Surprise, we’re back! Keeping up with the private stream’s topic of the month, we’re here to talk about Loneliness. 
Let’s discuss the varieties of loneliness, the trends that start in childhood and pervade a lifetime, and the separate condition known as Isolation. Plus, how being a relational castaway can actually benefit our post-traumatic growth (whaaat). 

Looking for all the details and community reflections on these lifetimes of loneliness? Find em at patreon.com/traumatizedmotherfuckers – promise you’ll feel less alone.

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Transcript / Blog Version:

Soooo we’re back! Told you we might be speaking soon, my effort to declusterfuck my life 2023 includes getting back to this public platform on a regular basis. One part of about a billion changes happening around the traumatized motherfucker community. We’ll see how it all goes.

So, today, let’s dip into our topic of the month for January. And let’s talk about loneliness.

“Ha-ha-ha not something you need to be educated on,” you say?

Yeah, we’re all right there with you. Loneliness is more prevalent, pervasive, and impenetrable than a cockroach infestation around this PTSD topic… which is ironic when you think about it.

We trauma brained folks often connect ABOUT not having enough connection. And yet, despite treating our loneliness through talking about loneliness, don’t always find that we feel lastingly better in the aftermath. Right? How many late night social media scrolls on mental health pages have actually made you feel BETTER or more connected? Versus just confirming that you areth also doomed, as they are, independently?

Which begs the question – what the fuck? What’s the right answer then? We can be surrounded by others, and yet just as lonely as ever? If human connection doesn’t fill the void of human connection, what’s the problem? Is there something we’re missing when we try to socialize? And, therefore… is loneliness as simple as it seems?

Is all loneliness the same?

Well, NAH FUCKERS. Turns out, there are some specifics about loneliness that we might want to better understand, so we can ever escape its cold, clammy, maladaptive-coping-inspiring grip.

Because, we learned through the literature this month that loneliness is intricately linked to traumas and, in particular, childhood traumas. Loneliness is relatively stable from childhood into adulthood, meaning… if you were a lonely child, you probably don’t feel socially fulfilled to this day. Even if circumstances have changed, something inside of you… has not.

I would posit that most of us experienced emotional and social isolation as kids, and that sticks with us. We were lonely through the traumas we endured, themselves. Neglect, abandonment, and abuse are unquestionably lonely experiences. Then, we’re alone in the silence surrounding the events, through your social sphere shutting down and shaming the story. And then in the aftermath of those traumas, we’re still often lonely when we’re in a symptomatic state and left to figure out what it all means, while having connection issues with people who just don’t get it.

Loneliness enters our lives early, and experimentally it’s shown to persist.

So I suppose it’s no surprise that we also learned each instance of trauma increases your likelihood of experiencing loneliness by a very significant figure. I’ll leave that detail to the private podcast stream so we aren’t outing anyone’s research here… but consider looking at your list of ACEs and calculating that you have about a 200% chance of loneliness that emerged in early life and has steadily run through all your years so far…

Explains a lot, doesn’t it?

Well, there’s still more to aid that effort. The next thing I want to tell you is… Loneliness can be experienced in two different ways.

There’s social loneliness, which relates to the number of relationships you have. Feeling like you’re “just alone” or don’t have enough friends. Something about your social sphere isn’t meeting expectations or you feel incapable of securing certain social capital. That’s social loneliness.

And then there’s emotional loneliness, which is more so about the quality of the relationships. The desire for close and safely vulnerable interpersonal connection. Most of us don’t need more than 1-3 intimately tethered individuals in our lives, but without those handful of close relationships, we feel emotionally unseen and unsupported. Alone with our feelings, not only alone physically.

Childhood trauma is, of course (big let-down of a surprise) more intimately connected to this intimate, emotional, loneliness.

We’re likely to feel like emotional outcasts in our early environments – and if you’re also having flashbacks of people calling you “too sensitive,” “too emotional,” “too needy” as a child – then we’re on the same page.

When your family is in the midst of some generational trauma tsunamis and you have the audacity to still have emotional needs… you’re going to be left out on that open ocean, alone, at a time when your system developmentally NEEDS exactly what you’re lacking. Unfortunately, possibly feeling like a human connection castaway forever after that need is not fulfilled.

And part of this is yes, biological. We aren’t wired to be alone, especially young in life. But also because… loneliness, actually, is a perceptual condition.

Which means our brains have the ability to get it very wrong, and to create self-fulfilling prophecies from our thoughts.

So when we assess that we’re broken, wrong, and other as little kids, we lay the groundwork for our brains to feel this way forever. We create behaviors that keep us out of the limelight or away from potentially disappointing human experiences. We isolate ourselves for protection and see any social failure as confirmation of our original hypothesis of social unworthiness and destitution.

And we create vicious cycles. Being lonely, assessing that relationships are out of reach, editing all our behaviors to fit that storyline, and therefore continuing to be lonely.

Meaning, loneliness is really an assessment of self versus your own expectations for self. And it has historical roots in childhood that might be creating cognitive distortions into the present day. It’s all about your perspective.

On the other hand, we have Isolation.

