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CONNECT During Social Isolation

Season 1Episode 162Sep 18, 2020

Dr. Tom Williams, element scientist for human factors and behavioral performance in the Human Research Program at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, details a reminder called CONNECT and how it not only benefits astronauts in space but those on terra firma here on Earth. HWHAP Episode 162.

CONNECT During Social Isolation

CONNECT During Social Isolation

If you’re fascinated by the idea of humans traveling through space and curious about how that all works, you’ve come to the right place.

“Houston We Have a Podcast” is the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center from Houston, Texas, home for NASA’s astronauts and Mission Control Center. Listen to the brightest minds of America’s space agency – astronauts, engineers, scientists and program leaders – discuss exciting topics in engineering, science and technology, sharing their personal stories and expertise on every aspect of human spaceflight. Learn more about how the work being done will help send humans forward to the Moon and on to Mars in the Artemis program.

On Episode 162, Dr. Tom Williams, element scientist for human factors and behavioral performance in the Human Research Program at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, details a reminder called CONNECT and how it not only benefits astronauts in space but those on terra firma here on Earth. This episode was recorded on August 21, 2020.

Houston, we have a podcast

Transcript

Gary Jordan (Host): Houston, we have a podcast. Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center, Episode 162, “CONNECT during Social Isolation.” I’m Gary Jordan and I’ll be your host today. On this podcast, we bring in the experts, scientists, engineers, astronauts, all to let you know what’s going on in the world of human spaceflight, and today even our own lives. 2020 has been a crazy year with the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of us are affected by it in how we live and work now every day. It’s very difficult to go out or to do things or to see people. I know for me personally, I haven’t seen my friends or family in, well, what seems like forever now. This is a very similar story to astronauts. They describe life away from family for long periods of time during space station expeditions. Of course, they miss their families, but they seem to always make note of keeping in regular contact with them. Keeping remote connection with others from the International Space Station can be a form of a countermeasure or a preventative measure from feeling isolated. So, astronauts can maximize their performance and get all kinds of science and spacewalking and maintenance done in their crazy busy schedules on orbit. There is an approach or a method or whatever you want to call it that can serve for a useful reminder for the different ways in which NASA helps our astronauts deal with the isolation and confinement on long space missions. And, that reminder is called CONNECT. Of course, it’s an acronym. It stands for Community, Openness, Networking, Needs, Expeditionary mindset, Countermeasures, and finally Training and preparation. On today’s episode, we’re going to explore NASA’s CONNECT method and how we can use what NASA does for our astronauts to find ways to connect in our own lives thinking about the stresses that comes with isolation. So, joining me is Dr. Tom Williams, now three-time guest of the podcast who is the Element Scientist for Human Factors and Behavioral Performance in the Human Research Program here at the Johnson Space Center. So here we go, using the NASA CONNECT method in our own lives with Dr. Tom Williams. Enjoy.

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Host: Dr. Tom Williams. Thank you so much for returning to Houston We Have a Podcast.

Tom Williams: Gary, thanks so much for having me back. It’ll be a real pleasure for me to share some of these thoughts with you today.

Host: Absolutely. And it’s a very timely discussion I think that we’re having. It’s all about social isolation, which is something that I know I personally am very used to and I think a lot of our listeners are as well. And, I’m very interested to talk about this because it’s not only something that is applied to human spaceflight but it’s something that can be brought into our own lives here on Earth. And, I’m very excited to get right into it. Let’s start, though, with getting a good understanding of just what we’re talking about here and why we have to implement this thing called the CONNECT reminder. We’ll get into that shortly. But, first sort of setting the scene on social isolation. What is, Dr. Williams, what is social isolation?

Tom Williams: Well thanks so much. And, it’s really an important topic just as you said. All over the world we’re all dealing with it. Social isolation is really when we either voluntarily or intentionally withdraw from social contact with others. You know, with our astronauts we, they voluntarily agree to complete a long duration mission. And, for many of us today, we’re kind of struggling to maintain the social isolation that they volunteer to engage in. And, so it’s important that we kind of distinguish between being socially isolated and feeling lonely.

Host: Interesting. So, let’s dive into that. What are those feelings? Give us a little, a little comparison on that. The, what can come with the results from social isolation and I guess how that compares to the traditional sense of loneliness?

Tom Williams: Yeah. Great question. So, when we think about being socially isolated, feeling socially isolated versus feeling lonely. Again, social isolation is when we self-impose a withdraw away from other people or we do it as a result of being requested as we are now. And that’s, unfortunately, when we withdraw, that’s often viewed as a precursor to depression. People who become depressed, they don’t want to be around other people. And, the consequence of that, loneliness is a common experience. All of us get lonely from time to time. And, but it’s not always aversive. It becomes only aversive when we sort of self-exile and withdrawing from basically everything around us. And, we no longer kind of confront the ways that, through our day to day activities, we grow. So, when we withdraw, we tend to not foster our personal growth like we could. So, loneliness really kind of sets up an activation of a set of complex feelings. And, some of those result in negative feelings and then the negative reactions we have can be perceived by those who care about us, they see us withdrawing, they get concerned about us. And, we don’t reach out as much. So, it really starts to impact on our relationship with others and it kind of doesn’t allow us to meet our social needs. And, that’s why we get concerned and attentive to how we socially isolate and how that may set us up for loneliness.

