Loneliness Is Not A Symptom

Toward the end of Christopher Frye’s play, The Lady’s Not For Burning, we find this disquieting exchange:   Margaret says, “Has anybody see that poor child Alizon?  I think she must be lost.”  And Nicholas answers, “Who isn’t?  The best we can do is to make wherever we’re lost in look as much like home as we can.”

I want to speak today about one way of being “lost” that most human beings go through at one time or another in their lives.  I want to talk about loneliness. 

A national study published not long ago in Psychology Today revealed a very startling statistic.  It reported that, within any period of several weeks, nearly one quarter of all Americans describe themselves as “painfully lonely.”   Think about that for a minute – this means that for every four people you meet today, chances are one of them is feeling painfully lonely! 

That’s an amazing statistic to me.  And among adolescents, the study reports, the percentage is even higher:  closer to one in three on any given day say they feel painfully lonely.

As pastoral counselor Henri Nouwen pointed out, beginning in the 1970′s, loneliness could be identified as “one of the most universal sources of human suffering today, with psychiatrists and clinical psychologists calling it the most frequently expressed complaint and the root not only of an increasing number of suicides but also of alcoholism, drug use, different psychosomatic symptoms – such as, headaches, stomach and low-back pains – and of a large number of traffic accidents.”  (cf, Henri Nouwen,  Reaching Out: Three Movements of the Spiritual Life, Doubleday and Company, Inc.; Garden City, NY, 1975.  p.15)

Dr. William Sadler, who conducted an extensive study of loneliness in American society funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, says that even though the condition of loneliness is a pervasive and serious problem for many people in our communities, it remains largely ignored by the social sciences. 

There are two reasons for this, he says.  First, loneliness is difficult to define and understand in a theoretical way.  And secondly, there is a general attitude in the public toward loneliness which sees it merely as a symptom of weak character. 

A common response to persons who admit being lonely is, “Well, what’s wrong with you?  You don’t need to be lonely – go out and get busy!  Join a club!  Do something! “

Dr. Robert Weiss of Brandeis says that psychiatry has done little better than the social sciences in addressing loneliness.   Despite the fact that loneliness has been clinically linked to physical ailments and suicide, until as late as the 1980′s psychiatry treated loneliness as an unusual and exotic state, a sort of “Antarctica of the soul.”

Despite the fact that almost everyone you know – at some time or another – has experienced acute loneliness, loneliness is still seen by many of us as a condition of personal weakness.  Despite the fact that it affects all age groups, loneliness is still viewed by many as some sort of lack of maturity, or a developmental problem of some kind.

We are taught in our culture that there is something shameful about feeling lonely, however legitimate the cause of our loneliness might be.  We have a myth that loneliness is easily and quickly curable through personal activity or group participation. 

We have a myth that older people are necessarily more lonely more often than young people.  On average, they are not.  (They got to be that old partly by being self-sufficient and self-contained enough to survive!) 

We have a further myth that aloneness and loneliness go hand-in-hand.  Consequently, we attach a stigma to those who for whatever reasons choose to live alone, or who enjoy being single.

Beginning in childhood in our society we are conditioned to dread solitude.  Robert Weiss gives the example of the concerned teacher who reports to the worried mother that “little Mary doesn’t always want to play with the other children at recess – she just wants to be by herself some days and think!” (God forbid…)

So, what is loneliness, where does it come from, what causes it, and how can we be of help to someone we love when we see them going through a lonely or isolated time?

In the Weiss studies that were conducted at Harvard Medical School in the early 70′s, loneliness was defined, not as a psychopathology, but as “a common human response to the absence of needed social provisions.”   This study claimed that all human beings seem to have two primary social needs:   we need, one, a sense of attachment – which for most people is best provided by an intimate relationship.  And two, we need a sense of community; that is, a network of friends who share our interests and concerns.  The absence of either one, says Dr. Weiss, can result in loneliness.  The study pointed out that loneliness can be experienced not only by people who have lost an attachment, but by those who never had any.

