Nomads. We’ve become a bit traumatized living in modernization and separation from land. All mammals have emotional circuitry for grief and when we are without our kin, our village, our land, that circuitry goes into full alarm (anxiety, sadness, depression and loneliness are all related symptoms). And then we may shame ourselves for our perfectly natural response to the alienation from the modern world.

We have convinced ourselves we don’t need each other, but in reality our mammal bodies are made for relationship. This is an expression of a deep truth: all of life is relational. We exist in interdependence. We seek relationship from the earliest moments of life and our lives unfold and take shape relative to the nature of the relationships we encounter and create. In fact, all life forms down to the single most cell seek to connect, because we are inter-relational.

We think the world is linear, i.e., that we are going somewhere. Our culture values the heroics of the rugged individualist, In that viewpoint, it’s not ok to admit we are lonely. Loneliness is when we don’t experience being seen for who we are, understood, valued, remembered, or cared for. The linear worldview finds its roots in Western European and American thought. It is logical, time oriented, and systematic, and has at its core the cause-and-effect relationship. The belief is that if we understand the cause, we can find the solution.

Yet, the linear view is narrow. It inhibits us from seeing the whole person. A more holistic viewpoint would see the world as relational. Problems should be seen in terms of its relationship to other events, circumstances or people around them. We have a mosaic of feelings that indicate when our basic needs are being met or unmet. For example, when our need for care is met, we may feel love, affection, calm, happiness, etc. Conversely, when care is not met such as when we lose a friend, we feel grief, sadness, even physical sensations of emotional pain.

These feelings can be common for us when we don’t have real relational understanding. How do we find a way to be seen, understood, valued, remembered, and cared for? That is the inner work we are faced with. So how do we get that connection we’re longing for? What needs to exist for us to feel belonging? 

I first learned to validate my body sensations, feelings and needs. I learned this through working with a Nonviolent Communication (NVC) practice group. NVC was started by Marshall Rosenberg in 1984. Here is where I learned my feelings made sense. They weren’t something to get rid of, they were there for me to listen to myself and what I needed.

NVC created a new way of processing and communicating with ourselves and others. It educated us to weed out our cause-and-effect language. Searching for causes makes us a very blame-based culture, i.e., “Whose fault is it?” We want to let go of cause and look for the needs that are either being met or not met. Only in that way can we resolve the feelings we are having. We had to reframe blame from:

I feel _____ because you _____! (blame!)

Reframe to:

I feel _______ because I _____! (ownership of feelings)

When we reframe our communication, we have greater understanding of what we need and can ask more directly to get our needs met. This is the best way to hold ourselves with more understanding, connection and love.

About the author: Rev. Catherine Dockery, MA, is a People House minister and a trained facilitator in conscious aging, nonviolent communication and resonant healing of trauma. She has an MA in Public Administration and BA in Communications both from the University of Colorado at Denver. Catherine started The Center for Conscious Aging in 2015 where she conducts workshops, personal coaching and support groups for older adults helping them to understand their developmental changes and transform their lives. She has 10 years of experience in individual and group facilitation and presents on aging topics throughout Colorado. To learn more about Catherine’s services please visit www.centerforconsciousaging.org or email consciousaging1@gmail.com

Farmed out to live with relatives at the age of nine left me bereft of a sense of Self. At age 18, the summer before I started university, I set out to find that Self by hitchhiking solo through Canada. Maybe we’d recognize each other along the roadside with our thumbs out. “THERE you are!” we’d enthuse and fall hugging into each other’s arms.

In one Canadian city, I stopped at a YWCA to rent a room for a couple of nights. The inn was full, but the kind receptionist put a screen in the corner of the lobby where I could roll out my sleeping bag with a modicum of privacy.

That afternoon I wandered the city’s streets looking for that Self—who did not materialize. I had nothing to anchor me and felt as if I was going crazy. Miserable, I returned to the YWCA lobby and my corner and managed to meet two girls my age who were traveling together. We hung out, and their presence and our shared talk of mutual missteps cheered me considerably. I felt happy when I connected with the two other travelers. I didn’t know that was my Self flitting in joy at this mutual recognition. Note that it required communication, speaking, a dialogue.

After Canada, I continued my solo coddiwompling believing I didn’t need people. Bill Plotkin, whom I read decades later, says we travel outwardly because we are in reality traveling inwardly, looking for our soul, the deepest part of who we are (1, 2). 

Discontent, sadness, and loneliness dogged my footsteps. To escape this state of unhappiness, I converted to a patriarchal, crusading Christianity. My Self slunk deeper into the recesses of the dark cave of my soul to protect Herself from that lonely adventure, occasionally breaking out with what I thought was random and embarrassing speech. She only wanted to be noticed (3).

Loneliness: an absence of connection

We can feel that inner, lonely isolation in a crowd. In her award-winning book The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone, Olivia Laing says:

“. . . loneliness doesn’t necessarily require physical solitude, but rather an absence or paucity of connection, closeness, kinship: an inability for one reason or another, to find as much intimacy as desired” (pages. 3, 4).

And more:

“If loneliness is to be defined as a desire for intimacy, then included within that is the need to express oneself and to be heard, to share thoughts, experiences, and feelings. Intimacy can’t exist if the participants aren’t willing to make themselves known, to be revealed” (page 75).

US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy has brought loneliness to the forefront of mental health issues; he identifies three types of loneliness:

• Emotional loneliness – ‘the absence of meaningful relationships’
• Social loneliness – a ‘perceived deficit in the quality of social connections’
• Existential loneliness – a ‘feeling of fundamental separateness from others and the wider world’

Unknown to me in those late teen years of travel, I was suffering primarily from an existential loneliness, cut off from my soul and hence others and the wider world. I didn’t present my Self to others, but a persona, what I believed would keep me safe, what others wanted to see or hear. My religion told me to “die to self,” but I didn’t even have a Self to die to.

