Category: Treatment

Are Lonely People Just Selfish?

5/11/2013

My friend, let's call him Jeffrey, told me the other day that he thinks that the reason people are lonely is simply because they are selfish. Naturally I was a little taken aback when he first made that statement but I asked him to explain further. He said that if you really think about it, lonely people seemed to be wrapped up in themselves a lot.

They are, for example, ever wrapped up with the thought about why people don't like them. I have heard lonely people say that they think they have special interests that other people don't, or that other people are very judgmental. Jeffrey continued his thought: have lonely people ever thought that perhaps to have a friend, or partner, or spouse, you first have to be a friend/partner/spouse first? If you're constantly focused on your needs all the time then clearly people are going to get tired of you and leave.

Sometimes I believe that it is difficult for lonely folks to establish friendships. Sometimes there are social anxiety issues and it is really difficult to meet someone because of the fear of rejection, the fear of putting yourself out there and being turned down. Sometimes people have trust issues, having been betrayed in the past, they are more careful about trusting others and being open. To some degree, painful past experiences limit lonely people's ability to form new friendships.

"Fair enough," said Jeffrey, "but social anxiety or trust issues still revolve around the issue of selfishness. Because they are so focused on their own emotional stability and avoiding rejection and betrayal, they inevitably lock themselves into their own loneliness. Their selfish self-focus leads to their own imposed isolation."

Wow, that's pretty hash I thought, but certainly there is some truth to it. If we get too wrapped up in ourselves, it could inevitably lead to loneliness. It reminded me of this article based on a study that found those who over-value happiness put too much focus on themselves and in the end damage their relationships and their sense of well-being. Maybe by focusing on others and by trying to be a good friend first, we might have a better chance of forming a relationship.

But there are cases when some lonely folks try to be too good of a friend, they sacrifice their own needs and wants in order to try to build the relationship. I have also seen lonely folks who have a martyr complex, and they will do anything and everything for others at the expense of themselves. In the end, these relationships turn out to be one-sided and drain the lifeforce of the poor folks trying to be a good friend.

"Doesn't that poke a hole in your theory?" I asked Jeffrey, "here are folks being selfless and still ending up lonely."

Jeffrey thought about it a bit and incredulously he said, no, those folks as just as selfish. I was flabbergasted.

"How could they be just as lonely?" I asked.

"Well," Jeffrey said, "those folks are only nice to others because they think that if they are nice then the other person will be friends with them." But you just said that up above, I thought, to have a friend you have a be a friend. Jeffrey explained further that it was about being a friend, not about being likable. Everybody likes someone who is focused on them. But that's not necessarily being a friend. Being a friend means that you create a reciprocal relationship, you support your friend as much as your friend supports you, it's a two way street. The minute you make it a one-way street, you either become too demanding or don't also seek support, it becomes less about the other person and becomes all about you. Lonely folks with a martyr complex, deciding to provide all the support and not ask for any, are simply selfish individuals trying to force others into a friendship.

These are harsh words from Jeffrey. What do you think, are lonely folks really selfish?

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Another shooter, another story of loneliness

7/23/2012

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Many of us are still trying to wrap our heads around why anyone would walk into a theater and start shooting people, including children. So far the authorities have not given or found any motive behind the actions of the Colorado shooter who killed 12 people and injured another 50+ people in a movie theater. His actions echo similar similar actions by other persons, most notably the Columbine shootings and the Virginia Tech shootings. At least one article has already suggested that the common thread behind all of these killers is loneliness.