Host: That’s right. And, you’ve already gone through a few of those effects of what social isolation can do to a person. You’ve mentioned depression and you’ve mentioned this almost stand off-ishness from those who made try to connect with you, if you’re trying to socially isolate. Are these sort of the symptoms of what can come from social isolation?

Tom Williams: They can indeed. You know, it’s interesting, a 2018 national survey by Cigna Insurance, even before COVID hit, looked at 20,000 U.S. adults. And it really concluded, loneliness is at an all-time high. And, like 40% of all the survey participants reported that they’re, sometimes they always feel like their relationships aren’t as meaningful as they feel like they need to be, and they feel isolated. And, what’s really interesting is that they’re really differed by age groups, kind of surprisingly. We used to always think that our elderly were the most at risk. But, what’s interesting about this most recent survey is the fact that Gen Zers, the 18 to 22-year old’s and the Millennials, the 23 to 37-year old’s are really lonelier and really claim to being more so than our older generation. Now social media use alone doesn’t seem to be the predictor of the loneliest, loneliness. It’s not that they’re turning into their devices and away from other people. Which is sort of interesting now when we think about the impact of COVID where we are using technology more. But the student actually had higher loneliness scores than retirees did. And, there didn’t seem to be a big difference between men and women, and no differences, major differences between the races to when it came to averaging. So, it’s really important that we look at there are ways that we can be less lonely, and we can have those regular in person interactions. And, when we do that there tends to be a good overall physical and mental health benefit. And, when we find that balance, that’s when we seem to do the best.

Host: I’m very curious to explore some of that. And, I love you diving into some of the statistics there for something we can describe on Earth. I think what’s fascinating about talking to you, Dr. Williams, is that this is something that we in the world of spaceflight here at NASA relate to very often, you know, this, the whole world right now is experiencing this social isolation. Being told, you know, for the benefit of others that this is one of the better ways to stop the spread of the Coronavirus, the novel Coronavirus. But it is, it does has a lot of comparisons to human spaceflight. An astronaut very much separated from everything he or she knows. Can you talk about some of the ways that social isolation that we’re looking into how it may affect or some of the, or some of the symptoms and, I guess, adverse conditions that can come from an astronaut that is social isolating?

Tom Williams: Great question again. Thanks, so much for that. Because, it really is, it’s one of the reason NASA’s identified isolation as one of the five spaceflight hazards for a long duration mission to Mars. We understand how being isolated from those you love, from society as a whole can be stressful. And, in fact, it’s something that we spend a lot of time researching in different environments over extended periods of time. And, what we do is we set up analogs, analogs that are focused on isolating the research participants, confining them within that analog setting. And, we try to do this in an extreme environment so that the crews within those analogs can experience something close to the stressors that maybe our crews are being exposed to on a long duration space exploration mission. So, we’ve done this research with scientists and other individuals who are typically doing winter overs in Antarctica, for example, for 12 or more months. And what we learned is that often times there’s something that’s been described as a winter over syndrome. That’s when the individuals start to withdraw from one another. They become more socially narrowing in their processes. So, they kind of socially withdraw as the mission extends. That means they start to spend more time alone in their rooms. And, of course, that would be difficult to achieve on a small spacecraft. And, so then that could potentially create a tension. And, if that tension is there, the irritability sometimes also increases with our research participants, somatic complaints, they get more aches and pains. And, so if a crew member starts to have an increased medical complaint, they’re too far from Earth to get any medical care that might, that we might have here in Houston. So, it really becomes something that we need to fully understand and better get a grip on in terms of how does this social isolation impact? Because as people become more socially isolated, they also become more territorial. When they put something down, they don’t want somebody else to move it. And, they may complain more about feeling down or depressed. Sometimes they have problems concentrating and sometimes sleeping and sometimes they report problems with memory. So, you can start to see why it’s so important for NASA to understand how this long-term isolation can impact on our crew. We don’t know for sure if the same thing with our crew will be experienced. But we need to be ready to help them if they do experience this way.

Host: And, I think that’s a fascinating point to zoom in on is not just the social isolation thing that maybe we can think of when you think about a single person barricading themselves and isolating from others. The idea of isolating in groups. I know a lot of us are stuck at home with our, with our families, whether it’s a loved one, whether it’s a mother, father figure, whether it’s a wife or husband. And, you know, adding into the stresses of social isolating, now you have to perform with this, with your family with your crew the same that an astronaut would. And, the stresses of socially isolating being with just those people, there’s a factor of how, I guess, you respond to those people, you know, a heightened sense of irritability. It seems like there’s a lot of parallels with the crews studying how isolation effects crews in all of these analogs, you know, like the winter over months for Antarctic crews, astronauts, but even our own families.

Tom Williams: That’s exactly right. That’s a huge factor. Primarily because when you start to feel that disconnected, isolated, and alone, and you can be around people and feel somewhat isolated and alone. And, so that social narrating, that narrowing, that becoming more irritable, less patient, often times is a result of feeling kind of crowded, feeling like you’ve got, you’re trying to balance multiple demands, multiple roles. Like you’re the office mate, you’re the spouse, you’re the mother, you’re the father, you’re the student. Multiple roles are now being demanded of you. And, that’s putting pressure on you to try to confront some of the ways to manage all those different stressors. And, sometimes dealing with that stress kind of increases the potential risk of now not, kind of handling the responses to those situations effectively, which then adds more stress as tension starts to mount between you and the other members of your family or the group that you’re isolating with. So that’s why it becomes so important that we, we understand that and be able to effectively deal with it. And, you know, every, every time we get a delivery, I know more people are getting deliveries at home. But, every time we get a delivery, there’s some calculated risk that we’re encountering. So, it becomes important that we sort of look at it in the same way an astronaut going out on an EVA or a spacewalk. They’re going out in a high-risk hazardous environment. If we go out, we’ve got to take precautions. They’re, they get a lot of hundreds of hours of physical and mental training to do something. And, they go out in a completely protective suit designed to protect them against the hazards. But, taking actions in that suit, in that hazardous environment is very demanding. It produces stress. It produces fatigue. They confront that. And, we can all learn from that by doing kind of the mental check on our own gear as we get ready to go out the door to go get groceries or whatever we may need to do, taking those appropriate precautions. And, that can decrease the stress of the environment that we currently find ourselves in.

