Overcoming Loneliness: My Story from Disconnection to Meaningful Connection

Phil’s heartfelt reflection on loneliness and the journey toward meaningful human connection — shared with honesty and hope for you as you seek to understand or overcome loneliness.

It's time to share my story of loneliness

There were days in 2016 when no one asked me how I was. No one.

That feeling of deep loneliness was overwhelming. It’s a dark place many of us know but few talk about openly.

Hello friend,

Loneliness is a universal human experience, but too often it remains hidden and unspoken.

For almost a year now, I’ve been writing most weeks here on the HUMANS:CONNECTING blog about loneliness and authentic connection. But I realised I hadn’t yet shared my own loneliness story — at least not here. I had on The Lonely Diplomat and The Loneliness Guy, but not in this space.

That changes now.

I’m bringing that story here. Sharing how I found meaningful connection after feeling completely lost, stuck and disconnected matters.

I think I’ve been avoiding writing this article and sharing my story. I wanted to be seen as offering more than just a personal story. I wanted to be seen as having something useful to contribute beyond my own experience.

I realised that I was doing what I told you and everyone else to avoid: talking about loneliness in the third person, and not in the first.

In this article, I share what loneliness looked and felt like for me; how I descended into it; and how I’ve been finding my way back through meaningful connection, honesty, and a lot of vulnerability.

This is for anyone experiencing loneliness and searching for hope and guidance on how to overcome it. It’s also for those who want to understand loneliness better - whether you’re supporting a loved one or creating spaces for authentic connection. And it’s for those who believe, like me, that the world needs more honest stories, especially the messy, real ones.

This post isn’t short. It meanders, just like life, and just like a conversation you’d have with me. If you’ve ever wondered if someone else has felt the loneliness you’re feeling, I invite you to read slowly, maybe more than once. This is me being real with you. I hope it helps you be real with yourself, too.

If this is your first time here: welcome. And if you’ve been reading for a while: thank you.

Thank you for being here.

~ Phil

Speaking stories of loneliness is tough

The road to loneliness can be short and direct (like as part of grief) or it can be long and meandering (like the subtle disconnection from self that happens when we consistently make decisions that put our own needs behind those of others).

My story is meandering. As you’ll see, my journey into loneliness and subsequent return involved lots of little decisions taken with the best of intentions over many years. Both the little decisions and the many years are important.

Time and scale matter.   

Destigmatising loneliness is an important part of what we do at HUMANS:CONNECTING. Central to that is creating and occupying spaces where loneliness is spoken about openly and honestly. I create and occupy spaces when I speak about loneliness – be that as a keynote speaker or on a podcast (ours or someone else’s).

It’s tough for me to practice sharing my loneliness story and keeping it tight and to time. For example, the ‘so, how did you get here?’ question is often the first asked when I appear as a guest on a podcast. It’s a reasonable question.

The tough part for me is giving the version that they want for their format. Short-form podcasts are all the rage at the moment, and I feel pressured to compress my story of loneliness into the most impactful 90 seconds, both so it fits the format but it’s also good for Instagram stories promoting the episode.

What part of my story is going to resonate most with the audience? I struggle with what parts to gloss over or leave out entirely.

Authenticity matters. Humans connect through stories, and I’m a storyteller. Stories meander. The meandering matters, because we all meander in life.

But I feel pressure to edit my story to fit a format. I fear that, for me, this editing comes at the price of authenticity.

And once authenticity is lost, it’s tough to get the specialness back.  

Can you see the bind?

On a deeper level, the story I tell myself is that there’s value in telling my story of loneliness, but only if I can tell it quickly.

I’ve been working on finding the right balance that honours my own experience and fits a format: be that through our speaking services, speaking with the media or on podcasts.

The work continues. [If you have any tips, please send them my way…]

Loneliness to engineer an outcome gives me the ick

At the time of writing this, I’m a 48-year-old white man, who’s a dad to two Gen-Z sons. Me using the word ‘ick’ is going to give them the ick if they ever read these words...

Like yours, my loneliness story is precious. I struggle to share it and then have it feel like it’s being picked over or – even more uncomfortable for me – use it to engineer an outcome.

We can use our loneliness story to engineer a connection outcome, whereby we share our loneliness story with someone who’s not in the mental or emotional space to receive it. We feel seen and heard by them – so we feel connected – but the story overwhelms them, and they recoil and retreat from us. The retreat may not be immediate, but it'll happen over time. This is something that I refer to as the loneliness vomit: we feel better, but they weren’t prepared to support us.

It's hard to turn loneliness into a pitch deck

The outcome to which I’m referring to here is not only the ick associated with the loneliness vomit, but engineering a financial outcome.

