Loneliness is our society’s biggest mental health challenge; it’s an epidemic. People across every age group describe feeling disconnected and alone, missing a sense of community and deep friendships.

Our reliance on technology, the fact that we spend our days interacting with screens and talking to bots, not people, working in isolation; the geographic scattering of families and the disappearance of community pillars; the overall shift in our values as a society, with “progress” having replaced contentment; all of it contributes to the situation in which we now find ourselves. People are connected around the clock, but don’t feel connected to each other. And maybe more frighteningly, we are losing the skill of even knowing how to connect, to form deep friendships and meaningful bonds.

As a therapist for over 30 years, I hear a lot about loneliness and often about loneliness that exists within relationships, the feeling so many people describe of having “friends” but not feeling particularly close to those “friends,” and the lightness and superficiality that characterizes many friendships these days. And I hear about what people really want and need from their relationships—what makes them feel connected and cared for and what makes them feel lonely. In this way, I have an inside view into what helps and heals our loneliness. That said, I want to suggest one simple practice that can move the dial when it comes to loneliness, a small gesture we can make that creates connection and can profoundly change and enrich our relationships. A small practice with an enormous impact—a profoundly powerful way to cultivate closeness, deepen, strengthen, and build connection in your friendships and relationships overall. Something it seems obvious one would do instinctively (but in fact is rarely done), a practice which, ultimately, will help you feel less disconnected and alone in a society in which disconnection and loneliness are the norm.

A case in point: Jane and Melly.

Jane texted her good friend Melly to ask if she had a moment to speak by phone. Within moments, the phone rang, and Melly was on the other end, asking what was up. Jane shared that she’d received some scary test results from her doctor. She wouldn’t know anything for a couple of weeks and would have to meet with a specialist to do follow-up testing and figure out what the next right steps would be. She was frightened, however, and Melly, at the time, was reassuring and kind.

Over the next week, the two women texted daily, as they usually did, about all sorts of topics, but not about Jane’s health situation, and not about the fear she was carrying in her heart, or the anxiety that was wallpapering all of her other activities. They just went back to their usual way of talking about regular life. The following weekend, Jane and Melly met for coffee as was their ritual on Saturday mornings. And again, Melly didn’t raise the topic of Jane’s health, ask her if she had any more information about it, or bring up how she was feeling about it. Nothing. It was just a regular conversation about their work, kids, dogs, the sports team they followed, and all the rest of life’s stuff. It had been a lively and fun coffee date, as theirs always were, but when Jane got home, she felt sad, disconnected, and profoundly lonely.

Because they were good friends, Jane decided to tell Melly how she felt, and to simply ask her why she hadn’t brought up Jane’s health situation, or followed up in some way about the heaviness and fear she was carrying in her heart. Melly felt terrible about her choice not to bring it up, but explained that she didn’t want to insert the dark topic if Jane didn’t want to think about it or “go there” at that moment. She figured that she was giving Jane some relief in getting to just chit-chat about their usual life nonsense and not having to think about the hard stuff for a bit. And if Jane wanted to talk about her fear, she would bring it up. She was being respectful, or so she thought, by giving her space and allowing her to take a break from the hard stuff.

In Part 2 of this post, I will offer an alternative to our standard way of relating and a simple but radical path to end our loneliness.

The post The Startlingly Simple Way to Not Feel Lonely appeared first on Nancy Colier.

We can, still, choose to refrain from diving headfirst into this AI experiment on human consciousness. We can decide to not do what we know we can do. As humans who fundamentally want to be happy and don’t want to suffer, we can choose not to be seduced and hypnotized by the excitement, greed, and competitiveness of the tech wizards in Silicon Valley.

As a psychotherapist and interfaith minister, I can say with certainty that technology, in the way we’re using it, has become an obstacle to our overall happiness and well-being. Technology is severely damaging young people’s ability to connect interpersonally and enjoy themselves. The surgeon general has determined that the mental health of young people is “the defining health crisis of our time.” And yet we proceed forward, accelerate faster and harder down the same path, and commit more fiercely to AI as the great solution to life.

