My Loneliness is Killing Me: Let’s Reconnect (Part 1)
When’s the last time you thought of someone, saw a friend in passing, or online and said, “We’ve got to get together!” Then months, maybe even years go by, without hanging out or reconnecting.
Or maybe you’re caring for a loved one in your home with an illness or disability, so you can’t get out as much as you’d like (and neither can they)?
Or maybe you’re in your 30’s, 40’s or 50s wondering if you’ve wasted the best years of your life, because things just haven’t turned out the way you’d hoped by now?
Loneliness is not just a problem for the elderly. Chronic loneliness is now a mental health and public health issue across several generations that has affected the mortality rate, due to technology, housing trends, telecommuting, increased in-home caregiving responsibilities, and other factors.
Fueled by my own experiences as a caregiver and a young widow, I did some research to uncover the root of social isolation in our modern society, and learn ways we can create and strengthen adult friendships and other relationships to truly connect in our hectic, technologically-driven world.
Why We Get Lonely
Maile Young Karris, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine at UC San Diego Health says there are three general periods of time in a person’s life where they are most at risk for being lonely. “Adolescence or early adulthood, from 15 to mid-20s, the 50s is a period of time when people are experiencing the midlife crisis, and then when you’re elderly, you experience it again. And this is not just something that is happening in the U.S., and we’re seeing this across the world.”
It’s not inherently wrong or bad to feel lonely sometimes — it’s a regular and natural part of life. But “regular” loneliness that comes and goes from time to time is very different from chronic loneliness. Your ordinary run-of-the mill loneliness is “driven by the fact that we are biologically wired for social connection. So it’s the normative experience of feeling alone, because our wiring is such that we are primarily proximity- or closeness-seeking organisms,” says Nakia Hamlett, Ph D, visiting assistant professor of psychology at Connecticut College. “Loneliness is part of the human condition. Regular loneliness is the temporary feelings that we experience, like when we’re used to being with friends; some people have a higher need to be around others, maybe an extrovert versus an introvert. And those feelings can come and go — they’re transient.”
You can also feel lonely just based on perception or the aforementioned cognitive discrepancies in your life. Karris says your level of loneliness is determined by “the difference between what you want from your social relationships and what you’ve actually perceived that you have.”
“After a certain point in life, many of us can relate to, feeling like we should be further along, or have completed certain achievements. Dinorah Nieves, Ph.D, Behavioral Scientist and author of Love YOU: 12 Ways to Be Who You Love & Love Who You Are, explains this as the term cognitive discrepancy, which describes “the stress that people feel when they think about their lives and find that it’s dramatically different from what they had expected. It’s what happens when there’s a difference between what you think your life should look like and what it really is.” It’s a common reaction when we self-reflect, or when something we really hoped for hasn’t come to fruition.
Chronic loneliness is actually more more serious — and common in industrialized society now, because it’s a state of loneliness that “just doesn’t go away,” Karris says. Hamlett explains it as “a persistent state of being,” so that it becomes normal. “It also brings about thoughts and feelings such as:
* I’m scared to be alone
* Why am I alone?
* Am I not worthy of love and companionship?”
“What accompanies loneliness is increased vigilance for social threats,” Karris explains. “So when you’re feeling lonely, you’re actually more aware of your environment and people around you that may be threatening. Loneliness can initially start off as an evolutionary protective measure, maybe even a response to a threat. But if you don’t listen to that pain of being alone, and you continue to isolate yourself, and you’re not acting on that, just like with hunger, you could socially starve. What usually happens within people that are chronically lonely is, they become more self-centered, and more independent, because they’re not reaching out to the people around them. In the short term, that could be potentially protective to the individual, but in the long term, it’s damaging overall.”
Sometimes it’s about your relationship with yourself. If you don’t like your own company, you may rely more on the presence of others. I generally don’t have this issue, but I’m an extrovert, so sooner or later, I’m going to seek out people to hand out with.
Now of course, you can still feel lonely even when you’re not alone. “You can feel lonely in any experience,” Nieves says. People tend to associate loneliness with being alone, because it is the time that people may feel it most intensely, [when] there’s no other distraction.” But your lack of connection “causes a feeling of emptiness that makes you feel isolated from the rest of the world. And that feeling of loneliness will follow you into all kinds of relationships. If you don’t have a good relationship with yourself, what kind of relationships are you attracting?”
