Archive for the ‘Stigma of Loneliness’ Category
You’re gutsy, too!
Was in Toronto for a holiday recently, and I went into a large bookstore to buy a gift for someone. The bookstore was entirely unlike the one in my town: it was glitzy, and bright, and filled with busy, fashionable people. I saw my book in the self-help section, and scanned the distance you’d have to cover to get it to the cash. I thought about grabbing a book called Lonely, and walking across the store with it. And I thought, “That takes guts.”
Many people have written in to say that I’m brave, but I think the bravery runs both ways. To those of you who have stared down stigma and grabbed Lonely at a bookstore, I say, “Thank you.” Until I went to Toronto, I don’t think I realized what was involved. Picking up Lonely isn’t easy, and everyone who’s done so deserves a pat on the back.
It’s loneliness, not depression
When I was talking to potential publishers about Lonely, the question that came up time after time was, “Aren’t you just depressed?” I found this question maddening. I wasn’t depressed. The problem was long-term loneliness. But most of the people around me just assumed I had “the blues.”
I wrote a guest blog for the Huffington Post on this issue a few weeks ago. (Note: I got the name of my book wrong!). My main argument, which I stand by, is that people say they’re depressed because depression isn’t as stigmatized as loneliness, and because depression is less threatening than loneliness. Loneliness, after all, refers to gaps in our social lives, and that inevitably involves other people. It’s precisely the people closest to you who might not want to hear that loneliness is a problem.
I think it’s important to sort out loneliness from depression. Many lonely people are on anti-depressants, whicn they might not actually need. I think that loneliness is harder to treat than depression, but talking about and trying to treat depression when the problem is loneliness won’t amount to much. It’s much better to try to tackle a hard problem than to miss the mark completely, and go after something else.
Writing about loneliness for the Guardian
I was thrilled to get an email from the Guardian a few days ago, asking for an article about my experience with loneliness. The editor and I both agreed that we wanted the piece to be very personal, and I had no trouble writing about the worst aspects of my loneliness. The article is about my past, but since I’ve been feeling really lonely here in Newfoundland, it was easy for me to access those feelings and really tap into them.
I experienced no stigma anxiety while writing the piece, but yesterday afternoon–after the article was submitted–I was sitting on the stairs, and I thought, “What have I done?” I don’t usually think about numbers, but I knew that the Guardian reaches a lot of readers. And then stigma hit–the feeling that I’d admitted to something I was supposed to keep private, that I might be judged, that people would think I was off my rocker.
But I stuck by my mission statement, which (if you’re new to this blog) is to make lonely people feel less alone. I have a lot of people giving me support in admitting to long-term loneliness–my editors, my agent, my publisher–and I thought, You have to do this.
And now that the piece is out there in the world, I’m hearing from people saying thank you, and that makes it all worthwhile.
Loneliness, writing, and Twitter
It’s odd. I just wrote a piece for a British newspaper about loneliness, and it was very personal — about the “voices” that overcame me when lonely, the jealousy I felt, the sense I had that I just might disappear. And I was fine with all this — largely because I didn’t know who was going to be reading the article, or when.
What’s interesting (to me at least) is that, when I try to Twitter about loneliness, I freeze up. And I think that’s because I know exactly who’s going to be reading the tweets. The audience is so clear — I have a list of “followers” — that I can imagine the reactions.
This may sound strange, given that I just published a book about loneliness, but I need a sense of privacy in order to confront and overcome the stigma attaching to loneliness. When I blog, or when I write an article, the audience is very broad. You, my readers, are important, but I don’t know when you’ll be reading the posts, or which posts you’ll read, or which ones you might come back to and read again.
I think that loneliness needs “space,” in a sense. I have that on this blog, but not on Twitter. It will be interesting to see if I can overcome stigma on Twitter and be as personal as I am in Lonely, or on this blog. You can follow my tweets if you wish — but if you do, you’ll see it’s a different me emerge, one that’s a lot less personal, and maybe a bit less honest about my loneliness.
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.