Nothing can excuse these killers for the actions they took against innocent people. But how could feeling lonely generate such vicious actions? No one can understand the pain of loneliness unless you have been there yourself, feeling it like a constant shadow against your back, day in and day out. Being a lone mass killer is an extreme, atypical reaction to loneliness, but loneliness has driven people to do many a strange thing. Another story that was recently in the news talks about a woman that keep a dead body for two years because she did not want to be alone. But what about ordinary folks? Would ordinary folks to outlandish things to fit in and feel accepted? Social psychologists have done a number of experiments to show just how far people will go to fit in and obey authority. One of these experiments was done by Stanley Milgram, who showed that individuals would be willing to deliver painful shocks to other people when instructed to do so:

In another popular experiment, it showed that individuals in a public place would display apathy and often refused to help someone who was in distress, rather than helping. Here is a video showing an example of people just passing by when someone was in need of help:

It is not just simply the fact that loneliness and the need to fit in, the need to belong, can drive us to behave in very destructive ways, but also the fact that loneliness can have drastic effects on our health. For example, the American Association for the Advancement of Science has said that loneliness is as bad for health as obesity or smoking. In the UK, there have been calls for loneliness to be treated as a major health issue in the elderly, with 5 out of 14 million elderly saying that television is their only source of company.

The fact of the matter is that loneliness can have a profound effect upon us and sadly many of us do not realize or acknowledge this fact. Loneliness is often not treated as a serious issue that can have serious consequences on our behaviors and our health. There are not very many organizations focused exclusively on loneliness, compared to other organizations dedicated towards addressing social issues such as hunger, obesity, or smoking. I am sure the average person does not think of loneliness in the same drastic context as hunger. And yet, if you take the time to look, you will see that loneliness is making as much of an impact as hunger or any other major, popular issue right now.

The fact of the matter is that loneliness is a response to a basic need of every human being, arguably in much the same way as our need to eat, sleep, or breathe. Baumeister and Leary have argued that the need to belong is a basic, fundamental human need, in much the same way as any other basic, human need we have. And what happens when we cannot fulfill our need to belong? The same thing that happens when we have a need to eat but no food is available. We feel hungry, but in this case, we call this hunger, loneliness. Loneliness is response to our social need, it is our bodies telling us that we are not getting the social interaction, the sense of belongingness that we require. And just like hunger, if it continually goes unfulfilled, it has negative consequences on our health. To some degree, hunger is easier to fulfill than loneliness, all we need to do is provide food. But for many of us, being able to build a sense of connection is difficult, very difficult. It is almost as if we have not developed the ability to feed ourselves and thus have trouble getting that sense of connection. We can also very easily see someone who is starving and in need of food, but it is a lot harder to spot someone who is lonely.

Until society acknowledges that loneliness is as much of a social issue as other basic needs such as food and shelter, we will have problems stemming from loneliness continuing to persist in our society. And it is a growing problem, not just in the elderly, but across all age groups as well. A recent study in Norway suggest that 40% youth ages 18-29 feel lonely "often" or "quite often." And another study in Australia show that at least 30% of Australians feel lonely, up from 10% ten years ago.

I, for one, will not stand by and wait for another tragedy to happen, wait for someone else to come to the rescue for those who feel lonely and isolated, for those who are longing for connection and cannot find one. I have hosted the Web of Loneliness for over 10 years. I am now moving onwards and upwards to establishing the Web of Loneliness Institute to find ways to raise awareness, and help the lonely. If you are willing to follow me on this journey, contact me, I'd be happy to have you along!

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Feeling lonely? Then go join a club.

10/15/2011

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On the Lonely Quiz, I ask if joining a club is one of the most effective ways of treating individuals who are chronically lonely. Only 34% of the people answered this question correctly. The correct answer for this question is no, joining a club is not a very effective way of treating chronic loneliness.

The first question you may ask yourself is; why is not joining a club effective? More people (66%) were able to recognize that self-help books and websites are not effective treatments either. Ironically one of things that makes self-help books ineffective is the same thing that makes joining a club ineffective. The problem has to do with particular individual traits that a chronically lonely person has. Someone who is chronically lonely, is lonely regardless of the situation that they are in. They are lonely when they are by themselves, and they are lonely when surrounded by others. There are ebbs and flows to stronger feelings of loneliness, but if you were to ask someone who is chronically lonely, they will admit that loneliness is always in the background, like a shadow, always there following their every move. Depending upon the situation, sometimes you are aware of it more than other times, but it is always there.

