Sharing – Not Just Social Isolation: Loneliness Comes in Many Forms
When we talk about loneliness, it is often in the context of the limited amount of time and people we have in our lives. This article points out that it’s more nuanced than that:
But researchers and helping professionals have begun to develop more nuanced understandings of the concept of loneliness. For instance, loneliness can be experienced by sociable folks even when they are surrounded by people at an event, and it can be experienced in the context of an intimate relationship, such as a marriage (just ask a couples therapist). While the emphasis on the social aspect of loneliness in psychology persists, other aspects of loneliness also exist.
It is true that there are people with plenty of social skills and social contacts who are still lonely. As a survivor, I recognize this in things like the small number of people we can talk to comfortably about our abuse, our healing, etc. At various times in my life, I’ve had a lot of friends and was very social. I was still lonely. Because no one saw all of me. No one sat with me in my pain. I kept it hidden from everyone. That’s lonely.
Now, I’m at a place in life where people who don’t know me might assume I am lonely because I work from home, don’t get out much, and seemingly have few friends. And while I still struggle with loneliness from time to time, I’m not as lonely as I was when I was around people all the time, because I have people who know me well.
I think we’d do well to remember that there are different kinds of loneliness, and stop assuming that social people aren’t also missing out on deep conversations about difficult topics with people who care enough to sit in them. That’s actually quite rare, in my experience.
