The Missing Link in Healing: Why Human Connection Matters

Hi, I'm Dr. Scott Stoll and welcome to a regenerative life podcast where science becomes hope, food becomes a catalyst for healing and every conversation explores the profound connections between personal health, human flourishing and the earth and future that we will share together.

But more importantly, we'll explore one of the most important questions of our time. What happens when we actually begin living in alignment with the way we were designed?

All right, hello and welcome back to Regenerative Life with Dr. Scott Stoll. I'm so delighted that you're here and today it's really my honor to introduce you to an incredible friend who has been there with me walking through one of the hardest seasons of my life.

He's been my coach, he's a mentor, an encourager, and I have to tell you, the work that I've done with Matt has not only transformed me, but he has transformed my family.

And so, one of my desires with my podcast is to introduce you to people that have changed my life, that, I believe, have life-changing ideas to share so that you can learn some of the things that i've learned as well.

Today's conversation is really meaningful for me, and so I hope that you can walk away with something really valuable from today. And I want you to know this is not the first and only conversation that we're going to have with Dr.

Matt Letterman. This is the beginning of a long conversation because he's got so much to share with all of you. Dr. Matt Letterman has spent his entire career asking incredibly and sometimes what would seem to be deceptively simple questions about human health, about humans flourishing, and about humanity thriving.

And his journey began in medicine and, as you will see, transitioned to lifestyle changes It was seen on forks over knives, worked for Whole Foods Market.

But over time, Matt came to recognize something deeper, that we can all eat extraordinarily well, and we could live a healthy lifestyle, get a great night's sleep, address all of the traditional pillars of lifestyle medicine, yet still struggle to flourish in our lives.

So today we're going to talk about human flourishing, human emotion, emotions and needs, stress and vibrancy and human flourishing. So Matt, welcome. I am absolutely delighted to have you.

Oh, thank you so much Scott. What a wonderful welcome and so a pleasure and I've learned and enjoyed as much as I have contributed. So it's a very mutual, mutual relationship.

And it has been so powerful for the people that are open to this work. I'm excited to share whatever I can. Yeah, thanks, Matt. And I, you know, gosh, I'm thinking about this podcast interview.

There's so much that I want to dive into and I think so that we can have a conversation about that will be valuable to people. Part of me is like, let's start with the basics and we could build from that foundation.

The things that I have learned over the last two and a half years working with you, as you know, have radically changed my life, my relationships with my children and others, and my relationship with myself.

My understanding of the science of healing in a different way. And so, I'm excited to start an ongoing conversation on this podcast and I think that everyone will hopefully have a little bit of the same experience that I had in my weekly coaching with you.

So that's my goal. And it's a lot to tackle, but we'll start at the beginning with the first block and we will build from there. How does that sound? That sounds great.

The work is as powerful as you are, not you personally, as people are willing to be open and humble around receiving it. I noticed when I talked to people about how you talk and how you think, which is beyond what you eat, how that can affect your health and ultimately disease outcomes.

There's people that will respond and be excited by that. And then there's that people will be responsive and defensive to that, and the people who are excited about it are the new ways that they can improve and optimize and grow.

Those tend to be people with that growth mindset. And then there's people that live in more of a static, fixed mindset. And if they're doing anything that is quote unquote wrong, then they feel shame and they think that they are to blame.

So it's very hard for them to take in new information. What I find working with you is so valuable and helpful. is that you're open to learning and growing and you see every challenge as an opportunity instead of a statement of your worth or value or competence or effectiveness.

And that is the secret weapon for anybody listening, is can they be open and humble? And then that will allow the growth. Yeah, thank you, Matt. And I think that is a secret weapon is to, you know, with humility and with compassion and care to look inward and say, gosh, what can I do to be better?

You know at our immersions, one of the administrators from Whole Foods likes to ask the question of people that are there by instead of saying like, What could go wrong to say gosh what could actually go right today?

What if everything went right today? And I think it's kind of the same idea with our own growth is to simply ask like, gosh, with care and compassion, what else can I do to grow and evolve as a human?

That allows us the flexibility and resiliency, I thing, to step into some maybe hard places that wouldn't be comfortable otherwise. And that reframe is so powerful.

Everybody's seeking ultimately joy, satisfaction, aliveness, inner peace. And a lot of that is available to you right now, just through the reframes. So when somebody says, instead of thinking what could go wrong, what can go right, all of a sudden your entire body, your Shifts and you start seeing all these things that are going right, which changes how you feel.