Host: I’m loving the parallels here between astronauts in space and what we’re experiencing now in our own lives. And, with this foundation set of understanding what social isolation is and how it can be affecting us, all of these parallels brings up this reminder, this acronym called CONNECT. And, it’s something that I believe we apply or at least have astronauts have in the back of their mind as a reminder to counteract some of these effects that could happen from isolation. So, Tom, kind of introduce this for us. What is this reminder called CONNECT?

Tom Williams: Thank you. The CONNECT is, it’s sort of a mnemonic that we’ve coined to really try to pass on the lessons learned that we’ve used with astronauts for a long period of time. So, it’s not a formal NASA program. But, it’s just a good reminder of the seven different considerations that we can all take into account that may help us all better cope and adapt to the demands of social isolation. So, it’s an acronym, that CONNECT, that C O N N E C [T] and does a play on words. If we think of those seven things we can do, that helps us connect. And, if we’re feeling more connected, we’re feeling less socially isolated. So, it’s just a useful reminder of actions we can consider and take. And, like any good team member on a spacecraft, potentially use as a gentle reminder to others to consider taking when we see that we may need increased coping, or they see we may need increased coping. And, it just gives us a potential stress reduction strategy. So that’s, that’s why we’re using this as a useful reminder for ourselves and for others we care about in the same way crew would do the same team care on station.

Host: Wonderful. Now let’s dive right in to CONNECT addressing both the space related and Earth related applications at each step starting with the first C.

Tom Williams: That’s great. So, Community is a big one. That’s kind of the foundation. We’re all socially isolating now as gesture to protect other members within our community. And, in the same way, the crew will take steps to get trained up. And, they’re isolating to go out on an expedition to advance the reaches of space exploration. So, they’re heavily involved in the community. They’re doing lots of public affairs events to stay connected with our community, to inspire students to become more focused on STEM, the science technology math components. So, we really focus on how do we link this increased reliance on a more limited contained environment to the fact that we’re helping take care of our community as we do so? So, we do that by taking a more positive approach. And, the challenge for us is to become innovative in that new normal until we can do a reentry. Just like crew will come back to Earth from a space exploration mission. So, when the virus clears, how do we prepare ourselves to come back to that more normal social interactions? So, finding a way to focus on our isolation is a way that we advance the interest of our community, we protect our community, but we’re still part of our community. And, that’s the importance of why we’re socially isolating. That becomes our C in the first letter of CONNECT.

Host: I love that, there’s a, there’s a lot of themes within that first C, within that community. There’s this theme of positivity, looking for the positive. And, there’s, there’s also, and correct me if I’m wrong here. It seems like there’s a sense of purpose. And, that purpose is, is pulled gently away from the self, from you, and that purpose is driven more toward the people that surround you, your community. So, as you mentioned the purpose of, you know, wearing a mask in your community, what you’re doing there is your purpose is to prevent the spread of the Coronavirus. So, if you were to be a silent carrier, as we’re all learning is may be the case, wearing that mask is the purpose that drives you to protect those around you.

Tom Williams: That’s such a great point. And, the other night we had a presentation on the overview effect. And, on one of the things that crew members will report on in seeing the Earth from space, they really had this sense of awe and a greater sense of connection to all of humankind on Earth. And, that’s a way that their experience in space really intensely connects them to the community below them. They don’t see borders, they just see humankind. And, that’s a great example that you’ve provided of how that represents that community with spaceflight and the need for us all to look how we’re all in this together. And, the actions each of us take promotes the interest of the others.

Host: That’s very, very powerful, that sense of purpose. Now let’s move on to the next one, O that stands for Openness.

Tom Williams: Openness really tells us that we are in a challenging situation. We’re being asked to do things we don’t typically do. And so that really demands kind of a call for a greater openness to try new things, to be open to doing something other than what we’ve always tried to do. So, it really helps us recognize the importance that we now have an increased reliance on each member of our team, our community. And, that we’ve got to be able to find ways to promote and actively seek ways to take on this challenge with hope and preparedness just like we talked about with our crew. So, we’ve got to accept the new normal. But that doesn’t mean we just sit there and take it. We look for interesting innovative ways being more open to the possibilities. And, that’s really sort of what resiliency is for us. When we think about being more resilient, it means that we can appraise what’s happening, we can take positive steps to cope with what’s happening, and then we take steps to eliminate the sources of stress. And, it’s how it’s really how we’re thinking about it. You know? Henry Ford once said, “when you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.” Meaning that how you think about the situation will often determine how you cope with the situation. So, we really need to be open to the possibilities to how do we self-regulate in this environment so that we don’t let stress get out of control? And, resilience really kind of tells us, we can find ways to positively adapt despite the significance of the adversity we might be encountering. And, that gives us the ability to kind of bounce back to our prestress levels of functioning so that we can maintain a sustainable equilibrium in our own life and that’s that self-regulating part. We spend a lot of time with crew training them on these techniques. So that we can identify ways, regardless of the situation that arises, you’ve got resources and resiliency to contend with those, to meet the difficult demanding situations. And, that’s what gets us to a more positive adaptation as we confront these stressors.

