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The Lonely Blog

Functional Loneliness

8/8/2013

10 Comments

 
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I have had a few conversations with some folks recently who mentioned that generally speaking they are okay, but there is this underlying feeling of loneliness. Generally these feelings of loneliness become more prominent when they are under stress or have been hurt, or other such similar situations. Outside of those times, loneliness in effect became background noise, it is always playing in the background, but they do not always pay attention to it. When they do pay attention to it, it is because a situation has triggered an even greater degree of loneliness that forced them to pay attention to it. They have what I call functional loneliness - it is functional because most of the time they can carry on with their day without feeling crippled by feelings of loneliness. However, there are those occasions where loneliness gets the better of them and shuts them down. So how does functional loneliness come about, why do certain situations trigger it, and is it okay to just continue living life with functional loneliness?

Functional Loneliness - What is it?


I believe that functional loneliness occurs for individuals who have found somewhat effective ways to cope with their loneliness. Unlike individuals that may have overwhelming feelings of loneliness, people with functional loneliness are able to successfully suppress their feelings without having to deal with it directly. Usually it is because they are so busy doing other things that there is little time to have these feelings bubble to the surface. They are almost forced to suppress these feelings in order to do their job, take care of their families, or other such things. It is like a drowning person desperately trying to keep her head above water, it is a sink or swim situation. Functional loneliness folks have learned to do some amount of swimming and keep their heads above water whereas other folks just get drowned by their feelings of loneliness. The fact of the matter is that in both situations, the underlying root causing feelings of loneliness is still not being addressed. The cause is that they are not getting the kind of intimacy that they need in their life. The social interaction, the friendships, the disclosure, the feeling of connection and belonging is simply not enough. While they can ignore it with distractions, they cannot get rid of it that way. It will always be there waiting to remind them that their lives are not complete.

When functional loneliness becomes dysfunctional

It is no surprise then that certain situations would trigger these overwhelming feelings of loneliness that would shut them down. These situations demand the support, intimacy, and connection of others, something that was never fully satisfied in the first place. For example, when we experience an embarrassing moment, or someone hurt our feelings, or we feel overwhelmed with the work that we have to do, it helps to have someone to talk to. Even better, it really helps to talk with someone we are close to. However, when that person is not around or does not exist, then feelings of loneliness crop up, and for those with functional loneliness, it becomes very difficult to continue to ignore that background noise of loneliness. That noise has become a lot louder and a lot more distracting. Even ironically, it may be affecting their behavior and they don't even realize it. Someones we feel too stressed, or tired or just have no energy or simply feel lost. Underlying these feelings may really be feelings of loneliness, hiding in the shadows behind these other feelings. We become so good at ignoring the noise of loneliness that even when it distracts us to the point we become dysfunctional, we still do not recognize the noise. So our life may become a series of functional and dysfunctional periods marred by our ever constant loneliness.

Living with functional loneliness?

The other question to ask ourselves is, is it okay to continue living life with functional loneliness, with our ups and downs. The answer really depends on the person. Change usually happens when one has enough motivation to make it happen. That whole cycle may not be enough to motivate us to do something about it. However, living with functional loneliness is living a life incomplete. It involves being able to start trusting others and open up our lives to them. Others cannot be sources of comfort, support, and connection if we do not let them into our lives, let them know what is going on, and ask for help. It involves taking a risk and moving outside of our comfort zone. Sometimes we get so used to a bad habit that we forget it is a bad habit and how much of a detrimental effect it has on our lives. And habits are hard to change, but if you are willing to make the effort, you can make that background loneliness noise go away, or at least become a very quiet whisper that you can deal with, even in the tough times.


10 Comments

Lonely in an online gaming world

7/3/2013

3 Comments

 
One of the interesting characteristics of some members on the Web of Loneliness (WOL) online support group is the fact that they are online gamers. I've often mused over the question about whether online gaming helps alleviate loneliness or increases it. To me, it seems like if you are in an online game where you need to connect and collaborate with others, it would naturally lend itself to creating relationships and reducing loneliness. In fact, the online world could become so powerful that people neglect their lives in the real world. For example, there have been multiple stories of parents neglecting their children to play online games (see examples here, here, and here). That leads to the question, if online gaming is so immersive and capable of connecting people together, why were there members popping up in the support group who were lonely. 

A study recently published by Visser, Antheunis, and Schouten sort to look at how playing the online game, The World of Warcraft (WoW) affected players social competence and loneliness. Some of the major findings included that there were no direct effects between playing the game and a person's level of social competence or loneliness. That means that just because you play the online game, WoW, it doesn't automatically mean you tend to be more lonely or less socially competent (or vice-versa). The study also showed that the amount of time a person spends playing the game is also not related to loneliness or social competence. What they did find however, is that if you had a variety of communication partners in the game, a person is less likely to be lonely. In addition, if you tended to experiment with your identity more, you tended to be lonelier as well. The question becomes, why do less lonely players having more communication partners and experiment with their online identity less.

