I wrote many articles about loneliness (1, 2, 3, 4). I have experienced a lot of loneliness in the past 8 months. And it is something I have experienced more than I would recommend as an adolescent.
I don’t blame my loneliness on the cold world out there. On many occasions, my emotional baggage, insecurities, trust issues, introversion, and even life goals were the main reasons behind being and feeling lonely.
But here is the thing. I am fed up with people idolizing loneliness. I am sick of the online posts linking loneliness to independence and strength.
People who advocate these ideas probably have never experienced real loneliness or are just too numb to feel it. They do not realize how deep it hits when your unspoken words clutter your mind. And they don’t know how it feels when your stomach knots, knowing your good or bad news will die inside you unheard of.
They have probably never seen an old lady sitting alone in a crowded cafe playing crosswords on a piece of paper. They do not know how a man who lives alone feels pressing the elevator’s buttons and opening his apartment’s door, knowing no one will be around.
While this is my personal experience, the research findings point out how harmful loneliness is. According to WebMD, loneliness can weaken your immune system, cause higher blood pressure, and make us prone to conditions that affect your heart’s health like obesity and bad cholesterol levels. (1)
The ultimate scam
One of the arguments people use to advocate for isolation and loneliness is that dealing with fellow human beings is exhausting and potentially dangerous. Some people are mentally exhausted and, therefore, do not have enough energy for social interactions. Others cannot afford getting hurt again.
I understand that. I have been both.
But this argument is so false I don’t even know where to start. It is a scam, to say the least.
How is it a scam? First, believing in this idea is costly. People end up paying more than they can afford.
Second, as compensation, they end up getting temporary comfort. Then, they experience pain worse than the one they initially tried to medicate.
If this doesn’t fit the definition of what a scam is, I don’t know what will.
Let us break down these 2 components. Sadly, we fall prey to scams because we don’t think deeply about what we are doing. And usually, we don’t do that because we are in too much pain and want a quick fix.
First, what price do we pay when we idolize loneliness, over-independence, and isolation? What price do we pay when we equate these things with peace and freedom?
This is an easy question. Connection. And before you assume this is getting clingy, ask the following question. What is connection, and why is it important?
To me, connection is about decluttering our minds, thinking more clearly, feeling understood and heard, and being encouraged to become a better person.
Once we understand these 4 components, we will understand why connection is important. I will do my best to explain each concept in a few sentences.
Decluttering our minds:
Lonely people have cluttered minds. When we have a lot of feelings, thoughts, or experiences that we cannot put in words to make sense of (and believe me, we need that), our minds become cluttered.
Just like a messy room, we can neither find what we need nor can we stay there without feeling upset.
Conversation is how we declutter our minds. People need to talk to organize their minds and make sense of the world (their world, at least). It is why you sometimes talk to yourself. And it is why listening is a huge part of what therapists (and life coaches, the legit ones) do.
We need to talk and articulate what is going on inside our heads, or else they will get cluttered.
And because in a cluttered environment it is almost impossible to find what we need, you are less likely to find the right thoughts, words, strategies, or insights. It is literally what people mean when they say, “I don’t know what to do,” or, “I don’t even know what I think.”
Thinking more clearly:
The process through which we organize our cluttered brains is messy. We talk incoherently about so many things until we figure out what is there. We may jump from one topic to another or struggle to articulate something because we genuinely don’t know how.
At some point, we start seeing things as they are. We recognize the feelings and the thoughts. We get an insight or an idea that makes sense. And a strategy appears out of nowhere.
This is what happens when we declutter. This is the therapeutic part of having a real conversation.
The benefit of decluttering our heads is thinking more clearly. When that happens, you think sharper. This, in turn, impacts the quality of your life.
Generating better ideas and strategies and having insights related to our emotions and thoughts can improve how we act in the world. It is the difference between being stupid and intelligent. Ignorant and educated. Illiterate and literate.
Feeling understood and heard:
this is the emotional aspect of the human connection. I personally think it is the most important one.
From my experience, nothing brings people closer than feeling heard and understood. Try it. Try listening to someone and understanding them as a person, not just the words they are saying.
Be genuinely interested, and do your best to see the world through their eyes, even if you disagree with them. It is not an easy thing to do. But it is rewarding and therapeutic for both of you.
Being encouraged to become a better person:
Encouragement is underestimated. This is someone who sees the best in you. They see the best part of yourself and encourage you to become more of that.
That is why they are your friends. They wish you well, encourage you to improve, and they are not okay when you are becoming a worse version of yourself or wasting your potential.
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Those 4 things (known as connection) are the price we pay when we idolize loneliness. And this is a price we cannot afford. It is something that affects the quality of our lives.
Now, for the second part, why do we pay this price, and what type of compensation do we get?
The answer is simple: pain. We pay this price because we are in pain. And as compensation, we end up getting more pain! Let me explain.
Pain vs. Connection
We explained that communication has 4 components. Let us call them “needs” for the sake of simplicity. If we fail to meet any (or all) of these needs during an interaction (especially with those close to us), we experience pain.
For instance, if we talked to someone and got our heads more cluttered, we would experience pain. If we felt misunderstood and unheard, we would feel pain. And if the person we are close to failed to see the good in us, it would not feel good.
Note that it can be our fault. We sometimes contribute to our loneliness by shutting down and not communicating.
We just give up when we feel the other person doesn’t understand us or that we are getting more confused. The other person could be doing their best to understand you, and they would if you put in more effort.
But anyways, we feel alienated when we don’t meet any of these 4 needs. They become a source of pain. So we sacrifice them.
This pain is the motivation for idolizing loneliness. It is because we have been hit by what it takes to be connected that we started celebrating being disconnected.
But being disconnected is not the answer. For instance, let us take the first need of decluttering. We experience pain when we interact with someone and fail to declutter. But we also experience pain when our minds stay decluttered.
When we choose loneliness, our minds become more cluttered; therefore, we experience more of the same pain we are trying to avoid.
We might experience a bit of comfort when we are no longer interacting with people in a non-fulfilling way. But we eventually experience the consequences of loneliness when we don’t get those 4 needs met. So, it is the same pain either way.
And just like with any type of pain, we will try to numb it. As humans, we tend to choose cheap pleasure when we are in too much pain. That could come from multiple sources.
The most common one is social media, which is “junk communication.” We depend on the interactions on those sites, the DMs, the likes, the comments, and even the lives. We post about loneliness and how painful and stupid real connection is.
But social media is only one channel. We may choose drugs, alcohol, pornography, or superficial relationships that are just for “entertainment”.
But all these things eventually create more pain. They make real connections harder. So, we avoid it and indulge in our favorite drug. And it is a cycle, a devilish one!
And oh, we try to get as many people as possible to join us. We romanticize loneliness. We vilify connection and relationships.
But the saddest part is that we don’t realize that we are experiencing loneliness on a deep level until we see a glimpse of connection here and there. It could be a friend with whom we had a deep and real connection. It could be a group of people with whom we experienced any of these 4 needs.
We start seeing loneliness for what it is and how painful it can be.
Not everyone is lucky enough to have such glimpses of connection. So, if you are this lucky and you can see loneliness for what it is, start leaning into the pain of building meaningful, healthy relationships. It is worth it.
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I hope this was helpful
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