Is Inner Loneliness Becoming the Fastest Growing Disease on the Planet?
“The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or Leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love…” Mother Theresa.
Loneliness is a broad term for what is commonly considered to be situational; when we think of somebody who is lonely, the first thing that springs to mind is a person who lives alone with no friends and family. While this is often the case, loneliness is not always a physical state of being alone. Mother Theresa understood this and encapsulates loneliness as a state of being or having a perception of being unloved. Many people experience feelings of being utterly alone, even when they are in a crowd or living with another…they feel empty and disconnected, no matter what their situation is or where or who they are with.
Loneliness is now being recognised as a disease in itself, instead of what was previously treated as a symptom of mental illness. Long term loneliness, that adversely affects a person’s sense of well being, can lead to a state of hopelessness, pointlessness and ultimately depression. A person who feels unsupported and alone in the world, will often begin to experience stress, anxiety and panic. Imagining a future without love and support can be very overwhelming and daunting, especially as a person gets older and becomes aware of their own mortality. It is now believed that these symptoms of loneliness can lead to bad physical health; digestive problems, lack of appetite or overeating, hypertension, bad circulation, dementia and even Alzheimer’s. All of these ‘side effects’ may in turn create an even deeper fear of being alone ‘when something happens to me’, resulting in a resistance to going anywhere where there is a perception of ‘help will not be available”.
While a certain amount of solitude to replenish the soul and allow for self reflection, can be considered healthy and even extremely good for spiritual growth, too much time in mental and physical isolation can lead to a dysfunctional amount of self absorption, as social relationships become more and more deficient and dysfunctional. A person who becomes extreme about isolating themselves, often lands up suffering from social anxiety, which can be triggered by large crowds, travelling or even wide open spaces. Long term avoidance of the company of others and a lack of engaging the world at large, can precipitate phobias, including agora phobia (a fear of being out in public).
ROOT CAUSES OF A FEELING OF EMPTINESS THAT RESULT IN ISOLATION
Lack of love
Many years ago, while attending a self actualisation course, I heard that if a baby is purely fed without being touched, it will literally die. It is called, ‘failure to thrive’. The infant firstly stops growing and if the touch isolation lasts long enough, it will die. A lack of loving touch, is very detrimental to ones mental health and well being. Demonstrative interaction can be likened to soul food. Without nurturing in some form, we begin to feel barren and empty. This can lead to eating disorders in adults such a lack of appetite or an inability to absorb and assimilate nourishment or the opposite extreme of obesity.
A person who feels unnurtured and unloved for long periods of time, will often begin to view the world and people as hostile, especially somebody who has gone through desertions in love relationships and has experienced too much abandonment. A pattern of believing that opening oneself to love because it always ends in pain and grief, can result in a type of natural self protection mechanism where the individual develops an armour coating. As they close off their hearts more and more they start losing their ability of giving and ‘accepting’ love. It is easier to push people away than to risk more loss. This then becomes a convenient avoidance of any contact that may result in any risky feelings of connection and a feeling of ‘what’s the point?’ This type of behaviour could be wrongly viewed by friends and family as selfishness or even narcissism.
Bereavement
Losing the love and caring of a loved one can also exacerbate feelings of being lonely. Even the spiritually minded who understand that death is a transition and not a finality, will experience the physical loss of somebody they hold dear. It is sometimes difficult to know how to really support somebody who has experienced the death of a parent, spouse or child. Sometimes the huge void a person experiences, without the relevant other, in their day to day lives, is too much to bear. After a certain amount of time, those closest to them expect them to move on and recover but putting on a brave face, for the sake of appearances may create an inner feeling of being inauthentic and lying to oneself. Sometimes isolation is the only way to handle these emotions because it is just too difficult to behave as if life simply goes on when you are still feeling like your world has fallen apart. There is no set time period for grief and healing.
Post Trauma After Life Threatening Situations
Any situation that brings you to the brink of death will create a certain amount of obvious or even latent trauma. In South Africa, nearly every person you meet, has been put in some sort of compromising position, whether it was a robbery at gun point, being mugged at knife point or even rape. I have been involved in a home invasion at gun point and a year later had a robbery while I was asleep with my bedroom door unlocked. I was lucky I wasn’t raped. After you have been violated to such a degree that you were rendered utterly helpless, whether you want it to or not, your world changes.
It makes you vulnerable and affects your confidence, even your self esteem. In a country where there is a high likelihood of crime, going out socially can be a challenge because every time you walk out of your front door, you are aware that ‘something disturbing could happen’. This in itself can create social anxiety and gives you the perfect excuse to begin living a more insular lifestyle.