Chronically lonely individuals have a vicious, cyclical pattern of thinking, feeling, and behaving that keep them trapped in their feelings of loneliness. Perhaps they think that they will always be rejected in social situations, perhaps they are very shy or suffer from social anxiety, or perhaps they have trouble trusting others. Regardless of the specific reason, these types of thoughts/feelings create barriers to establishing friendships. Thus, if you have trouble trusting others, you would be unable to get close to them and deepen a friendship. If you are socially anxious, you probably avoid social situations altogether. So, what happens when you take a chronically lonely individual and you throw them into a social group, like a club or a class? Not much. Like anyone else, they reproduce their personality patterns in the group. If they were shy before, pushing them into a club won't make them less shy, they will still withdraw from others.

When it comes to things like chronic loneliness, self-help books have a hard time actually changing people for the better. This is because these patterns of thinking/feelings/behaving are deeply ingrained in the psyche, and it becomes almost impossible for a person to heal themselves. Very much like if you get injured in a car accident, you cannot heal yourself, you need others to help you. Most people who answered the Lonely Quiz seems to have understood this, but at the same time, thought that just being around others with help relieve the loneliness. Again, if you are injured in a car accident, just because there are others around, doesn't mean that they can help with your injuries. The best person to do that would be a medical professional. You need someone who will be able to 1. focus on your injuries and 2. have some knowledge of how to treat your injuries. Similarly, if you are chronically lonely, you need someone who can serve as that medical professional. It may be a therapist, but it may also be someone who has been through chronic loneliness and understands it.

What I'm trying to understand is why so many people think that simply joining a club will effectively deal with chronic loneliness. One simple explanation is that people didn't read or understand what I meant by chronically lonely. Joining a club, in fact, can be very effective for someone with transient loneliness - who experiences loneliness a lot less frequently and less intensely. People with transient loneliness are better able to overcome their feelings of loneliness and move on. Their feelings of loneliness stem from the situation they are in, rather than any personality characteristics. So perhaps, some people got it wrong because they were thinking about transient loneliness as opposed to chronic loneliness.

But surely, not everyone made that mistake. It seems like chronically lonely people would know that joining a club can be ineffective. However, perhaps some chronically lonely people may think that the entire problem lies outside of them and in the environment. Therefore the reason they are lonely is because they haven't found the right set of people to connect with - if they joined the right group, then their loneliness would go away. They are merely victims of circumstance. This mindset is comforting, you can effectively blame the situation around you for your feelings of loneliness. It relieves the chronically lonely person of any responsibility for having the change, "I'm lonely because everyone else sucks!" Under these circumstances, it is understandable that a chronically lonely person may think that joining (the right) club would be an effective treatment for loneliness.

What about individuals that aren't chronically lonely? Why would they think this would be effective for chronically lonely folks? I think part of the reason has to do with the often nonchalant attitude the average person has about loneliness. Loneliness is often not seen as a big problem, the cause seems pretty simple (you have no one around to make friends with) as does the solution (go join a club, meet some people, and make some friends). It ignores the deep-seated roots of chronic loneliness, often in childhood abuse, trauma, or neglect. Lonely people aren't losers because they can't do something as simple as making some friends. Making friends can be very difficult to do, especially if your past has taught you that anyone you love will hurt you. Just dismissing it by saying, go join a club, is actually a rather insulting, crass thing to say to someone who has been dealing with loneliness for years. If it were that simple, I think they wouldn't be lonely today.

Chronic loneliness takes years to form, and by extension, I also feel it takes years to dismantle. There are no simple solutions for this complex problem.

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The Lonely Blog

Are Lonely People Just Selfish?

Another shooter, another story of loneliness

Feeling lonely? Then go join a club.

Sean Seepersad

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