It changes needs that aren't met, it changes everything. So when you can shift even some safety is another one. Everybody's trying to get safety, meet their need for safety by controlling their environment and creating certainty.

There's this bad thing that I don't want to happen because I'm scared if it happens and I'll feel safe if I can control my environment so it doesn't happen.

But you can also meet your need for safety by connecting to your own ability to navigate whatever happens. If you trust that you could handle whatever happened, you feel safe.

You don't have to control your environment. It's exciting because a lot of people think I have look outward to meet my needs. More often than not, You can meet them by looking inward.

That's a very empowering view. But it's contrary to everything that we have learned in this world, right? Nobody teaches these things, you know, the foundations of life.

So maybe before we go too far down this road, I want to pull us back a little bit, get a bit of your history so people can understand the context. Dr.

Matt Letterman, how you ended up in lifestyle medicine, Forks Over Knives, New York Times bestselling author, You know, producing incredible content for Forks Over Knives for many years, writing multiple books, and making this transition into what we're going to talk about, nonviolent communication, you know the art of connection, meaningful human connection.

So maybe walk us through a little bit of that journey so that we can help people understand where we are and where were going. Yeah, the underlying thread through everything we've done is helping people heal.

and using every tool available to optimize healing. And we apply it on ourselves before we ever bring it up with our patients. So I'm on my own healing journey.

I continue to heal and explore and learn and grow. Then when I find something I really like, we add it to the toolbox that we share with patients So originally it started with Western medicine, and then I learned all about the power of diet, and then lifestyle.

And then I was pretty happy with that for a while. Then all of a sudden I started dealing with some chronic pain issues. I start looking into chronic pains and learning how that actually worked, which the conventional system does quite a poor job in addressing.

And through that, and we can get into that if that's interesting now or another time, but through, that I got exposed to nonviolent communication, which I'd known about for a long time intellectually.

But part of the healing was to be able to connect to my own feelings and needs more effectively. And I can talk about what that means. But when I started working with a coach to do that, because I struggled on my own, all of a sudden my life changed.

My relationships changed, my connection with Alona, and my wife, My kids, how I parented. And then I brought it into with, with patients and then with our team and our coworkers.

And I said, this stuff's amazing. I'd love to learn even more so I can become not only an expert, but figure out where my learning edges are that I don't see.

And that's when I decided to do the certification process to become a certified trainer of nonviolent communication. and I haven't looked back since it's just the most amazing thing I've ever done.

Now I'm starting to see the fruits of our labor and how our kids show up now that they're 13 and 15 and I just can't imagine not having had that tool.

Yeah and i just want people to understand when you say certification this is not a weekend and a couple of you know multiple choice questions and you're certified in non-violent communication.

I want So they will perhaps have more value for what we're going to share. Yeah. It's usually a three to five year process, usually four plus years where you not only have to understand intellectually, but demonstrate your capacity.

to live it and share it from an experiential perspective. It starts to sound a little woohoo when we talk about energy and energetic experiences. So I gotta be, I don't know how open your audience is to that type of language, but it really is, it's really nice, Scott, that you have a personal experience of that shift in yourself that can't get in any way other than putting in the time.

So it's just like any other, you can read all the books on how to play golf, but until you swing that club thousands and thousands of times, it just doesn't matter.

So what they're doing is making sure you're swinging the club, thousands, and thousand times and they are giving you feedback on that. and then eventually get to a place where they say, I think you're ready to be certified, meaning we would trust you to teach this to other people in a way that's really impactful.

But I was certified many years ago and I'm still learning and practicing and still going to seminars and retreats. It's a lifelong process. What was exciting was using nonviolent communication as a tool supported a lot of the physical healing for diseases that diet and Western medicine alone couldn't reverse.

And that's what was most exciting. That's why we started creating connection docs, which was the power of connection, is essential for healing. We think it's essential not only for things like chronic pain, but anxiety and panic attacks and depression, gastrointestinal issues or the bloating and the irritable bowels and chronic fatigues and all these things that we just don't do a great job of treating with Western medicine or diet alone.

And then cancer, which is one of the most challenging diseases to overcome is you got to bring all your tools in. And that's what was exciting. That's why we started really focusing on cancer because it needs the full toolbox.

