Oh, I shouldn’t have opened Psychology Today…. Got stuck with my favourite topic – loneliness.
There’s this article “What Drives Our Loneliness?” and I’ll have quotes from there in this well, my reaction to the article?
Research has shown that both perceived and actual social isolation were associated with increased risk of early mortality.
Oh, well, I’ll die faster than others. But waaiiit…. will people even notice that I’m dead?
Yet, loneliness isn’t something that we should take lightly.
We shouldn’t but rarely anyone has time to notice and help people who are lonely. We have home-work-home cycle and our own issues and problems that to care about someone else have become a pain in the ass. Who would want to hear about my loneliness, it would end up with my favourite phrase “You should go out more”. ‘Kay, now that will surely make me feel better (dramatic eye roll).
According to the Encyclopedia of Human Relationships, “the most broadly accepted definition of loneliness is the distress that results from discrepancies between ideal and perceived social relationships.” The key word here is perceived. Loneliness is not the same as being alone. Individuals can feel isolated or outcast in even the most social-seeming of circumstances. Alarmingly, one study in the United Kingdom, which surveyed millions of people, showed that one in 10 people didn’t feel they had a single close friend.
Oh, I can stand in the middle of the grandest party and feel so lonely that I’ll pull out my phone and read LinkedIn articles or play Sudoku. Ideal social relationships… I used to want a friend to whom I could call whenever I felt crappy but then I thought, “Why would anyone want to hear me whining about my stupid life?” Yes, sometimes I want someone to go shop with, travel somewhere but then I again think “Oh, please, you’d talk and talk, talk about all sorts of things and the person would just shut you out”. It happens in a lot of conversations, I very well feel when a person becomes disinterested. Even my parents don’t want to listen to me. One in 10? I am that “One”. It’s been what 20 years since I had my last real friend? And I’m just 25.
Studies have shown that lonely people have more fear of negative evaluation and often engage in overly cautious social behaviors that perpetuate their social isolation. Ironically, social media has even been linked with increased feelings of social isolation among young people.
I’m often considering deleting my Facebook account. If I write an article about some topic, no one reads it, but when a dumb post comes up, everyone “Likes” and shares it. I want to have a conversation there, but it won’t happen. Cautious social behaviour? “‘Keep your mouth shut” is my motto.
The isolation and comfort of contemporary society carry with it the risk of reinforcing psychological defenses that contribute to an inward, self-protective, and somewhat emotionally deadened way of being and living.
Individuals build certain psychological defenses to adapt to their early environment that can hurt or limit them in their current lives. These defenses can lead to feelings of alienation, isolation, and depression.
Well, self-protection, alienation, and isolation are my friends. Emotionally dead? My wish is to never cry again. I hate crying. Wait, my loneliness limits my current life? And here I thought it was my dark sense of humour. *Sarcasm. I’m still building my psychological defence, I’m trying to mould it into this “I need no person” thing.
An angry, erratic parent may have led us to stay quiet and retreat inward so as not to attract attention. An unavailable, distant or rejecting parent may have similarly caused us to retreat and try to be self-sufficient, taking care of our own needs. As adults, we maintain these adaptations even when they are no longer conducive to our current lives and relationships. We may be reluctant to trust again. We may harbor old fears of rejection, negative anticipation, or cynical views. We may project negative qualities onto others and practice caution in how we approach them.
My parents almost never had time for me. My older brother and sister rarely played with me. Maybe they did it more than I can remember, who knows. I really have grown up to be the person who didn’t want to attract attention, that was what my sister did. I stayed quiet, my biggest dream was to become invisible. Self-sufficient? Since the age of 12? Partially even earlier. I was on my own. Problems at school? After moving I told no one about them because I knew my dad (he was the one who went to school’s parent meetings) would make it even worse and/or not even believe me. He believed teachers more. Negative anticipation? I don’t expect good things, I don’t think good things can happen out of nowhere. Fears of rejection are what makes me not engage in any activity with other people. I remember how I used to ask my family if we could go on a family trip, soon I stopped asking. We didn’t go on trips. Also, they sometimes became angry because of my suggestion, no idea why. I don’t expect Christmas to be nice, I hate Christmas.
In addition to having suspicious feelings toward others and self-protective attitudes toward ourselves, we tend to be self-critical, seeing ourselves in the same unfavorable ways we were seen or treated in our early lives. For example, if we felt invisible, burdensome, obnoxious, or unimportant in our family of origin, we may carry these shameful feelings inside us and listen to self-critical thoughts or “critical inner voices” that put us down in regard to new relationships.
