Yes, believe it or not there is a small but noticeable difference between
aloneness and loneliness. To be alone is to by oneself. You may or
may not FEEL lonely when you are alone, but the only important condition for
being alone is that there is no one else around you. To be lonely, is to
suffer the feelings of loneliness, to want people, social contact, and yet be
unable to get any. Given this fact, it is quite possible to feel lonely
when you are alone, and it is also to feel lonely when you are NOT alone.
Many people report feelings of being lonely in a crowd, that even though they
are surrounded by people, they still feel lonely. On the other hand, there
are those who have written about the virtue of being alone. Hermits, monks
and other religious persons treasure their time alone for contemplation and
communication with the Higher Powers. Even in our daily lives we should
practice spending some time alone, going over the events of the day.
Aloneness is both an important and integral part of our lives. So don't
get the two mixed up!
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You can think of loneliness being experienced on a continuum with two
extremes. On one extreme, a person experiences loneliness all the time, as
an inescapable part of their existence. On the other extreme is a person
who rarely experiences loneliness. If you are the kind of person that
rarely experiences loneliness, when you do experience loneliness, we call that
type of loneliness state loneliness. This is loneliness that
is generated more by the environment than the person. So you probably will
experience loneliness only when it's a long rainy day and you have nothing to
do, or you go on vacation and you are missing your friends at home or something
like it. The loneliness is generated by the circumstance you are in, and
usually doesn't last very long (a day, a week). If however, you are the
kind of person that experiences loneliness most of the time, then the loneliness
you experience we call trait loneliness. This is type of
loneliness that follows you everywhere. The loneliness is generated from
the person, although particular circumstances might aggravate your experience of
loneliness. So regardless of the situation or circumstance, when you think
about it, you are still lonely.
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Some theorists believe that loneliness results of a difference between how
much friends you have, and how much friends you want to have. For some
people, maybe for you, it's simply that you are in the wrong place at the wrong
time. You have friends, yes...maybe, but they aren't really as close as
you would like them to be, or maybe you just wish you had more friends.
This discrepancy between your desired level and quality of friendship and
your actual level can cause your feelings of loneliness. If you think that
this is, in part, the root cause of your loneliness, maybe it's time to look for
a new avenue for friendship. On the next
page I will be talking in more detail about how we deal with feelings of
loneliness and what people do to reduce their feelings of loneliness.
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Shyness and loneliness have a very strong relationship to each
other. Shy people, I think, have two major obstacles they have to
overcome. One of the big obstacles is mental, that if you are a shy
person, you believe that if you go and talk to people they will reject
you. And perhaps in part it has been your experience as well. When
you go and talk to people, you don't know what to say, or you say something
stupid so they end up (maybe politely or maybe not so politely) excusing
themselves from talking to you. So aside from the mental thoughts that
people will reject you, there are so behavioral problems as well. If you
are a shy person you may lack simple conversational skills to make new
friends. How do you approach someone you don't know and want to talk
to? What do you say? How do you carry on a conversation?
Sometimes you may share too much information with the other person, sometimes
you may not say enough, sometimes you don't know what to say! Often times
you can feel that you don't understand the other person, or that that person
doesn't understand you. The simple fact that you lack some of these
conversational skills work against forming friendships of any length or quality.
Research conducted has also shown that
people generally tend to reject lonely people because they act lonely. Who
likes the person that is always stuck in the corner and doesn't talk to
anybody? Not many people. Most people like those outgoing, friendly
people that talk to and are friends with everyone. If you don't make the
effort to make friends, very rarely is anyone going to make the effort to make
friends with you. And so the loneliness is perpetuated. It's a
vicious cycle that you need to get out of.
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If you find yourself with constant feelings of loneliness that is very
painful, and you also have feelings of anger or depression, then the cause of
your loneliness may run very deep into your past. There is the
psychoanalytic view that a particular type of loneliness maybe because of hurt,
lack of love or attention, abuse or neglect that you may have received in the
past. Often times it will be associated with your parents or caretakers
who may not have treated you exactly the way you wanted to be treated when you
were going up. Childhood may have been a difficult time of growing up for
you. Psychoanalysts believe that what happens early on in your childhood
life affects your later relationships, your later self. Your feelings of
loneliness, and the other hurtful feelings as well, probably stem from a more
deep-seated (perhaps hidden) psychological problem that needs to be
resolved. Your persistent loneliness, depression or anger is a sign that
all is not right with yourself and there are some things that you need to deal
with. This is why you feel so lonely all the time. In all
probability, the friendships you have may be more superficial than not.
You have learnt to cleverly hide who you are and what you are from both yourself
and others. This is one of the more severe types of loneliness.
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One of the founding researchers on loneliness, Robert
Weiss, got started
studying loneliness quite by accident. He was actually interested in
couples and primary relationships (that is, the close relationship one person has
with another). What he found though, was that people who lack these
"primary" relationships tended to be very lonely. In one of his
writings he says, "I was puzzled by the upsurge of loneliness that seemed
to follow the ending of even an unwanted marriage, by the persistence of
loneliness despite new friendships and by the suddenness with which loneliness
could be abated [with the promise of a new partner]." How
often do we believe that if we just found that right person, entered that right
relationship, our loneliness would also be abated. We don't need ten
thousand people (!), we just need that one special person. Weiss also
believed that we needed that special person in our lives as well. He
called that special person, our attachment figure, someone who gives us a sense
of security or reassurance that we can face the world once again. Weiss
believed that loneliness comes when there is that loss or absence of an
attachment figure. In babies, a caretaker (usually a mother) is the
attachment figure. When that mother leaves the room or doesn't give the child
the attention he/she needs, the baby cries for her mother and is restless and
listless without her. So too, is our experience of loneliness when we have
lost or are missing that attachment figure. We cry or are listless, we
search everywhere to find that attachment figure, so that we can once again feel
secure and feel loved. Weiss referred to this type of loneliness as loneliness
of emotional isolation. In well-known terms, loneliness has been
referred to as separation distress with an object. Find
out more here
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