2105: Why We Feel Lonely and What (Not) to Do About It by Dr. Kelly Flanagan on Understanding Loneliness & The Human Experience

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[00:00:58] This is Optimal Relationships Daily, Episode 21-05. Why we feel lonely and what's not to

[00:01:05] do about it? By Dr. Kelly Flanagan of Dr. Kelly Flanagan.com. Hello, everybody. Happy

[00:01:12] Sunday and thank you so much for tuning into O.R.D. once again. I'm your host, Greg

[00:01:17] Audino. And today I'll be sharing an article for you covering loneliness which is a topic

[00:01:23] I really enjoy reading about and sharing with you and also discussing myself as I will

[00:01:28] in my commentary afterwards. So be sure to hang around for that. And for now let's

[00:01:32] hear this article from Dr. Kelly Flanagan as we optimize your life.

[00:01:40] Why we feel lonely and what's not to do about it? By Dr. Kelly Flanagan of Dr. Kelly

[00:01:46] Flanagan.com.

[00:01:47] In 2017, I published a book called Lovable. It's a book about the healing of our shame

[00:01:55] which is the belief we all pick up somewhere along the way that we are not good enough

[00:01:59] to be loved as we are. Not worthy of companionship if you will.

[00:02:04] I wrote the book because I'd spent almost three decades becoming ashamed and almost

[00:02:08] a full decade becoming more aware of it and more free from it. However, following the

[00:02:14] book's publication I discovered something a little disconcerting. Though my shame was

[00:02:19] shrinking, my loneliness was still lurking. For a while this confused me. I'd been telling

[00:02:26] myself that shame and loneliness were essentially the same thing and I assumed as one decreased

[00:02:32] the other would decrease as well. Perplexed, I bought a bunch of books about loneliness written

[00:02:38] by authors I respect. In the hopes of understanding why my shame seemed to be diminishing, while

[00:02:44] my loneliness seemed to be thriving. The reading didn't help. In fact, most of what I read

[00:02:49] also lumped shame and loneliness together by describing loneliness as an experience which

[00:02:54] invariably feels shameful. Then one day, I finally came across the answer I was looking

[00:03:00] for in a book I already owned. In fact, at the time, I owned almost 100 of them. The

[00:03:07] book was lovable. In it, I had written, loneliness happens. It is as much a part of life as hunger

[00:03:14] and sunsets and funerals. It is simply what happens when we grow up and realize we have

[00:03:20] a universe inside of us to which no other person has access and that every other person contains

[00:03:25] an unknowable universe as well. At some deeper level, apparently, I had known all along

[00:03:32] that, though we tend to lump shame and loneliness together in our minds, they exist separately

[00:03:37] somewhere at the heart of us. Lovable reminded me once again, loneliness is not an artifact

[00:03:44] of our woundedness. Loneliness is a fact of our humaneness. We can have family at home

[00:03:50] and friends in our neighborhood and followers online and still feel lonely because loneliness

[00:03:56] is a constant, even in the midst of a crowd and feeling lonely is merely a glimpse of that

[00:04:02] constant. When you feel lonely for a time, it is your loneliness surfacing and then settling

[00:04:08] into the depths again. It doesn't mean you're paying a price for something. It simply means

[00:04:13] you're paying attention. So why do we commonly lump loneliness and shame together as if they

[00:04:19] are one and the same? Because we're looking for explanations. I have a friend who, as an

[00:04:25] adolescent, told his mother he was going to a friend's house and went to an arcade instead.

[00:04:30] When he got home, the tokens jingling in his pocket gave him away, and his mother began

[00:04:35] chasing him around the house with a ruler. My friend had been prepared to get grounded

[00:04:40] for his deception but getting hit for the transgression had never crossed his mind. So he dodged and laughed,

[00:04:47] thinking his mother must be feigning her rage. Out of breath, his mother called his father

[00:04:52] into the room. My friend expected his father to be more measured. Instead, his father

[00:04:57] backhanded him across the face. His cheek stung but the three words inside of his head

[00:05:02] stung even more. It's just me, he thought. In other words, what brings me joy brings them

[00:05:10] rage. What I think warrants punishment to them warrants pain. I'm all by myself. I'm

[00:05:17] all alone. In the sharp sting of skin on skin, the fact of his loneliness rushed to the surface

[00:05:24] of him. Like abandonment, abuse has a way of suddenly bringing our attention to this in a reality.