“One of the reasons that people feel lonely, is because they’ve cut themselves off from themselves. There are pieces of you that you don’t know, there are pieces of you that you don’t like, there are pieces of you that you are not willing to accept, there are pieces of us that you feel haven’t come to be. So you fragmented yourself into all of these different pieces, and there’s no communion among those pieces. So part of why you feel alone is because the “you”s that should make you feel whole, full and complete… are out there somewhere in the ethers, because you cut them off. So what contributes to that feeling of profound loneliness is that fragmentation of who you are.”
“I also think it’s a healthy practice to focus on things that bring you joy,” Hamlett says, “as opposed to dwelling on loneliness. There’s people who are feeling you’re lonely, and sit home and think about being lonely all day. If you feel lonely, and you make yourself go out and see a beautiful sunset, you probably feel a little better.”
Loneliness is “far more prevalent than we think it is across all age groups,” says Carla Marie Manly, Ph D, clinical psychologist, and author of Joy from Fear and Aging Joyfully in Sonoma County, California. “Research is showing that we are in the midst of a loneliness epidemic.” From a sociological aspect, “our ancestors were in very close, tight knit communities and tribes where we were in daily contact, eating with people, hunting with people, collecting berries, sewing, doing all of those things. And that was the way that we lived largely through the 1950s.”
“I think people are just starting to realize that other people might be lonely, and that it’s not just a thing that affects old people,” Hamlett says. “We know why it affects older people. But we kind of live in an age where people across ages are lonely.”
Karris agrees. “There is a thought that we as humans are not as personally bonded to each other as we used to be. We don’t live in the same area for generations, like we used to. So instead of growing up in the town where your great grandma, and your great, great grandma grew up, and everybody knows each other, we move a lot. We’re moving away from each other, and we’re doing our own thing. And we’re creating a gap in faith. So we’re not engaging with the people that we normally would engage with, or used to be engaging with on a day to day basis. Along those lines, we used to have to meet face-to-face for everything. And with technology now, we don’t have to do that. We’re not really meeting face to face or communicating with each other. I think social media has been blamed for a lot of this. I think that the part that social media plays in loneliness may have some differences across generations.
“With Gen Z, one thing impacting their level of loneliness is that what they’re seeing on social media is know is not always real. And so they’re perceiving the difference between what their life is and what they’re seeing on social media. It’s also really easy to troll someone on social media, rather than face to face. Most trolls would never say the things that they write on social media, in person to who they’re talking to, and it’s also really easy to ignore someone. It’s common when you’re posting on Twitter, or Facebook or Instagram, that when someone comments, you like it, because you get them to comment more. But it’s also easy just to not to post something, leave it alone and never acknowledge anybody’s response after that. And that can change your perception of your relationship with that person potentially.”
Manly says that too often, we retreat or allow ourselves to be sucked into a world that involves just ourselves and a screen. As technology has advanced and became more prevalent in society, “people started retreating into the home space. And instead of interacting with each other, they were interacting with their devices. So it’s our misuse of technology. Because as humans we often take the path of least least resistance. It takes more energy to pull out a board game and interact with people than it does to sit in front of a TV” or interact with a device.
How Personalities and Living Alone Affect Loneliness
Although everyone who lives alone does not feel lonely, trends and statistics show that millions more Americans are living alone or otherwise socially isolated — more so than at any other time in history.
In the U.S., middle-age people account for the largest growth in people living alone in recent years, nearly doubling since 1999, according to the Stateline analysis of Current Population Survey data. The 55-to-64 age group has increased from 13 percent to 21 percent of those living alone as of 2013, surpassing those 75 and older, who were the largest component of those living alone in 1999. There has also been an increase in people in their 20s and 30s living alone, while the 35-to-44 age group has dropped by 15 percent. [3]
The number of people living alone in the U.K. in 2017: For men, the ages of 45 to 64 were the most common, with approximately 1.3 million men reported to be living alone, compared with roughly 1.1 million women of that age group. The highest number of women living alone was among those aged 75 and older with 1.6 million. In contrast, only 648,000 men aged 75 and older were reported to be living on their own. (I did not see statistics for younger adults.)[3] Since 2017, an additional 292,000 people aged 16 years and over are estimated to live alone, bringing the total number of one-person households to just over 8 million (15% of the U.K. adult population) in 2018.[4]
What are the effects of living alone, being an introvert or extrovert on loneliness? Do extroverts get lonelier, or more easily get lonely than those who are born “loners”?
