4 Beliefs That Feed Loneliness – and How to Find Meaningful Connection

We’ve noticed that 4 common beliefs keep us stuck in loneliness. This article challenges those beliefs and points you towards meaningful connection.

Hello friend

Our aim at HUMANS:CONNECTING is to provide content that serves, supports, challenges and inspires you along your way to becoming a connected human. We’re here to get you on your way to feeling the connection that you need and deserve to thrive in life.

Most content fits into the serves, supports and inspires columns.

This article falls squarely into the ‘challenge’ column.

I’m going to be blunt.

Over the last eight years supporting people through loneliness and disconnection, I’ve learned that although everyone’s story is different, the same core patterns keep showing up.

There are four common beliefs that feed loneliness. They stop people from experiencing the connection they crave.

But this article is not about “people”. It’s about you.

You likely hold one or more of these beliefs. They may be keeping you stuck.

1.     Loneliness is not important

Let’s unpack this.

Loneliness is what you experience when you do not receive the social connection that is meaningful to you.

Meaningful social connection, meaningful to you, is life sustaining. Literally.

It’s life sustaining in the same way that nourishing food to eat and clean water to drink is life sustaining.

The belief that loneliness is not important and therefore not something to take seriously is like saying hunger and thirst are not important signals and not something you need to take seriously.

If you’re otherwise healthy, dehydration becomes terminal in 3-7 days. Starvation will take you in about 3 weeks (source). It can take years for loneliness to take you – through heart disease and some cancers – but the outcome is the same (source).

How this shows up: We downplay connection as a “soft issue” in workplaces. Governments treat it as important but not urgent. And most of us treat our own connection needs as weakness, neediness or inconvenient truths.

Bust the myth: prioritise meaningful social connection in the same way that you prioritise drinking 2L of clean water and eating nutritious foods daily.

2.     It doesn’t affect me

Ah, ignorance. What a flimsy shelter from uncomfortable truths ignorance provides.

I understand this one all too well. For years, I thought that the thoughts and feelings I experienced were not loneliness. I believed that loneliness was only for the elderly and the bereaved, and I was neither. I was a white, middle-aged man, a husband, a father and highly educated with a successful career in public administration and diplomacy.

How wrong I was. 

Loneliness is part of the human experience. If you’re human, you’ll experience it. Are you not human? Have you evolved onto a higher plane that makes you an uber human?

Nothing provides immunity to loneliness and social disconnection except for feeling the connection that is meaningful for you. No salary, no job title, no relationship status, no address in a fancy suburb, no qualification, no label, no perfectly curated life offers any kind of immunity.

Indeed, endlessly chasing these status points and prestige may bring a slight bump in happiness, but feeds your loneliness (read ‘The Good Life and How to Live It’ by Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz). Chasing this kind of happiness is chasing a mirage.

How this shows up: If I had $1 for every time I’ve heard ‘Your work is so important and will help so many people!’ I’d not be writing these words from an upcycled sit/stand desk in our kitchen in suburban Canberra.  

Bust this myth: The antidote to ignorance is acceptance. Accept that you are ‘people’ too.   

3.     I’m too busy

I hear this all the time. Indeed, ‘I’m too busy’ is my favourite go-to excuse to avoid anything that makes me uncomfortable. Honestly, I use it because it’s safer and more socially acceptable than saying ‘I’m scared’.

I’ll put it simply: busyness kills connection.

Without doubt, there’s a lot to do in your day. Life does feel very full. There are so many commitments and people who rely on you to show up time and again to give them what they need from you.

At work. At home. In the community.

But the busyness game ends one way: your social disconnection.

Everyone and everything gets what they need from you, but there’s nothing left for yourself. Indeed, busyness can wear a cloak of self-righteousness that screams ‘I matter!’, but you’re scared that your loneliness will catch up with you if you ever slowed down.

Psst: the strategy does not work, because you’re experiencing loneliness anyway…

How this shows up: It’s clear when this belief shows up. Busyness is in our words, our thoughts, our actions and our attitudes. When called to do something challenging, you say something like ‘This is so interesting, but I’m just really busy at the moment. I’d love to come back when things calm down.’

Translation to what you’re really saying: ‘Shit. You see me. I’m going to keep myself busy so I never need to come back.’

Bust this myth: Things NEVER calm down unless you want them to. Busyness is a choice. Just as you’re choosing to be busy, you can choose not to be. Sit with that.

4.     I don’t want to be a burden

‘I don’t want to be a burden’ is the belief that feeds loneliness the most.

This belief is dangerous. It is sinister and malicious. It masquerades as kindness.

I’m going to be blunt: cemeteries are full of people (usually men) who didn’t want to be a burden on their friends and families.

Not wanting to burden your friends and families – the people who love you and want to see you thrive in life – because you care too much for them is some next-level mental gymnastics.

Not using services that have been set up to support you because you want to save their services for someone else more deserving is a stunning act of self-gaslighting, self-abandonment and manipulation.

A reminder: you are people, too. You are not the exception.

You’re worthy of asking for – and then receiving – the same love and support that you so freely give to others. 

What this sounds like: Silence. Later, someone says ‘If only they’d said something, I could have been there for them.’

Bust this myth:

Mike Campbell said it best in our conversation on episode 24 of the HUMANS:CONNECTING podcast.

5.     Loneliness means that I’m broken

I did say that there were four beliefs, but we’re all about giving you great value here at HUMANS:CONNECTING, there’s a sneaky fifth belief.

While you never want to experience loneliness, you’re now being invited to respond.

Your loneliness does not need fixing, it needs understanding. You need to understand your loneliness because – again, just like hunger and thirst – it’s trying to tell you to slow down to pay attention to it and use it to tell you what connection you’ve not been receiving.

Humans experience loneliness just like we experience joy, happiness and every other emotion. And emotions are simply signals that we get to pay attention to.

There are so many reasons why you will experience loneliness: after the death of a loved one, the ending of a relationship, coming out, moving house, starting a new school/job, becoming a parent, retiring. The list of transitions we experience in life is long.

There are bigger systems at play beyond personal transitions: How our cities are designed, how our communities function, the structure of our work, the state of public discourse, social media and the consumer economy — all disconnect us from one another.

You didn’t ask for any of this. You evolved to live in community where you feel seen and heard for the amazing human you are who has all sorts of wonderful skills and insights to share and contribute.   

Loneliness is not weakness. It’s an invitation to meaningful connection.

Let’s end your loneliness

Which of these 5 common beliefs landed with you? What was your gut response?

Did it challenge you, annoy you, make you curious?

Maybe your reaction is the sign you need to dig in.

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Until next time, be awesomely you.

~ Phil   

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Important:

All views expressed above are the author’s and are intended to inform, support, challenge and inspire you to consider the issue of loneliness and increase awareness of the need for authentic connection with your self, with those most important to you and your communities as an antidote to loneliness. Unless otherwise declared, the author is not a licensed mental health professional and these words are not intended to be crisis support. If you’re in crisis, this page has some links for immediate support for where you may be in the world.

If you’re in crisis, please don’t wait. Get support now.