Treatment of loneliness

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None psychoanalytic a study of shame is not nearly as inspiring as a drama in verse about a man talented, fearless, incorruptible, with only one flaw - that he considered all his qualities to be nothing compared to the size of his nose. Shame gave him additional motivation to prove himself, and probably the necessary anger, but above all else it brought him a deep feeling loneliness, that he was misunderstood and rejected.

Shame is one of the feelings that can lead to painful and/or chronic loneliness, and we should not forget about the contribution and influence of unfavorable circumstances. Guilt, low self-esteem or social anxiety, as well as belonging to a minority group, poverty, relocation, age or gender, can all lead to or exacerbate loneliness. Almost all of us feel it in "periods of transition": when we start a new school, change jobs, end long love relationships, even move to another part of the city... Then, even the most sociable and strong among us need more support and encounters.

In the last few years, the whole world is witnessing a flood of loneliness, and the emergence of services and even ministries that should fight against it. Therefore, it is unusual for us that loneliness is historically a relatively new phenomenon, unknown to people until recently, so that the word is not even mentioned in Robinson Crusoe, which seems to us synonymous with loneliness. Due to the fact that we as a species are fragile and not independent, people always moved in groups and standing out was seen as a danger, so there was hardly any opportunity for solitude and loneliness. Only with marked urbanization, at the end of the 18th century, in the west Evropi nuclear families arise, greater alienation in social relations, and the era of romanticism idealizes the image of a lonely and misunderstood artist (after Beethoven, and initially after the character of Hamlet) and retreat from cities to nature.

(NE)REVERSED

That loneliness would become a problem could already be seen immediately after the Second World War, due to increasingly strong tendencies towards individualism, increasingly frequent relocations and, subsequently, due to the excessive use of the Internet and social networks. In the so-called the Western world, the importance of friendship is decreasing, almost everyone has fewer brothers and sisters than in earlier generations, in the most famous cities the largest number of households consists of only one person. Most of the exchanges between people take place on the Internet and young people do not have the opportunity to develop some extremely important social skills or even capacities (such as empathy). Dating apps are changing the nature of relationships to the extent that the focus on getting to know another person, commitment or falling in love has become rare in modern relationships and all types of relationships are now dominated by superficiality.

All problems with loneliness escalated during the lockdown and imposed isolation, which led to a kind of loneliness pandemic. One kind of problem was reflected in the fact that we couldn't see whom we wanted, especially not casually and unplanned, that our lives moved to Zoom, that the cities were deserted, some students didn't go to a single party during three semesters. On the contrary, there were cases when we had to spend much more time with people with whom we (no longer) had much in common, which refers to some married couples, to adolescents and their parents, as well as to some multigenerational families. And a special question is whether we ever recovered from the lockdown or whether it changed us so much in the psychological sense that we now live some other social lives. Various studies confirm the high global prevalence of loneliness. The largest study, involving 55.000 people, showed that one third of them feel lonely often or very often, and that the most affected group are young people, especially young men, even more than people over 75, who topped the list in all previous surveys. While the problem of the elderly is that they do not have enough opportunities to socialize because their peers are dying, the problem of young people could be that even when they have a handful of opportunities, they no longer know how to recognize what is important to share and how to do it. We have long known about the devastating effects of chronic loneliness on the brain, heart and overall health. Postoperative wounds heal more slowly in people without social support, they get diabetes or heart attacks more often, their life expectancy is shorter, and their life satisfaction is lower. Chronic loneliness is often compared to smoking 15 cigarettes a day in terms of its overall negative effects. In addition, people are ashamed of it, so they retreat further.

The negative effects of loneliness on mental health are even greater. On the one hand, isolation, shame and chronic loneliness, often from early childhood, lead to the fact that someone cannot bring their inner life closer to others (and where there is no artistic talent, not even to themselves), thus ending up in hopelessness and, consequently, in a mental disorder. On the other hand, the stigmatization of mental disorders is still so widespread and comprehensive that it leads to avoidance in the workplace, among yesterday's friends, in the building where one lives, even among professionals who are expected to provide crucial help to solve the problem, which makes loneliness an almost intractable problem.

HOW DOES THE OTHER FEEL?

Of course, these data on the alarming prevalence of loneliness and its disastrous effects on somatic and mental health raise awareness of the necessity of urgent action and prevention of the problem. What else is possible to do here? How can we fight loneliness?
At the narrowest level, if the problem is already present, the most effective tool is self-help groups, where a person suffering from something can exchange experiences with those who have the same experience (psychiatric patients say this helps more than anything else). Also, group and long-term individual psychotherapy can lead to great progress, since a person can feel that someone (finally) understands and accepts him, and that he begins to understand himself better. Finally, at the level of the entire mental health protection system, international trends point to the necessity of introducing work in the community, where patients, with help, continue to work and live outside hospitals, so that their sense of belonging to the society of which they are a part is preserved, and they can actively and significantly contribute to it.

When it comes to psychological prevention, serious work is obviously necessary from an early school age in order to develop and encourage the skills of communication, cooperation, tolerance, empathy, leadership dialogue and asking questions. Just one example of this is that in German elementary schools, a student who hurts someone has to write an essay about how the other child felt. While schools are full of math and language, few emphasize socio-emotional learning or artistic expression.

More and more states are introducing restrictions on the use of social networks for minors, and psychological research confirms that this is necessary. Children mostly experiment with "online identities", especially for those who suffer from high social anxiety, this seems like an ideal solution - you reach out to someone, and you can prevent anyone from reaching you - which is a shortcut to chronic loneliness. Although it seems too early to assess the possible effects of artificial intelligence, there are already scholarly articles on how it could destroy the development of the capacity for attachment and a petition calling for its use to be banned for children under the age of sixteen.

THAT POWERFUL ONE, HONEST CONVERSATION

Finally, it is obvious that modern Western society has harmful consequences for our development and emotional well-being, so basic (capitalist) values ​​such as ambition, greed, individuality and ruthlessness should be replaced by solidarity, support, compassion and modesty.

This seems, unfortunately, completely unattainable in a world ruled by neither ethics nor politics, but by super-rich corporations that have developed technology that follows our every choice in order not to drag us even deeper into greed and addiction to shopping. It is even more difficult to achieve this in Serbia, where the value system is almost completely perverted, and subgroups and divisions are always quickly created, so enthusiasm easily disappears. It seems that a person would have to escape the alienation and loneliness of life in large, impersonal groups by retreating to nature and rejecting all Internet connections, but this is, apparently, just replacing one form of isolation with another. No matter how intractable the situation seems, we should always remember its importance and the hope that a greater number of free individuals will join together to solve social problems and overcome their own loneliness.

At the core of the experience of loneliness is not only mental pain and pessimism ("no one will ever accept me the way I am"). They are also accompanied by the experience that no one else in the world has ever felt lonely in this way, no one was ashamed of what I am ashamed of, my experience will forever remain foreign and unfathomable to others. All this is, of course, an illusion, since we all recognize all feelings, with much greater similarities than variations, we are all sometimes sad, angry, scared, happy, and even lonely. And when it doesn't seem that way at all, some person - whose inner space life has, by chance, carved exactly according to your shape, and works in the next office - or someone who wrote music or plays two hundred years ago, can become your psychotherapist... Just don't forget the power of honest conversation.

The author is a psychologist