Manly gives us a clue: If you find that after engaging in activities, whether it’s social media, or in real life (IRL) activities with others, it ends and then you think, “… Okay, what’s next, I’m not feeling well, I’m feeling anxious, I’m feeling depressed, that’s a sign that that connection isn’t enough for you. But some people just get overwhelmed by social media, and when they’ve taken a break, They’ll say, ‘I feel so much better, I feel lighter, I feel less stressed, I feel less lonely.’ So it’s all really learning about your own rhythm. And if you have a really balanced relationship with technology, then you won’t experience any of this.”
“Most of the data that looks at linking loneliness to personality type is done in children and adolescents, Karris says. “It appears that if you’re a true, people-oriented extrovert, you have a greater need for social stimulation. And because of that, you actually enact more behaviors to try to increase the type and amount of interpersonal contacts that you have, meaning that you pull others to you, and you pull that behavior out of others. So being an extrovert seems to be a somewhat protective against loneliness. But [conversely,] being an introvert doesn’t mean that you’re going to be lonely. Introverts tend to crave more intimate relationships, maybe with less people, but they tend to be deeper [relationships], and more connected to the people that they are interacting with. I can say that’s the case for me for sure. I have a handful of very close female friends that I depend on, and that we share everything with. My job really takes a lot out of me some days, so it’s because of them that I can continue to go on. And it’s highly protective of being lonely. I can tell them anything, [and] I can ask them for anything.”
“The introverted stereotype is they don’t like people, they don’t want to be around people,” Hamlett says. Quiet as it’s kept, although I consider myself an extrovert at heart, I’m not a people person either (even though I’m a life coach and I love public speaking — go figure)! Hamlett continues, “They’re [introverts] too shy or whatever, but in fact, it just means they have they still have a biologically wired need to attach; it’s just that they may want to do it in smaller groups; they may want to just observe and be part of a group without saying much, or they may want to have a shorter periods of time that they spend with people. Whereas extroverts, there’s the assumption that they constantly want to be around people, and they constantly want to be “on” and making new friends. But there’s definitely times they need time alone, too. So both experience loneliness, it’s just that their amount of time they want to spend with people and in social situations is different.”
Manly agrees. She says that as an introvert, “I require significant periods of rest, rejuvenation, and downtime. And I rarely, if ever feel lonely. I may be alone on a walk, I may be alone meditating, but I don’t feel lonely because as an introvert, that’s what I need [is to be alone]. If you’re an introvert, you often need quiet time to recharge. Often when you go into a crowd, you feel drained — it takes a lot of energy from you to be in the crowd or the party. Now an extrovert will go into a party or a crowd, and since that’s where they get their charge, they come to life, and they feel better. Their need is to be in a crowd to feel energized and recharged. Of course, it’s not necessarily one of those two poles, you can be a person who’s kind of a mixture of both, where you can go to a party for a certain amount of time, feel recharged, and then you need to go and have your quiet time.”
Our society prizes extroverts, but neither propensity (introversion nor extraversion) is better than the other. They both have their advantages.”One of the upsides of introversion,” Manly notes, “is that introverts tend to be pretty self-sufficient. When it comes to a need for stimulation, they are and can be, in many ways, their own best companions. Not to the extreme, where you avoid relationships altogether. But introverts can be really happy in downtime with one or two friends, and might tend to be more peaceful and solid when they have their needs met in that quiet space.
“Our culture often makes introverts feel badly for not being extroverts. But really an extrovert is its own species. An extrovert can be the life of the party. They just love being out there, pumping everyone up, running the show, and that’s a beautiful thing. But we don’t all need to be extroverts, and we don’t want to be extroverts. Everybody would be vying for attention and spotlight, and that would be too much. In our culture we need to honor both and really respect that introverts have their own needs, just like extroverts.”