Murthy says loneliness is at “epidemic levels” and is “killing us.”  Supposedly one in two adults experienced loneliness in recent years—and that was pre-COVID pandemic isolation. Roughly one and a quarter million adults are feeling lonely at any moment. This ranges from a deep, chronic loneliness to a transitional loneliness caused by a move to a different city, a death, a breakup, a new job (see note 5; for more on how loneliness is measured, see this resource).

Loneliness can lead us to what we value and what we need

Can we see it as a gift? Something this prevalent in the US that impacts nearly fifty percent of our adult population cannot be an anomaly, it must be part of the human experience. In other words, it’s a normal experience (it can become an issue when feelings are all-consuming and if it interferes with daily living).

We don’t need to feel shame that something might be wrong with us; instead, it can lead us to what we value and what we need. Don’t expect others to fill that need for you. Your happiness is not their responsibility. Make choices. Practice gratitude instead of focusing on a lack—perceived or real.

An excluding group, the masses

What we know but Laing illuminates, is that “loneliness does not happen in isolation, but rather as an interplay between the individual and the society in which they are embedded” (page 90). As humans, we want to be looked at and listened to, but the excluding majority doesn’t want to hear from the misfits, those on the fringes of society. An excluding group has a fear of difference and refuses to let other life forms co-exist. 

My religion—which I did leave—was dedicated to excluding and sidelining women. And while that continues, it’s the LGBTQ+ and people of color who face the greater silencing in today’s society, edged out as outsiders. If connection and intimacy require communication, that is stifled due to fear of public or private humiliation, rejection, or ostracization.

Big Pharma benefits

Shaping loneliness to be an aberration, a feeling we don’t dare confess to, can only bring anxiety and/or depression—something to be medicated, which Big Pharma is happy to provide, thus increasing profits for its CEOs and shareholders (I am not excluding the use of pharmacological medications; talk to a mental health expert as needed).

And while social media can and does give a voice to the excluded, it also can further isolate us, cutting us off from the intimacy of connection and closeness.

Laing found solace in art, and in her book, focuses on four artists: Edward Hopper, Andy Warhol, Henry Darger, and David Wojnarowicz. She said she “wanted to understand what it means to be lonely, and how it has functioned in people’s lives, to attempt to chart the complex relationship between loneliness and art” (page. 8).

Working with loneliness

If you feel lonely, be curious about it: “Isn’t that interesting. I’m feeling lonely. I wonder what’s going on? What do I need?”

Pay attention and sit mindfully with whatever surfaces. Jon Kabat-Zinn defines mindfulness meditation as “the awareness that arises from paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment and non-judgmentally”. Don’t panic; remember to breathe.

Affordable counseling is available through People House. Get help when needed!

I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up all alone. It’s not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people that make you feel all alone. –Robin Williams

Notes & Sources:

1. Plotkin, Bill. Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche. Novato: New World Library, 2003.
2. By “soul,” I do not mean from a Christian perspective, but that deepest part of you. Carl Jung believed the soul was a part of the psyche, the psyche defined as the whole of one’s being, conscious and unconscious. Clarissa Pinkola Estés refers “to the soul aspect of the psyche by many names, including the true self, the instinctual nature … all these separate from the small ‘ego of appetites and ambitions’ that may serve its own purpose—but by no means is ego to be the leader of the enormous psyche.” https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/2017/03/clarissa-pinkola-estes
3. Excerpts taken from: Edwards, Mary Coday. To Travel Well, Travel Light: An Adventure Memoir of Living Abroad and Letting Go of Life’s Trappings: Material Possessions, Cultural Blinders, and a Patriarchal Christian Worldview. 2022; SBNR Press.
4. Laing, Olivia. The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone. Picador, 2016.
5. Murthy, Vivek. “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation, 2023: The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community.” https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2023/05/03/new-surgeon-general-advisory-raises-alarm-about-devastating-impact-epidemic-loneliness-isolation-united-states.html
6. Westbook, The Lifespan of Lonliness.https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/21/opinion/loneliness-epidemic-mental-health.html?campaign_id=39&emc=edit_ty_20231221&instance_id=110687&nl=opinion-today&regi_id=82638792&segment_id=153149&te=1&user_id=c0f89e1e3d4e432c6a83738febd1f5be
7. Loneliness in the United States: A 2018 National Panel Survey of Demographic, Structural, Cognitive, and Behavioral Characteristics  https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31203639/ 

About the Author: Award-winning author Rev. Mary Coday Edwards is a Spiritual Growth Facilitator and People House Minister, and author of To Travel Well, Travel Light. An Adventure Memoir of Living Abroad and Letting Go of Life’s Trappings: Material Possessions, Cultural Blinders, and a Patriarchal Christian Worldview. A lifelong student of spirituality, Mary spent almost 20 years living, working, and sojourning abroad in Asia, Southeast Asia, East Africa, and Latin America before finding her spiritual connection at People House and completing its Ministerial Program. Past studies include postgraduate studies from the University of South Africa in Theological Ethics/Ecological Justice, where she focused on the spiritual and physical interconnectedness of all things. With her MA in Environmental Studies from Boston University, abroad she worked and wrote on environmental sustainability issues at both global and local levels. In addition to working in refugee repatriation, she was an editor for international, English print, daily newspapers in Indonesia and Mexico.