Host: So, you talked about, you talked about resilience as one of those things that can be a stressor. And, you talked about techniques that we can, we and astronauts can use to create a better sense of openness. What are those techniques?

Tom Williams: Well resilience is really a good way, it’s a way that we describe how someone positively adapts to a difficult situation. So, one of the things that we do is to do resiliency training, to give you processes on how to cope with different situations. One of those is mindfulness training. So, being mindful of how something is impacting on you emotionally and then trying to do a self-assessment of why is it having this impact? So, when we think about often times someone says something a certain way and we might misinterpret it. So, we got to kind of step back and do a reassessment of that and say. Was there an intention there for someone to say it that way? You know? And, one of the things we know is that sometimes people get into conflict when they’re in a more confined environment. And, there’s an old saying in psychology that good mental health is not the absence of conflict but how you handle the conflict. And, so when we are more open to finding more positive ways to adapt or handle conflict, there’s always going to be the opportunity for a more positive outcome. And, when we have more positive outcomes, that’s what’s stressful and that’s what we need to stay open to finding ways, innovative ways, to be more adaptive more positive about this experience. And, that will help us all cope better.

Host: These, even just these first two, Dr. Williams, community and openness seem like positivity takes on this, this forward theme for both of them. And, what I think what’s very interesting is it’s a lot about nurturing that positivity and in turn nurturing that positivity creates a more positive environment. And, it sounds like creating that positive environment is one of those powerful things that you can do to reduce or possibly even eliminate some of the stressors that come with social isolation.

Tom Williams: You know, absolutely. And, just relating that, just think of a long duration mission, three years. And, if you can’t find ways to kind of maintain positive relationships among the small crew, that could be a long mission made longer by the sense of stress that would be produced. So that’s where the team care and being mindful of how we relate to others, being kind of alert to what actions we’re taking and how it may impact on others becomes so important at times like this and on long duration space exploration missions.

Host: Now let’s move on to the next one. We’ve gone through C and O, Community and Openness. The next one is Networking.

Tom Williams: And, Networking is so important. And, this is one where, at its very core, is how we really reach out with the ones we love, to family, to friends, and the importance of seeking kind of innovative ways to connect with them. So that can be through technology, that can be finding new ways to communicate with them. Because part of what the isolation does for us it takes away that face to face opportunity. So now the ability to network becomes important that we find ways to reach out. What’s really interesting about this is, when you look at some of the research related to being happy, finding ways to connect to people near you that are happy, increases your own sense of happiness. Kind of related to the point that you helped us make on the more positive nature. So, it’s really important that we network, find ways to connect with those we love. And, that may be challenging at times, because maybe some of our older parents or grandparents may not have some of the same technological connections that we do. And, they may feel, you may feel like you don’t have as many ways to do that. But you can write people. People are increasingly writing now while they’re isolated. We also have to be mindful that some of us are more sensitive to the connections with others also tend to be highly sensitive to the absence of those connections. So sometimes people just need those connections. And, so we may find that some of our friends are reaching out more. And, we’re hesitant. Because, in a social relationship, we may not want as much connection, but they may need it. And, so being mindful that everybody’s needs with connection may differ. And, importantly, when our needs aren’t met, that’s when we find it more difficult to apply our coping skills. So that’s where we have to be adaptive. And if we’re not kind of meeting or getting our coping skills met, that’s when we sort of feel out of it. And, that’s when sometimes, if someone reaches out and we don’t reach back, that may lead to a perception of not feeling like we’re worthy. That somehow, because they didn’t reach back in a timely way, that that’s a testament to our own sense of worth in their eyes. And, that’s, that’s something we really want to avoid and get away from. And, that takes us back to being open to the possibility that maybe some other demand has been placed on them and they don’t have the time to respond immediately. When we’re in social interactions, we can read those cues more effectively. When we’re more isolated and trying to read it through the networking capabilities we have now, that becomes less able for us to do that. So those with high social skills usually are least likely to feel lonely or to feel socially isolated because they are going to reach out. So, if we know we have friends that are that way, we’ll expect them to reach out more. But it also tells us not to ignore those who don’t have as many social skills. And, certainly, with our crews, understanding their natures, the composition of the team that gets put together and finding ways to relate to one another. Because the reality is, we often contrast our own experiences with those we observe in others. So, as we see people relating, as we see how they’re relating to others, that helps us learn how to relate as well. And, when we’re isolated, we lose that opportunity. So that reinforces the importance of being attuned to the need to network, particularly with our family, friends, and those we care about and those who may need that support. And, we see all sorts of reports of that in the news where people are finding innovative ways to reach out.

Host: And, I know, I’m the result of that too. I’ve been part of many a Zoom call to a lot of family members and friends. Just one of those ways that you have to, that you have to connect nowadays. And, I’m interested to see how that relates to astronaut’s, I guess now, on the International Space Station. I’m sure it’s going to be a little bit more prominent as they go farther away. But what are some of those ways that astronauts are using this networking method to connect with others?