Which is a different thing, altogether, although we don’t usually talk about it as such. So, let’s clear that up. Isolation IS an objective point – it’s the measurable lack of relationship. No question about it – if you’re living alone, working alone, and speaking to no one… you’re isolated.

The thing that I want to harp on is that definite isolation doesn’t necessarily make you LONELY.

You can be happy as a clam seeing not a single human being all day (can attest). You might not have a sense of void, lack, scarcity, or fear around relationships… you just aren’t on the market for them.

So, there’s actually nothing wrong with being alone, the terror comes from FEELING alone. And how does THAT information feed into the typical trauma experience?

Well, I think plenty of us go through periods when we actually don’t WANT social connection all that much. Or, at least, Parts of us don’t. We realize that we’re better off without relational traumas and soap-opera-like dramas in our lives. We don’t want to go back to the fawning, fighting, and flighting times with interpersonal challenges, and we have other things to focus on. Like, our mental health and post-traumatic growth.

Isolation can actually be a catalyst to making positive changes, by cutting out the destabilizing factors that regress our progress. Isolation and loneliness are not the same thing and they do not have the same effects on our psyche.

Which brings me to maybe the best news I’ve got for you on this topic.

1. I’ll say it again. You don’t have to experience loneliness when you’re in a relationally-shifting time period, such as during trauma recovery. You can reframe it as isolation (I prefer the term “insulation”) and save your time, space, and energy for fixing your own life instead of worrying about supporting others.

2. If you DO experience loneliness… well… we found out something a little surprising. It’s actually an excellent motivator for post-traumatic growth. That’s right, we learned that one of the top mediators indicated for making positive changes after a trauma is loneliness. The other strong influencer of post-traumatic growth was the PTSD symptoms, themselves.

And this fact is telling us something very important about the experience of loneliness in our post-traumatic worlds.

We don’t change unless the pain of staying the same exceeds the fear of making those alterations. I’ll say that again. We don’t change unless the pain of staying the same exceeds the fear of making those alterations.

We’ve all heard of “hitting rock bottom.” And for a human, that’s apparently the condition of loneliness, especially when shaken and poured with mental illness.

We also found that loneliness predicted six significant psychopathologies, so the likelihood of being plagued by inner strife while lacking significant outer connection in life is very good.

And altogether? This combination of uncomfortable symptoms and uncomfortable time alone creates… a system we can’t stand to live in anymore, driving us to make changes.

Loneliness can actually be the thing that inspires us to finally investigate our past and decide to strike a new path forward. Without a perceived lack of social and emotional connection, we might just continue stewing in our historical pains and patterns, instead of vowing to change them. Loneliness is often what inspires us to do better, for us, for others, and for the relationships we could foster.

So there’s that. A point for loneliness, if we have to find one.

But the real gold star, for me, goes to the concept of isolation. Because being alone without experiencing loneliness is really what we’re all aiming for in a lot of ways, isn’t it? Can you really say that you’re recovered or mentally healthy if you can’t stand to be with only yourself?

I say, nah Fuckers. That sounds like reliance on human escapism to mask some internal pain points, in my book. And those internal pains might be wrapped up in feeling as lonely as ever, while you’re actively filling your schedule with social engagements.

Because, of course, when we talk about persistent, untreatable, loneliness that’s continuous from childhood? I’d say, we’re really talking about carrying wounded Parts. Pieces of ourselves that haven’t healed from the original events that created them. If loneliness influenced that Part into existence or was a major aspect of its experience… well… no amount of social butterflying is going to stitch up that sore in the present.

Except. If you go in there with a needle and thread, to help close the wound yourself. Probably requiring some… insulating isolation.

And that’s where we’re going to stop this time. Setting the stage to come back and talk about those inner relationship turmoils and how they need to be resolved, next time.

We’ll be discussing a therapy framework known as IFS, and breaking it down into less ridiculous language that might actually work for you to work WITH you. And all your goddamn lonely parts.

Til then… well… I can’t directly fix your loneliness. Satan knows, this MF feels it from time to time, themselves. But, you CAN use me as a parasocial relationship, if you’d like to hang out for the hundreds of hours I’ve already recorded. Feel free to have this voice fill the silence, when you’re in a pinch. Just don’t project a real relationship onto me, or we get into hot water.

The episode submissions from the community do a hell of a lot to add connection points to our lives, too. We’re putting out two to five of those a month at this point, to expand the conversation on the private platform and deepen the available connections. Plus, there’s that motherfucking Discord for 24/7 chat support, should the isolation ever start to feel like a permanent social vacancy. At the very least, you’ll be among friends who understand.

We’re all in this together, Motherfuckers. Ironically, while feeling like we’re all completely alone.

And that’s my final cue to remind you that loneliness… is just a perception… which might be royally fucking your lifelong perspective about assumed worthiness, acceptability, and capacity for connection.

My best advice is, don’t focus on what loneliness has meant about your relationship to others. Focus on what it’s been trying to tell you all along about your relationships within your goddamn… Self. And we’ll pick up there, to work with those lonely internal exiles, next time.

See you on the airwaves, Fuckers.

Hail your Self, the antidote to loneliness.

Hail Archie, who was the antidote to mine.

And cheers y’all.