Some insight into this question comes from one of the members on the WOL support group. He thought that online games in which you get to shape your environment, so-called sandbox games, had a better chance of reducing loneliness than your basic run-of-the-mill action packed, violent games, such as WoW.

To me, there seems to be two distinct threads running through the findings of the study and the comments by the WOL member. One thread is the idea of authenticity. Online games give you the opportunity to pretend to be someone else, someone who is not you, to wear a mask, and hide your true self. Very much in real life, we do wear masks and hide our true selves from others for a variety of different reasons. One of the biggest ones is probably because we are afraid we will be rejected if we show our true selves to others. The problem with mask-wearing is that you can never truly connect with others, whether it be face-to-face, or online. You cannot share the deeper, more intimate aspects of your life with others and without that connection, the relationship will remain shallow and meaningless. This thread of authenticity is connected to the finding of identity experimentation, where the real self may be hidden behind a variety of experimental identities. Similarly sandbox games allows for a much more complex, rich, and revealing manifestation of one's self. It allows a person to really express who they are in a variety of ways beyond just the typical avatar in online gaming. Imagine creating a world that is a reflection of you and then having others interact with it. That is certainly a powerful tool of communication.

The second thread is the idea that online gaming does not magically make things different. If a person is lonely offline, when he/she goes online, the difficulty of connecting with others still remains. It's no surprise that less lonely folks have an easier time having a wider variety of communication partners online, because they already have the skill set to do so. They already know how to initiate conversations, how to build collaborations, how to resolve conflict, how to ask probing questions, etc. But for lonely folk lacking that skill set, getting immersed in an online world won't make a difference. I think this fact is reflective in other areas online as well. I've heard many lonely folk say that online dating sites simply do not work. Perhaps that is true, but if you had difficulty dating offline, you are going to have difficulty dating online as well. Nothing changes except the means of communication. If you are, for example, a jealous person, it will become manifest in either medium.

Online gaming can certainly be a powerful tool for helping people connect with one another. However, if you are a lonely person, being able to use that tool to connect with others may still prove to be difficult.
3 Comments

Ruby Sparks - A Lesson on Finding "The One"

1/27/2013

1 Comment

 
Disclaimer Notice: This blog goes into some detail about the movie, Ruby Sparks. If you haven't seen the movie yet and would like to, I suggest watching the movie first and then reading the blog.

Ruby Sparks is about a young author named Calvin Weir-Fields. In his teenage years, he published a very successful novel and since that time has apparently made his living from the royalties and speaking engagements associated with the book. Calvin though, is very lonely. In the movie it doesn't seem as if he has any friends, except for his brother, Harry. As with any successful author, Calvin is being pressured to publish a new novel and unfortunately finds himself stuck with knowing exactly what to write.

One day he had a dream about a girl named Ruby. The dream became so vivid that he decided to write his new book about it. In Calvin's mind it was more like documenting something that happened rather than creatively writing about something. Ruby was the perfect girl for him, there was an instant and deep connection that broke his loneliness and brought fulfillment into his life.
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One day, Ruby comes to life. She is in his house, making breakfast, and behaves like a continuation of Calvin's story. At first, Calvin thinks he is crazy, but when he realizes that everyone else can see Ruby too, he realizes that something magical has happened. He is also aware that Ruby is a creation of his writing. In fact, he could change who Ruby is, simply by continuing his manuscript with whatever he desired. So for example, he could make Ruby talk French by simply typing in the manuscript that Ruby talks French. He decides though to hide the truth about who Ruby is from her.

The premise of the movie is great. How many lonely folks would not like the same magical event to happen to them? Simply conjure up what you think your perfect mate is and bam, there the person is. There is no effort required to go find this person, and this person is specifically designed to be what we think is perfect. In fact, for a while in the movie, Calvin locks the manuscript away, believing Ruby is perfect and nothing else needs to be written. The trouble is though, what we think is perfect for us, may not necessarily be so. Eventually Ruby decides she wants to leave Calvin. The perfect woman, constructed through Calvin's mind, somehow decides she wants to leave him. The reason she wants to leave Calvin though, is because of the way Calvin is. While Ruby was ready and willing to engage in a relationship, after a while it was clear that Calvin was not.

The movie very beautifully demonstrates the simple principle that no one can rescue you. A person cannot come along and magically pull you out of your depression or loneliness forever. No one can cure you. If a relationship is going to happen, it is going to happen because you made yourself ready for it - because you made yourself lovable. Not even the most perfect person you can conjure up can rescue you. Eventually they will give up like Ruby did.