Working from Home
I cannot overstate the flexibility that working from home has given me. I’ve been working from home full time since 2005, and was able to avoid daycare during my daughter’s first four years of life in part because of it (and also thanks to my mom). The only people that I see are my family members, unless I make the effort to text or message friends and ask to meet up, or if I go to the occasional meetup (to hang out with strangers).
Telecommuting trends can definitely contribute to the issue of chronic loneliness. According to Global Workplace Analytics, from 2005–2017 [5]:
⦁ Regular work-at-home, among the non-self-employed population, has grown by 159%, more than 11x faster than the rest of the workforce and nearly 50x faster than the self-employed population.
⦁ 4.7 million employees (3.4% of the workforce) now work from home at least half the time.
⦁ Full-time employees are four times more likely to have work-at-home options than part-time workers.
⦁ 50% of the US workforce holds a job that is compatible with at least partial telework and approximately 40% of the workforce works remotely at some frequency.
⦁ 80% to 90% of the US workforce says they would like to telework at least part-time. Two to three days a week seems to be the sweet spot that allows for a balance of concentrative work (at home) and collaborative work (at the office).
When I work, I like it to be quiet, and I hate interruptions because the work I do requires a lot of focused concentration. But for some people, that may not be so great, because they thrive being around others in an office or co-working space. Some people might need to go to Starbucks just so they can like hear other signs of life, and that helps them not to feel lonely, even if they are not interacting with anyone there.
“My friends from my former job are still my friends,” Hamlett says. “The social part of work becomes very much a part of people’s lives. It’s where people socialize, because you spend all day there. So if you don’t have that, you’re already at a deficit with social interactions.”
In-Home Caregiving
Caregiving in the home exacerbated the issue of chronic loneliness for myself and my husband in his last year of life. He had in-home peritoneal dialysis every night for over a year, and once his lower leg was amputated, he quickly began to lose feeling in the rest of his body. Within months, he lost the ability to use his wheelchair, and was confined to a hospital bed in our living room. My training as a certified nursing assistant (albeit 20 years ago), came into play big-time.
We were living in a small military town with very few friends and family nearby. Our support system was limited, and family in town were able to step in when I had a business trip for a few days. We had home health aides visit a couple times a week for about an hour, and I otherwise attended to his caregiving needs, including monitoring his blood sugar (he was a diabetic), and administering medicine, bathing and feeding. Most of the data I found about caregiving was for people aged 50 and older, which didn’t apply to us. However, Caregiving.org reports that [6]:
⦁ Approximately 43.5 million caregivers have provided unpaid care to an adult or child in the last 12 months. [National Alliance for Caregiving and AARP. (2015). Caregiving in the U.S.]
⦁ The majority of caregivers (82%) care for one other adult, while 15% care for 2 adults, and 3% for 3 or more adults. [National Alliance for Caregiving and AARP. (2015). Caregiving in the U.S.]
⦁ Approximately 39.8 million caregivers provide care to adults (aged 18+) with a disability or illness or 16.6% of Americans. [Coughlin, J. (2010). Estimating the Impact of Caregiving and Employment on Well-Being: Outcomes & Insights in Health Management.]
⦁ Higher-hour caregivers (21 hours or more weekly) are nearly 4 times more likely to be caring for a spouse/partner. [ National Alliance for Caregiving and AARP. (2015). Caregiving in the U.S.]
What is it like to once be able to work, walk, drive for 40 years, and then no longer be able to do anything for yourself? It’s safe to say that both my husband and I were in a pretty depressing place in his latter months. Even though I was doing all I could, I felt so helpless, and he felt like a burden and a failure. If that’s not loneliness, I don’t know what is.
An excerpt of this article was first published at http://brainhackers.com/my-loneliness-is-killing-me-lets-reconnect/ by Daree Allen Nieves. Go to https://medium.com/@dareeallen/my-loneliness-is-killing-me-lets-reconnect-part-2-fc77d768a4b4 for Part 2.
