Dealing With Loneliness

Written By Don Shetterly

Recently I was reading the blog post that Jody wrote for her column on loneliness.  It is a topic that is near and dear to my heart as well.  I've struggled with loneliness all my life, and she is so right that Loneliness Can Break Your Heart.


I remember being in one of my grade school years and we were shown some movie about a little kid who was a loner.  I don't remember the name of the film.  I barely recall what the movie was about.

However, I remember one scene in particular that stands out in my mind.  The little boy was getting on the school bus and looking for anyone to see him off, talk to him, or act like he existed.  The look on his face was loneliness.  The little kid was a loner.

Somehow out of that movie, I learned that being a loner could kill you.  Again, I can't remember the entire movie, but that stuck in my mind all these years.  I know I've read other things about loneliness.  There was a song that someone sang in church one time when I was a kid that was titled, "Lonely Voices."

Even in a crowd of people, I can feel lonely.  In a group of close friends, I can feel alone.  I struggle with loneliness because it seems that it permeates every part of my life.

It has gotten a little better over the years, but I still long for being alone.  I could be one of those people like Grizzly Adams that lived out in the woods.  Yet, as much as I like being alone, I do like to be around people.  I love to help people.  I care about people.

Maybe it was because I was hurt so badly as a child being sexually abused and tortured.  Maybe it is that I never learned how to be around others because we were controlled and isolated as kids.

I know that there are lonely people out there and I desperately wish I could wave a magic wand and make it all better.   It is something we all have to work through if we are faced with loneliness, but I can tell you from first-hand experience, it isn't always easy for me.

Fortunately, there is support through friends that understand.  There are special connections online that can help.  Pets and animals make a world of difference for me.

Even if I feel alone, I know I am not.  There are people who care about me and love me, even if I can't always see it.  It is important to keep that in mind because loneliness is the jail we put ourselves in.  We alone can unlock it because we hold the key.

Make sure you check out Jody's post on Loneliness Can Break Your Heart.

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Blog Post And Images (c) 2017 by Don Shetterly

• Permission required before any part of this blog post is reprinted, reworded or used in any form. 
• You are welcomed to share the LINK to this blog post.  

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Loneliness Can Break Your Heart

(by Jody, Mental Health Matters)

We all need human contact. Human beings are social creatures by nature and although isolation is a comfort for many, human communication is vital to survival. Isolation, in many cases, leads to a deep sense of loneliness which is such an overwhelming feeling.

You feel like you have no one and nothing, and will do almost anything not to have to feel it. It is like you are drowning in a lake with people in sight but no one close enough to throw you a line.  That is the worst kind of loneliness.

Feeling like this is not only emotionally devastating but research is showing that loneliness and social isolation can impact a person’s health, causing problems ranging from high blood pressure and obesity to heart disease and stroke,  much the same as anxiety and depression. Some researchers have indicated the increased rate of illness as high as 30%.

It could be because people who feel alone are generally isolated and tend to take poorer care of themselves. They have worse diets, generally not enough sleep or exercise and are more prone to not sticking to their medication routine or doctor’s appointments.

After all, when you are alone, you are reliant on your own motivation, and let’s be honest, when you are feeling that low, self-motivation is a near impossibility. Top that off with the depression or anxiety or whatever other mental health issue you are dealing with and the cumulative of those factors could drive up blood pressure which could in turn lead to heart issues.

Loneliness is an independent condition, even though one condition may affect the other. So for example it you were treated for depression or anxiety, the symptoms of those may dissipate but that does not mean the loneliness does.

There have been studies on the biological effects of loneliness, particularly on the stress hormone cortisol, as well as the link tied to hardening of the arteries which also leads to high blood pressure and increases risk of heart disease and stroke.  Researchers define loneliness as the gap between a person's desired and actual social relationships  and chronic loneliness can wreak havoc on your blood vessels and heart by undermining regulation of the circulatory system so the heart works harder and the blood vessels become more subject to damage.

Though they may not be aware of it, lonely people tend to perceive social interactions as more negative and threatening than others do, leaving our brains on constant alert for social threats. This persistent state of stress affects the cardiovascular system. Studies have found that people who were less socially connected had higher blood pressure as well as higher levels of inflammation markers in their blood, while others suggested that the risk of solitude is comparable to that posed by high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and even smoking.

Loneliness and isolation also appear to take a toll on a person’s lifespan, with some research suggesting that the increased risk for heart attack, angina or death by heart disease is 30%, and the increased risk for stroke by 32%, for both men and women.