The continuation for this quote is my jam.
These “voices” don’t just isolate us by criticizing us and diminishing our confidence, but also by tricking us into self-protecting. “Don’t trust her,” it says, “she’s probably using you.” “Stay home tonight. You don’t need the stress of going out and talking to people. Things are too hectic. You need your own space.” These voices can seem self-soothing when they entice us not to take chances, but they’re self-punishing the minute we listen to them. Even in a crowd of friendly faces, our critical inner voice can try to sabotage us into feeling alone, “No one here really knows what you’re like or who you really are. You have everyone fooled, don’t you?”
I’m kind person, I want to help anyone I can (myself not included) so to use me is quite easy. I always feel like people are using my kindness, there are few people whom I feel don’t do that. No really knows me – even my family doesn’t know me. I doubt they even know what’s my favorite music. I put on the mask (not really a mask, I sometimes like that side of me), I’m friendly, happy and sweet, yet inside I’m like a empty, dark can with a beetle inside that’s still alive and wants to be seen, wants to be heard, but the darkness is so comfortable that beetle is slowly giving up hope of ever be noticed. The inner critic is who I listen a lot. “They are only nice to you because it’s what polite; She only comes to you because you can look like you’re interested in her boyfriend issues…” and many more critics. Self-punishing is what I also I’m trying to do, for example, “You talk too much, tomorrow you will keep your mouth shut”.
These destructive attitudes and expectations can lead us to engage in distancing behaviors and adopt pseudo-independent tendencies that push people away. Our defense may be to toughen up and act like we don’t want anything from anyone anyway. Or, it may be to get shy and try to stay in the background. We may remove ourselves from others and indulge the feeling that we are a burden.
Ugh, how often I feel like a wounded animal who bites people and make them leave while at the same time, I want them to hug me and help me heal. And yes, self-sufficiency is my goal, I don’t want to rely on anyone. Burden? Oh, yes, yes, my thing. That’s why I don’t want to tell anyone about my issues because I feel like a burden.
Ultimately, we are driven to be inward.
In Creating a Life of Meaning and Compassion, we discuss inwardness as “a retreat into oneself.” In an inward state, a person adopts “a lifestyle characterized by a decrease of feeling for oneself and others, a reliance on painkilling habit patterns and substances, and a defensive, self-nurturing orientation toward life.” We seek satisfaction internally and spend our time engaging with our critical inner voice.
Me and my conversations with my inner critic, much fun, very nice. Defensive – it’s what I become when someone begins to talk about my life when someone dares to attack me with those same old phrases. Yet, no one asks why and what’s really going on, no one wants to crack the shell, no one wants to see the anger, self-hating, and pain. No one cares and that’s fine. I retreat from life, dullness is a comforting feeling. I sort of hate when I get excited about something when I have some nice expectations. Yet, at the same time, I kill those emotions because I know that no nice things have to happen in my life. I’ll be fine with meeeh. No excitement and expectations, no disappointment. Exist, don’t live.
Our fight against loneliness is, therefore, more of an internal struggle than we may imagine. It is primarily a matter of being a friend to ourselves, standing up against our inner critic and challenging our core defenses. We must cultivate a compassionate attitude as we step out of our comfort zone and risk making a mistake or getting hurt. When we discover and befriend ourselves, we learn who we really are stripped of our defenses. And when we know ourselves, we are more inclined to form deeper friendships with others. We’re better able to create lasting connections that won’t repeat patterns from our past that reinforce old, negative identities.
Friend to myself, yeah, no, maybe. Compassion, this buzz word. I sometimes do challenge myself out of comfort zone, after all, I stayed in a crappy hostel for a week in another country. Did that make me proud? Yeah, it did a bit but then I remind that I’m 25 and I should be proud of having a stable income and education, not some lame trip. I do want to strip myself of my defences, this is what I’m sort of doing here while writing. I might know myself but I still repeat the same old pattern. I hate getting hurt and making mistakes. Making mistakes always cause judgment, I take too much to heart those mistakes. They remind me that I’m no good.
Maybe one day I’ll let people in if they’re willing to crack it and actually get in and stay. But I doubt it’ll happen. I want to let people in so they could tear me apart and I’d be that empty shell with no emotions, dreams, and feelings.
Thoughts that keep me up at night. 