Looking death in the eye due to health issues can also leave you feeling vulnerable and if you are living alone, may precipitate a constant awareness of your mortality. Irrational fears of sudden death that would ordinarily not have even entered your mind, suddenly become prevalent. I was in ICU for two weeks with Pancreatitis and given a 50/50 chance of survival; I would either respond to treatment or my organs would begin shutting down and I would die. Pancreatitis is very painful and I was so drugged up that I don’t remember having any fear but when I came out of the protective environment of the hospital, I was alone. My son was a huge support system and came in to help me with the basics but the rest of the time, I had to overcome the post trauma on my own. I was determined to focus on my physical recovery but didn’t really heal completely from the psychological trauma. This was two years ago and even as I write this article, I am experiencing ‘ping’ moments about why I have stress and anxiety that I never had before. A lot of the time, it is subconscious and you may have convinced yourself that you have chosen solitude because that is what you prefer, instead of looking deeper at the underlying causes.
Other Reasons for Feelings of Emptiness
Other people who are at high risk of developing the disease called loneliness are people who work alone from home, people who retire, the empty nest syndrome where children move far away from home, relocating to a new town or country, a divorce that was instigated by the other party, break ups or loss of self esteem through ageing where you begin to perceive yourself as no longer being love able.
SOME SELF SABOTAGING BEHAVIOURS AND BELIEFS LONELY PEOPLE HAVE
- Becoming so self absorbed that you are not willing to ‘allow’ other people to be there for you.
- Rejecting love because you believe that you will always be abandoned and are programmed to believe that you will get hurt.
- Forgetting to give love to the people who need you because you don’t believe that you are valuable to them.
- Displaying narcissistic tendencies where the whole world revolves around you and your pain.
- Believing that you have nothing to offer anybody so what is the point of being there for them – they don’t need you anyway.
- Berating yourself for being unlovable.
- Eating badly because you can’t be bothered to nurture and nourish yourself.
- Turning to drugs, alcohol or anonymous sex to take the edge off your social anxiety and numb yourself to the challenges of your symptoms of loneliness.
What can you do?
- Make a list of small, easily achievable things you can do to help in your recovery. It could be as small as making a phone call to a friend or preparing a wholesome meal for yourself.
- Make goals about stepping back into society. Break them into easy, manageable chunks and celebrate every little achievement.
- Push yourself to do one thing every day that you know will be good for you – something you are resisting and that is out of your comfort zone.
- Accept an invitation or invite a friend over even if you are not in the mood. Perhaps you will be pleasantly surprised.
- Do not berate yourself ever. Change all your negative thoughts to positive affirmations even if you think you are lying to yourself.
- Reach out and do something to give encouragement or help to someone else – you have more resources to help others than you believe you do.
- Own up to yourself firstly about how you really feel then be honest about it to at least one other person.
- Put on some uplifting music and dance around the house at least once a day. There is a woman, on the internet, who was very overweight. She took daily videos of herself dancing until she lost the extra pounds. Do it for fun.
- If you are abusing yourself with substances take a pro-active stance and enter yourself into a program where you will get professional help and support. All alcohol and drug programs include helping you to look at your past baggage and give you steps to finally start taking control of your life and your perceived problems.
- If you are feeling spiritually empty and disconnected, ask your higher self to guide you on to a path that resonates with you – as adults we tend to intellectualise spirituality too much. Faith and spirituality do not belong in the mental plane. What would your inner child have done? Start with that.
I am not a person who likes to prescribe or advise people. All of the above are just suggestions. If you want to heal your loneliness disease, you will find your own way. If you are too depressed to even want to heal, that’s another story and you need to seek help. There is a saying, “You can take a horse to water but you can’t make it drink”…you are here on this planet so you may as well lap up some positive energy, get it together and start living your life. I read a book a while ago by Anita Moorjani who experienced a miraculous healing from cancer, called Dying to Be Me. What I loved about the book was that Anita hasn’t used her healing as a way to prescribe to others…her most profound and simple message is to ‘live your life fearlessly’. If you are lonely and struggling to even long for or want a cure then you may as well work on overcoming your fears and go for ‘something’…anything as long as it can begin replacing the emptiness you feel today. Find a way to bring some joy into your isolation and the lives of the people who surround you and if you truly have nobody to share your joy with, go out and find them.
Finally, you can’t force love and nurturing into your life from others. It begins with you. Self love is free and readily available to you. You may have been berating yourself and disliking who you are for so long that you don’t believe it is possible to love yourself. Well, find something about yourself to love. We were all born with unique gifts…not just some of us, all of us! As soon as you begin finding aspects of yourself to love, the people around you may begin mirroring your self-love by showing you the respect and love you are so longing for! And if they don’t, love yourself enough to find people that will.
Blessings on your journey back from pain to freedom.
Lilith White
Lilith White is the author of the creative non-fiction memoir, The Other Side of my Reflection (go to book)