So nonviolent communication is not only wonderful for relationships, but it's essential for healing many diseases. Yeah. And so maybe let's pick up on this one thread of the physiology of disconnection, and then I will go back to understanding kind of emotions and behavior in the light of unmet needs.

But so, you know, your work has become really focused on, You know you've moved from talking about diet, nutrition, lifestyle to focusing on the impact of.

Unresolved emotions, needs in an individual. You know, these things of like this deeper tension in the body where there's unresolved fear, isolation, feeling unsafe and these unmet needs become biological at some point through the entire stress system.

So maybe you can help walk our audience through what actually happens physiologically. when a person is living in chronic stress, chronic disconnection from themselves and others, and how these contribute to the initiation and progression of disease.

And then on the follow-up for that, how do these systems improve when somebody finally has experienced a safety, belonging, connection, purpose, meaning?

Yes, so we started talking about something called threat physiology. but there's different physiologies of what's happening in the body. And there is essentially two states.

We're oversimplifying, but just go with it. There's safety physiology and there threat physiology. Safety physiology is where our body says, hey, we can rest, week, sleep, digest our food, reproduce, do certain types of healing.

That happens when our bodies in what I call safety Then there is threat physiology, which is what happens when there's a threat to our safety. And we then will do things like fight, flee, freeze, and our body can only do one of those really well at one time.

We can either do threat, physiology or we can do safety physiology. we cant put all of our resources towards both. They both require a lot of energy and it makes sense.

You're not going to worry about digesting your food and reproducing when you are fighting the tiger, the bear, or whatever you're afraid of. So knowing that is the key here.

Knowing that we got to get out of threat physiology. We go into threat, physiology, and then we turn it off and go back into safety physiology that's how the system was designed.

Unfortunately, now because mental and emotional and spiritual threat turns on the same physiology as a physical threat. If you are seeing a tiger that's in the room right now, or you're worried that there will be a Tiger in a room, which I consider more of a mental threat, there's no actual tiger, but I'm imagining there is going to be tiger.

Your body has the same physiological response either way. The sad thing is most people will experience the tiger physically and then the tigers gone. They either die or they survive, they move on.

And then they go back to their safety physiology. But if we can constantly be worried about it, when's the next tiger going to come? and, oh my God, that was terrible, and how do I control my environment so there's no more tigers?

You're in threat physiology trying to control your environment and that doesn't shut off. And when you're a chronic threat, physiology, meaning you don't ever go back to safety physiology or you do it very well, that's when disease can start to happen because you have inflammation.

For example, when you're fighting the threat, you want to shift resources towards being able to heal tissue damage, so inflammation, You want be able fight bacteria instead of viruses.

Viruses are a concern for social populations in safe, connected environments. Bacterial infections, if a tiger bites your hand, do you wanna be a fight the bacterial infection.

We don't fight viruses very well when we're in threat physiology. We want to be in safety physiology for that. Similarly, cancer. we don''t worry about cancer spreading growth when were in threatened physiology, so your immune system shifts towards being able to deal with the physical threat and says, hey, we can worry cancer once we are safe.

And fear puts the brakes on the immune system as far as cancer's concern. So I tell people, if you are in a fear-based mentality or then, or in threat physiology, your immune systems can't optimally fight cancer the way you want.

Now, here's the challenge, Scott. We can turn on threat physiology in all these different ways. And we become experts at different way to turn threat on physiology.

So we can turn it on by disconnection in our relationships. We can on turn on self-critical thoughts. In fact, they show that expressive writing and stopping the suppression of the emotion.

When you tell yourself this emotion is dangerous to share, which is what we do when we suppress, If you just wrote and did expressive writing, James Pennebaker did a whole bunch of studies on this and research showing how that impacts physical disease and all different diseases from like CD4 count with AIDS to certain cancers to blood pressure, just by telling your body it's actually safe to share these emotions.

So Scott, there's so many ways that we turn on threat physiology that, we can talk about later. Yeah, and essentially that threat physiology undermines harmonization of just about every system in the human body.

Yes, so what people don't understand is that you turn it on. It's not just, oh, I think I'm safe. I know I am okay. That doesn't matter. Its the subconscious programming that's the concern.

So if you've been programmed to think that the world is a dangerous place or that your a failure or you're not good enough. Or that sharing emotion is dangerous, so you better suppress it.

Or, that people don't like you, then you start to feel lonely and disconnected. All of that turns on threat physiology. So that's why you have to do this emotional work.

