Naming Loneliness
Have you ever been scrolling through pictures of landscapes, food, or pet videos only to see two friends playing together? Or been shopping for groceries and heard strangers chatting and laughing? Did those experiences create in you a feeling of emptiness or sadness? What did you do with those feelings?
If you have experienced these situations and felt emptiness or sadness, you are not alone. Most of us at one time or another have felt or feel like we are excluded or missing out. When these feelings go unattended things can quickly devolve into more serious issues. Let’s talk about doing something before that happens.
Sadness is a universal emotion. Depending on who you listen to, sadness is one of six basic emotions -along with happiness, fear, anger, surprise, and disgust. Like all emotions sadness is an indicator of something. Emotion points us to the areas of our life we care about. With that awareness, we can take action.
Since sadness is universal there is really no reason to hide it or feel shame about being sad. But we often feel the need to hide our emotions. Hiding emotions doesn’t help. It frequently makes the situation worse. We deny the feelings and they fester inside of us. Or we take out our feelings on someone we love and fail to deal with the root issues.
What if we didn’t hide our sadness? What if we asked ourselves what sadness was indicating? Going back to the situations that made us feel sad we can learn something.
In the first situation, we were scrolling online to be entertained, to relax, to enjoy our interests. We saw beauty, delicious food, and laughed at the hilarity that is often shared on the socials. Then we saw friends enjoying each other’s company. That was the trigger for our feeling sad or empty.
In the second situation, we were minding our own business and doing our grocery shopping. Out of nowhere, stranger’s laughter triggered our feeling sad or empty.
I think both of these situations has an explanation more common than you think.
Since this has happened to me, I feel comfortable sharing what I experienced.
When this has occurred, the feeling of sadness or emptiness has helped me to recognize a desire for my own friend moments. Most of the time it isn’t jealousy or anger I feel. It is emptiness that time with a friend would fill. The sadness reminds me that I want to be a friend and have a friend. Maybe too much time has passed since a friend moment and I am feeling lonely. If I look at my calendar, I probably have spent too much time alone. Being alone is not the same thing as being lonely, but too much time alone can lead to lonely. In this situation it may be that the balance of time in my life is weighted too much toward alone time and not enough toward friend time. The feeling points me to my desire. Whether I recognize it or not, I may be going through a few steps . I’ll share them with you to consider the next time you experience feeling sad, lonely, or empty.
Name the emotions or feelings as the first step. Admit what you feel. I am sad. I feel empty. I am lonely.
Clarify what the feelings are indicating and claim your identity. I am a person who values friendship.
Decide what can be done and do it. I invite. I say yes. I prioritize friendship.
Remember you are not alone in experiencing and overcoming loneliness. Each of us has and will experience loneliness. Loneliness is a temporary state. You can’t completely control all of the factors in your life. You also are not helpless. You can name, clarify, and decide. Knowing what you know… will you deny your feelings thus staying stuck or will you name loneliness so you can act?