This need for intimacy, for attachment, would seem to be an evolutionary legacy, biologically built-in.  Whenever people go through major transitions in life, when they move to a new place, or when they go through bereavement for the death of someone close to them, or when they go through a divorce or a separation – it is this emotional legacy that is tipped off balance.  It is not the same as grief, but it is part of the grieving process.  Nor is it the same as depression.

Loneliness is a signal that something is missing. It is a painful self-awareness of the absence or weakness of relation.  It can be a sharp ache, as often happens in grief.  Or it can be a dull lingering form of stress.  It has been likened to a hunger pang, a feeling of hollowness, wanting to be filled up.  “I feel like I’m drifting, empty, like I might float away,” is a common expression of those going through loneliness.

The original Weiss study was controversial when it was first published in 1974, largely because of its conclusion:  it said that there is only one real cure for loneliness – namely, replacement of what’s missing.  This is a harsh prescription for those going through a grieving process, for example, to agree to.  A later study at UCLA suggested that over time loneliness eases mainly because we lessen our expectations of the world and make peace with the hollow places in our hearts, with separations that will never be replaced, with failed relationships which can never be retrieved.

In case after case, people going through loneliness describe a quality of surprise about the experience.  Where we are not prepared for it – at home, at work, with friends – loneliness can produce confusion or fear, depression or outrage.  In truth, most people are not very sympathetic to loneliness in others because we see it more as a weakness than as a natural human response to the passing conditions of our lives.

I won’t ask you this morning whether you’ve ever experienced real loneliness at some time or other in your life.  Rather, I’ll just assume that you have.  I’ll ask you to recall the last time you felt truly lonely, when you felt detached either from a significant intimate relationship with another, or detached from the caring support of an important network or community in your life.  Maybe that was a while ago, or years ago, if you’re lucky.  And maybe it was as long ago as this morning or last night.

I want to describe some different types of loneliness, some of the different ways that loneliness can visit our lives, and perhaps help you identify the sources of your loneliness, and point out why there isn’t any one cure for every type of loneliness.

And I want to underline for you that none of these types of loneliness is “pure” in and of itself.  It is possible for us to experience more than one kind of loneliness at the same time, especially in times of extreme stress.

The first and most familiar type of loneliness is interpersonal.  This is one person missing another person.  This is loneliness of a lost love or a broken partnership or the death of one we love.  This is also the loneliness of an unhappy marriage or union, even before the couple has separated.  This is also the loneliness of a child who feels unloved by his or her parents.

A second type of loneliness can be called “social” loneliness.  Here the individual feels cut off from a group that he or she considers important.  This particular kind of loneliness is expressed in terms like “ostracism,” “exile,” “discrimination,” “prejudice,” anywhere a person feels cut off.  This is the daily loneliness of most minority groups.  This is the loneliness, too, of youth who are never invited to be “one of the gang,” who are made to feel ugly or stupid or uncool or unaccepted by an in-crowd. 

And incidentally, this is also the loneliness of the elderly when they feel shut out of meaningful participation in society or family life.  This is the same kind of loneliness most often described in juvenile delinquent behavior.  It is also significantly associated with the loneliness of those who have trouble feeling useful after retirement.

Besides the Interpersonal and Social categories, there is also “Cultural” loneliness.  This describes the loneliness of people who feel separated from a traditional system of meanings and way of life.  This is the loneliness of immigrant families, for example. 

This is the loneliness I heard as a child in the songs and poetry of my immigrant parents and grandmother.  This is the inherent loneliness of strangers in a strange land, trying to keep their identity and their customs, their religion and their language intact in a foreign place.  “Learn English,” we tell immigrants and refugees, with cavalier or little regard for what it means to them to leave behind all that is familiar and safe and understood.  “You’re in America now.  You must learn new ways and speak our language!”   Maybe so.  But there is a crushing loneliness that comes with making any such cultural crossover.

This is the same cultural loneliness, by the way, that increasingly marks any upwardly mobile American family, that now moves an amazing average of twenty times in the course of thirty years (!)  This is the loneliness of children trying to relocate in a new community, in a new school.  This is the loneliness of starting a new job with a new company – perhaps you never thought of it quite as a cultural adjustment before, but that’s exactly what it is.  Cultural loneliness.