You see, we’ve been seeking some seed funding to help our social enterprise roar into life and start having the positive social impact we’re called to make at scale. Again, I’ve been told that my loneliness story matters, and that I need to share it because people will see themselves in it, then believe in the work and invest.

Tell me, how would you do that? How would you share your story of loneliness in a way that was not too much, but also so short as to make it meaningless? How would you share your story feeling that you don’t belong in a way that engineers a financial outcome? How would you share your story in a way that nailed the pitch and allowed your social enterprise to thrive? How would you navigate the stories you’d tell yourself about when you do share your story and receive ‘Meh. It’s not for us’ and be completely unaffected by it?

Honestly, it feels like I’m busking in front of people while standing completely naked and they’re audibly critiquing my singing voice, my song choice and everything else.

Please get in touch with me if you can navigate that without any hint of ick. I want to learn from you.   

Still, I believe this work matters. If my story helps others believe in it too, maybe it’s worth the discomfort.

Receiving stories of loneliness is a privilege

It takes courage to speak and share stories of loneliness. It also takes courage to listen to stories of loneliness.

It’s also a privilege. And while not everyone has earned the right, someone has.

Sharing stories of loneliness says ‘I trust you with this deeply personal experience’. It’s beautiful when that trust is recognised and honoured.

Listening with empathy is the best way to listen to stories of loneliness. ‘Me too’ is powerful.

Too frequently, stories of loneliness are met with judgement, pity and/or fixing it.

• Judgement sounds like ‘should’ ie: ‘You shouldn’t feel lonely; you’ve got a great job and lots of friends and a family who loves you.’

• Pity sounds like ‘Oh, you poor thing…’ Pity sounds like empathy, but it’s a type of barrier between people that keeps the discomfort at arm’s length.

• Fixing it sounds like ‘You should go join a walking group/take a class/put yourself out there. Let’s google something to see what’s available.’

While these responses are understandable, they reflect the broader discomfort around loneliness. They say 'I hear you, but your story makes me uncomfortable, and I don’t want to feel this way. I want to fix it so I don’t have to question the quality of my social connections anymore.’

Again, receiving stories of loneliness is a privilege and not everyone has earned the right to hear them.

But someone has.   

Receiving my loneliness story

Thank you for reading through those explanations. It’s important to me that you understand this before you read my loneliness story, if only because the explanation creates a space and a container for me to put my loneliness story out into the world for you to read at some time in the future.

It’s my way of wrestling with vulnerability. I’m meandering myself into the space gently.

I’m feeling very vulnerable as I write this. I ask you to sit and spend unrushed and unhurried time with me. I ask you to listen/read with empathy.  

But the time has come. I want to share my loneliness story now. I want to give it space and time to be.

I don’t want to feel rushed, or edit it in a way that conveniences others.

I invite you to sit with me as I share my story. You may resonate with it, you may not.

Simply, I hope it helps you put words to your loneliness so you can begin to listen to it and the message it’s trying to give you about the connection you’re not feeling.

My loneliness story – the descent

I had a sneaking suspicion that I was lonely throughout 2016.

I was living in South Korea at the time, as I was on a diplomatic posting in Seoul (with responsibility for Japan, so I travelled between Seoul and Tokyo frequently).

Me in Seoul trying to hide my loneliness

I so desperately did not want to be lonely.

Loneliness seems so sad. Lonely people seemed so clingy and needy. Type in 'lonely' in a text message and take note of what emojis are offered. I wasn't crying. I didn't have a sad face. I had so many people in my life. I had a wonderful family who I knew loved me. I had friends. But I had no one who I felt I could call and say, 'I need you to listen to me' without feeling like I was intruding, asking too much, and being a burden.

At this point, I had much in common with these words of Paul Kugelman shared in this report on National Public Radio in the United States in 2018:

"I think I viewed it [feeling lonely] as sort of a circumstance rather than a problem. It was kind of like gravity."

I simply thought that disconnection was my lot in life: it was my gravity. An inevitability.

I just needed to get on with it.

I doubled down on my work and sought the praise and attention of others. I put my head down and continued doing what I was doing. That surely was the way out of this feeling. I worked hard to avoid and numb my feelings.

I also felt that I couldn't speak up. I was living and working in diplomacy, and I was living and working my dream. I was living a life of privilege and prestige. I felt terrible that I no longer felt such enraptured gratitude for everything and for all my job required from me. The diplomatic life was coming at a price, and I was scared to consider that I wasn't willing to pay it anymore.

I loved my job and the opportunities it gave me and my family, but the job was exacting an emotional toll. I couldn't ignore that anymore.

Moreover, I thought I was alone, because the people around me were always wanting to talk about the positives and not about the costs. If conversations did go into the negative, the topic was changed after someone said a variation of 'get over it' or 'this is just how things are'.

