It is beyond dispute that socializing with our family members or good friends is a joyful and fulfilling experience for many of us. It is also the societal norms that having a lot of social connections could be associated with being successful. However, for some people, there might be some reasons for them to have less social connections or to be forced to be alone. For instance, a client of mine was divorced by his wife suddenly and unexpectedly. All of his close friends are in the common social circles with his wife. As a result, his close friends distanced from him after the divorce and chose to continue the friendship with his wife only. He was having a depressive episode after the divorce due to his lack of social support and intense feeling of loneliness. He also reflected that he was all along being accommodating in relationships with his family members and friends. When he started to be more assertive and to say no to their requests, they started to distant from him. In the therapy, he told me that he might want to develop a few meaningful friendships in the future. For the time being, he would like to learn how to be alone without feeling depressed. He thought that it is important for him to be able to be self-sufficient before he could have some fruitful relationships. How can he still feel good when he is alone?
According to Rae André, a psychologist researching in solitude, we socialize in order to obtain feedback to feel loved, recognised, appreciated and connected. In social connections, we constantly learning about others and the environment in order to adapt to the demand of our lives. In fact, our need for social feedback is natural because it is important for our survival. André suggested that the sense of loneliness for us when being alone is due to the gap between our expectation for social feedback and the lack of it due to solitude. For example, my client used to have the companion of his wife in the marriage. When he woke up in the morning in the past, he could chat with his wife and asked her opinion about his attire for work. They made breakfast together and commented the taste of their newly bought coffee beans. After the divorce, he had no one to talk to after work when he was at home. He could not share his feelings about his colleagues to his wife during dinner. This social feedback gap made him feeling extremely lonely and helpless.
In this sense, we could perceive loneliness in a different angle. If we could fill the feedback gap by ourselves when we are alone, we can live our lives with contentment and enjoyment. In the long run, we can learn to become a more self-reliant individual who is creative in engaging in different activities alone. In order to achieve this, it is important for us to create an environment that we feel relaxed and free. In this environment, we can choose to do what we would like to do and explore our external and internal world by ourselves. For instance, my client could start to put some effort in decorating his home so that he feels relaxed and free after work. In this environment, he could learn to cultivate positive attitude to nurture himself with healthy food, good sleep and exercises. Gradually, he can learn to engage in self-exploration through being alone or being with others. He could learn to observe himself more to understand his inner world more. He could also explore his relationship with the spiritual and art domains. In this way, we could learn to fill the gap in our feedback loop and have the contentment when being alone. We may also gradually improve our relationships with others in our social lives.
