I can’t fight this loneliness alone (and nobody ever could)
A hard-won lesson from a prolonged misunderstanding about loneliness.
Tingling pain flutters in my chest. The raw sensation wrings my heart until the rib cage hurts. I am suffocated as I can barely grasp the air around me. There’s something freakishly offbeat about the pain. Sometimes, it makes me feel lost into an unbounded depth of despair and emptiness. In a prolonged sigh, I weep. Oh, loneliness has generated emotional labor as intense as physical pain.
At first, I thought I could delude lonely feelings with some tricks, or at the very least, I could endure the loneliness without wallowing too much on its weight. I would gracefully embrace its embittered torment and transmute the isolation into a tranquil solitude. But it failed me heartlessly. Perhaps, there’s no cure for loneliness, I was cracking myself up.
To overcome the lonesomeness, I initially took my default emotional first aid likewise anytime I experienced other uncomfortable feelings or stressful events. The approach heavily weighed on the power of neuroplasticity. It practically told that we can rewire our brain when we’re dealing with something that makes us suffer, some kind of “a thought reframing” strategy to regulate our emotional distress.
The mind identifies pain by learning how we reacted to that substance before. The mechanism progresses in the same framework with how our brains construct neuron pathways to form a habit. It can be said that our reaction to aversion is a developed habit. When we’re suffering because of a difficult experience, this kind of response has been conditioned. But we can interrupt this learned process by shifting the pathways. We can train our brain with a “cue” that mitigates the difficult experience to become a less-threatening force. Therefore, we can create a healthier relationship with the pain rather than cling to it in a hurtful manner.
Most of the time I applied that mental trick, it had successfully cloaked myself up with assurance. It substantially reduced the magnitude of the pain and upended its power that clasped my agency to repel. But compensating that strategy to counteract loneliness made the trick works more like a catalyst rather than an antidote.
In the first attempt to co-opt the mental trick, I tried to unfold all the messy forms of thoughts and emotions about the loneliness I experienced. I observed and reorganized every part of them, separating the mix of divergent thoughts to space up a gap between each thought. Hence, I could manage to dispel this mystery in a more clear-headed way.
That led me to come out with a reasoning: I was lonely because I was overvaluing the meaning of social relationships, and the love that blossomed within. I set a high standard for an intimate relationship. Besides, I took all the ongoing relationships I already had, whether it was familial, friendship, or romantic relations, for granted. From this reveal, I started to recalibrate my positioning towards a relationship I defined as valuably personal and deeply close.
Beforehand, I categorized a close or intimate relationship as a relation that earns mutual respect and trust for both sides. And it has a growing trajectory of relational identity — a process where interactions and bonds with other people around you contribute to the development of your personality. The relationship also should be infused by the burst of love that is fundamentally comforting, to the extent it must fulfill all the emotional needs.
I wonder why I fixated such unrealistic expectations, albeit my experiences showed I was not amply capable to muster my time and energy in building and maintaining them. Despite the lackluster track record, I still placed a strong faith for someone whom I intimately connected with would understand myself properly, to the point he or she even could read the unspoken truth inside my head.
At this level of unraveling the cause of my loneliness, it’s obvious that I was bogged down by the romanticism of intimate relationships. As far as I could sense, I was in the state of exaggerating the longing for intimacy.
The idea to treat personal relationships — not only the one that’s involved in romantic monogamous relation but also related to family and friendship — as a sacred thing lying on a pedestal has been hardwired in society for so long. Yet what is worse is movies, books, social media posts, or any pop culture content consistently reinforce the fantasy of this true-loving relationship in untarnished imagery of compatible relation.
But when we tell the more accurate story far apart from the arbitrary metric the society asks for, a relationship in reality, regardless of the range of the intimacy, is always incomplete, challenging, and sometimes nonreciprocal.
Although the act of recalibration escorted me to the clear-eyed insight of what I’m supposed to believe in a relationship, this shifting was not quite successful in preventing the loneliness to crawl back. The thought reframing strategy only provided momentary relief, most often it made the experience of loneliness get worse. I thought the trick might be a misplaced belief because I was not entirely saved from the ordeal of being lonely.
