My current obsession is the concept of loneliness. Before I read the book Lonely by Emily White, I was unaware of how many different types of lonelinesses there actually were and how deep of an impact chronic loneliness can have. I was unaware of how sneakily loneliness takes root or what situational loneliness meant. I took up the book out of curiosity and having felt somewhat lonely lately. This book has quickly become one of my most interesting reads ever.
Emily goes deep into her own experiences with loneliness, starting with her childhood and all the way into adulthood. She also shares research on the topic of loneliness and how it’s increasingly becoming a common struggle for many of us, albeit rarely talked about. I applaud Emily's efforts to delve deep into a condition that most of us can't even bring ourselves to admit being a problem. She shares her very intimate thoughts on this and her many one on one conversations with other lonely people when she decided loneliness deserved more attention. She shares research on this topic. I highly recommend reading this book if you currently struggle with chronic loneliness or have in the past.
SHAME & STIGMA
Admitting to chronic loneliness comes with potential feelings of shame.
Close your eyes and imagine a lonely person. What do you see? If I had to guess, the person you may have imagined would likely have some sort of inherent undesirable qualities attached to them.
In our culture, the lonely are made to feel like there's something inherently wrong with them. No one talks about feeling chronically lonely. It is believed that their undesirable qualities is what leads to people becoming lonely. That if only they were a nicer or more agreeable person, they wouldn't be lonely. If they were only more interesting, they would have more people in their lives automatically. If they weren't as lazy and if only they would try more, they would be able to claw out of loneliness. Our culture assumes its the lonely peoples fault that they are lonely. Lonely people are seen as flawed and anti-social. They are seen as unfixable problem personalities. The fault is placed almost entirely on their shoulders for bringing on loneliness in their lives. No wonder loneliness is not something people openly admit to. No one wants to be perceived as undesirable, especially when social contact is what is most needed.
Emily's book fights this stigma around the perceived undesirability of a lonely person with a vengeance and puts forward data & research that suggests otherwise. Anyone can come face to face with loneliness. It can haunt any one of us and suddenly years have gone by and you may not even realize how deep rooted it can get. You may have many friends but none intimate enough leading to feelings of loneliness. You may have intimate and deep friendships but not have a significant other who you are able to connect with or may have lost connection with over time and that can lead to loneliness. A new job, a new city. A new marriage. Motherhood. Otherhood. Grief from losing a loved one. A health condition. Moving for education. A new career. The possibilities are endless. I was not aware but apparently some people are also more genetically prone to loneliness. Any short bout of loneliness has a potential to turn into years of chronic loneliness if proper intervention doesn't occur.
One key takeaway from this book for me was that it can affect any one of us and there is no moral high ground to stand on for the non-lonely vs the lonely. Loneliness is a vast topic and one that is not understood as well as other conditions such as depression. I was surprised to learn how many types of lonelinesses there even were. Objective, subjective, situational, etc. I was surprised to learn how different people can have vastly different thresholds for how much social and intimate contact is sufficient vs insufficient before they can start to feel lonely. This sort of tracks with how we think about introversion vs extroversion.
Loneliness is not something with a singular cause and therefore solutions to combat loneliness can end up being way more complicated than simply "going out more" and "putting yourself out there", Emily says.
I never thought of myself as a lonely person or as anyone who had struggled with loneliness in the past. But, having read Emily's book, I know better. I have in fact battled with loneliness, albeit unknowingly. In some cases it has been situational. In some cases it has been objective and subjective. In some cases, it has been a lack of intimacy and social groups. It helped to put a name and words to my experiences. Very similar to how naming ADHD helped me understand what the fuck was going on.
INTROVERSION & NEURODIVERGENCE
The topic I want to understand better is how conditions are rife for chronic loneliness to take root in lives of people who are introverted and late diagnosed in cases of ADHD and/or autism. For people like us, vast parts of our identities don't solidify until later in life due to the confusion surrounding our experiences of the world while growing up and typical expectations and experiences of other people around us. Our self concept can already be somewhat unclear and distorted. Of course, this is solely my own experience. Your's could be entirely different! But, in my own case, I've only recently started to form a more solid identity. My ADHD diagnosis was a catalyst for this.
Loneliness starts to set in when you consistently feel disconnectedwith the people around you - something that can very easily happen for us who are so used to hiding our real selves due to associated shame. One can slowly start to lose their sense of self when this happens. In my case, I've gradually transitioned away from viewing social groups as inviting or positive spaces, no matter how nice people were to me. Something like this can happen ever so gently over vast periods of time. Years can go by where you can't put your finger on exactly what it is you are dealing with. For me, social activity has now become fraught with fear of feeling misunderstood, accidentally saying the wrong thing, not getting the joke, not being able to meet social expectations, not speaking coherently, sharing too much, etc.
Being an introvert on top of that, made it vastly easier for me to further retreat into my inner world over time. In my inner world, there's a 24x7 inner monologue that is quite dramatic and boundlessly entertaining. For as long as I remember, I've enjoyed spending time alone and doing things by myself. Somewhere along the way, I picked up a sense of being socially awkward and anxious. A socially anxious introverted person who has undiagnosed ADHD? This is already fertile ground for chronic loneliness to set in and flourish. Add the pandemic on top of that and voila! You have the perfect recipe for loneliness to go entirely unnoticed until it’s too late to fix by simply "going out more".
If I have had such experiences, surely others must have too?