Tom Williams: So that’s, they have a great opportunity to reach down, calling their families. There are oftentimes PAO [Public Affairs Office] events that allow them to connect to network to share the experiences of what they’re doing. Which, in many ways, makes it more meaningful for them when they’re able to relate what they’re doing in space and help inspire and share the excitement with those of us here on Earth. And, it also, from time to time, they’re allowed to reach out to celebrities. And, so calls are set up between them and a, maybe a celebrity, a movie star or something to share those experiences. So, there’s many different ways they network. And, it’s important for them and their families to stay, to keep connected. And, that, of course, is one of the concerns we have of long duration missions. Because we really see the importance of that networking and recognize with a long duration mission there’ll be communication delays because of the distance that the signal would have to travel. And, how might that change the feeling of connection that you get when you network? And, so you get the message, but that message was 10 minutes ago or 20 minutes ago and now your response will take another 20 minutes to get back to them. So how might that change that sense of connection? And those are important research areas that we have underway.

Host: Yeah. It’ll be interesting to see how that plays out without that conversational feel that instant feedback that you get when you say something and somebody responds to it, not being able to have that. So that’s definitely one of those things that’ll be very interesting. Let’s move on to the next one. Next one is another N and it stands for needs.

Tom Williams: You know needs are so important at times like these. Because, really the challenges in isolation sort of help us realize that we importantly have to attend to our physiological health, our emotional health, and the psychological needs that we have. So, when we think about our physiological, emotional, and psychological needs, it’s important that we understand, if we don’t attend to those needs, it starts to diminish our enjoyment of life. So if we’re not eating right, if we’re not getting enough rest, sleep, if we’re not self-regulating some of the emotional reactions that we might have to some of the stressors, if we’re not attending to those things that give us meaning and purpose in life, then that starts to cause us to be more controlled by the circumstances than to feel like we’re in control of our settings and our environment. And, that gives us not only a loss of a sense of isolation, but a loss of the sense of control. So, attending to those physiological, emotional, and psychological needs become really important. And, it helps us also recognize how we maintain control over our health and wellbeing for both ourselves and those we care about who may be either living with us or, when we’re networking with our friends, paying attention to how they’re dealing with it. Now, like our crews, we train them in mindfulness as we related to earlier. And, that’s to help them remain aware of how the experiences that they’re having may impact on them. And, that gives them that sense of control, that sense of purpose. And, if we don’t do that, if we’re not attending to those experiences, again, that starts to diminish our, our purpose, our sense of wellbeing. And, it really actually results in a reduction in the enjoyment of life. So, the self-care becomes really important when we’re isolated. The self-care focused on not only ourselves, but really being attuned, just like crew members are, to how the needs are being met by others, their other members of the crew. The team care is really, really important. And, if you’re noticing something about another member of the team, being mindful of how can you set conditions to make it more positive for them. And, you know, one little thing we all can do that, you know, a great article in Health Psychology, a “Randomized Trial.” So really a good scientific approach helped address even sitting upright, you know, an upright seated posture helps us maintain self-esteem and it reduces our negative mood and increases positive mood. So being attuned to our body posture, not allowing ourselves to slump as we sit at home trying to continue our work. One small gesture can have a huge impact. And, so it really helps us realize that, with isolation, getting a personal sense of control, helps us decrease that growing sense of the circumstances that tend to feel like they’re beyond our control. And, so it really, it’s important that we find ways to kind of psychologically reframe our isolation and to help us recognize that we’re really maintaining the isolation to actually maintain our control over own health and wellbeing. And, so reframing it, making sure that, as we remain isolated, if we reframe it, we can have that greater sense of control. You know, some people in isolation start to report having more vivid dreams. So, I always like to remind people, you know, when we’re isolating to avoid coming in contact with the virus, that gives us the free exercise of the emotional expression of our dreams. So, someone who’s healthy in isolation can have a thousand dreams. While someone exposed to COVID-19 and you become sick with it, has but one dream, one goal, and that’s to not become seriously ill or to cause someone else to becomes seriously ill. So it really becomes important to reframe the situation, meet our needs, and recognize, as we’re doing so, we’re really, again, promoting our physical, emotional, and psychological needs because we don’t want to live the rest of our lives with a sense of guilt on potentially contaminating someone else.

Host: Yeah. There’s a lot to this, to this particular part of the reminder CONNECT, the needs. I think, I think another one, what’s interesting is that you talked a lot about the mental wellbeing and about others. I think, I think what’s very interesting is just how important those physiological needs are just keeping your body healthy. You know, things that can help you in the sense of social isolation can be eating right and getting enough sleep and exercising, all things, I think, a lot of people are having trouble with as gyms are either closed or very high-risk environments. And, you know, we, you start sacrificing things like sleep and like having some good food, just making sure that you’re attending to those very basic needs.

Tom Williams: That’s another great reinforcement in that point. Because one thing we see is a lot of people kind of going back to the openness and using the openness to meet these needs. And, that is people are innovatively finding ways to exercise where they live. So, they’re creatively looking at different ways to do exactly as, in the point you made, and that is to maintain that physical fitness and that component of ranging their environment to be more conducive to meeting their physiological, emotional, and psychological needs. And, that’s important that we remain open and creatively look for ways to do that to help ensure those needs are being met.

Host: Now this next one is interesting. It’s called Expeditionary Mindset. Now what exactly is that?