The stream of intrusive pain still lurches in my heart. The pain carries out lots of unprocessed and unexamined grieves. It makes me feel to be singled out by the world, as I had never belonged in anyone’s life, never remained as a part of someone else’s story. I still felt the sense of disconnection, abandonment, or being forgotten by people. The aching sensation is hastening the rhythm of my heartbeat, also firing my vein on and off as if the pain is always there, ingrainedly attached to my body. Meanwhile, in my head, I’m battling in anguish for the matter that my existence was so insignificant to the universe. The loneliness has hacked myself so deep to the very foundation of my thoughts and emotions.
Everyone surely can experience loneliness, but I think there are two types of tragedy. Some are experts at shoving the loneliness aside, dropping it, and disowning it, whereas some are loaded with loneliness’ burden more than others and they are bestowed to be exquisitely tuned with its impact. The first one refuses to countenance their aversion. The second one can’t help to gravitate toward their misery.
A part of myself acknowledges this loneliness has become a chronic disease because the mechanism works like a persistent attempt for a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The feeling of disconnection has been long occurring in my body. Ever since I was a child, I have perceived a pervasive sense of social isolation due to a lack of intimacy and close relationship with people around me. It is a long battle for me to fight this predicament and protect myself from its threat simultaneously.
But I tend to deploy a maladaptive coping mechanism that constrains myself to be free from the misery. I am inclined to not seek or even decline any forms of emotional and social support from others. I’m particularly suppressing the unmet interpersonal needs.
The lonely feeling appears like a paradox. I’m expecting social connection, but I refuse to engage with any of it which indeed intensifies the state of my loneliness. And the cycle perpetuates, no wonder loneliness has developed persistent painful sensations in my consciousness. Though it can temporarily subside, its existence remains as a relapsing torment that can come back with a more entangled force.
My heart wrings every time I envisage myself remain to be stripped-of-love forever. In that matter, there’s a possible risk for me enduring the long-term consequences of chronic loneliness, both physical and cognitive damage. Across a number of studies, scientists found that chronic loneliness carries similar harmful risks to smoking 15 cigarettes per day. In the long run, loneliness will impair the body’s immunity by interrupting the inflammation response to combat infections.
Recurring loneliness probably compels a continual “fight-or-flight” stress signaling. Inflammation is a formidable defense mechanism that prepares the body to fight against any threat, but the long-span duration can turn inflammation into the risk itself that imperils the body. In other words, the more inflammation occurs because of loneliness means the less immune the body is. Chronic inflammation links to poor cardiovascular function, higher rate of heart disease, adverse cognitive decline at every course of life hence leading to Alzheimer’s disease, and increased depression or anxiety disorder.
It’s hard to see the gap between your own thoughts when you’ve been overpowered by the acute sense of isolation. This can mislead your judgment towards the problem. Though changing maladaptive thinking by giving a more compassionate assessment of the pain is considered as a helpful intervention to regulate the sense of loneliness, it may not be the exceptional solution. In a particular state, relying on that mental trick to overcome the lonely state might misunderstand the nature of the discomfort. Plus, it does not give a full picture of what is happening when you’re experiencing loneliness.
Loneliness is one of the primitive senses human beings always experience throughout their existence, even from the hunter-gatherer era. Loneliness elicits unpleasant awareness that acts as an alarm for unmet fundamental needs, in this case are social interactions. Its role is crucial for a human to function in order to survive and maintain their well-being. The pain appears as an active stimulus for us to seek companionship. Desire to socialize even shares the same urgency with hunger. When we’re longing for social interaction, our brains show activation in the part that’s identical to the state of craving for food. That being said, isn’t social connection the most efficacious remedy for loneliness?
However, focusing on the quantity of social interactions is not considered as the right solution likewise eating foods excessively won’t comply adequate nutrients the body essentially needs. The way out does not relate to how many people you’re supposed to interact with in order to assuage the loneliness, but it much more depends on the quality of connectedness deriving from true intimacy that can satisfy your social needs.