A PERCEIVED THREAT
The path out of a lonely but comfortable burrow, that one tends to create when chronic loneliness sets in, is not a very clear one either. I have not finished the book yet but I am quite anxious to find out what Emily is going to suggest as ways to come out of loneliness. Simply going out more is not helpful, since you begin to anticipate and even physically experience social situations as threatening. It's too easy to avoid them altogether when you already enjoy being by yourself as much as introverts do.
When you are by yourself, there is no one but you to disappoint. No miscommunication whatsoever. No overt expectations of hiding your real self or a messy room. No pretending to listen. None of that. To retreat is simply an easier way to be. There was a time when I would not have considered myself socially awkward / anxious or having had any experiences with loneliness. 13 years have gone by after that time and now I am a different person altogether. My experience matches with what Emily describes as loneliness resulting in a changed persona. She also described physiological changes in people and worse long term health outcomes.
All this is not meant to be alarmist writing. The goal is to generate awareness on this topic and remove the stigma that has come to attach itself to loneliness. It can happen to anyone. Anyone can stumble into becoming situationally lonely - where your loneliness is triggered by a certain event - but some people simply don't have the opportunity or circumstances to dig their way out. Their social skills may or may not be a problem. Their friendliness may not be an issue. They are nice, kind and interesting people. They could be far from the undesirable or insufferable people that we have come to view lonely people as a culture. Life happens. Loneliness takes root and suddenly 12 years have passed when you find yourself questioning, who you are. I never considered that loneliness could have contributed somewhat to the deep loss of sense of self that I had begun to feel as years went by. Of course, there's many factors at play here but I would never have thought that loneliness could have been one of them before I read this book.
A CULTURE OF SOLITUDE
Emily talks about self actualization and how much importance our culture presently gives to it vs how we maintain our sense of identity in relation to other people and the intimate relationships in our lives. Ofcourse no one denies that social contact is critical and important, but I had not run into the idea of social contact being key to our sense of self. This was a fascinating view to me. Our culture increasingly promotes solitudeand the importance of being able to enjoy it. It promotes that you are simply not whole or secure enough if you can't handle being by yourself. It promotes "not needing others" to become who you actually are and meant to be. But, this narrative seems flawed or at least somewhat incomplete when you think of how social humans are and were for generations and generations that came before us. So much of who we are develops and flourishes in relation to other people and as a result of sharing our journeys with them. With deep and meaningful intimate relationships in our lives our goodness has a better chance to blossom more wholly.
There is a big difference when you choose to spend time alone and come out of that solitude feeling invigorated and recharged vs having no choice in the matter day after day. As an introvert, I have experienced both these states. I love doing things by myself. I am an artist and making art is a solitary activity. I also love reading books which is also something not usually done in groups. But, often I come out of such experiences feeling recharged and wanting to share my fruits of solitude, but having no other place to share other than social media. Over time, the effort of chasing, developing and maintaining actual intimate connections over short-lived and instant ones like on Instagram, can start to feel like "too much". There's so many situations where I experienced loneliness even in presence of intimate relationships. An intellectual loneliness born out of inability to connect with others over my ideas and thoughts. Eventually this can lead to underdeveloped thoughts or experiencing the world in an inhibited or stunted capacity because the sense of self that would have solidified from a shared experience and deep intimacy was left in an unfinished state over and over. In short, your previously strong sense of self can start to slip away making it harder to define who you are.
As someone who loves spending time alone, I am one of those people who totally bought into the narrative of believing that people who need a lot of other people to define themselves were shallow. I prided myself in not needing others. Self-actualization has its place and I still believe it is extremely important, but I have realized that it is just as important to also have meaningful and intimate relationships in your life. I am starting to learn how much of an impact this can have on keeping you grounded to who you are or stunt your growth towards who you are meant to be. Relying on other people builds a community filled with trust. It's simply a stronger and more resilient community as a whole. An individual who has a healthy level of social contact, whatever their individual needs be, will be more confident about sharing their thoughts and ideas.
This can seem like an obvious thing, especially for someone who has never struggled with loneliness or has a natural and biological predisposition to make friends or form new relationships easily. But, as someone who has increasingly begun to view social events and contact as a battleground, this was a new realization to me.
It's understandably hard to rewire your brain to suddenly enjoy social contact when you experience it as a time for combat and everything in your body tells you to run in another direction. It can be hard to be present and enjoy the moment. After many years have gone by, its no surprise that continued self preservation in social situations becomes too overpowering and ultimately becomes self defeating.
If I am being entirely honest, this is somewhat of a scary realization. Scary because a self defeating cycle is harder to break out of. It's a highly contradictory situation when your body and mind tends to react with hostility towards the very thing it most desperately craves and needs to come out of loneliness. It needs intimate connections with people. It needs a strong tight knit community.
NEUROPLASTICITY IS AWESOME
What can be a solution? I have to delve deeper into this. Loneliness is a vast topic. Stay tuned for another post on this topic. I have certainly not lost hope. That's never gonna happen. I'm too fucking stubborn and curious for that, lol. But, it helps to become aware of problems like these that no one talks about. Right? Defining them for what they are can be followed with action. I believe this.
Our brains are fascinating, and especially the brains of us neurodivergent folk. But, I'm a little biased. It makes sense though. Right? If there was enough plasticity there to learn to see social contact as time for battle, I'm hopeful and entirely confident that there's also enough plasticity there to rewire and learn to love and appreciate people and community again.
As hard as it will be to reverse that process, I'm 100% confident that it can be done. :)
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Sneha