Archive for the ‘Social Isolation’ Category
Loneliness and solitude
I was on Wisconsin Public Radio last week, doing a phone-in show, and several people called to ask if I was pathologizing aloneness. Surely, they said, there was nothing wrong with being alone?
And I couldn’t agree more. It’s a bit tricky, since the word “Solitude” is now stamped on my book jacket in both the US and Canada, but I see nothing at all wrong with solitude. Some people can enjoy years and years of solitude without ever feeling lonely. And I don’t think the boundaries between loneliness and solitude are made of stone. Loneliness might “break” at times, and start to feel like creative solitude, while the best bouts of solitude can run off the rails, and start to feel like a grinding loneliness.
I think the difference is subjective need. If you feel content alone, that’s great — that’s solitude, and it can be an immensely rewarding state. But if aloneness is laced with feelings of threat, envy, insufficiency, confusion, and anger, that’s not so great. That’s loneliness.
I, for one, can veer from loneliness to solitude and back again in the course of a day. In the years that I write about in Lonely, solitude was not a frequent visitor: it was loneliness that I was dealing with day after day. These days, my loneliness comes interspersed with feelings of quiet inspiration. And I would never want to give those feelings up; I’d never dream of saying that anything was wrong with them.
June 23, 2010 | Category: Loneliness and Creativity, Long-term Loneliness, Social Isolation | 5 Comments »
The social isolation experiment
I was watching the news last night, and it showed six men from different countries voluntarily signing up for months of social isolation. The goal of the experiment is to assess, in part, what happens to people when they’re cut off from social and community ties.
The experiment strikes me as a bit weird (not to mention insanely claustrophobic). I’ve talked to people who are leading lives of real isolation–and they aren’t taking part in any high-profile experiments. Isolation is simply what characterizes their lives — whether they like it or not.
Here’s a crazy idea: Why not take all the money that’s going into the MARS experiment, and put it into researching and building community ties? We already know a lot about social isolation, and we also know that a lot of people are leading wildly isolated lives. The experiment strikes me as socially-blind. There are already hundreds of thousands of people leading lives of involuntary isolation. Maybe we could start paying attention to this fact, and stop pretending that extreme social isolation is something that has to be “constructed” in an experimental setting.
June 4, 2010 | Category: Social Isolation | 11 Comments »
Major study on long-term loneliness
Thanks to readers of this blog for drawing my attention to a new major study of loneliness in the UK.
The study covers a lot of the ground that I cover in Lonely, but it has some really new and interesting stats. It found that 11% of the survey group struggled with feeling lonely quite often, and close to 50% saw loneliness as a growing problem in society.
For more than 10% of a sample group to admit to loneliness is a fairly major thing. The figure mirrors numbers I’ve seen for North America, suggesting that a 10% long term loneliness rate is pretty solid.
The report has received a lot of media attention in the UK, and I think this is a good thing. People have been writing to me to say that the report (and loneliness) are all over the airwaves in the UK, and I say, “Fantastic!” Not happy, obviously, that loneliness is a serious problem, but quite pleased to see that loneliness is getting the media attention it needs. More attention, and more voices, will slowly, slowly lead to less stigma.
May 26, 2010 | Category: Long-term Loneliness, Social Isolation, Stigma of Loneliness | 3 Comments »
Why are the holidays so lonely?
I realize that many readers of this blog aren’t Canadian, but it’s a long weekend here in Canada (it’s “Victoria Day” — a celebration, I think, of Queen V’s birthday). And I woke up to the start of the holiday weekend thinking, “Oh no, not three days of this.” And by “this” I meant loneliness, specifically the feeling that I was alone and isolated when the rest of the province–and possibly the country–was out celebrating.
I think much of this feeling has to do with the media. Last night, the local newscast was all about families heading to campgrounds, and parties at cottages, and not driving after “spending time with friends.”
My newscaster often looks straight at the camera before a difficult story and says, “The following story may be disturbing to some viewers.” I think some sort of loneliness-warning should precede stories about huge, intergenerational parties, or three-days-with-friends camping trips. I felt lousy after the newscast, and that feeling lasted until today.
Part of the problem, of course, is that I am socially isolated. But being reminded of the fact that my life is different–and that others aren’t struggling with loneliness–doesn’t make it any easier. My solution is short-term: more nature. Am heading out to the ocean today. Will think happy thoughts (no oil spill thoughts), and will make it through to the end of the holiday.
Best to anyone else out there feeling lonely on a long weekend.
May 22, 2010 | Category: Social Isolation | 10 Comments »
Robert Putnam and creating community
I’ve recently become extremely interested in the work of Robert Putnam, who focuses on the idea of “social capital.” Social capital is a way of referring to our connections with family, neighbours, and colleagues. Putnam is convinced that social capital has declined in North America since about the mid 1970s, and I happen to agree with him.
The fun thing about Putnam’s work is that he’s created a “to do” list of things that might help strengthen community ties. Some of these suggestions (such as “organize a party for a new neighbour”) seem totally overwhelming, but I like some of his quieter suggestions — such as donating blood, or giving to the local food bank, or frequenting a small, local store. These are certainly not cures for loneliness — Putnam doesn’t intend them to be. But they’re interesting to think about: it’s fun to go through the list and think, “Yes, I could do that,” or “No way would I host a potluck.”
May 20, 2010 | Category: Dealing with Loneliness, Social Isolation | 3 Comments »
More thoughts on (my own) social loneliness
It’s been a week since I’ve blogged, and that’s because I’ve been bogged down with non-book stuff. But it’s also because I’ve been trying to think of causes and “cures” for my social isolation.