So as much as your illness is telling you to isolate and feeding into your feelings of loneliness, try and fight it the best you can. Try to allow yourself a small support group, be it with friends or family or even in the online world. Sometimes the company of a distant stranger is welcome; non-judgmental support from people who may be struggling with loneliness can be as well. Not only is it important for our mental health, but as studies may be proving… loneliness can literally break your heart.

Being alone can break your heart——literally.


- Jody (Jody's Blog)

Read all of Jody's Columnist Posts

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Jody

Guest Blogger
Writer
Survivor, Warrior, Conqueror

Visit Jody's website at

Jodyb2016 Wordpress

  

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Blog Post And Images (c) 2017 by Don Shetterly and Jody

• Permission required before any part of this blog post is reprinted, reworded or used in any form. 
• You are welcomed to share the LINK to this blog post.  

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Lonely Voices

These days, it seems like everyone is screaming.  It seems to me like there are far too many lonely voices out there just wanting to be heard, wanting for someone to care and to show they care.

We are surrounded by all this social media and we're constantly connected, but there is a void that I think everyone feels.  The void of having that personal one-on-one interaction with someone.  It is the part where you know someone cares about you and you care about someone.  It is the part where there is physical interaction, not just words on a screen.

Modern day communication isn't necessarily a bad thing, but we've let it become our sole source of communication.  We've let it rule our world.  It is like we stare at our phones all the time as if nothing else matters.  It is a lonely voice.

If you're one that can put the phone down, I give you big bunches of kudos. However, I think most of us feel like we're not tied to our phones and social media, even if we are.  We tend to think we have our lives under control, when we may just likely be one of the lonely voices.  Most of us would be horrified to put our phone down and walk away from it for a few hours or a day.

All you have to do is take an account of how often you reach for your phone rather than physically stop to talk to someone or sit outside with the birds.  Can you honestly put the phone down and walk away from it for an hour or two or even a day?  If not, you may want to notice that give it some time for evaluation.

You can see the lonely voices walking around the city as you observe just how much everyone looks at their phones.  The fingers are flying as they communicate, but they miss that voice.  They miss that energetic connection.  They miss that body language.  Communication has been reduced to a single-flat-lining moment.  There is no depth to it.

Let us learn how to balance and modulate our phone devices, because if we don't, we will become a lonely voice - calling out for attention and love and care.   After all, loneliness is pretty harmful to the brain.

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Blog Post And Images (c) 2016 by Don Shetterly

• Permission required before any part of this blog post is reprinted, reworded or used in any form. 
• You are welcomed to share the LINK to this blog post.  

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Loneliness And The Brain

This is definitely something I struggle with in my own life.  Loneliness is not easy to overcome and I've fought it as far back as I can remember.  There are several factors in my own life why loneliness is such an issue for me.

I wish I could remember the name of a film we watched in grade school many years ago.  I don't recall much of it now because I was so young at the time, but I really identified with the kid in the film.  For some reason, the thought I came away from it and remembered was that you could die if you were lonely.  Now, I'm not so sure that was the intent of the film, but it is what my mind remembers.

Growing up in my family, I was often thrown to the side for various reasons.  There is the time that my mom chose my dad over me when he had hepatitis in the hospital and for some reason I was in the hospital being taken care of by nurses.  Also, the times where I got locked in a closet by a babysitter so she didn't have to worry about me.  My brothers also stole the show and caused my parents to spend more time with them, leaving me to fend for myself and figure life out on my own.

The chaos of our house made it difficult to form relationships in the family because if you weren't getting abused, molested, or tortured, you were tip-toeing around on eggshells trying to not be noticed.  In addition, we moved so many times before I graduated from high school that I barely had a best friend for very long.  I was taught to not trust friends because then they might learn the family secrets.

All of these things made loneliness one of my best companions.  Yes, I had my dogs and cats, but they too were killed and removed from me by the monsters in my life.  I had my sheep and hogs in high school, but there would always be some reason that my parents would come up with to get rid of them.

To this day, I struggle with loneliness.  I have very few true friends and one of them that I had known almost the longest passed away from pneumonia.  I'm so afraid that everyone I know will either leave me, find an excuse to avoid me, or will end up dying and not be there for me.  I'm being brutally honest here because this is what I experience.

Reading the article from the work that John Cacioppo is doing on loneliness, was something refreshing for me to read.  I did not realize anyone was even looking at the topic. In his work at the University of Chicago, he looks at what happens to the brain when the social connections are missing.