Tom Williams: You know, this is a really important one and it’s really, you’ll see a number of the astronauts have commented on social isolation and they really pull from an expeditionary skills model. So, when we think about in expedition, we’re thinking about you’re now heading out doing something, kind of a sense of adventure, there’s a readiness to respond, you’re learning from success of others, you’re sharing the successes you have. You realize there’s going to be challenges that are going to be coming your way. You take a lot of steps to kind of foster a sense of readiness to respond to whatever those challenges may be. You kind of use the challenge to create a sense of adventure. And, you remain open to the challenges that you’re going to confront. So that’s really what has helped others who have engaged in historical expeditions, that’s how they succeeded. They studied, what did others confront? How did they succeed? How do we prepare? What are the challenges we’re confronting? How do we learn to address them with the limited or no help that we might have? And, how do we continually hone our skill sets for doing so? That’s kind of what we mean by an expeditionary mindset. That we don’t say we’re stuck in this environment, there’s not much we can do, we say look, this, if we adopt an expeditionary mindset, we approach it by saying you know what, we realize that others are going through this, others are learning from it. How can we capitalize on what they’re doing? How can we build on that success? How do we build on our own success? What works? What doesn’t work? How do we pull our family together? Kind of again getting the team activated so that we identify and respect the roles and responsibility that each of us have in the success of the mission in the same way the crew would do, each has a role and responsibility? How do we, how do we arrange our family, our others that we’re living with to make sure that everyone feels worthy, they’re contributing even in small ways for the success of this expedition of social isolation mission that we’re all engaged in?

Host: Now, I think what’s interesting is, is you talk about Expeditionary Mindset. And, I’m relating it to expeditions as we know it on the International Space Station usually six months sometimes a little bit longer. Christina Koch being up there for nearly a year and then the same with Scott Kelly. I think what’s different about the way that astronauts today approach their expedition missions on the space station is that there is an end date. And, I think there are these expeditionary skills and I wonder if there is a sort of ease with knowing that, or at least having a sense, of when you’re going to come back and then things are going to return to sort of normal. So how can we, how can we use this expeditionary mindset in a way that we are uncertain of the end date?

Tom Williams: Yeah, but it’s such an important point. And, I think it’s something that we would all like to know and I think and sometimes with crew. Sometimes they thought they had an end date and it gets extended due to orbital mechanics or due to just the scheduling. And, so I think that they, at times, have had to confront, sort of what we’re confronting. And, I know, sometimes, military members think that their deployment is going to end at a certain time, and it gets extended. So, looking at some of those experiences, the importance is setting objectives to overcome how to get through particular set points in the duration. So, we don’t know when it’s going to end. But, how do we set objectives to say, “in the next month, here’s what I want to achieve.” And, so each month you can set new objectives knowing that these are steps within an overall mission. And, we can pretty much imagine that there should be a vaccine available by next January, February, that’s sort of the mark on the wall for a lot of us, I think. And, so setting objectives to overcome the challenges we’re likely to confront, and importantly the expeditionary mindset says we’ve got to share our successes. What is it that we’re doing that’s helping us bide the time? You know, one of the things we do with crew is have them grow plants and try to look at there’s a cycle of plant growing that farmers have long used to kind of measure the time across the summer. So, are there things that we can do, objectives that we set for ourselves? Some people are trying to learn a new language. How do we reframe this to say I want to achieve this before it ends? And, that gives you objectives. So, you’re now more focused on the objectives that you’re working toward rather than the time. Because if we just focus on the time, that will seem like a longer time for it to get here. If we focus on things we can achieve as time passes, then that gives us something that keeps it more positive, more open, more creative, and it better meets our psychological needs.

Host: Now we’ve gone through a lot of the CONNECT reminder so far, Community, Openness, Networking, Needs, and Expeditionary Mindset. The next C is Countermeasures.

Tom Williams: Another really important one because, with our crew, we really focus on we’ve identified spaceflight hazards. How do we develop countermeasures so that those hazards don’t have a dramatic or an adverse impact on the crew? And, in the same way we need to think about countermeasures that we might engage or bring into our homes that would help us maintain a sense of control over how this social isolation is impacting on us. So, the strategies to maintain that sense of connection with others is really what we’re after here to reduce the sense of isolation. So, I alluded to this a little earlier where onboard the International Space Station, we’ll sometimes, we’ll deliver care packages or arrange connections with family members via the communications network or have the communications with MCC, the Mission Control Center during operational activity. So, crew will be having social interactions as they’re performing different tasks. So that tells us something. As we’re doing things, can we reach out to someone, someone who’s always had a talent for getting something done at a certain way? Can we Zoom with them or have some activity where we sustain a connection with them and then grow as a result of that connection? So that becomes a countermeasure to some of the stress. So how do we continue to direct our focus on engaging in some kind of activity with others that reduces the isolation? So that’s part of a countermeasure identifying ways to reduce our stress, to reduce the demands that we feel in the isolation. And, so just like with our crew, we all need to be sensitive to how the isolation may impact on each of us differently. Each crew member has different capabilities. Each member of our family or each of our loved ones may have different abilities to deal with the social isolation. So, it really becomes important, again, as we talked about earlier, to remain mindful of those differences and to be responsive to them in the way they need us to be. That’s part of the countermeasures that we also train the crew on, being mentally prepared for the isolation. Having a mental acceptance that a period of time is going to pass while we have to be socially isolated. And, then recognizing that different stressors are going to trigger potentially different coping strategies in us. And, each of us may differ in how we deal with it. And, so we may think the best way to deal with it is the way we’re dealing with it where another member of the family or whomever we’re living with is dealing with it differently. And, we’re wanting to try to make them change to our way, which it may be exactly meeting their needs at that point.