And it's not just about hiding in your house, trying to avoid the tiger. In fact, if you think you're up to hide in house. Now, loneliness was one of the most potent indicators, what turned on some of these pro-inflammatory responses.

Lack of meaning and purpose was another one. If you don't know why, you are getting up in the morning. That's another way to turn on threat physiology, which was very interesting to me.

Yeah, and so your point is well taken that this moves and these are things you've taught me, that it moves out of the intellectual kind of cognitive realm and we start actually tuning into our bodies.

And we tune in in a way where it's curiosity and not shame, blame, or judgment. And so this allows, I think, a lot of freedom, especially in my life, to look at things that I'm doing, communication patterns, the way I am feeling with just simple care and curiosity.

If someone else is struggling with you know, overeating or procrastinating or some other behavior or communication pattern or emotional state. We can just simply look with curiosity and say, that's interesting.

And so maybe I think take people through this kind of next step that we can begin to maybe become aware that a threat physiology existing in us because there's an emotional State that has been pre-programmed by something in our life.

So maybe walk people through that idea of first tuning into your body and how they can start with curiosity and care, tuning in to listen and ask without judgment what's going on.

So the easiest way is to start connecting to your felt experience. People who are listening, if they close their eyes and just take a breath, And you just notice, and I start to notice tension.

That's the first thing I found that was easy for people to connect to. People that aren't experienced at working with feelings might not even notice feelings.

And they'll know that because you'll say, how are you feeling? They're like, I don't know. Or they will say good or bad. Good and bad are not feelings, but they can basically assess if it's pleasant or not.

So just if you notice tension, like I even have, as we're talking, just a subtle tension in my gut, which is probably a little bit of vigilance around, hey, what am I saying?

Is it helpful? How am i coming across? So I don't feel, even though I feel fully safe with you intellectually, Scott, there is a part of me that there's a vigilence around performance, let's say.

So that's a perfect example of how even though my head says I'm perfectly safe, my body has turned on a little bit of threat physiology. And I know that because I can feel the tension.

When that happens, I might feel a bit bloated. Why? Because when you have threat, physiology, your gut needs safety signaling from the vagus nerve to say we're good, you can function.

Then you say, okay, all of a sudden now the peristalsis, the motion of the gut starts turning back on. and you don't feel that backup, which can give you symptoms like bloating or discomfort.

So, you know, this happens people when they travel. Have you ever traveled, Scott? And people will tell me, oh, my bowels don' work properly when I get to the new place, even though it could be the most beautiful resort.

But your body is, it's called neuroception, is trying to take in all these cues and decide if it is safe or not, regardless of what you think. And if its in an unfamiliar environment, Your body's like, there's a little bit of vigilance.

It's saying, I don't know if I can trust this yet. And then over time, your body gets this experience that, oh, it's okay to trust. and all of a sudden the bowels start working.

Or some people say, It is not until I get home. and then all of a sudden my bowels start working. That's about feeling safe and your gut getting the signals that it's safe, regardless of what your head thinks.

And a lot of this ties to emotional states that we are not aware that were existing in. We live, but we don't connect with our emotions. And I even, you know, I'm still learning in my own journey to connect more emotionally in the moment to just say, huh, why am I feeling this right now?

And you taught me so much about emotions. And, that emotions are normal, they're not problems to be eliminated, something to push down, to feel guilty about.

It's information. Anger, fear, loneliness, frustration, joy, these are emotional states that point towards something else that may not be met. So I'd really like, you know, today, I would like you to just start walking people this understanding of emotions, what they are, why we have them, and the relationship between our emotions and our universal human needs.

And that might be challenging for people to recognize we all have needs. They're universally present and valuable. And we'll move from there to understanding the language that can change the way we better understand ourselves and others.

Yeah. So everybody has feelings, but we often don't have feelings vocabulary. And feelings are putting words into ultimately sensations in our body that we interpret as an experience.

There's a whole physiological response to needs and needs are abstract. traits or resources that life needs to thrive. So for example, safety, food, belonging, connection, love, autonomy, those are needs and they're universal.

Everybody has them and you don't argue over needs because we all have them. Now, often we argue about strategies to meet needs. but we don't argue over the needs.

So conflict happens at the strategy level, not the need level. When we have a need that is being met, we feel a pleasant feeling. If I have need for food and I need it, I'm going to feel satisfied.

And if I ever need food, and don´t need, then I feel hungry. The feeling isn't right or wrong, good or bad. It's just letting you know that you have the needed that's not being meant.