One of the points that he makes is you can have too many social connections.  If you have too many, it can end up being that many of these connections are not motivated by the right things.  Sometimes fewer connections are better. 

I find it amazing that 25% of Americans according to his book have no confidant at all in their life.  While it is hard to determine how many confidants are ideal, one is better than zero and two is better than one.

Even being a client of a professional therapist is not enough.  It may provide a person that is someone you can confide in, but it is a one-way street.  It doesn't allow you to have that rich reciprocal bond.  It takes a two-way relationship for our connection to be strong and effective.

According to John Cacioppo's research, one in four people regularly feel lonely.  Chronic loneliness increases the odds of an early death by 20%.  Loneliness decreases the effectiveness of sleep.

In the article, Loneliness Is Like An Iceberg, just putting lonely people together does not work because it confuses the idea of loneliness with the fact of being alone.  Just focusing on social skills is not going to do too much because a lonely person is focused on self-preservation.  It is not the answer to just give lonely people support of the people around them because it takes reciprocal connections.

The one treatment that did seem to help was changing how lonely people think about other people.  Helping them to understand what happens when their brain goes into self-preservation mode is an effective way for helping give lonely people a chance at overcoming this struggle.

Too often in our world, we want to run over those that seem weaker or who are more outcast.  Instead of getting to know them and understand what makes them tick, we sentence them to a life of loneliness.  When you combine that with loss and trauma in the life of a lonely person, you're only casting them to the outer darkness of society.

I believe these are important conversations to have because if we want to survive as a species on this planet, we cannot go through life ignoring the people who are lonely.  We need to be a species that you don't house alone, but that you put together for the greater good of society and our planet.

As I stated in the beginning, I still struggle with the issue of loneliness and I feel all alone.

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Blog Post And Images (c) 2016 by Don Shetterly

• Permission required before any part of this blog post is reprinted, reworded or used in any form. 
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Biological Family Connections

For those that know me, family is a very difficult subject for me in my life. Some days I have wondered how I was born into the family I was. For a long time, I really wondered if somehow I was switched at birth.

Except for my mom, I have very little in common with my family. Yes, we do share some of the biological and upbringing traits but outside of that, my concept of what life is all about seems to be miles apart from those in my family.

I was the middle of three boys born into a family of turmoil and abuse at the hands of my father and continued with my older brother among other various participants in life. Boundaries were nonexistent, lives were controlled and manipulated at home and church, while fear and torment were our closest allies. When my father wasn't screaming at us, my two brothers were going at each other's throats.

While I do remember more than sometimes I really want to remember, much of my past I have blocked out. In 2002, my mom was killed in a car accident and since that time, I really do feel as if I am on my own, separated in life. Because of what my older brother and father did to not only me but to my younger brother, the family bonds are non existent.

Before my Mom died, I had not been able to speak with her for 10 years. My younger brother and I give the appearance that we've been able to talk but we both know that it is nothing more than damaged threads of communication.

There are the relatives that do say hi from time to time and are friendly but of course, they seem like mere strangers that I have faintly become acquainted with. One cousin seems to ignore me for the most part which I am sure is in part due to her religious practices. Other cousins on both sides of the family are ones that I know very little about and if I walked by them tomorrow, I would not even know it.

I know I'm not alone out there as many people have suffered through some horrible family moments in their own lives. Some days it does hurt as I'm sure others will attest to. There seems to be no way to ever replace the biological ties of the family you were born in to when you entered this world. You can do many things to help make up for the losses but that biological family connection is one that cannot be replaced.

Some days, it feels pretty lonely in life and because of some of what I've been through, I fear that others in my life will disappear or leave me or tell me they no longer want anything to do with me. I find it difficult at times in life to wonder if people that I trust really mean well or are they just using me, as it once again reminds me of days gone by where you could trust no one. By trusting no one, I refer to my parents, the baby sitter, the creepy guy in church, my teachers and my family.

I know I have come so many miles in this journey but there are days when it is difficult beyond comprehension. There are days that I question everything and head for my bunker in the ground. I so badly wish that I could sever the biological connections as if they had never been there in the first place. Yet, I know that to do this, I would be claiming the impossible.

Life will continue to go on no matter how difficult my moments get. I seem to have a never ending supply of courage and determination. If only my energy and resolve and confidence could keep up, I would greatly be propelled along in life. In many ways, I don't fully understand all that my journey has for me to walk through but I know or at least I hope I will know that one day as I look back, this will all make sense to me!




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