Two years ago, my feelings of loneliness hit its peak.
Fresh out of secondary school, with the scars of being treated badly by many of my schoolmates and classmates still hurting, I started my journey in Junior College (JC) with the hope that I could make a fresh start, but with the pressure to appear or be perceived as a guy who was popular, had many friends and a good social life. I even once told myself that I wanted my social awkwardness out of my life for good.
I recall freaking out a few days before the first day of JC in my mind because I didn’t have enough followers on Instagram and wanted to look like the "cool guy who had a good social life".
About a month into JC, I heard about streaks on Snapchat - a function that counts the number of consecutive days you and your friends send each other direct snaps. The number resets to zero if either party doesn't send the other a direct snap for one day. Almost all my classmates and schoolmates were using it and I couldn’t help but want to jump on the bandwagon. It seemed trendy, cool and a way for me to fit in and improve my social life.
But there came a problem - I didn’t have many or very long streaks and seeing others have so many more and so much longer streaks would overwhelm me with envy and the impression that they were having better social lives than me, as well as thinking that everyone had more friends and that I was just an island. I also got so angry with my schoolmates who didn’t reply to my snaps and there was once when I was on holiday in England that I suddenly started crying over not having sufficiently long streaks - something that I shouldn’t be worrying about while on holiday.
That is only one part of my story, but my main point is that loneliness is something that many of us struggle with, and it can be really damaging. Even more alarming is the fact that it is on the rise and more than 20 percent of adults in the US and UK report that they feel lonely, lack companionship, or feel left out or isolated.
But in the first place, how do people become lonely?
Of course, there are ways that are quite common and expected, such as people who live alone and elderly people who have lost their spouse.
But here's a catch - even having more of what we want in our lives can make us lonely. You can be married and lonely at the same time. You can have many friends and still be lonely. You can be rich yet lonely. And yes, this happens more often than not.
How is that possible?
First and foremost, it is important to know that being alone and being lonely are two different things. Being alone is a state of not having anyone physically around you, while loneliness is a feeling. In fact, people who are in solitude may not feel lonely and vice versa.
From this, we can identify one cause of loneliness: poor quality of friendships or relationships. We may be surrounded by many friends, but if the friendships are superficial or if we feel that we cannot connect with them, we definitely won't feel comfortable in social situations in the long run. Yes, we may think "oh, I have so many friends", but just how long does that last? Even if we have a partner or many friends, we still feel extremely empty when the meaning, closeness and emotional connection are lacking, or if the activities that we are engaging in are void of value or have insufficient social interaction.
Ironically, making more friends could end up making us feel even more lonely. We may be physically around others more, but are our minds with them or elsewhere? Connecting with others is easy - most people don't find it difficult to say, "Hey dude, nice to meet ya, what's your name?" However, deepening a friendship or relationship isn’t and takes a lot of time and effort. When we are hungry, we open the fridge and eat whatever is in there, even if it is junk food. It satisfies you hunger immediately, but could cause health problems in the long-run if done in excess. Likewise, if we just connect with any Tom, Dick and Harry without being selective, just for the sake of filling a void in our lives, it makes us feel secure in the short-run, but more often than not, the relationships will end up being shallow and you will feel even more lonely.
What could be even worse is if there is a lot of toxicity in a relationship or a friendship. Engaging in activities like bad mouthing someone may seem appealing on the surface, but friendships built on that are less likely to last. Even worse, someone may be trying to control you - they may use manipulative tactics such as deliberately making you feel guilty, vulnerable or weak.
Another common cause of loneliness could be unconstructive comparison to others' lives, and a large part of that could come through social media.
In my previous article about social media, I mentioned that it breeds a culture of unhealthy (and unfair) comparison of your life to that of others. Seeing others having fun with friends or partying at clubs could make you feel lonely because you may feel as though they have more enjoyment in life than you do. Many of us also want to have more followers or likes, and seeing others having more of such could potentially make us feel jealous and think we have less in our lives than them.
However, it is important to be discerning when we use social media. In fact, I also mentioned that people who are less satisfied with their lives tend to post happier posts because they need the likes and followers as validation, and that is what makes them feel more secure about their lives. Having many likes gives them the false impression that people approve of their lives and like what they see, when the people who like the posts may just be mindlessly double-tapping.
On the other hand, truly happy people are less likely to see the need to post because they are sufficiently satisfied with their lives, and hence do not need to have likes as validation. In fact, even if they gain joy from seeing their number of likes rise, the joy is only short-term and the feelings of dissatisfaction will resurface after some time. No amount of likes or attention can replace people who sincerely love you and
care for you in your life.
On a personal note, the process for me works like this - and I believe it works for many other people as well.
Feel bored. Open Instagram. Look at my friends' Insta-stories. See some of them having fun. Feel down because others are having more fun than me. Think to myself, “Oh, I need to hang out with my friends more! Oh, I'm so lonely! Oh, I don't even have a life!”
It doesn’t always work like this, but that's how my mind works on a bad day.
It is very tempting to open social media when we are bored because it feeds our desire for instant gratification and we have the fear of missing out on knowing what's going on in others' lives. However, is it really worth it if seeing others having fun makes us feel so drained? In fact, we need to be more discerning when we use it; what we see isn’t what actually goes on in others’ lives. Only the good is shown on their Instagram feeds, while there could be so many bad things going on behind what you see on the account.
