'Made to Connect': Surgeon general, Matthew McConaughey discuss coping with loneliness

Matthew McConaughey and U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy have both struggled with loneliness. On Wednesday morning, they talked with students at the University of Texas about how to cope with the need for social contact and relationships.

“Loneliness unfortunately has become this widespread crisis in our country where more than half of people in our country are struggling with loneliness,” Murthy said. “And it has real implications for our mental health and for our physical health.”

The surgeon general is on his “We are Made to Connect” tour to colleges across the country to talk to young people about loneliness and mental health. UT is his third stop. McConaughey, an American actor and UT professor, joined him for the conversation.

The event was strikingly intimate and sincere. Murthy asked the audience how many of them knew someone who was lonely – almost everyone raised their hand.

Murthy said he was inspired to make mental health a priority by conversations at UT in 2015, when Murthy had just become surgeon general under the Obama administration.

“I remember a group of students coming up to me one by one and saying, ‘I love being at UT, but I feel like people don't really know who I am; I don’t think I can show up and be myself, I feel really alone,’” he said. “And that wasn't just true at UT, I started to hear that in colleges everywhere.”

A surgeon general's report released this year says that lacking social connection was more dangerous than smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day. People who had healthy social connection, in contrast, had increased odds of survival by 50%.

Murthy and McConaughey talked about their experiences with loneliness and how they worked through them.

McConaughey recounted the lasting affect from a small act of kindness he received from a monk during a four-hour conversation at a time of emotional turmoil in his life.

“I was purging, confessing, tears running down my face, snot running out of my nose, waiting for the hammer to come down on me. And he looked at me with the kindest eyes, and after about 15 seconds of silence, said, ‘Me too,’” McConaughey said. “Is that a solution? No. But it let me know, oh, it’s the human condition.”

Murthy talked about losing touch with friends when he first became the U.S. surgeon general, and how, though society may conflate financial success with happiness, it’s not true in practice. He said he discovered there’s a difference between having friends and “experiencing friendship.”

“It turns out that when you're disconnected from other people, you just don't show up the rest of your life as well as you could,” he said. “I could have been a better surgeon general if I was better connected to people.”

Since then, Murthy said prioritizing connection has made his work, life and mental well-being better. He now has monthly, committed check-ins with friends where they are vulnerable about how they are doing, and promise to come together in times when one friend is in need.

The pair also discussed the importance of people discovering their own values and priorities. McConaughey said it’s important to be comfortable with being alone.

“We won’t find those valuable relationships because we won't know what we value and we won't look for it in others,” McConaughey said. “So, check in with yourself before you check in with the world.”

Murthy said the need for connection is universal. He talked about the privilege of being with people at the end of their lives as a doctor, and hearing their reflections.

“What they talk about is remarkably consistent. They talk about their relationships, the people they love, the people who loved them,” he said. “At the end of our lives, when only the most meaningful threads of our existence remains, what floats to the top is our relationships.”

He urged students to treat their friendships with the same priority they treat their classwork. Keeping in touch, he said, can be as simple as picking up the phone when people call, even if only for a minute.

McConaughey said he keeps in touch with friends, such as through the “ritual” of coming together for UT home games.

At the end, Murthy implored the audience to think of someone they were grateful for. Then he asked them to take 30 seconds and write a message to them, and then hold up their phone with their flashlights turned on.

The dark auditorium lit up with hundreds of little lights, and the crowd — captivated — fell silent.

Lauren Hightower and Sydney Fern, sophomores on the pre-med track at UT, said the talk made them both emotional.

“After this discussion, I just really wanted to go out and take a walk in the woods by myself and just really think about who I don’t want to be, I thought that was a really important thing McConaughey said,” Hightower said.

Fern said she was moved by the importance of connection despite the demands of being a student.

“I feel like the part where they talked about your job is to be a college student, and you put all your time and energy into just doing your job, and I feel like I’ve lost touch with some people because of that this year,” Fern said. “The point they made that it takes 60 seconds to connect with people, it made me a little emotional, I was tearing up because it’s so true.”

At the event's conclusion, Murthy challenged students to take five actions to connect with people. Both Fern and Hightower said they were excited to do it.

Chris Brownson, the UT associate vice president for health and well-being, said the university has worked to make mental health support more visible to students, such as with its Counselors in Academic Residence Program, which makes counselors available on-site, as well as with its macro-level prevention and education initiatives. He also mentioned the Longhorn SHARE program, which makes trained peers available to offer support to students on a variety of different wellness topics.

“It’s been a wonderful way of combatting loneliness and isolation and increasing social connection,” he said.

Brownson said UT has free, in-person or online counseling available to students.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: US surgeon general, Matthew McConaughey talk at UT about loneliness