We might call a fourth kind of loneliness, “Cosmic” loneliness, for want of a better term.  This is a kind of religious loneliness.  The Bible, for example, is full of lonely people longing for God.  It is not uncommon today to hear people describe how they miss the certainty of belief in God that was part of their childhood.  One friend recently described her religious loneliness to me this way: she said

“I don’t believe in that God I grew up with anymore, you know, the one with the long white beard who took care of everything for us.  But just between you and me, I kinda miss Him sometimes – or at least, I miss what that God used to represent in my life – the sureness of it all, the sense that it all made sense;  the comfort of a convicted faith.  I’m not sure I’ve ever found anything better to replace that God, and He sure left a big hole in my life.”

Cosmic loneliness.  Existential loneliness.  A sense of being alone in a senseless world, separated from the ultimate source of meaning in our lives.

Interpersonal loneliness.  Social loneliness.  Cultural loneliness.  Cosmic or Existential loneliness.  Recognize anyone you know in there?

Easy answers simply don’t cover every kind of loneliness.  If you’re suffering from Interpersonal loneliness (missing a particular person from your life), joining a club is not going to compensate for that kind of loss.  Becoming a workaholic, as so many do these days, may pass the waking hours, but sooner or later we come home to the empty rooms that no amount of compulsive work is going to fill for us.  Likewise, those who suffer the pain of social exclusion will carry that pain despite the best efforts of those loving partners who walk by their side.

Telling someone to “just shape up and snap out of it and get active” may not be very helpful advice, no matter how lovingly intended.  And making someone feel ashamed or embarrassed or silly for their loneliness is a denial of their personhood.  And a denial of the truth that often loneliness comes from sources completely outside ourselves, sources over which we have little control and no say.

People going through loneliness don’t need advice as much as they need someone to listen.  Loneliness does not respond to advice – loneliness responds to hospitality, that is, to the caring reception of friendship.  The most effective and healing gift you can give a person in loneliness is a moment of connection.  An listening ear, a consoling touch, a sympathetic smile from another person.  The gift of your time and attention.

In a society where nearly one quarter of the population feels painfully lonely on any given day, that statistic alone tells us why it is essential to maintain strong church communities, and it points out an important direction for our pastoral mission as a church.  That statistic alone tells us why our church must always take seriously its ministry as a caring and supportive network for all of us.  It’s why new people in the church need to be made welcome and included by long-term members. 

A little story for you in closing.  Many years ago I once had a parishioner who was a very successful businessman.  He was a pillar member of my church, served on many committees, always there on Sunday mornings.  I noticed suddenly that I hadn’t seen him around church for several weeks running, and since that was unusual, I gave him a call. 

“Hey, Bob, how are things?  Seems I’ve missed you at church for the last few weeks, everything okay?”  And with some hesitancy, he told me that he had been let go by his company in a sudden down-sizing.  The stress was badly affecting his health, as well.  He was on very hard times, and he said he was feeling very isolated.  “All the more reason to come to church,” I suggested.  “Well, to tell you the truth,”  he said, “I’m really embarrassed about all this – maybe I’m too proud or something, but our church is filled with such successful and high-achieving people, and I’m not sure how they would respond to me now.”       

Please remember this, friends.  Church isn’t just for those times in our lives when things are going well for us.  The very person that you are brave enough and forward enough to say hello to in the social hour this morning may be precisely the person who most needs a warm hello for reasons you can’t even begin to guess.  If you’re not sure which person that is in coffee hour, here’s how you do it — count any four people around you, and that fourth one over there – that’s the one!  Go say hi!

Loneliness is not a symptom of weak character.  It’s a universal experience, part of being human, part of being alive, the price of having a soul.  Amidst this company of friends and fellow travelers, of kindred spirits and like-minded souls, may you find both a haven and a hospitality to make your own passage through lonely days the swifter and more bearable.  “The best we can do is to make wherever we’re all lost in look as much like home as we can.”