It’s odd, but I find that I’m giving myself advice that I wouldn’t give to others. I’ve told myself I should drive for Meals-on-Wheels, or sign up for another belly-dancing course, or do more volunteer work. I wouldn’t give this sort of superficial advice to another lonely person. I understand that loneliness is more complex than that, and that it won’t (or most likely won’t) “budge” in response to volunteering at a food bank.
Still, my social isolation is starting to be laced with “have-I-done-enough?” guilt. Have I tried making enough social calls? Have I volunteered with enough organizations? Have I tried enough churches? Yes, yes, and probably yes (the whole religion thing remains an open question…more to follow).
In the book, I stress that loneliness is only partly an individual problem: a lot of it has to do with the culture in which we’re living, or with the situation in which we find ourselves. But I find it hard to remind myself of these larger issues. The state feels so darn personal, doesn’t it? And with personality standing out as the main “cause,” blame and guilt are quick to follow.
My therapist, Genevieve, was a big proponent of mindfulness. I have some problems with mindfulness, but I think it’s helpful right now. It’s interesting to me that, even after all my years of research on loneliness, I’m tempted to see the state as “my fault.” The state goes very quickly from being circumstantial to being personal, and I need to be aware of this shift as it becomes more pronounced.
Will I sign up for a course? Do more volunteer work? The verdict is out. I haven’t decided what I’m going to do in response to my loneliness. Right now, my main goal is to resist the impulse towards guilt, and to see the state as situational, not as something that’s my “fault.”
May 7, 2010 | Category: Social Isolation | 14 Comments »
Social isolation emerging as a serious problem
I haven’t talked much about my day to day life in this blog, largely because I haven’t wanted to give away the ending of the book. But not talking about the details of my life is becoming impossible. Here’s a spoiler (if you don’t want to know how Lonely ends, don’t read the next bit!): I now live with my partner on the remote island of Newfoundland.
The reference to “remote” is really key. I’m now about 2,000 miles from friends and family in Toronto. My social circle involves, well, my partner, and my partner has a full-time job that takes her out of the house every day. This means that I am on my own most of the time (my own job is something I do from home).
I was out at the lake yesterday, and I noticed my legs were getting tired, and that I was having a hard time catching my breath. This struck me as strange — I’m not out of shape. I realized I was hyperventilating, and then I realized that the reason I was hyperventilating was that I was so totally alone — my isolation was making me anxious. I had to sit down on a bench to catch my breath, and rest my legs, and all I could think was, “WHY is this happening? Why am I STILL so isolated?”
And I couldn’t come up with a good answer. I did recover enough to finish the walk, and then I drove home (alone) and cooked chili (alone). I PROMISE that this blog will not turn into a misery memoir. But I did want to share what I’m dealing with right now. It’s social isolation, or what the sociologist Robert Weiss calls “social loneliness.”
I know myself, and my tactics, well enough to know that I will probably start researching what I’m going through. What else can I do? (I know, I know, I could go make friends, but–trust me–I’ve tried.) So this blog entry is to introduce a topic, in a sense, and to give readers a sense of what’s happening with me post Lonely. People are writing in to tell me what their lives are like, so here’s the first step on bringing you up to date on mine.
April 29, 2010 | Category: Social Isolation | 11 Comments »
More people talking about loneliness
Here’s a wonderful article by the writer Caitlin Kelly in BroadSide. She refers to me, and to Lonely, but the article is really about her past and present experiences with loneliness. I love her description of being able to hear her neighbor through the wall, but being unable to connect with her. Click here to read the article.
March 25, 2010 | Category: Social Isolation | 16 Comments »
Rent-a-friend and commercialized relationships
A tweet from John Cacioppo drew my attention to an article in the Las Vegas Weekly about “rent-a-friend” services, in which you pay by the hour for ordinary companionship.
The idea seems shocking, but–when I thought about it more closely–I realized it was just a natural extension of the commercialism that’s already affecting many aspects of our intimate relationships. In Lonely, I talk about how often I paid for contact. Not in the form of rent-a-friend, but certainly in the form of massages, therapy, exchanges with sales clerks, etc.
There’s a brilliant book by the sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild, called The Commerialization of Intimate Life. In it (especially in the opening essay) she talks about how the market has intervened in a huge range of previously “private” relationships — how we now hire people to shop for us, babysit, care for the elderly, organize birthday parties, etc.
I think the subject of market intervention in personal relationships is a very large one — one that touches on the nature of consumerism, and how we’ve effectively lost control of it. But I think it also relates directly to loneliness. As we depend more on the market, we wind up further and further away from each other. Rent-a-friend is appalling: I feel deeply sorry for, and compassionate towards, anyone who needs to pay for connection. But there’s no point in getting exercised over something as extreme as rent-a-friend if we’re not going to pay attention to all the other ways in which we’ve let the market interfere with our personal connections. We’ve never before opened up so many aspects of our lives to the market. And we’ve probably never before felt so alone.
March 11, 2010 | Category: Social Isolation | 18 Comments »
What’s the difference between loneliness and social isolation?
Sometimes, there is no difference. It’s entirely possible for someone to be both socially isolated and lonely. But the general difference, in terms of loneliness research, is between what’s known as “objective” and “subjective” states.
Social isolation is an objective state. It means, to use a common measure, that an individual has four or fewer people they can turn to for support and help. For example, if you’re new in town, and know only two people to turn to for support, you’re considered socially isolated.
Loneliness is usually defined as a subjective state. This means you might know a lot of people as potential supports, but still feel alone.
People often talk as though social isolation and loneliness were two totally different things, as though loneliness were purely subjective, and social isolation purely objective.
But they’re actually tightly entwined. Many lonely people often have very small social networks—that is, they’re experiencing both loneliness and social isolation. And social isolation—the existence of a small network—might flow from the withdrawn and socially apprehensive behaviour loneliness tends to cue.
January 23, 2010 | Category: Social Isolation | 1 Comment »