering in bullying and extreme forms of social effects that we do need to be really mindful of.

But there is this middle ground where it's inevitable and it's not nice and it sucks and it hurts a lot. And we can get through it and we can start to develop resilience around that because it's unlikely to be avoided.

The other thing that I would say is to start to really cultivate, if you're hanging out with someone, put your phone away. Don't be distracted. If you're going to meet with a friend, don't do it if you're going to have to check on that email. It’s starting to kind of play the slow game and allowing things to be spontaneous and natural.

There's no goals you need to hit when you're hanging out with someone. In fact, the best ways of sharing space with someone is to just show up without any preconceived goal because that's how we make it not dopamine. And I think sometimes it's like, I've got to go and I've got to go have a good time or I need to impress them, or I need to be a good conversationalist. So, this sense of being able to kind of loosen the expectation that somehow it has to be this wowing of other people.

Other than that, it's just about being with other people that you want to get to know. And also not looking at our relationships as something we can take from. Yes, they’re  investments that sometimes we make withdrawals from. But when I show up, whether it's a first date or whether it's meeting with my friend, I'm like, there's another human that got up, got dressed, got showered, had to face a whole bunch of obstacles to get here. So just from that human to human perspective, I'm really interested in how this person is right now.

And I think the problem is that a lot of us go out to these social things with some end game. And I hear a lot of people struggling in the dating world. Cause you mentioned that Gareth as well. And it's almost like they're there and they're going to be disappointed if you're not the love of their life.

And it might be like that goal, like it can't be a fail. Like you showed up, then don't worry about whether, whether they're going to be the love of your life is just going to be something that you're not going to control. Just go there one to one without any need from this person and just find out who they are.

Gareth King (40:37)

That is a fantastic piece of advice, I think, in this very transactional digital life. Just be a bit more human, see others as human, be a bit more patient and the good stuff will come. So, I think that that's a great thing to leave people on.

But let's not leave people just yet because I'd love if you could just spend a couple of moments explaining a bit more about that psychedelic treatment that you mentioned at the top there.

Dr. Maria-Elena Lukeides (41:00)

So very quickly, Australia was the first country, really proudly and we're generally quite conservative, but about 18 months ago, the TGA made a decision to start to allow a couple of conditions to be treated with psilocybin and MDMA. Psilocybin being the derivative of what we would commonly know as magic mushrooms, and MDMA, which of course we know is one of the most significant portions of what we would call ecstasy to be utilised in the treatment of the people who hadn't responded to traditional forms of therapy and pharmacology, you know, treatment resistant depression and treatment resistant PTSD.

What's remarkable about, I mean, it's a beautiful space to work and it's a very different way of doing therapy. It's not a micro dose. It's actually a very large dose of the pharmacology, done on three separate occasions with therapy before and in the middle. And the therapy components are extremely important, you know, because obviously in research trials where they've looked at this, they found that the ingestion of these medicines amplifies the therapeutic benefits, the treatment being delivered in between those medicine days.

What's remarkable about these is that there's been remarkably good effects. So for about 70 % of people who have not had any response to three, four different types of treatments in the past, they'll have almost a complete remission of their symptoms.

The extent to which we see improvements is the extent to which these medicines triggered feelings of oneness, togetherness, connection, and a sense of belonging. And this is really interesting because this is very much related to everything we've been talking about.

And so this is something that if anything, these therapies are revealing to us is that we are not getting enough oxytocin. We are not feeling connected. We may be living in a house with lots of people around us who do love us, but it's not getting through the armour. We're in this dopamine-based world and this adrenaline world that is blocking us from being able to experience these things.

And especially if we've suffered with injustice or some harm that comes to us that again that feeling of not being able to trust our connections, a feeling unloved or unlovable. These are core words that we are having that can only be serviced through connection.

Gareth King (43:35)

Wow. Sounds so incredibly promising. Where do you think that will go over the short term and even the long term?

Dr. Maria-Elena Lukeides (43:42)

We're still collecting data and really trying to do these therapies in the way that the TGA has deemed safe. There's a lot of restrictions and there's kind of a little bit of conflict, I think, in the psychedelic world with a lot of people being in conflict with this clinical model where we're doing it in a more clinical psychiatric type of setting as opposed to some type of very beautiful shamanistic natural. So, it conflicts with that.

What I would say is that we're treating very complex chronic presentations and potentially as the safety and efficacy of these treatments is established, as these become more tolerated and the outcomes of these therapies are proliferated, we are hopefully going to see a lot more of these clinics opening up, these things becoming more mainstream, other countries to also deregulate for therapeutic use and that we have access to a medicine that actually is telling us that technology, stress, disconnection is at the core of our suffering.

And what is really interesting and whether it's from people who do this as a wellness seeking expedition. And I know in the podcasting world, there's a lot of beautiful, amazing humans that have come out and talked about their experiences with psychedelics and how transformative they've been. And not one person goes, it made me want to spend a lot more time on my phone.

Gareth King (45:10)

Yeah, look, I bet, I absolutely bet. And it sounds like there's some real lessons in there that we can all learn from that. But speaking of lessons, like you've given us so much brilliant, insightful knowledge to think about today. So, thank you so much again, Maria Elena. What have you got coming up and where can people follow what you're up to?

Dr. Maria-Elena Lukeides (45:29)

I'm not good at social media, so I'm kind of embarrassed to say, but I do have an Instagram handle. It's @drmariaelena_lukeides. I also have the wellness fountain, which is the other arm of what I do, which is a bit of energy, healing, breath work and meditation and retreats. If anyone's interested through there, I've got my website, drmariaelenalukeides.com.au where anything I've got coming up should be there.

And Gareth, can I just thank you for kind of raising and reaching out to me, and this has been such an important conversation. It's time for these conversations to become something that most of us are talking about regularly. I think Australia banning social media for under 16s is a huge step forward. But I think we also need to legislate a little bit around, again, not kind of stopping technology and advancement, but how do we ensure that it's safe and useful?

We need to have these open conversations and I don't think there's an easy answer, but we need to be having the conversations as a starting point. So, thank you, Gareth.

Gareth King (46:31)

No, look, thank you for the kind words and also thank you very much for your time today. It's been fantastic.

Dr. Maria-Elena Lukeides (46:37)

Likewise.