Why You Feel Pervasively Lonely (And What To Do About It)

Situational loneliness can just be a part of the human experience. Maybe you moved somewhere in which you don't know anyone, experienced a breakup, or suffered the loss of a loved one. But what is going on when loneliness becomes a chronic or frequent experience in life? How can some people be surrounded by loved ones and still feel lonely? How can we identify the reason(s) and then solve for them so that we can feel better? Chronic loneliness can have some devastating effects on our mental health, but this is something that can be healed. In this video, I do a deep dive into the topic of loneliness and discuss three key factors to examine (and what to do about them to improve them and heal them!) Stay tuned for future videos as well in my loneliness series. At the end of this blog post, you will find my YouTube video, Why You Feel Pervasively Lonely + 3 Very Special Guests at The End of This Video (Get to know my 3 babies! 🐱)

What is loneliness? The American Psychological Association defines it as ‘cognitive discomfort or uneasiness from being - or PERCEIVING - oneself to be alone and the emotional distress we feel when our inherent needs for intimacy and companionship are not met’. So what causes PERVASIVE feelings of loneliness? How can, in some cases, someone be surrounded by family and friends and feel lonely? Occasional loneliness can be a completely normal experience, but pervasive loneliness can indicate some very unmet needs and/or unhealed perceptions. There are only 2 reasons why we emotionally feel pain: 1.) Unmet needs and 2.) Painful stories we tell ourselves, i.e. PERCEPTIONS! If we feel both of these things chronically, it can lead to quite a bit of suffering. Feeling one or both of these things on a regular basis can lead to depression. Chronic loneliness can lead to depression. So what are the reasons a person can feel lonely? Here are 3 major reasons why someone could be experiencing chronic loneliness. 

Reason #1.) Quality of Your Connections. So what constitutes ‘quality’ connection with others? The first ingredient is truly allowing yourself to be SEEN. This involves vulnerability for DEPTH of connection. ‘Quality’ connection is not SUPERFICIAL connection. Quality connection is about authenticity. Quality connection is allowing yourself to be deeply known to the person you are connecting with. It is teaching the people in your life HOW to properly care for you. One ingredient of self-love is to get to know yourself so you know how to properly care for yourself. Teaching others how to properly care for you involves letting them know you. ‘Quality’ connection involves vulnerably voicing your boundaries for this to happen. ‘Quality’ connections allow for you to express needs. And of course, there is the ingredient of presence because without that, none of this can be received. Research shows that it is not about quantity - it is about quality! Having a few very good connections has an enormous impact on preventing loneliness versus having many surface-level connections. 

Reason #2.) Lack of quality self-connection. So what IS quality self-connection? I will sum it up in one sentence. Quality self-connection is being PRESENT with yourself. Just like the key ingredient from the other person in the first reason. This means really being present with your emotions, allowing yourself to feel them and sit with them. What can this look like? This could be taking the time to regularly journal. It can be meditation where you just sit for a period of time on a regular basis and just witness your thoughts. If journaling and meditation are not for you, it can simply be PAYING ATTENTION and allowing yourself to feel your emotions and just sit with them. Quality self-connection is actively LISTENING to yourself. We can illustrate this by the example of a good friend coming to your home to visit. A lot has been going on in your life. Well, it wouldn’t be a very good connection if this friend that came over was sitting on your couch halfway listening with their face buried in their phone, scrolling social media, drowning out your conversation. You would probably be feeling very unheard, neglected, and unvalidated at this point. And this brings me to what quality self-connection is not. It is not drowning yourself out! Quality self-connection is not spending time alone and ‘numbing’ and ignoring your emotions and thoughts through distracting behaviors. Examples of this include the aforementioned scrolling of social media, video games, and binging shows. ‘Numbing’ can involve an addictive, compulsive component. This can include, but is not limited to, binge-eating, pornography, drinking, or any kind of mind-altering substances. It can include activities that the individual does not deem harmful and are seen as acceptable. But they use this thing over here to distract them from what is going on over here so over here is not dealt with. Dismissive avoidants can often be guilty of this since numbing and shutting down and overall doing what they can to NOT feel their emotions is a huge behavioral coping mechanism for them. Many unhealed dismissive avoidants will think they have good self-connection because they think ‘I spend a lot of time with myself doing X-activity’ but they aren’t ever truly present and available to themselves.  Fearful avoidants who lean dismissive can also do this. One good example of quality self-connection is being able to RECOGNIZE and REFLECT on a situation in your life that bothered you and then come up with a strategy to solve for it. 

Reason #3.) You have a negative belief, or core wound, that is taking away from the meeting of your connection need. Our beliefs color the world around us. Our beliefs are vital in the process of meeting psychological needs. Now, I’m going to give a silly example. I want you to imagine, for a second, that you have a psychological need for this pen right here. Someone in your life gives you this pen. If you have a hardwired belief that this is not a pen, you’re not going to feel like your need for getting a pen has been met. This is an example of how our subconscious beliefs affect our ability to receive our intangible needs and create ‘holes in our cup.’ I’ll illustrate this with another example. Imagine that you have a cup that represents the fulfilling of your need for connection. We talk about our ‘cup being full’ or ‘trying to pour from an empty cup’. Let’s say that today you had a good, connected conversation on the phone with a friend or family member. That ‘poured’ some connection into your cup. A little bit later, you find out that some of your friends are getting together but you never got the memo and they made plans without you. For the purpose of this example, let’s say that you have the core wound ‘I am Excluded’. Whereas someone without this core wound might not be bothered by this scenario, someone with it might find this scenario very painful. If this person with this core wound has a high need for connection in their list of personality needs and they are now telling themselves painful stories about why the need is not getting met, they are now suffering to a pretty big degree. Remember, in the beginning of the video, we talked about the only 2 reasons we feel emotional pain is unmet needs and painful stories (i.e. things we tell ourselves based on our beliefs) and this person is now experiencing both of those things. There are a handful of scenarios in which this can happen in terms of a hole in your cup. You can imagine the ‘I Am Excluded’ core wound puncturing the side of the connection cup and creating a hole. It is now harder to fill and actively taking away from anything that is there. Another thing that can happen, in regards to core wounds and loneliness, is you can have certain core wounds that stop you from actioning getting your connection need met from other people. For example, if you have the core wound ‘I Am Disliked’ or ‘I Will Be Disliked’, it can just stop you from attempting to engage in connection with others. This also can happen with the ‘I am Rejected’ or ‘I Will Be Rejected’ core wound. I will be doing a future video soon that deep-dives into the majority of the core wounds that are connected to loneliness, how to recognize them, and how they affect our connection need.