Why do we continue hurling ourselves toward what will most certainly become an existential crisis for our society? Why are we surrendering our autonomy and agreeing to be ruled by a technological wizard who doesn’t understand or care about us humans enjoying good lives—a wizard much like Hal the computer, which Stanley Kubrick imagined in his prophetic 1968 film “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

We continue in the name of what we call “progress,” which we define as that which creates more efficiency, is more productive, cuts costs, and ultimately, generates profits. So too, “progress” is whatever allows us to do less, removes some life tasks, and promises to make things easier and faster. The end goal, or so it seems, is to become passengers in our own lives, even if it’s a virtual Frankenstein who’s driving the bus.

The problem, however, is that our definition of “progress” and obsession with pursuing it benefits only a small number of people, those who also reap enormous financial rewards and power from this system.

What if happiness and well-being were what we pursued, considered “progress,” and designed our society around? What if our goal as a society were to create a good life for its members, a life we enjoy and want to inhabit? What if we focused on our experience of living rather than on an idea of “progress” that makes so many people not want to live? Can we change at this stage of the evolutionary game — redefine “progress” such that it means learning to be okay where we are, not always have to move forward at epic speed, and refrain from chasing every possibility regardless of whether it’s good for us or that we even want?

Despite everything we know and directly experience with technology, how it affects and harms our children, and despite our society’s multigenerational epidemic of anxiety, loneliness, and depression, nonetheless, we keep pushing forward, doubling down on technology—going after whatever we can think up, simply because we can think it. We do this no matter the cost, offering up our lives and ourselves as kindling in the bonfire we call “progress.”

We cannot give up on well-being and happiness as the goals for our society, and cannot surrender control of our lives to an AI wizard just because it tells us we should, and will be good for us. What more do we need to know, or discover, to be able to step off this train of relentless “progress,” to take our foot off the accelerator and reevaluate what we want, what matters to us as humans, and how we want to design (and live) our lives?

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John is a highly educated man and was vigorously expressing a lengthy and well-defended case against the validity of the whole phenomenon that is the Me too movement.  His argument extended to issues of race and gender as well, specifically, how all of the now-prevalent identity politics is overblown, unnecessary, negative and destructive.

When he did pause, just for a moment, I snuck in an observation, namely, that the identity movement seemed to make him feel defensive and angry.  He denied feeling defensive but shared that as a teacher, the new politic did force him to be hyper-vigilant about the words he uses with students, to have to watch everything he does so as not to be wrongly accused.  I empathized with his experience and how hard it must be to be a teacher these days.  He then went back to his well-constructed case for what was faulty about the movement.

As this conversation was going on, I was also keeping an eye on his partner, Nel.  As John went on with his narrative, Nel’s expression glossed over; she had checked out, lost interest in even trying to stay present.  I understood her experience as there was nobody there, really, for her to be present with.  The possibility for connection was gone, lost behind the steel walls of intellectual content.

But I was hopeful as I had seen an opening; a little piece of John had emerged as he talked about the difficulty for teachers just now.  And so I inquired, hoping that I could get a little further than John’s teacherexperience.

“What does it trigger in you personally, having to be in the thick of it, required to participate in this dialogue and all the forms and training sessions you probably have to be part of?”  And for some reason, with that very simple invitation, within the safety of our relationship, John showed up.  In an instant, his entire facial expression shifted as if he had also not been present and now, suddenly, he was there.

John then expressed how toxic the whole thing felt for him, that he was not interested in any of it and yet was being forced to be in a conversation that was not his life, not valuable to him.  He felt terribly put upon and trapped by the whole environment of identity politics, in a constant fight about issues that he didn’t resonate with, having to prove he wasn’t guilty of something that didn’t in any way belong to him. The specifics of what he felt are less important than what happened in the couple as a result of this fresh truth that John was able to share.

Suddenly Nel was there in the room.  It literally felt like a wave of energy had wafted through the space; it was palpable.  Nel had returned, literally reentered the space behind her eyes.  In that moment, for the first time, I could see real empathy for her husband spread across her brow.   They were sharing the same space, perhaps for the first time in a decade.  Nel was looking at John with an entirely different expression, really looking at John.  Tears welled up in Nel’s eyes; connection was happening.  At last, what had been separating them all these years, all her husband’s ideas, were out of the way and she could feel him, be with him, be truly together, in real company.