For so long, I thought I had all the capacity to withstand and overcome every misery by myself. The only person who could save me from any psychological anguish is merely myself. In troublesome situation, I rarely asked for someone else’s help or advice, I tried to seek the resource of solution by myself first. Inhabited the lone-ranger behavior, I treated the crisis as a personal life quest to make my own discoveries and pursue my ideas. As the consequence, I was lacking emotional and social support from other people.
In spite of that, it’s still not clear for me — I have not yet dispelled the mystery — which one of that conditions came first: I don’t have a support system because I decide to be a loner; or because of being socially impoverished, I’m forcing myself to be independent to the core.
But that instance relates to the prominent characteristic of chronic loneliness. Lonely people always have negative expectations about social interactions. I am still inclined to think that I don’t have much luck in terms of connecting with others. I don’t expect relationships with people will go well in my case. As far as I’m conscious that I am just being governed by manipulative inner voices, I still don’t expect anybody will understand my thoughts and concerns, or even care to know me better. Until now, I’m still grappling with this self-worth crisis to not consider myself deserving love and affection from others. That’s why I keep fulfilling the chronic loneliness prophecy.
To my understanding, there’s no single underlying cause of my reserved behavior. All the influences can’t be isolated into a couple of factors, they emerge as random and associated perceptions invented in my mind over the course of my life. But I guess, everyone may understand on a deeply personal level that to be neglected, unloved, and lacking affection can withhold us to open our hearts and seek what exactly we need for ourselves.
The nature of loneliness conveys that humans are social beings. This is such a common notion that everybody feels too familiar with. The idea stretches out so prevalently until we recognize it as a mere platitude, or a series of vapid words in which the banality isn’t worthy for our attention, let alone enact it as a solution. As a result, we still befuddle to operate normally when the lonely feeling strikes. Its presence seems to remain a big mystery to us, even when we know the answer for it, or perhaps the misery gets us deluded to the answer. We have never taken the fact that we are made to build a relationship — instead of to be a loner — wholeheartedly to the cavity of our heart.
To learn the inherent merit of loneliness as a mechanism of survival is such a novelty to me. For years, I have been revolting against loneliness preemptively with a weapon holding neither acuity nor accuracy to destroy the target’s power and control.
I enforced the loneliness to conform with my individualist ego, it became the hostage inside the collapsing sense of self who was reluctant to welcome any tangible support from the outside. Fixated by the staggering power of independence, or to be more precise, impaired to love others properly due to having a lack of self-worth, I failed to see the fact that I cannot fight this loneliness alone, and anybody cannot do that either.
We cannot load all the emotional pain of loneliness only for our own burden. Instead of combating loneliness by ourselves, we should reach out for experiencing social connection. Relationship quality has a strong influence on a person’s health and well-being. Close social bonding can affect endocrine function, immune system, and nervous system leading to lower cardiovascular diseases risk and increase the likelihood of survival. American Psychologist Association asserted the importance of close emotional connections as life-saving evidence for improving the quality of people’s lives.
Although it took me a while to understand, I start measuring things differently when I value life based on social connection. I used to train myself not to seek support from others every time I’m in trouble. I did not want to admit that I wanted to be rescued by any means, or by any reason. I built and carried misjudgments about loneliness throughout my life. I ascribed I could save myself from the anguish by myself. I believed I had the capacity to withstand whereas the risk of loneliness itself could result in premature mortality, so deadly that it wouldn’t be possible for me to evade its harm unscathed. I grasped so little understanding about loneliness, but I would consider it reasonable enough because at the very least I survived the best way I knew. Regardless, I learned the irony of that misjudgment, what I needed to pursue appears to look for prominent companionships.
My initial attempt to recalibrate the unrealistic expectation toward a relationship somehow generates a few impacts. It can protect myself from being entrapped inside the lonely feeling. More than anything, it serves as an empowering approach to subjugate the lack of a sense of self-worth that subsequently helps me counteract my own distrust toward others and myself. Thereby, it become more reassuring for me to start building my life around people.