Everything that happened after that in the movie was a painful demonstration of that simple truth. Calvin decided to take the manuscript back out and to make some changes to Ruby. At first, he made her need him a lot. Ruby changed and became excessively clingy. And while that worked for a while, eventually Ruby was not happy again and Calvin could not deal with her excessive neediness. No matter how he changed Ruby, the relationship still didn't work. Calvin was under the false impression that the reason the relationship kept failing was that he did not make Ruby perfect enough. It was the other person that needed to change, not himself. How many times have we cycled through relationships because we always blamed the other person for the relationship failing and never accepted any responsibility ourselves?

Towards the end of the movie, Calvin decides to reveal to Ruby that she is in fact, just a creation of his mind. There is a heated argument and a powerful demonstration that Ruby was simply a mirror of Calvin. Ruby thought, said, and behaved in whatever way Calvin specified as he typed in the manuscript. In the end, Ruby was a mirror of Calvin, his hopes, fears, and desires, all the things he refused to face. And when he was forced to face it, he realized that it was he that needed to change, not Ruby. It is easy for us to demand from others, to try to change people, to try to get people to like us. But it is harder to look inside ourselves, demand from ourselves, change ourselves, and to get us to love ourselves.

The Rubys of the world are not going to fix us, to magically cure us. The Rubys of the world can only stand like a mirror and show us our own inadequacies, needs, and desires.
1 Comment

The cure for loneliness

2/16/2012

43 Comments

 
When you hear the stories of the lonely, especially those that have been experiencing loneliness for a long period of time, one thing stands out quite clearly: There is usually no readily available one shot answer to helping them get out of loneliness. Of course, if you ask lonely folks what's the way out of loneliness, I'm sure at least 80% of them would say, finding a romantic partner. That is what most people seem to need, one person who will love and care for them the way no one is currently doing and arguably has done in their past. And sure enough, if a romantic partner came along, loneliness certainly does seem to vanish like a bad dream one is waking out of. Loneliness researcher, Robert Weiss, said that romantic relationships seems to be like an "anti-loneliness pill" providing immediate relief from the painful condition of loneliness. If we are lucky, the romantic relationship serves its purpose and we are forever cured of our loneliness, but I suspect for most of us, loneliness creeps back up into our existence once the euphoria of falling in love dies down.

I believe that the real, initial cure for loneliness, lies not in romantic relationships or friendships, but in our ability to be vulnerable. When we are born into the world, we are taught through a series of interactions whether the world is a safe place or not and whether others can be trusted. So, when we are babies and we cry because we are hungry , or hurt, or sad, does someone come and help alleviate our need? Or, are we left to fend for ourselves, at least until the parent or other caregiver has no choice but to come to our aid. Over time we learn the degree to which we can rely on and trust others. Some of us are lucky enough to have very nurturing and loving parents in our lives that give us a feeling of trust in others - we can expect in our hour of need someone we love will be there to comfort us. If we are not so lucky, we develop a sense of mistrust in others - in our hour of need, we have to do what we can for ourselves, no one else can be trusted or relied upon for help. Mistrust in others usually manifests itself in two ways, either we completely reject others and totally fend for ourselves or we demand help from others in a very possessive, jealous, dominating manner.

So what does this have to do with vulnerability? Well, essentially our life experiences teach us how much we have to guard the vulnerable parts of us. The vulnerable parts of us, psychologically speaking, is the emotional parts of us. Emotions reveal our weaknesses by showing others what is important to us. Sometimes our life experiences teach us that others cannot be trusted, in the sense that one day others will eventually hurt us. Sometimes our life experiences teach us that others are trustworthy and while they might hurt us, they genuinely have our best interest at heart. When we do not trust others, we form a defense barrier around ourselves, a way to protect us from outsiders, and to keep our vulnerable emotions hidden and locked away. The barrier eventually becomes so strong that even if we tried to remove it, it becomes difficult to do so. Someone who is very distrusting of others would become extremely anxious and fearful at the thought of removing their barriers. It is not a simple thing to remove.

The problem with our defense barrier is that it is the antithesis of forming a true and meaningful relationship. When you hide your vulnerable emotions on the inside, people cannot connect with you, and you cannot connect with others. You could have tons and tons of friendships or romantic relationships but at the end of the day they all feel superficial because you have still locked away the most vulnerable parts of you. So, you could certainly fall in love, and display a ton of emotions, but still have hidden away, your deepest secrets, desires, fears, hopes, and dreams. Eventually these relationships collapse because they cannot move forward.

The solution is not, of course, to be vulnerable to everyone, everywhere. We have to be discerning about who we choose to be vulnerable to. But we have to grow the ability to become vulnerable, and to become vulnerable despite experiencing numerous rejections. Those individuals with successful, deep, meaningful friendships have not avoided hurt altogether. No, rather they have learned to pick themselves up after getting hurt and being strong enough to be open and vulnerable to hurt again. That's an amazing thing to do, something I argue not many people can do. But if you learn to do it, you will have found your cure for loneliness.
43 Comments

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