Host: I think what’s unique about this COVID-19 situation that we’re all in is you talked a lot about understanding and connecting with people and finding ways to do so with a lot of folks that may have different needs. I think what’s also challenging, especially in these times is, I guess we’re recording this, what is it, it’s August now that we’re recording this. We’ve been in social isolation, at least, at least I have since March. And, I think what’s most surprising about this whole thing is just how long this thing is going on. So not only identifying and finding these ways to sustain the, to have a connection and to find the right connections, depending on the people that you want to connect with. But what are those ways that we can make sure that we are sustaining these connections and we’re regularly performing these practices without tiring out. Because I got to say, sometimes, sometimes I get pretty tired of these Zoom calls, sometimes I just want to call it quits. But, what can we do to make sure that we are, we’re hanging in there, that we’re hanging in the game for the long run?

Tom Williams: What a great question that is. And, you know, one of the ways, and we sort of talked about this earlier with the being open and finding different ways to connect. But the best approach when you start to get tired is reframe it. And reframing doesn’t mean you’re denying the facts, reframing says I’m going to use my openness and creativity to think of a different way of appreciating this to take advantage of the opportunity that it presents. So sometimes we don’t think about isolation as giving us a potential for a healthy sense of renewal, a healthy sense of reflection, and greater insight into what we’re like, into what those we care about are like, and to help people deal with this. So, we reframe it. We look for ways to take advantage of the opportunity, and not just look for ways that it’s impacting on us negatively. And importantly, kind of thinking about when we’re using technology, it’s not the same as a face to face, so therefore we may need to use shorter snippets of it. A five-hour Zoom call is not the same as sitting in your back yard for five hours with someone you care about and sharing stories. So, there’s a little extra demand that’s placed on you, so you fatigue more quickly. And it’s always better to leave a communication where both are wanting more, than one of the two parties is feeling like, gosh, we should have ended that an hour ago. So being alert to that, and being mindful of it, can really help. Because that’s what we, we train our crews to increase and sustain their healthy connections with each other in isolation, with those back on Earth, and I think all of us probably can benefit to being alert to when we have a negative thought about something that may creep in, and then counter those negative thoughts. And one way that might help is like we do with crew, you journal. You use this time to journal, listing out the, kind of the activities that you’re engaged in, what did you find positive, what didn’t you find so positive, and then purposefully try to find a more positive tilt to it, to look at ways that you can grow from it. And that actually helps stimulate your brain a little more to give you greater sensory stimulation. Because that’s the other thing we have to worry about, you’re not getting as much stimulation when you’re in the four walls all the time. If we went outside, we would see trees, we’d feel breeze, we would get multiple stimuli. Same thing has happened with crew, they’re not getting as much stimulation, how do we find ways to stimulate you more? And that’s one way to reframe it, find positive ways to use what you can to put more context in it, like journaling, like being alert to those feelings you have.

Host: Well, Dr. Williams, we made it to the end. We’re at the T now in the CONNECT reminder. This one stands for Training and Preparation.

Tom Williams: And so, Training, and it really relates back to our being able to learn and grow from what we’ve been prepared to do. So, when we select crew, we look for individuals who demonstrated success in a variety of challenges. Because it’s from those experiences where they have achieved psychological growth, where they’ve encountered different adversity and shown that they’ve got the resiliency, and they demonstrate to us that they’ve got a readiness for new and uncertain challenges that may lie ahead. That’s what we need to do. Each of us have, we’ve all confronted different challenges in our past, we’ve learned from them, we’ve grown from them. And if we think about it, each one of those experiences helped us become better prepared for the next one, whether it’s been a negative experience. If we reframed it, we can look at any experience and try to bring some positivity out of it, if we’ve grown from it in some way. Life is that way. We’ve pull from all of our previous experiences, from the training, the growth, the preparation, that’s where we have that adversity that presents in our life we can grow from. We draw from our inner strengths, and from the inner strengths, at times, that others may provide. That’s a good, positive psychology approach, we think about what went well, how do we identify and activate the strengths that we have to confront the risk that’s before us, in this case, the isolation. And then with someone that’s helped us, and maybe they’re reaching out to us, and sharing a greater sense of control over the social isolation, how do we express our gratitude? One of the most powerful things in psychology we can do is someone who’s had a positive impact on your life is to reach out to them. Maybe set up a Zoom call that’s specific to say thank you, that the whole purpose of your connection is to say thank you. That is a powerful call. We’ve sometimes told people to make a special trip, write a letter, and then take a special trip to go read the letter in the presence of the person that you have gratitude for. Maybe it was a teacher, maybe it was someone who had a positive impact, a grandparent, a father, a mother, a sister, brother, somebody who had a really positive impact on your life. Think of the power of that, the meaning, the purpose that gives you. That becomes a powerful way to take the preparation, the training that you’ve had from life and to grow from it. So, as we look at this, as we think about, we all share the danger that’s prompting our social isolation. And when we humans share a common danger, if you think about after a storm, people tend to congregate out in the street, and there’s greater connection, greater bonds that tend to draw people together. So, we feel the danger that those type of disasters have prompted in the past, but we can’t connect. The COVID threat creates the danger, but it also creates the risk that if we respond like we normally do, to the humanness, that need to connect, that becomes a danger. And that’s a part of the tension that we face, and we deal with it by learning to prepare and by seeing how others are prepared and trained to handle it. Life has trained us for these challenges, just like our crews on the space station, we all can draw those lessons of our lives, and the strength we feel from each other. And that’s what that key really relates to us.