As such, posting happy posts when you’re feeling lonely is not necessarily a good idea because it only gives you a short-term and false sense of security. You get trapped in a vicious cycle; you feel lonely and crave attention and validation, and then you post, then you feel happy because you see the number of likes rise, but after a while you feel lonely again and hence resort to posting more pictures - causing the content on your social media account to drift further and further away from your real life in the process.
So, you may wonder, how can we make ourselves feel less lonely?
It isn't as simple as scheduling more meetups or rushing into a relationship. If loneliness could be cured like that, it would not exist. Even if we have more friends around us, we may still feel empty if the activities we are engaging in lacks meaning. As for those who want to have a relationship because of loneliness, being in a relationship isn't perfect and it won't solve all your problems. In fact, there is a higher chance of a relationship being built on superficial means if one rushes into it (and a higher chance of it ending as well), rather than if one gradually develops himself or herself before getting into a relationship.
There are two main ways of reducing our loneliness - surrounding ourselves with like-minded people and learning to enjoy being alone.
But in the first place, how do we find like-minded people?
Firstly, we can join a community, class or group. It can be anything that we enjoy - yoga, kayaking, painting, musical instruments, cooking and many others. When we join such a class, the people there are likely to have similar interests, who in turn are more likely to show similar personality traits and ones whom you can connect with. Of course, we may have to start with small talk, but we shouldn't discount the value of it as it may end up leading to a more personal conversation and talking about more meaningful stuff. It is indeed necessary because it helps you “warm up” in a conversation with a new person, and in turn gives the other person the signal you are interested to find out more about them, which would encourage them to open up as well.
In school or at work, we can’t really choose who are our classmates or colleagues. Hence, it is essential to filter out those people whom we can emotionally connect with and feel more comfortable around. Spending more quality time with them or talking to them more would be a good start, and being around the right people is so important for our emotional well-being. As for the others we cannot connect with as well, we don’t have to kick them out of our lives, but they just need not be such close friends and may just want to distance ourselves from them a bit.
It is important to remember not to be fooled or blinded by thoughts of wanting to be free from loneliness immediately, which would make you want to cling on to those shallow or toxic relationships. We often cling on to toxic friendships or relationships because we don’t want to face the reality that we are so much better off without the toxic person. However, we need to learn to let go and realise that our emotional well-being is way more important than having more people in our lives. When we're around people, it's about the depth and value of the friendships, and not about the numbers.
The other way is to enjoy being alone. Go and walk in the park alone. Watch a movie alone. Go shopping alone. It is beautiful.
Remember, there isn’t anything wrong with being alone. Other people may think “this guy is such a loner” or “that fellow’s forever alone”, but why should we care about what they think? If you’re happy on the inside, no one can take that happiness away from you.
Contrary to popular belief, being alone can actually be really enjoyable and beneficial. We can't always be with people and sometimes, constantly engaging in chatter and laughter with others can make us feel drained. Hence, we need the me-time to recharge. More importantly, being alone allows us to reflect on our lives and goals, and enables us to look inwards and discover the greatness within us. In turn, this could make us happier - both when we are around others and when we are alone. Being around others can give us joy because when we appreciate ourselves more, we will naturally notice and appreciate the good things in our relationships with others that we once didn't notice. We will also be happier when we are alone because we don't need validation from others. Knowing ourselves better allows us to know our strengths and trust ourselves more and hence require less recognition or acknowledgement from others.
When we are alone, checking social media or our text messages may not be the best idea, because it may make us feel bad about being alone. We keep yearning for 24/7 attention, and checking social media and getting constant texts grants us this craving. However, seeing others having fun or not having instant text messages could make us feel worse, and may prompt us to engage in meaningless chatter or pretend to be someone we are not so as to get more attention - which will in turn lead to us losing our own sense of identity.
This photo goes to show that even if we may get instant gratification from likes or messages if we try to get attention from dressing up and deliberately being funny, we risk losing our sense of identity and fail to realise that the joy from these likes or messages are only short-lived.
In conclusion, loneliness isn’t something that can be resolved so easily by simply “hitting more people up” or having more connections. The depth of the connections is what matters more than the number of friends you have. In fact, the term “friends” has a spectrum - it can range from acquaintances to close friends, and the emotional connection in each friendship differs. Learning to appreciate the time we have alone is also very important, and is needed to complement deep connections because we can neither be alone 24/7 or around people 24/7.
We must remember that we can’t keep giving in to our instant gratification. We always want something going on in our lives or someone with us, but we must learn to be content with nothing at times and that shallow connections won’t do us any good in the long-run. Having meaningful silence is better than meaningless talk, and one deep connection is much better than hundreds of superficial ones.
Regarding social media, it may not be a bad idea to reduce the time you spend on it if it makes you feel lonely and moody when you see others having fun. It is very easy to open it when we are feeling bored, but we must remember not to fall into the trap of unhealthy comparison.
I still struggle with loneliness at times, but rather than just messaging friends about “How’s the weather?” or sending them something they may not be particularly interested (and seeing them not reply me makes me feel even worse), I try to build a meaningful conversation with them and share about a reflection or realisation, or just more meaningful stuff in general. I also try to remind myself when I see others having fun on social media or having a lot of likes and comments that it’s not the most important thing in life; rather, life is about finding the right people and being yourself - which makes me want to remind myself about the people who truly care about me and were there for me in my toughest moments.
To sum up, we need to disconnect to connect. Disconnecting from social media will connect us emotionally with others, and disconnecting from others when we need me-time is important so that we can discover the best version of ourselves and ultimately improve our relationships.
Links:
Photo links:
Comments