As some of you know, I regularly do a weekly podcast called Lunchtime In Rome with some of my best friends on emotional intelligence, emotional needs, and how to solve the problem of feeling alone. We stream LIVE every Wednesday at 8:30 PM EST to the YouTube, and we also upload each episode to all the podcast apps.
I know, I know, some of you LIKE being alone. I do too at times. Yet there are so many times where we feel completely alone in ways that aren’t healthy. We can feel alone:
In our marriage
In our friendships (or lack thereof)
In our jobs
In our thoughts and desires
etc.
For nearly four years now (and 176 episodes!), our podcast has been exploring this topic and searches for ways to remedy that. We spend the first 15 minutes or so sitting at The Table, catching up on life, and then the remainder of the hour discussing a specific topic, like Respect or dealing with a terrible neighbor, for instance.
We also discuss the 10 emotional needs that each of us wrestle with to some degree. Some of us have a very high need for many of these. Others don’t. We’re all different in what we need or don’t need.
These emotions, when not met or taken from us, lead to hurt. Little and big hurts happen to us each day, and until we deal with them, we walk around bleeding out. Many of us simply ignore them, buck up, and act as if we’re good (that’s me!) Others feel like living death because of them.
Regardless of where you fall in this spectrum, our topics have always been very interesting, in my opinion. I’ve personally learned a ton through this process and found a good bit of healing and understanding about myself.
If you’re interested, I’d love to ask you to sign up for this parallel Substack that I’ll be running.
I would value the similar interaction on that Substack as I do here.
Again, here is the direct link - https://lunchtime.substack.com/
Hope to see you there! Any questions, please post them to me here in the comments.
Very excited to find out about your alter-ego stack! I’ve been adrift in basically a friendless zone since October of 2919 when for a variety of reason my husband decided we needed to move out of our home state of CA and relocate to SC. And then came COVID. It’s not been easy or fun trying to figure out this last phase of our life. I’m a very social person and miss the friends that I’d known for decades. We text or talk as often as we can, but its not a substitute for IRL. Substacks like yours has been my saving grace. Not only keeping me aware the perils of our reset times and engaging my brain, but also, and maybe most importantly, being able to connect regularly through the comments with other humans that aren’t my family.
I’m excited to learn about what you’ve been exploring. Thank you in advance. 🙏🏻
Here's a thought, free of charge (as in you get what you pay for ;) ) - You can only be alone, as in feeling alone, when among other humans.
Being physically alone when there are no other humans present, like when hiking outside trails f.e. isn't the same feeling as sitting in the faculty lounge and realising that your own ability to think (not IQ or intelligence, just a propensity and habit of thinking things through using their own internally consistent logic, and to the end no matter how absurd) puts you outside of the social group, since being in a group that only exists for its own social sake means not thinking things through, going on instinct and emotion rahter than intellect, and where fitting in by everyone practicing same-ness is how to be.
Feeling alone, alienated, atomised, and so on leads to being ostracised since the groups around you picks up on the otherness you radiate, and once one group/leader shows others you are acceptable target for shunning or even bullying the process is autmatic and everything you do will be interpreted in a pre-judging framework of interpretation, creating a recursive loop of confirmation bias that whatever the treatnet you receive, you've earned it.
I've seen it so many times at work (teacher) when neither kids nor adults can explain their behaviour against certain kids - it's an automatic process I think, same as with chickens when one of them gets pecked by all others and the hens just watch. People studying bullying have noticed that victims display a certain set of behaviours and characteristics which seem to trigger something in those with a personality of the bully-ish type, though how that information was received by the teaching profession, I'm sure you can imagine.
Just throwing this in the ring so to speak - lonelyness can of course also be approached from the sociological angle, where it was called 'anomie' among other terms back when I was a student.
I think some persons utilise the feeling of lonelyness as a defence, because they perceive belonging to a group as losing their sense of self and as the alternative to feeling belonging is feeling alone/estrangement they trap themselves in a cycle of trying to belong, feeling the loss of control mixed with the intoxication of being part of the pack, and upcomes the defence-feelings - often displayed as arrogance and aloofness.
Of course, having worked alot with "aspies" on the high end of the intelligence scale I'm biased in my perceptions somy sample group is perhaps not the go-to normal one.
Amything above of any use, feel free to do so!