If I have a need for safety and security, I might feel scared or anxious if it's not being met. If it is being meant, might I feel a sense of comfort or warmth or groundedness.

So the feeling is just letting you know if a needs not be met, so they're very helpful. They come and go by the minute, feelings come go and by minute based on whether the needs are met or not.

So that's why I struggle when people turn feelings into diseases. For example, you have anxiety. You're feeling anxiety, and you may feel anxiety frequently because your need for safety isn't being met frequently, or you don't even have a strategy to meet your needs for your safety.

But don't make the feeling the disease because it makes it very hard to treat it, and I don' think it helps you grow and heal. So the feelings, transient, come and go by the minute based on whether you have a need that's met or not.

And so part of this is just learning to be aware of feelings and pausing. I think that what's so important that you've taught me is to You know, feel a feeling, pause with curiosity to say, that's interesting.

Why am I feeling this right now? So maybe walk the audience through that process. So simply becoming aware of feelings, learning to maybe put a name to the feeling and a physical experience to it.

And then we'll kind of move to. Yeah. Sometimes there's the ability to notice the feelings. so sometimes I'll notice a sensation. Sometimes I'll notice a judgment.

A lot of people were taught to express their feelings and needs through judging other people. So I might say, the problem with Scott is he talks too much.

Now I'm diagnosing Scott. But underneath all of that is a feeling and a need. The feeling could be frustration and the need could to be heard or understood or seen.

I can say Scott, I have this need, And because my need to be heard isn't being met, I'm feeling frustrated. And then I can make a request to help me meet that need.

Scott, would you be willing to listen to me for a couple of minutes and then tell me back what you're hearing is important to my? But the key is, a lot of people will express their unmet need as a diagnosis or a criticism of you.

Or I'll blame you, this is a big one too. I blame and I say, you are causing my feelings. You're frustrating me. Or Scott, you're causing me to be frustrated.

No, Scott's not causing to me be to frustrated, what if I was, I just have a need to heard and when I have need be heard I feel frustrated if it's now happening.

But if all Scott doing is talking. Now let's say I nervous and I don't have anything to say. I could be relieved when Scott talking because I'm like, thank goodness.

So I am glad he's taken up the space here. Do you see how Scott is just the stimulus? And then if it meets my need, I could feel a pleasant feeling like relief.

But if doesn't meet my needs, could I feel an unpleasant feeling, like frustration. My feelings are always about my knees. Right, so when somebody's experiencing something, let's say, unpleasant, because that's usually more of what we need to deal with urgently, but it's also important for people to recognize when you feel pleasant and celebrate that.

So somebody is experiencing unpleasant perhaps in a relationship. And, you know, what we've been taught, both perhaps growing up in our families, by our culture, because we have not learned a different way, we respond out of our unpleasant state, Because we feel threatened, We have some expectation of what may happen, and so there's an emotional response, And that leads to disconnection.

in relationships—disconnection with ourselves and others. So, what I'd like to do—I'm trying to stitch this together—is let's talk about that disconnection piece and then the opportunity to reconnect when we appreciate our unmet needs, our own needs and the needs of others, so maybe first talk what happens in the moment of disconnections and how that can further contribute to not only the perpetuation of that kind of unhealthy emotional state, but also disease.

And then we'll go to the next step. So connection is really the true north. I gave you an example of needs and feelings and requests. They talk about these different steps of nonviolent communication, But everything is about what will support connection.

In the given moment, I can feel connected or disconnected. and different levels of each. And I know when I'm feeling disconnected, I feel more contracted, some tension, and when feeling connected I'll feel open and expansive.

So in any moment, i'm going to notice what I am feeling. Scott, you mentioned wanting to talk about disconnection first, right? Is there an example if we want to play with one?

I think that might be helpful. Using a scenario maybe to talk through so people can get more of a felt sense of it So yeah, so let's see do I do hypothetical or do you want to give you a real-life example?

Whatever you whatever is alive in you because I think it's helpful for people You know, let me give me a life example and I've talked about this, you know I have a daughter I won't use her name And she is an amazing person and she has definite ideas of how she wants things.

She has expectations of outcomes because she likes order, she like certainty, and those all kind of translate back into security. So an example that I think will help is that, you know, we were cleaning out a closet.

It was a busy day. In my mind, my expectation and outcome was, I don't have a lot of time to take care of this huge mess that's in this closet, so let's do this part and I'll come back to the other part later.

