How are you doing with being alone. Alone can often be confused with social isolation. Many of my clients who are alone, state that aloneness because they are not in a romantic relationship. They may be single but have friends. Even if they have friends, they feel alone but not socially isolated. While my other clients will feel both alone and social isolation.
Social isolation is an objective state in which we have limited social connection and interactions. This can be quite common from clients that move to Singapore for a job. They may move here without a partner. It can be especially challenge if the work they do is more isolating and doesn’t have a job.
While loneliness is a subjective state in which the person feels socially and/or emotionally disconnected from the people around them. I have many clients that have strong networks of friends. They are integrated with their colleagues at work. However, they feel profoundly lonely.
Social isolation doesn’t necessarily mean lonely and lonely people are not socially isolated. It can be quite confusing. Which one applies to you?
Loneliness often has more to do with early childhood experiences and lack of understanding oneself. Therefore, when a person is lonely, applying more people to sooth the loneliness doesn’t always work. It may work in the short-term, but not the long term.
One problem is that relying on people to sooth your loneliness isn’t reliable. People can be busy or have other priorities now you need them. If you rely too much on people to sooth your loneliness, you may be a risk to lower your standards or boundaries of who or what you are willing to do to be with someone.
The key way to address loneliness is to develop yourself emotionally and developmentally. If you are not ready to do therapy, starting to explore who you are is important. That is why in previous blogs I’m so focused on helping people find new experiences and develop passions and purposes. The more we know who we are and what we like and what we stand for, the more grounded we become. The more grounded we become, the better we feel.
So, focusing on figuring out who you are, what you like, what you don’t like and what you stand for is such an important part of developing yourself and combatting loneliness.
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