[00:05:31] Indeed any experience which reminds us that no one else is seeing the world through our eyes

[00:05:36] can trigger awareness of our loneliness. However, our minds aren't satisfied with this awareness.

[00:05:44] Our minds are meaning-making machines. They want an explanation. They want to know why we've

[00:05:49] been abandoned or mistreated or misunderstood. Our minds ask, why do I feel so lonely?

[00:05:57] Shame is happy to provide the answer. The voice of shame within us and perhaps even the voices

[00:06:03] of shame around us tell us we are feeling lonely because we deserve to be alone.

[00:06:09] Shame tells us no one can hear us shouting for help because we aren't shouting loudly enough

[00:06:14] or pleasingly enough, or articulately enough, or simply that we aren't worth saving.

[00:06:20] Shame tells us we got slapped because our sense of justice is wrong or weird or bad.

[00:06:26] Here's a simple way to expose the difference between your loneliness and your shame.

[00:06:31] Complete the following sentence. I feel lonely because

[00:06:35] fill in the blank. Shame is often everything that comes after the word because.

[00:06:40] Shame is believing your loneliness is a consequence for how badly or strangely you were made.

[00:06:46] Shame is weaponized loneliness. You and I, we may never totally get rid of our shame,

[00:06:52] but we can't tell it to keep its hands off our loneliness. Thank you very much.

[00:06:57] Don't let your shame write the story about why your loneliness has surfaced.

[00:07:02] Try not to add a because to any moment in which you become aware of your loneliness.

[00:07:07] Your shame may pipe up within you, but recognize it for what it is.

[00:07:12] Don't let it ramble on for too long. Tell it you're not looking for explanations.

[00:07:17] Tell it you already trust the only real explanation. You are lonely because you are human.

[00:07:23] Then your shame will shrink a little more. And finally, you can be a little more alone with

[00:07:29] your loneliness. It's so much quieter that way. It's the kind of quiet that can transform you.

[00:07:39] You just listened to the post titled Why We Feel Lonely and What Not To Do About It

[00:07:45] by Dr. Kelly Flanagan of Dr. Kelly Flanagan.com and be sure to stick around for my commentary

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[00:10:19] And thanks so much to Dr. Kelly for this post. I always love reading the author's

[00:10:24] takes on loneliness. You know, to me it's always seemed to be misunderstood. And it's really

[00:10:30] interesting to hear experts make sense of it or try to. And I love what Dr. Kelly had to say about

[00:10:35] how to some degree, it's just an inevitable part of being human. To me, notions like that help

[00:10:43] to reframe loneliness. You know, we may never find someone who will understand us as deeply as we

[00:10:48] understand ourselves. That's true. But we are all bonded by that fact. There's community in that.

[00:10:56] There are many people in the world who are pained by how lonely they feel. There's also community

[00:11:01] in that, right? A massive group of people going through a similar experience that either haven't

[00:11:06] met one another or just haven't connected over that particular struggle yet even though they all

[00:11:10] face it. So there's so much about loneliness that's actually really communal enough to make one

[00:11:17] argue enough to make me argue that many of our darker interpretations of loneliness are actually

[00:11:23] really illusory. So today, I dare you to look at your feelings of loneliness a little bit differently

[00:11:30] see if you can find the togetherness in it. I'll leave you to it as we wrap things up for now

[00:11:34] everybody. Thank you so much for tuning in and making this episode possible. Enjoy the rest of your

[00:11:39] weekend and do be sure to come back and start a new week with us tomorrow where your optimal life

[00:11:44] awaits.