I'd invited faith to help me. Faith's expectation was this is closet is going to be spotless and orderly by the end of the day." And so we had a tension in our expectation and it played out in the relationship.

She started pulling all these things out, putting them outside. And I said, Faith, I can't do this today. I don't have time. Well, all of a sudden she was in a different emotional state because she threatened and she started to argue with me.

So that triggered me I got upset and my first thought is, well, I'm the parent, i'm in control here. I need to tell her what to do. And so let's stop there.

So there's lots of needs there, and what happens is when our needs are not being met or there is the threat that our need won't be met, we go into threat physiology.

And often we do that even though there isn't a real physical threat, but our body can't tell the difference. Knowing that when we are going to threat physiologically through these disconnected moments, And everybody does.

Some people suppress the felt sense of that, but their body, like I said before, is still going into threat physiology. Connection is the way around all of this, because the connection is sort of the antidote to threat physiology.

It's the safety. So I'm always asking, not only does it feel good, but it's good for my physical health to pursue connection. And I can't always do that, especially if I am activated.

But at the minimum, I could connect to my own activation, even if can reconnect with the other person in that moment. So in that situation, there's a connection dance between ourselves and the other person.

And that connection dances saying, how do I ground myself first? Oh, and that's we go back and you look at the body and he's saying I'm feeling tight here.

I have a need for some respect and consideration around what works for me too. And just because something works, for somebody else doesn't mean it works.

For me. and I want to have autonomy and choice about what I do and when I. So you see, I named a couple of needs there and. Oh, so no wonder why I am so irritated.

My need, autonomy isn't being met. my need. for mattering and, consideration is getting threatened a little bit. And I don't like it. Let me take a breath here and let myself know that I have many ways to meet my need for mattering and consideration and autonomy.

And this other person can do what works for them, but they're not going to make me do something that doesn't work for me. We're going figure this out.

My guess is I can connect with this person as soon as I'm ready and we'll find a way that he cares for all of our needs. Now that the key is a lot of people think either you clean the closet or you don' There's two strategies, but you see that's where the conflict happens because you think there's only two strategy.

So either she wins or you win. Right. That's the key right here. We assume that somebody has to be right. Yes. And then somebody wins and somebody loses.

So when Marshall Rosenberg, the creator of nonviolent communication, talks about nonviolence communication being not about whether somebody's right or wrong or wins or loses or is good or bad, it's about how can we meet needs to make life wonderful for as many people as possible.

So if I say to this other person, I start with empathy, sounds like you really want to get this closet cleaned. So I don't even have to know exactly what their needs are.

I just start making empathy guesses, which is basically trying to be in whatever is alive in them, be connected to that. So I already did connection to myself real quick, like I said, my needs for mattering and autonomy, and I reassured myself, we're going to get those met.

Now let's connect with this other person. So that's the dance. I did my own check-in and now I'm checking with the other. And now if they said yeah, I really want this closet clean right now.

and then I stay with it. so I am not worried about whether we are going clean the closet or not. That's the key, you gotta let go of that. Who cares if we clean the closet right now?

What I care about is connecting to this person, and most likely this needs to be understood and heard more than they need the closets cleaned. So I'm gonna say, yeah, can you tell me more?

It sounds like this is really important and that'll help me connect to why this feeling so urgent for you. And they say hey, dad, I just worry it's not gonna get done if don't do it right.

and say, ah, okay, well, that makes sense. Like just that need for trust and follow through and that this is important. And hey, if it doesn't get done now, when's it gonna get it done?

I see why this feels urgent. and they'll say yeah. So are you gonna do it? And you say well I wanna make sure that we find a way that cares for you and for me here.

I don't think we're ready to decide what we gonna to do yet. Can we stay with the needs a little longer? Okay. So then you say, so you want to get this done and you wanna trust that if you could trust it sounds like, if could you trust, that this will get done by some date, then maybe it would be easier to not do right now.

But if can't trust you really wanna get it done now, is that what you're saying? And maybe they'll say yes. Maybe they will say no. but if they say Yes, you said, okay.

so what we really have here is a need for trust. and that you can trust that this is gonna get done. And it sounds like getting this done is going to help you feel like a sense of order and maybe a since of completion, effectiveness, movement around the house.

Maybe there's something even deeper. With all this stuff, Scott, that You've dealt with over the years, maybe there is something with organizing the House that would feel therapeutic.

