Experiencing loneliness
Loneliness is a very painful experience. It is a feeling that we want to escape from, and we do it by distracting ourselves with something. Watching TV shows and movies, the computer, the cell phone, traveling, alcohol, and work help us. All these things help us get rid of the unpleasant feeling. Because when we are alone, we experience the fact that we find ourselves back to ourselves. In loneliness, I am only with myself. I am abandoned. There is no one around. I don't have a relationship, I don't have someone to talk to. Loneliness is the experience of experiencing a lack of relationships. This feeling can be particularly acute in longing for something. If you love someone, you long for separation from them. I miss the person I love, I feel connected to them, but I can't see them. My heart is close to him, and without him or her my heart is lost to a certain extent.
A similar feeling can be experienced with nostalgia, when we long for our native places. I experienced very intense homesickness when I was a child of 11 or 12 years old in an orphanage. At home it was warm, pleasant, I had relationships there, I had friends there, and I was in a boarding school far away from home. I was away from home for a whole month. I felt like I was in a foreign world. The world was cold and I felt lost. All that time I wondered what was going on at home, what my family was doing: here they were getting up, now they were eating dinner, now the family was gathered around the table. And I was in constant pain because I was separated from the part of life where I usually experienced warmth, where I felt like I was part of the world. I felt incredibly alone.
We can feel lonely at work if we are confronted with some demands, if there are some projects that we haven't gotten to yet. Where we feel insecure about them, and if no one supports us. Then we feel alone. If I know that everything depends on me alone, there may be a fear that accompanies loneliness. It's the fear that I'll be weak, that I'll have guilt because I can't cope.
Even worse is if there is bullying at work. Then I'll feel like I'm given over to it, on the edge of society and no longer a part of it.
Loneliness is a very big theme in old age, in old age. And in childhood. Children who are not met, children who are left alone if their parents are busy doing something else, can feel helpless in their loneliness. Loneliness traumatizes children because when they are alone, they are unable to develop their Self. They stop developing. There is a warp in a child's development if they experience long moments of loneliness. On the other hand, it is not so bad if a child spends a couple of hours alone, because it is a developmental boost for him. Just what reality represents.
In old age, loneliness is no longer traumatic and does not hinder development - but it is stressful. It can cause depression, paranoid feelings, sleep disorders, psychosomatic complaints and pseudo-demonstrations. What happens is that pseudodementia is a person's silence from loneliness. He used to have a family, work for decades, be among people, and now he sits at home alone. One patient of mine at the age of 85 was sitting at home alone. As her doctor, so she wouldn't be all alone, I bought her a canary. She got a living creature. This canary helped her live a couple of years longer. She had daily conversations with it.
For most elderly people, the "comforter" is television. But television is a one-way communication. And yet the person at least hears human voices. And he can say something to himself anyway, even if no one is there to hear. I think this is not at all a bad form of overcoming loneliness, of creating a kind of bridge, because it relieves the acuteness of loneliness. But, of course, it is an ersatz, a substitute. In old age, loneliness can be very overwhelming. Especially if one has lost the ability to see or hear. Can I imagine having to live like this for a couple of years? When the only things that will accompany me are back pains or digestive disorders. We can imagine how helpless we are in these situations. And that really raises the question of the value of life.
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