Buying Lonely at a bookstore
I had to run out and buy a copy of Lonely recently at a big-box bookstore in town. This was a slightly odd experience for me. When you publish a book, your publisher sends “author copies,” so there hadn’t previously been any need for me to go to a bookstore and buy a copy of my own book.
With my author copies running low, however, I decided to venture out and buy myself a copy of Lonely. The first challenge was finding it. It was shelved–for reasons known only to Chapters–alongside diet and cookbooks. Having found the book, I had to pay for it, and this was where the real fun began.
I was the only person at the checkout, and the clerk looked at the book, and then at me, and then said, “Isn’t that a nice cover!” Now, the cover is nice–I love the birds on a wire–but it wasn’t anything to get too excited about. It was pretty clear that the clerk was a bit unnerved at being handed a book called LONELY, and felt the need to hide her discomfort by making small talk. I toyed with the notion of saying, “I wrote it,” but figured the clerk would lose it completely. As it was, I agreed that the cover was nice, and then paid, happy to have wandered into a small, impromtu field experiment on loneliness and stigma.
My strong sense is that, if the book had been about puppies, or gardening, or booze, the clerk wouldn’t have felt the need to paper over the transaction. It was sort of fun seeing her feel the need to say something about the book. It was also interesting to me to realize I had no problems buying a book called Lonely. Granted, I wrote the book, but I was miles ahead of where I used to be, when signing out books with “Loneliness” on the cover made me feel self-conscious and embarrassed. This time around, I was the one who felt calm, and the clerk was a little freaked out.
Being “outed” as lonely
Was at a large meeting with my boss this week (yes, I have a day job), and we were doing introductions around the table, and my boss was introducing me and she said, “Emily just wrote a book on….” Silence. I could see my boss panicking slightly, not knowing if it was OK to “out” me as lonely. Apparently not, since she settled on “social isolation.”
I found this interesting. It was a lot like watching someone try to figure out whether to out someone as gay. I wouldn’t have minded if my boss had said, “Emily just wrote a book on loneliness,” but Susan was clearly unsure about what to say. So she equivocated, to protect me. I found this sweet, but unnecessary. It hints at how much stigma attaches to loneliness. After all, I just put my name and photo on a book called LONELY, but people are still uncomfortable describing me this way. My sense is that they feel they’d be saying something damaging about me if they used the word, as though knowledge of my loneliness might hurt me in the workplace. I don’t think it will, but others are clearly not convinced. We have a long way to go, people.
New resolution re strangers diagnosing me online
I just had a smart reader of this blog write in and say, “Ignore them! They’re all nuts!” And I think I have to agree. One person told me (again, an anonymous Internet poster) that I’d have my life-long loneliness conquered if I just spent more time reading the cartoon page of the newspaper. This was actually wacky enough to put a smile on my face.
So, while I will definitely and always read notes sent to me by the readers of the blog and the book, I will–officially–no longer read anonymous posts on the Internet.
Stigma — I’ve been “diagnosed”
I knew this would happen: someone online (not a reader of my book, or the blog), has diagnosed me as having Avoidant Personality Disorder. I dissect “AvPD” pretty neatly in the book. My sense is that the “Avoidant” label is being used precisely because we don’t talk about loneliness.
A personality disorder refers to something inherently wrong with the self. There is nothing at all wrong with loneliness: it is not a mark of a malfunctioning personality.
What ticks me off (ooh, I’m getting mad here!) is that I say “lonely,” and someone immediately says, “Oh, you’re not lonely, you’re avoidant.” Actually, the problem is loneliness. If there were less stigma attaching to the state, we might be able to start talking about it without having to slap labels like “AvPD” on it.
“Anonymous” comments
Many thanks to the people who have written in response to some of my blog posts. I love reading what people have to say, and I’ve seen some really good ideas put forward.
One thing I have done, however, is pull people’s names off of the comments. This is because (a) loneliness is a stigmatized state, and (b) I’m not sure that people want their names published.
If you’re OK with having your name attached to your post, just indicate that in your message, and I’ll share your name or “handle” with the world!