I have no idea, but if you don't connect to the needs, you're arguing about whether you clean the closet now or not versus like, yeah, dad, I just want this space to be, my, need a space that's my own.

And it's really important to me that I feel more at home and more grounded. I'm just struggling to feel that way right now. So do you see how when you start to connect to the needs, you started to get to compassion and care, and now a couple things can happen.

They may not care about doing it right now because you can figure out a way to meet needs for trust by doing another time. You also might have a natural shift.

Be like, wow, when I realize how this is contributing to that sense of sort of belonging almost. and safety and security in the house, you know, I'm gonna see if I can find some time to make this work.

Now I am doing it out of choice, not because you're telling me I have to. So do you see how we start playing? Once we have the needs, then we can get to, there's gonna be something that shifts in me.

And that's got you, learned over the years, that what I think I understand now, and what understand two minutes from now after we connect about the need, can be significantly different.

Then what resources and capacity we have to accomplish and meet needs will be different two minutes from now once we connect around our needs. Then whatever is alive, then that'll tell us what to do next.

People have a hard time trusting that, they have hard-time probably even understanding that given, like you said, the culture that most people have grown up in.

But does that make sense, Scott? Yeah, it absolutely does. I hope the audience gets that too. That's exactly what happened in this scenario with my daughter.

You know, because of the work we've done together, we took a break from cleaning the closet. As I've described to you before, We had this conversation.

I understood her needs. I was able to recognize how important it was for her from a base level need of security and safety at a trust level in the house.

My heart shifted to compassion. And so we dove in together and, you know, to the surprise, my great surprise. We got the closet cleaned faster than I expected, perfectly orderly and cleaned, and we had a fun time doing it.

And at the end of the day, not only was the closer cleaned. we have a much deeper relationship because we'd worked through that situation together. And that's what was most meaningful.

The closet was secondary. It was great. That was clean. But we walked out of there so happy, more deeply connected with a new level of understanding of how to communicate together and work through challenges.

Yeah, it's really cool because you could even add to that what needs of yours were preventing you from saying yes. And you could put that on the table too.

So not only do you hear her needs for security and safety and whatever is going on with her, you can say, You know what's really getting in the way of me saying yes here is the following.

Could be that you're tired. It could be you have something else to do. Like imagine you had a patient. Like, I can't do it right now. And you said, hey, how important is this to you, Faith?

Do we need to call this patient and tell them that I need cancel them today? Or, you know, and I'm not saying you're going to cancel a patient to clean the closet, but just the idea of what that does is you hear what's alive in them and then they're gonna care for you too.

because you showing care for them. So you'll say, yeah. Now let's say she said, Yeah, cancel the patient. Be like, okay, well, I'm hearing it's really important to you.

See how it still doesn't mean I am going to cancel a patient or not. I just trying to get a sense of what's alive in this person, what their needs are, and what the level of urgency is.

And then I saying, Hey, if you can help me meet needs for respect for this patient and respect or respect, for whatever the appointment was, then be happy to move forward.

Sometimes I've said, I can't think of a way to meet your needs and still meet needs for respect with this other appointment I have. So then we mourn and we say, you know what?

I really wish I could figure this out and now I gotta go, but I want you to know how much I care about this, because I'm hearing that it's gonna meet your needs for feeling safe and secure.

And you what, I am wondering if you can start working on this stuff. I'll meet my needs over here and then maybe we'll check back in in an hour and see how you're doing, we will see what I doing and will have another connection conversation.

But the idea is that time together, that care for each other. But you see people get nervous by me saying, so are you saying I have this patient here and if we can figure out how to deal with that, then maybe we'll move forward.

They're like, oh my God, you're offering to cancel the patient to appease your daughter? No, That's not what I said. But I am telling that's what's preventing me from saying yes right now.

I mean, it could be you're tired, but do you see what I'm saying? So this is one of the needs that goes on the table. And what we should do is spend time identifying needs, put them on a table, and then we work as a team, you and your daughter, around how to meet all these needs we just identified and put on table That's where connection lives.

And then it's a beautiful dance together. It becomes this, this beautiful. I know we're kind of at the end, Matt. We're going to do more on this. But just kind in tying this up today and kind, I really want people to start thinking differently about communication and relationships.

and so, you know, This podcast is called regenerative life. And I love the word regenerative, because to me, even at the level of regenerated agriculture, we are putting positive inputs into the soil.

