Tend and befriend

I want to tell you what happened on the Vitality Clinic Conversations call earlier this week.

Robyn came onto the call having just finished her job. Her last day was the day before; she was due to start somewhere new on Monday. And, in her own words, she was an ugly-crying mess. She said it out loud. She had never cried so hard leaving a job in her life. She did not think much of the company itself; she loved her people. So there she was , raw, asking out loud whether she had made the right call.

The room turned toward her.

I told her what I genuinely believe, which is that the friendships she had built were a reflection of who she is, not of where she had been.

Kind, honest people draw kind, honest people.

That is not a function of any organisation; that is a function of her.

I also told her that her confidence had not gone anywhere. What she was experiencing was an emotion much bigger than confidence, and that bigness was actually part of her strength.

When we are not confident, we cannot let human emotion in at this volume; it is too much for us. It is because Robyn is solid that she could let it pour out of her on a call with women she had only known for a few weeks.

Then Bianca, who is in Romania, came off mute. She said something I will think about for a long time. She said, “I have never even met Rob, and I just feel so connected to her. Every time I hear her talk, it is so close to my heart.” And then Bianca cried too.

Six to eight weeks ago, these women were strangers.

I want to tell you about a piece of research that lives behind what happened in that room.

In the early part of last century, a physiologist named Walter Cannon ran a long series of laboratory studies on what happens to the body under stress.

He measured the hormones, the blood markers, the autonomic nervous system, and concluded that under threat, mammals do one of two things; we either fight or we flee. Aggress or detach. That phrase, fight or flight, has been written into the medical textbook for almost a hundred years.

Cannon’s studies, however, were done on men. Only men. (In early laboratory science, this was the default; female physiology was considered too “complicated” by the menstrual cycle to be a clean variable. Read that sentence again and let it sit.)

In 2000, Dr Shelley Taylor at UCLA brought women into the picture.

What she found in women was not the same as what Cannon found in men.

Under stress, women do not simply fight or flee.

We turn toward our people.

We tend to the children and to the elderly; we befriend each other.

Taylor named this the tend-and-befriend response, and she traced it through oxytocin, opioid pathways, and the broader female stress physiology. Roughly seventy years of “this is what stress does” had to be re-written the moment women were allowed into the study.

So when Robyn cried on Tuesday, and Bianca cried with her, and the rest of the women on the call held the whole thing without trying to fix it or rush it, something biochemical was happening. We were in tend-and-befriend in real time. This is what women do under stress when we are given the chance.

In the clinic I talk often about the seven things we have to attend to in order to feel vital and vibrant: how we eat, sleep, move, think, connect, test, and prescribe.

Every Vitality Plan, every protocol, every conversation comes back to those seven.

And I want to say something about connect. Connect is not the soft pillar. It is not the bonus that sits on top of the prescription. The connection that happened in the Vitality Clinic Conversations is medicine.

The tending is medicine.

The befriending is medicine.

When one woman cracks open and the room turns toward her instead of away from her, that is medicine that I cannot bottle and prescribe.

I want to thank the women in the Vitality Clinic for creating something I genuinely could not have dreamed up. My heart is wide open, and I keep being inspired, and I keep learning from them. We are teaching each other shoulder to shoulder. That phrase lands differently for me now, watching women set down what they have been carrying alone and put it on the table together.

If this is what you have been looking for (And didn’t even know it.), this is your circle, and I would love to welcome you in.

If you already have this in your life, friendships that hold you, women who let you cry on a Tuesday and cry alongside you, please nurture those relationships fiercely. I would love to hear where you find this in the world & Howard continues to support you and those you love. Reply to this email and tell me; I read every one.

One more thing before I let you go.

There is something extraordinary coming into the Vitality Clinic next week. My husband Jan has taken a private practice that he and I do together (a practice that is genuinely the bedrock of how we connect to one another) and he has built a version of it for the women in this clinic. It is designed to help you connect more deeply to the people you love.

What I will say is that it took my breath away, and I cannot wait for you to see it.

If this is what you want, this is your circle, and I welcome you to join us.

With warmth,

Dr Kirstey x

Artwork By the incredible:

https://www.chimilla.com/