How is it that you can feel perfectly happy on your own yet feel lonely in a crowd? Is it less to do with what others think of you and more a question of how you feel about yourself?
Loneliness is not the same as being alone. Everyone likes to have some time to themselves occasionally, and there are people who actually prefer to spend much of their time alone. Loneliness is being alone and not liking it, or being with others and still feeling alone.
Types of loneliness
Researchers have drawn a distinction between two types of loneliness, one of which is more common and considered more ‘normal’ than the other. These two types are known as ‘trait loneliness’ and ‘state loneliness’.
Trait loneliness is the most serious and involves permanent feelings of loneliness. State loneliness describes the temporary feelings of loneliness that we all experience now and then, for example when we are somewhere unfamiliar or far away from friends. Everyone becomes state lonely from time to time. Only a few are trait lonely.
A need for friends
Loneliness results from a discrepancy between the number of relationships or social contacts that you have and the number that you want, irrespective of the absolute number itself. So if you feel you need two friends and you have two, then you will not feel lonely. If you feel that you need 200 and you have only 150, then you might feel lonely.
If the major part of loneliness is a state of mind rather than a state of being, then there are strong hopes that it can be cured. Assuming that the lonely person can be helped to focus on a more positive, sensible target, modifying his behaviour in some way or changing his expectations, much of the problem can be dispelled.
Loneliness factors
The feeling of loneliness can be brought about by anything that lowers our self-esteem and increases our need for other people.
One piece of research, for example, found that teenagers often feel lonely at weekends – not because they see their friends less than at other times, but because they expect to be seeing them more. On a week night they may not expect to be socializing or having fun, so there is no problem. It is a question of expectations rather than objective reality.
Another factor that affects our feelings of loneliness is the way that we feel about ourselves. Anything that makes you feel good about yourself can have the effect of making you feel less lonely in the short term. It does not have to be the company of other people that brings it about – so a piece of good news or a job well done can reduce loneliness.
But loneliness is not entirely a question of our state of mind. If we move to another town, we will probably feel lonely fairly soon because we have fewer social contacts, but we will not necessarily feel bad about ourselves as a result. This is because we blame the loneliness on the situation rather than on ourselves. We can see that it is quite natural to be lonely in this situation and that it has nothing to do with our personal qualities.
Some lonely people, however, lack the skills to interact easily with others. They seem to outsiders to be very uninterested in other people, when really they are just awkward or shy. If this is the case, the problem may require more drastic solutions and there are therapists who are trained to improve social skills.
Lonely personalities
Some people become so used to being rejected that they become chronically lonely – they turn into lonely personalities. They develop a style of behaviour and thinking that cuts them off from other people. Their self-esteem is so low that they always blame their loneliness on themselves, seeing it as a permanent feature of their make-up and one that they can do little to change.
People who think like this believe that they may as well get used to being alone since that is how it is always going to be. Sometimes they just stop trying. They cease to make the effort to see others and resign themselves to a solitary life. Such people cope badly with loneliness, with the result that they often perpetuate it for themselves. Instead of creating more social opportunities, they turn to distractions which are essentially solitary. They may buy a caged bird to talk to, or they may go on a spending spree to make themselves feel good again. They reduce the loneliness for the moment but the relief is short lived. Because they never have any good experiences from social relationships they have nothing to counteract their low self-esteem. The important point is that we are all faced with the job of understanding why certain things happen in our lives, and chronically lonely people characteristically do it badly, and suffer the result.
Whose fault is it?
Establishing the cause of our loneliness is important. For example, John, on thinking about his sense of loneliness, could say to himself that it is due to his qualities (unattractiveness, big nose, shyness, lack of assertiveness), or to something outside of himself (unfriendly people around him, the fact that he has just moved to a new neighbourhood, alienation in society). So his first choice of explanation is essentially whether it is his fault or someone else’s.
Second, he has to make up his mind about whether the loneliness is due to something permanent or temporary. Is it due to stable and relatively permanent causes (his personality, his physical appearance, his lack of ability to deal with people effectively), or to unstable and temporary ones (the fact that he happens to have moved to a new neighbourhood or gone to a new college)?
Third, he has to decide whether the causes of the loneliness are things he can do anything about. Are they controllable due to his unwillingness to go out and meet people – which he could decide to change – or uncontrollable – he has just been moved to a new job in a different city by his employer?
Anyone who decides that their loneliness is due to their own qualities that are permanent and uncontrollable or unalterable obviously has a problem. He or she will be less effective at shaking off .the accompanying sadness than someone who decides it is not their fault, that it is temporary and that, anyway, it is within their power to control it.
Coping with loneliness
There are good and bad ways to cope with loneliness. One problem is that loneliness feels so awful that people often are led to do unhelpful things, such as getting drunk or going on eating binges or running wild with a credit card to buy material pacifiers.
Researchers have identified a set of behaviours called ‘sad passivity’, which some lonely people show. What this means, essentially, is a type of helpless, hopeless inactivity. Sad passivity is characterized by overeating, oversleeping, watching television non-stop, crying, drinking alcohol and taking tranquillizers.
Lonely people of this type have often decided that their loneliness is a permanent state, which is due to their own style of behaviour and is uncontrollable. They feel that they may as well become very busy with things that will help them to forget it.
Coping with loneliness is made more effective by a person’s belief that he or she has control over the factors which have caused it.