How to be alone? by Shifan Hu-Couble
Counsellor / Psychotherapist / Parenting Coach
How to be alone? b
y Shifan Hu-Couble
Do you have challenges being alone? Learn helpful strategies with Counsellor and Psychotherapist Shifan Hu-Couble to counter your feelings of loneliness. Find out how counselling or psychotherapy can help.
Loneliness in a Connected World
As the world becomes more connected than ever, we are feeling lonelier than ever. According to a 2010 study published in the journal PLOS Medicine, the health risks of chronic loneliness are equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Nearly 1 in 4 adults across the world have reported feeling very or fairly lonely, a new Meta-Gallup survey has found.
The new survey, taken across 142 countries, found 24% of people age 15 and older self-reported feeling very or fairly lonely in response to the question, “How lonely do you feel?”
The survey also found that the rates of loneliness were highest in young adults, with 27% of young adults ages 19 to 29 reporting feeling very or fairly lonely. The lowest rates were found in older adults. Only 17% of people age 65 and older reported feeling lonely.
In case you think this is only a US phenomenon, Singapore is also facing a loneliness crisis.
There is a loneliness pandemic.
Strategies to Counter Loneliness
How can we navigate through this pandemic? Other than increasing our social connectedness, and rebuilding communities which would rely on the cooperation of others, I believe that the most essential skill is to learn how to be alone.
1. Get curious about yourself
When we feel lonely, we often look an immediate relief by reaching out to our family and friends, going to crowded places, and joining social events. While others’ presence might be helpful in the moment, the most profound form of loneliness we experience comes from our disconnection with ourselves. Therefore, the first step is to get curious about who you are, what you feel, and what you truly desire in life. “When you start paying attention to and relating to yourself with curiosity and kindness, as a destination and someone worth knowing, a new kind of intimacy forms, an intimacy with yourself, which, in fact, is the most reliable remedy for loneliness,” explains Nancy Colier, psychotherapist and author of The Emotionally Exhausted Woman.
2. Strengthen your coping strategies
Life is unpredictable and stressful. The quality of life is a function of the effectiveness of our coping strategies. Take stock of your current coping strategies: what are they, when were they developed, how effective are they, and what are the alternatives? In my clinical experience, I often find clients cope with stressful life situations with the same coping strategies they developed when they were 7 and they wonder why they are no longer effective. For example, Jack learned at a young age to cope with his parents’ spousal conflicts by being invisible, either hiding in his room or disassociating emotionally if he had nowhere to hide. At age 40, whenever a conflict arises, he would use the same strategy: leaving the situation or tuning out of the moment. His immature coping strategy keeps him in isolation as he fails to attune to others’ emotional needs. His sense of loneliness exacerbates as conflicts compound in his relationships. We worked together to review his coping strategy and take steps to upgrade them over our course of therapy. Better equipped, Jack is now more engaging with others as well as with himself.
3. Get in touch with nature
Although we are human, we are also animals. We are wired to be in the nature. Being in nature aligns us with our true nature. This sense of alignment with nature allows us to be part of something that is bigger than ourselves. As we become a part of something, the sense of isolation naturally dissipates. Lounge in the backyard, take a walk in the park or hang out by the water. Absorb the sights, sounds, and smells of nature. Feel the breeze on your face. Research shows that 30 minutes or more a week spent in nature can improve symptoms of depression and lower blood pressure.
4. Heal your trauma
To be alone is to be with us, and that is often not easy because an attunement to self involves the re-living of past traumas and the emergence of painful emotions, fears, and anxieties we have been avoiding by immersing ourselves in the distractions of society. Therefore, to be alone well, healing from one’s past trauma is a prerequisite.
As a trauma psychotherapist, I adopt body-based modalities like EMDR or Somatic Experiencing as a bottom-up approach to healing. We all have experienced moments where we know the right thing to do, but we would end up doing the opposite of that. Our body has a memory circuitry of its own that cannot be overwritten simply by a new cognitive narrative. For example, after a couple of sessions, Sarah understands the importance of setting boundaries at work to prevent burnout. However, when her boss asks her whether she can work during the weekend, she still responds with a yes because her body is activated with a fear state: fear of disappointing an authority figure. This fear is rooted in her childhood when she learned to always say yes to please her dad. In this case, a course of EMDR therapy might help address the root of the fear by accessing an acute memory of her being forced to say yes to a demand from her father.
5. Ask for help
Loneliness is fortified by shame and the most effective way to shatter shame is to talk to someone you can trust. You don’t have to wait for a crisis to talk to a psychologist, counsellor or psychotherapist. Simply wanting to learn how to be alone and happy is a perfectly good reason to make your first appointment. Book in for a session with me now and let’s take this journey together.