Loneliness. A feeling that everyone knows, yet not many talk about. Often times shame stops us from sharig our experience of loneliness. We think that others might judge us, assume we are weird or something must be wrong about us.
Loneliness is not just a feeling that creeps into our lives when we spent much time by ourselves. Actually, it is way more common for people to experience loneliness when in company with others. Feeling misunderstood or “somehow different” from people in our environment. Unexpressed emotions, poor boundaries and learned helplessness contribute to being vulnerable to feelings of loneliness.
Loneliness can be felt in solitude and when being surrounded by others. It can come as a sudden realisation (often a thought), or it slowly finds its way into our lives, often times first felt as a numb and bored, frustrated sensation. The feeling likes to disguise itself in apathy, lack of motivation and heaviness, and at the same time create these feelings. Once in its grip, our thoughts and perception become focused on the negatives. It makes us question the positives, we might start to think in cynical ways, become a convinced critic, of others and ourselves, and be overwhelmed with feelings of inadequacy and helplessness. We feel sorry for ourselves and at the same time condemn ourselves for feeling like a victim.
Loneliness eats away our self esteem and self confidence. The more we focus on what is wrong with ourselves or others, the stronger the feeling becomes.
Loneliness urges us to respond to our feeling of being disconnected. It wants us to find meaningful connections and get active. However, often times what happens to us is quite the oppossite. We become hopeless and loose energy. Initially we might make some desperate attempts to connect. But our mindset is already coloured by the “it wont work out anyways”, and our efforts slowly turn into resentment. We give up.
Loneliness is persistent though. It keeps lingering, and keeps knocking on our doors of consciousness. It wants to be heard and seen.
If we don’t acknowledge its existence and try to ignore it, it won’t go away.
If we focus too much on its uncomfortable aspects, we get lost in it.
So what to do?
Often times people who come see me don’t even realise that they suffer from loneliness. Instead they share stories of sadness, annoyance or depressive symptoms.
In meaning-centered counselling and art therapy sessions we can start to explore the many layers of loneliness, and find ways to make its existence manageable. The more this feeling gets out of the shadow (and its disguise), the easier it is to deal with it, and to resolve it.
And to spread some hope here: I have never met a client who did not overcome loneliness – no matter how complex and intense their story was.