Loneliness Hurts Like Hell

To this day, I can clearly remember opening the door to my barely furnished apartment at 16 years old. As the key clicked left, I held my breath to prepare for that sinking feeling of loneliness. It was more like a gut-punch. In the most frank terms, loneliness fucking sucks. And it hurts like hell too. As much as you want to ignore it or deny it, it’s part of our human experience. And for some, like me, it can flare up like a bad case of acne-not so easy to cover up.

During my junior year of high school, I was prematurely launched into adulthood when my father decided to live full-time on the other side of the world in Kazakhstan. Tough scenario for a juniorespecially when cell-phones were a luxury item. It was just me, my tv, and homework after school.

I still remember eating bags of Rold Gold Pretzel Thins for dinner as a teen, knowing that the emptiness I felt was more unhealthy than the empty carbs. To be honest, it felt so unfair. But I forged through it. Yet, somehow that deep wounding has seemed to follow me into my adulthood. Some call it a “pain point.” To me, it’s more like an old scar- it’s been there for a while, sometimes you forget about it , but it just doesn't go away.

Originally, my father was only supposed to work in Kazakhstan for a few months. At first, I moved in with my 20 year old brother in North Carolina and my dad would visit every three months. Then my brother needed to finish college in Florida. I was then given the option of boarding school or living with “Lisa,” a former client from my dad’s hair salon (I guess boundaries or consistency were not necessarily modeled in my childhood).

Lisa was like an adoptive mother between step-moms who in a way found a rent-adaughter in me for the weekends. Let’s just say this relationship can be a bit complicated at times. It’s more of a blurry boundary issue that comes up for me. Regardless, when it was agreed that I would live with Lisa and her husband, Rob (who never wanted kids) I was relieved that I would at least get to live in Texas again.

However, that plan quickly turned south after a year. After many marital arguments between Lisa and Rob over having a teen living in their home it was decided for me to move out. The next best option was to live in a small apartment near the high school where all my childhood friends attended.

Wait. That's not even nearly half of the truth. What was really going on-was that my dad was living his best life as a single guy in Almaty, being a total narcissist, and selfishly enjoyed not having any kids to worry about. He wanted his freedom after being a single dad for so long. He thought that I would be fine living with family friends. Looking for a proper boarding school never really crossed his mind. So he basically dumped his parental responsibility onto the first person who was volunteering to take over.

I can’t blame Lisa because I’ve changed my narrative and the meaning I give my story. And after years of personal therapy, grief work, and spiritual healing--I don’t even blame my father anymore. Call it dharma, destiny, fate, or just plain life-- these early challenges, sense of abandonment and loss, and early introduction to loneliness; were all a part of my character development. Those life experiences and relationships have helped me be a more empathic therapist, mom, and wife. Not always, because I have my “off” days where I regress back to that scared and needy 3 year old or that angry and resentful 16 year-old. Yet, today I see that being exposed to loneliness at various developmental stages of my life, laid out the foundation for this book. Ultimately, I have learned so much more about something so personal yet widely universal.

According to a survey conducted by Cigna in 2018, three out of 5 adults in America, or 61%, reported that they sometimes or always feel lonely. Cigna’s survey showed that our loneliest population is our youngest adults, the “Z” generation, ages 18- 22 years old. I would argue that as early as 15, teens are starting to feel their first pangs of loneliness without even understanding what it really is. Most teens and young adults don’t realize that they are lonely.

The worst type of loneliness is when you can’t put your finger on what’s “wrong” while you’re surrounded by people, friends, family, or even strangers. Sometimes you just feel “stuck,” or invisible and disconnected. Like no one really knows you or has a clue of how much you are struggling inside. There are so many masks and personas that we hold up to cover our psychological pain. And the more we try to hide it, the more it breeds.

The pandemic magnified the pain of loneliness that so many of us have been feeling for a long time. In order to get to the solution end of this problem, I would like to first start off by trying to disarm the shame that comes with it.

The Shame of Loneliness

No one likes to admit that they’re lonely, it’s like a character flaw. For some reason we are quick to blame ourselves that the reason we feel lonely is that we are unlovable or somehow damaged goods, or we just don’t fit it. These are stories we tell ourselves in an attempt to make sense of something that feels so shameful.

So let’s begin by making more room for the actual emotion of shame. Defined as self-conscious emotion, shame gives us information about an internal state of not feeling enough, unworthiness, regret, or disconnection. Shame is an internal notification that our wellbeing and intrinsic need for connection has been interrupted. Another person or set of circumstances can trigger shame in us, but so can a sense of failure to meet our own expectations or societal standards.

However shame grabs you, it’s not a pleasant feeling. I usually get that horrible sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. My shoulders slouch, my face feels flushed, and I just want to crawl under a huge rock and hide. It sucks.

Research explains this physical urge for self-protection: The experience of shame recruits the same brain circuits that prompt people to hide from physical danger. Shame isn’t really associated with logic or cognition. It’s more of an emotional hijack, that triggers your amygdala while clicking the offline switch for your prefrontal cortex. What that means is all logical and abstract thinking goes out the door, your emotional brain gets flooded with anxiety and fear, and your amygdala sirens off the alarm to your primitive brain that there’s a real threat detected.

So basically, our human instinct to survive kicks off an automatic urge to hide and protect ourselves when we feel shame. This is a specific kind of stress on the body and mind. It can activate immediate and long-term biological changes. Intense experiences of shame, which some therapists call a “shame attack,” while I call it a “shit storm,” can produce immediate physical changes in your brain associated with a fear response.

Experts say shame often leads to a “sunken” body posture, head down, shoulders slouched, and other body language of wanting to disappear. This type of stress response is so immediate that it can also lead to common tell-tale symptoms of sympathetic activation, like blushing cheeks, increased body temperature, sweating, or queasiness.

One way that you can learn to better manage symptoms of shame and loneliness, while keeping your brain in shape is using boxed breathing. Think of a four-sided box, and each side you will utilize as a prompt for inhaling and exhaling. Try my brain health tip below:

Brain Health Fitness Tip: 4 step box breathing

1. Start by inhaling for 4 seconds, imagining you are tracing the top of the box with your breath.

2. Hold your breath for 4 seconds, as you continue tracing the next side of the box in your imagination.

3. Now, exhale it all out for 4 seconds, as you continue tracing the imaginary box.

4. And then inhaling again for 4 seconds, as you complete tracing the box.

Repeat.

Written By: Sylvia Kalicinski LMFT, PhD

Dr. Sylvia K is currently the lead clinical therapist at Mount Sinai Medical Center and runs her private practice in Miami Beach - where she serves individuals from all backgrounds. As a child of immigrant parents with their own mental health issues, Sylvia understands the uniqueness of each family’s story and the adversities that so many of us face today. Even though loneliness is a personal topic - it’s widely universal. Sylvia’s approach, turns complex human issues into a conversation that we all need to be having right now.