In the Australian context, one does not want to have a reputation for being a whinger (you may know the term ‘whiner’). Talking about loneliness would have been seen as whingeing. Of not being able to hack it.

I carried on.

But there was a voice within me – a knowing – that refused to accept any of this. I knew that my life did not have to be like this. It did not have to be this way, but I needed help.

I turned to Dr Google.

If you've done this, you'd also know that the standard advice is to put yourself out there and do things that you love to do and do them with other people. Connection is important. This is sound advice, to a point. From where would this time to pursue my hobbies magically appear? I was so busy. What could possibly give?

I spoke to my then wife. She was awesome and said that she supported me getting out on weekends to do something I enjoyed. I joined a swimming group. But this petered out after a few months. It turns out that swimming isn't really a sport where one can chat with others too much.

Besides, I felt so tired. The thought alone of getting out on a Sunday afternoon to meet people was exhausting and felt overwhelming.

When the counsellor said ‘Just put yourself out there’

My employer had a contracted counselling service provider. I summoned the courage to call it a few months later. I spoke to a lovely person who listened and then responded with pity. They then told me to find what I loved to do and 'put myself out there'. When I reminded the counsellor that 'out there' was in a non-English speaking country and my Korean was terrible, they cheerily said, 'Oh. Well try anyway'.

This was terrible advice for two reasons:

1. there was the immediate pity response.

   
   

2. the service contracted by my employer fundamentally did not understand what my life looked like. The support my employer said we needed to did not comprehend what my life looked like. Their advice did not even land and my explanations of life did not land with them.

Speaking with a counsellor for a few minutes was not the quick solution I’d hoped it would be.

But this is what I was beginning to appreciate about loneliness: any cure or treatment seemed too hard; an exhausting mountain to climb. It was too hard to explain everything.

Weeks went by. My funk got deeper.

I realised that there were days when no one, no one, asked me how I was. Did I not matter?

On reflection, my masks of competence and good humour meant that I wasn't giving people much of a reason to ask. When someone did ask me how I was, I did not have the words to express how I felt. I wanted to grunt and howl like a wounded Wookie. It was simply easier to say I was great.

I worked hard to appear that things were always great with me. I also know that this is a common feeling for those who are lonely.

I feared that people had formed relationships with my masks, and not the real me. Any cure for loneliness would inevitably involve me taking off my masks and hoping that people in my life would still like me and not abandon me. This was terrifying and kept me from seeking out more help.

To compound this fear, I felt shame for not being able to handle everything within myself with effortless ease. I was required to be resilient as a diplomat. The need to be resilient was drummed into me. The fear of the perception of not being resilient enough and being able to handle everything that life threw my way hung over me like the Sword of Damocles.

Rather than true psychological resilience, resilience meant ‘we’re going to give you vast quantities of work and the expectation is that you’ll deliver it on time and to a high standard every time, no matter the circumstances around you. You can’t complain. If you can’t do that, you’re not resilient enough for the job and we’ll ask one of the hundreds of people who would sell their mother to be in your position if they want to do it and you can come home [and never be posted again].’

Resilience meant that I needed to handle everything on my own.

The terror of peering into the abyss

I was terrified.

Any time sitting with the thoughts and feelings of loneliness had me feeling like I was staring into a deep abyss within myself.

I felt like one poorly-placed step and I would tumble into it - lost to myself and to others. No one would hear me scream if I fell in. There would be no trace of me.

The abyss is a terrifying, lonely and desolate place.

For me, peering into the abyss was the catalyst for change.

I could not longer deny my loneliness, ignore it or wish it wasn't there.

Something within me stirred when I peered into it. There was a voice – a knowing – that defiantly said: 'No. This is not for us. We deserve something more.'

I carefully turned back from the edge. While I was terrified, I decided that alternatives to falling into the void were better options, whatever they were. I became fiercely determined. There was no time to muck around.

My reconnection story – the ascent

A path leading away from the abyss began to present itself. I began to take it, uncertain where it went, but knowing intuitively that what I needed was along that path.

I'd started along my Hero's Journey. The guides and mentors I needed came into my life; all I needed to do was ask for their support and receive what support they gave.

One of those people was Mike Campbell. I'd read Mike's book in 2014 and I promptly followed his blog and followed him on social media. I'd even sent him an email to let him know how good I thought his book was.

Soon after peering into the abyss, I received an email from him telling me about a program he was putting together and if we could talk.

We spoke twice over the next few days. Each time we spoke I knew that he saw straight through me and my excuses and he encouraged me to join his program.

I did.

It was just what I needed. I had the support of Mike and some other amazing men in the program. At the end of the five-month program in March 2017, and after a lot of hard work, I felt like I had stepped into myself for the first time. This is a powerful feeling.