Regenerative health is the same. We're putting inputs that harmonize systems and begin allowing things to rebuild, reboot, regenerate, restore. I'd love to hear your idea of a definition or thoughts around the idea regenerating communication, and regenerator relationships.

as you and I start, a conversation will continue this entire year on this podcast of nonviolent communication and relationships and human health. So, just so I'm clear, you want to hear about how regenerative life might connect to what we're talking about?

What I'd love to here is your thoughts around the idea of the word regenerate, in its relationship to communication, human connection. So the word regenerative, I haven't given it much thought, so on the surface right now, let's see, regenerate.

I like the idea because we're always trying to feed and nourish the connection, and if it's struggling, if it's needing a little bit of attention, and if its needing some type of fuel or support or healing action, that's what we have to spend time doing.

So I think I like the word regenerative life and I liked the idea of that regenerate idea around relationships, connection to ourselves, connections to other people.

It's all available. And a lot of the people we talk to and we hear, they talk about stress, and it's this general, all-encompassing term that I don't even like, because stress isn't a problem.

It's how you respond to stress that's the problem, so we can have really healthy stressors and really painful disease-promoting stressers, more importantly, how we react to those stressor can be really health- promoting or really harmful.

So I don't like the idea of thinking of stress as the problem. I like thinking about what needs connection, what need some regenerative life support. How do we nourish and are we always sort of looking for opportunities to enhance connection?

as that is not only going to help our healing and our physical health and relationship health, but I really believe that's where joy and satisfaction and peace live.

Yeah, and that human flourishing. That is human flushing. This is a tough concept for people, especially if this is the first time they've been exposed to nonviolent communication.

It almost reminds me of neuroanatomy, you know, and I'm like, why are we learning all these tracks? I don't understand what this is. And they're like just memorize everything.

It'll make sense at the end of the course. I am like three months later, side note, it still didn't make since three month later to me. But it's this idea that this new, if you're waiting to understand it all fully, the perfect is the enemy of good.

If you are waiting know it before you try it, using it with people. The perfect is the enemy of the good. In fact, I don't think you can become proficient in this until you've tried it and made lots of messes.

So yeah, but you have to have the courage and the tenacity to make the mess is and stick with it. And if you can do that, this is going to change your life.

Yeah, thank you, Matt. Kind of as we wrap this up, two things. What is one or two takeaways that people can, you know, start putting into practice after they've heard this conversation?

And then finally, where can they find your books? Where can we find more information about your programs, what you and your wife, Dr. Alona Poldman are doing?

So the takeaway I would say about nonviolent communication is to focus on connection. What is going to serve the connection to yourself or with other people?

And let that lead you. And what serves the Connection now? could be very different than what will serve the connection two minutes from now. So be open to living in that present dynamic state and life starts to get better pretty quickly.

And then where people can find more information, we have a website, connectiondocs.com, which is just the word connection and then docs, d-o-c-s dot com.

You can our books there. It's on Amazon. We have our digital course because we use this work along with some other work to support people with cancer and other complex medical diseases.

well-versed in nonviolent communication as one of the foundation principles, just interacting with people, let alone treating them. And then we bring the diet and the lifestyle and nutrition and medical and care coordination, all that other stuff that makes it a really powerful experience.

So thank you, Scott, for supporting this work and for encouraging this with your audience. Oh, thanks, Matt. I'm really excited to be able to share this for people because I know what a difference it's made in my life.

So I'm excited over the next year to have you and Alona back. Maybe we'll do a couple next time and we will continue to share. So thank you for your gift of time.

Thank you your friendship. thank for pouring into my life and supporting me over last two and a half years, Matt. Your care, your compassion, you love, professionalism, patience.

Like so many things have really changed my like forever and I just want to thank Oh, that's so sweet to hear, Scott. I really appreciate you saying that and that lands in my heart.

And I, really, I appreciate that. My favorite thing to do is to contribute in a way that is meaningful and impacts the world and help contribute, make it a better place to whatever extent I can.

So whenever I hear something like that, it really lights me up. Thank you, Scot. Yeah, thank you Matt. We're working to help regenerate people and the world around us, and it's an honor to be working with you, Matt.

Thank you. And thanks to all of you for joining us today. We'll be back again next week with another episode of Regenerative Life. Thanks again. I'm Dr.

Scott Stoll. Please visit PlantritionProject.org or Dr. Scott Stoll for more information.