Archive for the ‘Dealing with Loneliness’ Category
What’s the worst advice you’ve ever been given?
I’ve been on vacation in Toronto for the past few weeks, and on the plane home, I was wondering why lonely people get such awful, awful advice. I mean, depressed people don’t get told to volunteer at soup kitchens, do they? Nor are they told to troll the Internet and meet up with strangers at cafes (which was the No. 1 piece of advice I was given).
I’m curious to hear what other lonely people have been given by way of advice. If the spirit moves you, send me a quick note, and share the single worst piece of advice you’ve been given. You can also let me know if you tried to follow that advice. I’ve done it all–from soup kitchens to online dating–and I’m curious to hear what others have been advised to do.
Thinking about the health effects of loneliness
Some readers of this blog have written in to ask how they can respond to some of the health problems loneliness seems to trigger. I’ve been mulling this, and trying to think of a response that’s both reasonable and workable.
I don’t want people to think that loneliness is utterly dire, that it will immediately land you in hospital, and leave you instantly sick. This isn’t true. I talk about having my health and sleep go all wonky when I was extremely lonely, but–when I think back on those years–I realize I wasn’t taking very good care of myself.
I think that part of the response (when thinking about the health effects of loneliness) is to recognize that loneliness is capable of cuing changes. This is Step One. Step Two involves treating yourself kindly: eating as well as possible, getting as much sleep as possible, treating yourself to massages (touch!), and exercising every day (if this is possible for you).
In other words, I think loneliness has to make you more health conscious. If you’re lonely, you need to take care of yourself. “Self-care” is a phrase that bugs me–I want others to care for me!–but I think it’s an important part of responding to loneliness.
Another response involves writing. Keep a journal. Write down what’s happening to you. If you’re not into diary keeping, write songs, or sketch something, or listen to your favorite music. I think that loneliness can be profoundly non-creative: it shuts down communication. Communicating in your own way, privately, through a journal, or a piano, or a painting, can go some way towards off-setting the feelings of aloneness that can lead to health risks.
Send me your thoughts on this. I don’t want lonely people to think, “Well, there are health risks, so I might as well throw in the towel.” This isn’t true! Taking charge of your health, and finding some way of externalizing feelings of loneliness can, I think, be a route to better health.
I’m going to be blogging about this more in the future, as I continue to think.
Loneliness and “daily maintenance”
One of the best things about having the book published is that I’m hearing back from people with their perspectives on the state. I was speaking with someone in Halifax, trying to explain that my loneliness doesn’t feel at all over to me. I was saying that it feels like something I’ll have to continue battling my whole life.
And his response to me was, “You need daily maintenance.” I think the phrase comes from Alcoholics Anonymous, but it really hit home. I think responding to loneliness really does require daily attention and “maintenance.”
I’m not sure what my “maintenance” regime will be, though I know I need one. For me, it must include exercise, and ideally meditation (though I have a hard time sticking to a meditation schedule). It should also probably include spirituality, though (as I’ve written in my posts on religion), I yet don’t have a church or congregation that feels like home to me.
Right now, I just wanted to share the phrase, and the idea, since I think it captures something important about responding to chronic loneliness.
“High functioning” lonely people
In the Macleans review of Lonely, Anne Kingston refers to me as a “high functioning” lonely person. The phrase is her own — I didn’t suggest it to her — but I think it does a great job of capturing the problem many lonely people face. Contrary to the stereotypes that get tossed around (of the lonely as unattractive, or insincere, or passive), lonely people are often so utterly competent and dishy that no one thinks there’s a problem with their emotional lives.
In my case, as the review points out, the fact that I was managing so well allowed me to completely hide my loneliness. And hiding the state was a problem, because it meant that no one asked me about it. And with no one asking, I was left with what felt like an unmentionable, insurmountable problem.
There’s much to be said for being a “high functioning” lonely person — it lets you escape stigma and censure, and it allows you to keep your private difficulties private. But I think functioning so dog-gone well can also make the loneliness much harder to bear….simply because no one will think to ask you about it.
Is LONELY a self-help book?
This may sound like a strange admission, seeing as my book is being marketed partly as self-help, but I’ve never been a real self-help kind of a gal. The best “self help” I’ve ever come across is what I’ve tried to create with LONELY: I love books that help me understand what I’m facing, and that allow me to see myself as less alone with the problems I’m dealing with.
I think this sense of shared experience—which is what LONELY aims to achieve—is a powerful tool, since it lets you put your difficulties in perspective, and allows you to stop viewing yourself as peculiar and different.
I’ve tried self-help with depression, but have never gotten very far with it. I’m bad at quizzes, and I’m terrible at CBT-type exercises (such as countering negative thoughts with positive ones). That’s not to say that self-help doesn’t work – I’m just saying it hasn’t worked for me.