 

The connection I was missing: to myself

Critically, I worked out what I found unsettling about the generic 'just put yourself out there and connect with people who share your interests' advice. I'd been focusing on the out there and the interests. My problem had been with the your self.

Owing to the work/family cycle, working hard for others' approval/postings/promotions, I had lost me. I feared what other people thought of me.

I feared what I thought of me.

The connection I needed was not only to other people, but to myself. I needed my own approval.

This was a revelation. I needed to know and accept myself before I could connect with others and the world around me.

Connecting with the world around me

Having started to reconnect with myself, I started to reach out to people in my life - both past and present - with whom I wanted to connect. This included those people physically around me, and others with whom I was still in contact over social media, but may not have seen them in person for years. I decided to use social media for good.

The major impediment to this connection was busyness. I lost count at the 'I'd love to, but I'm really busy' responses.

When the connections happened, they REALLY happened. I was having real, open, honest, courageous and vulnerable conversations with people.

Shit got real. This was me, really me, connecting. This was them, really them, connecting. It was beautiful.

I was having these real conversations within myself. I was having them at home. I was having these conversations at the office. I was having these conversations over the phone, by email, by text. And now I'm having these conversations with you through this blog.

Some people drift away – and that’s okay

But these attempts at connection did not always go well. With some people I noticed that we'd drifted apart. Our life experiences had meant that I no longer shared interests with some people from my past. This was sad, as these were friendships with people who I believed would always be there for me and I'd be there for them. I'd changed. I needed to let other people evolve and change too.

Moreover, I have told some people that I was lonely and wanted to reconnect and have been met at times with words or sentiments like 'you deserve it', 'this life is your choice' or 'you should have expected to feel lonely'. Ouch.

One that always gets me: ‘what do your friends and family think of you doing this work?’

This is a cheap shot, as it uses the shame of ‘what will people think?’ to make me feel bad about sharing my story and how my story affects other people. [Incidentally, other people's responses come from their place of fear. Despite being wrapped in concern about me and my family, their response is not at all about me, but what they fear happening in their life should the accept uncomfortable truths about themselves.]

Others have stated in words and actions that they don’t like who I am. They preferred the old me and formed a relationship with the image I was portraying.

This is all hard to hear when I'm putting the real me out there. It hurts.

Happily, I'm faster at getting to the point where I know that those who say that I deserve my loneliness have kindly outed themselves to me as not being worthy of my attention and connection. Besides, I can simply talk with someone who I know loves me for being me and I know that they can listen to me, and that I will listen to them.

Sometimes I can see that my candour and openness holds a mirror up for people. This can make them feel uncomfortable. I may speak to the voice within them that's telling them that things within themselves aren't as excellent as they want them to be. That's OK. It took me years to get to this point. I'm familiar with the discomfort.

Grateful for my loneliness

I never wanted to experience loneliness. It was not part of my life’s plan.

The watch band gets noticed by others in the LGBTIQA+ community. I love it.

Yet I’m so grateful that I listened to the defiant voice within myself that told me that we were worthy of more.

My life looks nothing like it used to. I came out as gay, ending my marriage to a wonderful woman and mother of our children. But that led me to meet my beautiful partner, Jeff. We’ve been together almost six years and he’s another dad to our amazing boys and collaborator in mischief with my former wife.

As for you, dear reader, you’re reading these words because I accepted my loneliness and resolved to walk away from the edge after peering into the abyss.  

Life’s gotten unimaginably richer and more vivid.  

Happily, I can see that my message resonates with people. I see it in the emails, texts and messages I receive. Some messages are lengthy. Some are furtive. All suggest that other humans are feeling lost and lonely. Worse, they're lonely and scared.

While you may feel lonely and scared, you're no longer alone. Let's walk together.

Let’s end your loneliness

Your loneliness ends when you walk the path towards meaningful connection, step-by-step.

I'm still walking my path. There are times when I stub my toes, bump my head or kick my shins along the way, but I persist. I'm still driven by that defiant voice within me that tells me that I'm worthy of walking the path. There are always humans along the way who apply the band-aids and then send me on my way again.

I'm sharing this with you because a version of the abyss and the path away from it has come up consistently in my conversations with hundreds of people in the last eight years. You probably have a similar feeling within you, too.

If these words find you as you're peering into the abyss within yourself now, I hope the words are the catalyst for the voice and the knowing within you to defiantly remind you that you're worthy of something different. Something more.

Please turn back from the edge. The path to connection is there, even if you can’t see it yet. You don’t walk your connection path alone.

Here I am. I'm Phil. I'm still prone to feeling lonely but I know a way out. Let's walk the paths together.

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~ 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.