John had been honing his ideas and intellect his entire life, using his arguments to validate what he was experiencing, but sadly, because of his own psychology, not even knowing or inquiring into what he was experiencing.  He had gotten quite skilled at proving his rightness, but all his ideas came at the cost of connection.  John didn’t get to feel connected to anyone or, for that matter, allow anyone else to feel connected with him.  He was an island in every way, surrounded by an ocean of mind.

Many people remain stuck in the land of contents—with the context underneath the contents rarely (if ever) reached.  Men particularly seem to get locked in their thoughts, information, and ideas, which shuts them out from their own hearts and shuts everyone else out in the process.  The feeling of being with such individuals is that of not being able to touch them, of being trapped in a corridor with no door, no way to be together, held at bay by the thoughts, opinions, and arguments, the armor that protects their hearts from ever being visible, or vulnerable.

As the partner, you are not able to connect deeply, not below the neck, beyond the layer of intellect. Since it’s not possible to join them in their experience, empathy has to happen from a distance, via an idea of what they’re experiencing but without getting to feel it with them.  For the partner of such individuals, being together is an experience of loneliness, separation, hearts that can’t actually touch, a life that can’t actually be profoundly shared.

When John expressed his personal experience, not his narrative around it, not his justification for it, not all that he knew about it, just his truth in its raw, real, and alive form, simply what he was living on the inside, as it was coming freshly in the moment, Nel felt connected to her husband, like she was at last with him.  They were together in the same now.  His intellectual defenses had stepped out of the way for a brief and blessed moment. Nel could then experience the sensation of being in true company—not being alone together. (She later confirmed this to me in an individual session.)

Couples spend decades trapped, like flies in spider webs, inside the arguments of content, and particularly who’s right, who’s justified in feeling the way they feel about the contents. They get caught, sometimes for good, in the ongoing battle for whose experience is deserving of empathy. This happens for many reasons, one of which is that we mistakenly believe that we are our thoughts and opinions.  Proving our rightness is thus a life and death struggle to ensure survival.  But such is a topic for another day.  In the interests of word count here, it’s my intention to simply point out that ideas and opinions, the stuff of mind, the generalized narrative and intellectual defense system, can serve as a non-navigate-able obstacle to connection.

Source: Vladimir Kudinov/ Unsplash

If you’re feeling that you can’t reach your partner, like you’re alone when you’re together, as if you can’t find the key to being truly with each other, notice, is your couple trapped in the land of contents—of mind—with no access to each other’s hearts.  Is your communication stuck in the land of opinions, ideas, and whether what’s happening is right or wrong, good or bad?  Notice if your relationship is waylaid in the purgatory of commentary, the airless box that it is to always be commenting on life to each other, but never in it with each other, forever a step away from your felt experience, and from each other.

If what I describe resonates, consider offering questions to your partner that contain an intention to reach the heart and uncover the real felt experience–not the story of it.  And, offer yourself the same invitation, to deepen your connection with yourself as well.

Questions that invite feelings:

-What is the experience like, for you, in that situation?

-What does that situation trigger in you?

-What does it feel like when you’re in that situation?

-What’s the worst thing, for you, when you’re in that situation?

What makes it so hard, for you, when you’re in that situation?

And, when describing your own experience, try modeling the communication style you want to receive from your partner.  For example, “For me, when that happens, I feel (such and such)” “What makes it so hard for me is…” Actively model talking about your feelings, your personal experience, rather than your narrative about the situation, maybe even naming that distinction so that your partner can hear the difference, regardless of whether he knows how to do it.  Furthermore, remember that when your partner is able to express his direct and personal experience or a fresh perhaps newly discovered feeling, be sure to offer him (or her) a safe space and supportive response. Don’t correct or dismiss his truth, no matter what it contains.  Each time he moves from the known storyline to the unknown felt experience, he is growing, taking a baby step forward.  When you respond lovingly and with acceptance, you are encouraging more steps in this direction and thus inviting a deeper connection.  True connection happens when we can communicate from our vulnerability, our hearts–not our stories and protective mental layers.  It happens when we dive into life together rather than standing on the shore, safely commenting on it. The most important journey we take in relationship, and life, is from our head to our heart.

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