Host: And I think we’re all hoping for, you know, to learn a lot from this entire experience. And then maintain that positivity through this whole thing, and then of course on the back end, and continuing to keep it going. That is, right there, Dr. Williams, the CONNECT reminder, Community Openness, Networking Needs, Expeditionary Mindset, Counter Measures, and then lastly, Training and Preparation. Taking a whole snapshot of this whole thing, what does it really tell us about the impacts of social isolation and what we have to do to make sure that we are going to be OK when this is all over with?

Tom Williams: I think it really tells us a couple of really important things. One, we really learn from each other. We are social animals. We draw strength from each other. And with these opportunities to learn and strengthen one another, we all perform better, and the isolation confronts that in our lives. And we’ve got to be innovative, find ways to connect, so that we don’t lose that ability to learn from each other, to draw strength from each other, and to feel more connected. So, when we’re all together, it kind of, it really, social activity promotes long term health. That’s so important. When we bring a sense of connection to our lives, and we connect with other people, we see that people who are more social, tend to live longer, they’re healthier. So, we know that being socially isolated is going to impact on our mood, and it has health consequences. You know, so I made reference to this earlier, but our happiness really depends on the happiness of others with whom we’re connected. So, we become happy, and happy, happiness is really connected and linked to our health. It’s sort of a collective phenomenon. And happiness spreads. When we’re happy, it can spread to other people. If you have a friend who’s happy, it increases your probability by 25% of being happy, which is a British Medical Journal study that really looked at how happiness spreads from person to person. And so, if you have a next-door neighbor that’s happy, that’s 70% increase in probability. So, it really helps if you’re the happy person you spread the happiness, you connect, you promote the health. We can’t get together as we once did in the same ways, but we can certainly be together in different ways, and CONNECT helps us remember to do that. To have positive emotions, to be engaged, to focus on our relationships, define meaning in those relationships, and to look for ways as a social king to achieve things, just like we’d expect of our crew, to work towards some goal to make things better.

Host: I absolutely love that. Not only surrounding yourself with happy people, but ultimately becoming that champion of spreading happiness. What a wonderful thing to be discussing. I want to end on this note. You ended your thought on the, on our crews, on the space studies. I think what’s really unique about this conversation is it’s very, it’s very relevant to all of our lives right now, living in a world of COVID-19, but a lot of the things that we’re learning, a lot of the things that we’re discussing, are things that were pulled from human spaceflight. Can you end with the value of conducting these studies, in space and, of course, on the analogues in the ground, and how important they are to understanding some of these concepts and bringing them into our own lives?

Tom Williams: Yeah. Thank you for that opportunity. Because these studies that we do, and they focus on the CONNECT, like we’ve just shared, really helps reinforce the importance of our human connections, that it’s important that we look at how the team that we will send on a long duration space exploration mission, how they need to maintain the human connection with each other, and with us back on Earth. And it’s important that we find ways to foster those connections with them, between them, among them, and with us. And that when we share danger, we share a special bond, and we know that there’s a tension now, with that special bond, because we want to get together and we’re in that tension. So, we pull this research from our analogues, we look at the isolation, we see the risk of becoming more socially narrowed and turning in, and that can be the reminder to reframe that, that tension that pulls us in, reframe it and reach out. Connect with others, be that positive, happy neighbor, that happy friend, and spread your good psychological benefit to others. And in doing so, they will spread it back to you.

Host: What a fascinating, enlightening, and then truly inspirational conversation we’ve had today. Dr. Tom Williams, thank you so much for returning to Houston We Have a Podcast. One of our valued guests we have, three-time returnee. I very much appreciated, having you on today.

Tom Williams: Thank you, so much. It was such a pleasure to share this with you, and we hope it will help those who are out there feeling socially isolated reframe it in such a way that they take something positive from this opportunity to share time with you today, for us to connect.

Host: Ah, for us to connect. [Laughter] Oh, we’ve got to make sure we sneak that in there, too. CONNECT during social isolation. Dr. Tom Williams, thank you, so much.

Tom Williams: Thank you. It’s always a pleasure.

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Host: Hey, thanks for sticking around. What a wonderful conversation we had today with Dr. Tom Williams. I hope you find the CONNECT method very useful in your own life. We have a lot more episodes of this podcast, Houston We Have a Podcast. You can check us out at NASA.gov/podcasts. There are a couple of other podcasts here at NASA that you can check out at that website, as well. This podcast, as well as many other resources, are available to you while you’re at home in social isolation. If you’d like to check some of those out, you can go to NASA.gov/NASAatHome. A lot of resources there. You can check out some of the podcasts, some of the, there’s education activities and a whole bunch more. Make sure you go there. Again, NASA.gov/NASAatHome. You can talk to us on social media. We’re on the NASA Johnson Space Center pages of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Use the hashtag #AskNASA on your favorite platform to submit an idea to the show. Just make sure to mention it’s for us at Houston We Have a Podcast. This episode was recorded on August 21, 2020. Thanks to Alex Perryman, Pat Ryan, Norah Moran, Belinda Pulido and Jennifer Hernandez. Thanks again, to Dr. Tom Williams for coming on the show, and for suggesting this topic today. Give us a rating and feedback on whatever platform you’re listening to us on and tell us what you think of the show. We’ll be back next week.