So LONELY isn’t a self-help book. Aside from the UCLA Loneliness Scale, there are no quizzes, no tips, no formulas. LONELY provides a lot of information. It’s a mirror. It’s a vivid cross-section of loneliness. It lets lonely people see themselves as less alone. And this, I hope, will offer help in the best possible way.
Loneliness and self-help
If you search the Internet, you’ll find lots of self-help advice! I tried a lot of self-help strategies when writing LONELY: I swallowed anti-loneliness potions, and experimented with anti-loneliness hypnotherapy, and read books that were supposed to make me feel less alone.
I don’t want to give away my findings (for that, you have to read LONELY!), but I will say that I find the whole notion of self-help as it applies to loneliness to be a rather sad and strange idea. Loneliness is a need for other people. It’s a signal telling us that we’re too much on our own. The thought that we can rely on ourselves in order to overcome loneliness is, um, weird.
I’m not saying there aren’t things lonely people can do. They can keep in mind the advice John Cacioppo provides on his site at www.scienceofloneliness.com. They can be kind to themselves, and not berate themselves for “failing” to socialize. They can be curious about their loneliness, they can read about it (for me, this helps a lot), and they can recognize their needs as legitimate.
But this doesn’t mean they can “overcome” or “cure” the state on their own. Telling a lonely person to rely on self-help is like telling a depressed person that all they need is Mind Over Mood. Sometimes, a problem is more complicated than what self-help can respond to. Loneliness is complex and powerful; it can be overwhelming. One of the kindest things we can do for ourselves is recognize just what it is we’re dealing with, and stop telling ourselves that we can “fix” it on our own.
What about loneliness “cures”?
I’ve tried loneliness cures. I actually spent a week swallowing a loneliness potion, trying to recover a promised sense of connectedness. All the stuff did was leave me really, really high.
I haven’t tried all the “cures for loneliness” that are available, but I know what’s out there. I’ve seen spells being offered, and instant telephone counselling, and self-esteem manuals that promise to somehow turn you into a completely different, nonlonely person.
I think the abundance of loneliness “cures” says a lot about how many people are feeling lonely, and about how little serious thought is given to ending the state. Absurd loneliness potions and “spells” are able to proliferate because we don’t take loneliness seriously. Dim-witted responses are available online because we’re used to thinking about loneliness as an oddity, a minor deal.
If the real significance of loneliness is recognized—if we realize that the state can skew perceptions, lead to dementia, and undermine the immune system—then the notion of relying on magic (sorry, that’s “Magick!”) spells shows itself as the charade it actually is.
There are ways of dealing with loneliness—real, tested ways, but they don’t scream themselves out on the Internet, they aren’t effortless, and they aren’t instantaneous. But they’re a lot more honest and kind to the lonely than the “cures” that exist online.
Are there ways of dealing with loneliness?
In writing LONELY, I wanted to see what worked as a means of overcoming loneliness. I wanted to get past the inanity of self-help and explore serious programs.
The important thing to note is that programs for responding to loneliness do exist, and they work. They tend to be heavy on information (that is, they provide lonely people with a lot of context for what they’re experiencing), and they operate at the level of the group. That is, instead of asking the lonely person to go it alone, the programs embed the lonely person in a group of others struggling with loneliness. This isn’t as awful as it sounds. As one researcher told me, just being in a group with other lonely people lets the lonely person know that they aren’t alone in dealing with the state.
The programs that exist (such as one led by Dr. Sean Seepersad, see www.webofloneliness.com), tend to take place over the course of weeks or months—they don’t offer instantaneous results, and they don’t promise a personality overhaul. Rather, they provide exercises, offer encouragement, and help lonely people with a difficult problem.
I discuss some loneliness-intervention programs in LONELY. The problem I discovered wasn’t that the programs didn’t exist, but that they weren’t widely enough available. A really great loneliness intervention program has been created by Holland’s Dr. Nan Stevens, but it’s not widely accessible. More work and more government funding has to be allotted to developing and strengthening group and community programs that respond to loneliness.
Loneliness and the “accidental community”
One of the best loneliness “cures” that I know of is simply being with others in an unstructured, non-threatening way. A lot of lonely people look for this sort of interaction at malls, but there, socializing is often linked to buying something (ie., you talk to the cashier when you pay for your book), and that sort of interaction can leave you feeling as though you’ve been taken advantage of.
My new way of dealing with loneliness is to go to the gym. “The gym” will be a different place, depending on where you live. I live in a town small enough to have only one major athletic centre (there are private fitness centres, but I find I don’t get the same sense of connection at those places).
Since the athletic centre is the only place to work out (especially during the winter), it’s filled with kids, and senior citizens, and students. The vibe is pretty inclusive and friendly, and I can stay for as long as I want. I usually find that—in addition to feeling good for working out—I tend to feel as though I’ve spent time with people after leaving the gym.
Again, this sense of “accidental community” might not hold true in larger cities, where fitness clubs and gyms are more stratified, but it’s a thought.