Episode 9: Alone vs Loneliness

In this episode, I discuss my own journey with loneliness and being alone.  I explore the differences between the two and how they impact the daily life of someone who struggles with Borderline Personality Disorder. I also share the things that have helped me through those dark times of loneliness.

**TRIGGER WARNING** I also speak about the negative impacts this has had on my life to date. If you feel uneasy whilst listening to this episode, please stop it and reach out to the appropriate channels; Links to Australian services can be found below. These services are available 24/7 within Australia.

Beyondblue: https://www.beyondblue.org.au/
Lifeline: https://www.lifeline.org.au/

Included in this episode is a video performed by the One Voice Children's Choir. The song is their cover of the hit song You Will Be Found from the musical Dear Evan Hanson. The link to this video is here: 
https://youtu.be/P7VLUI1Kdnk?si=7PsgLODmBydWlK4w
Please like and subscribe to their channel also.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to this week's episode of Unapologetically Imperfect. Thank you for joining us today. I would like to begin by acknowledging the Darik people, the traditional custodians of the land on which this podcast is recorded and filmed. I pay respects to elders past, present, and emerging, and extend that respect to any Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander peoples listening today. I acknowledge that this land is and always will be Darik Country. Trigger warning. This episode, I discuss some of the negative impacts of loneliness, the impacts that it can have on your mental health and your self-esteem. If you find yourself feeling down at any point, please stop and reach out to the appropriate people. Welcome back to this week's episode of Unapologetically Imperfect. I've titled this episode Alone vs. Loneliness, a concept which I've really struggled with for most of my life. I'd like to begin by playing you a song from the musical Dear Evan Hansen. This particular version is done by the One Voice Children's Choir. And I'd really like you just to listen to the words as I play the song now.

SPEAKER_01 1:30

Have you ever felt forgotten in the middle of nowhere? Have you ever felt like you could disappear? Like you could fall.

SPEAKER_04 2:13

You can reach And oh someone will come running and die Even when the dark comes crashing through when you need a friend to carry. When you're broken on the ground.

SPEAKER_00 6:09

Like you could fall and no one would hear. I love musicals. I love this song. For me, it's just a musical power ballad that you can belt out when you're feeling down or lonely. Maybe it's just me, but I feel music is like a big hug for your soul. When you aren't quite quite feeling right, music just seems to speak. And that brings me to our topic today. The two words, alone and loneliness. Whilst they sound similar and contain similar letters, they are extremely different. The term alone is defined as a physical or factual state of being on your own. It's not the absence of people, it's the presence of yourself. It's a space where your own voice becomes impossible to ignore. Being alone means standing in your own company without distraction or disguise. It's a moment when the world gets quieter and you get louder. It's not emptiness. It's uninterrupted time with yourself. It's the art of being enough even when no one else is around. A physical state that can feel either like freedom or confinement. And when the crowd disappears, and your relationship with yourself takes center stage. That's alone. We can be alone and be content. But being an only child, I spent many hours alone growing up. But what I didn't realize, whilst I was alone, there was something else more severe creeping in. Loneliness. Loneliness is an emotional state. It describes the sad, painful feeling of wanting companionship and longing to connect with others. Loneliness is being surrounded by people but feeling unseen. It's the ache of missing connection. Not just their company. Not just company. It's a silent room inside your heart. It's not the absence of people, it's the absence of belonging. Loneliness is an empty chair at the table of life. It's the echo of conversations you wish you were having. Like being a single star on a cloudy sky. As you can see, you can be lonely and not be alone. They're two very different concepts. One's physical, one's emotional. And it's in this state of loneliness that has plagued me forever. I spoke in previous episodes of how I often felt like a square peg in a round hole and how I didn't fit in. Well, most of this was due to loneliness. Made a million times worse by my borderline personality disorder, or BPD. Because many of the core features of BPD involve relationship, connection, and fears of abandonment. Hello, right here. Here I was thinking I'd just gotten used to being on my own and occupying myself when really I had suffered chronic loneliness all of my life. It wasn't until I was diagnosed by my psychiatrist that the feeling started to make sense. Now, BPD mixed with loneliness, it can amplify worries that others are going to reject me, have forgotten me, or have abandoned me. Not hearing back from a text in a certain time frame can have detrimental effects on me. Although it is something I'm really working on, and I'm learning that it's okay for people not to reply straight away. For me, loneliness also can trigger feelings of sadness, emptiness, sometimes anger, anxiety or despair more strongly and more quickly than it might for others who don't have this condition. If you've listened to any of my other episodes, you would have heard me talk about spending time with my friends when I was growing up and hanging out with my friends and youth leaders as a teenager. Whilst I was with people, I felt lonely. On the outside, I'd appear happy and enjoying people's company. But on the inside, it was a really different story. It was a really different story on the inside. Sometimes the feelings of loneliness that I regularly feel and experience are painful and can put me in a very dark place. There can be a strong urge to seek reassurance, closeness, or validation. And sometimes this would lead me to being extra clingy with people or the polar opposite. I can pull away in a flash. Because I figure, well, I might as well leave before they leave me. Not an easy concept. I've been able to misinterpret body language and tones of voice as rejection. Mentally intense episodes of loneliness have made me feel like I don't want to keep going. Not because I want to die. Right? It's not because I want to die. But because the feelings are so empowering and overpowering I just don't feel like there's any other option. For me, BPD has reinforced the following loneliness thoughts about myself and my self-image too. Nobody cares about me. I'm unlovable. I'll always be alone. If you've listened back to previous episodes, you'll understand that there's a lot of trauma and rejection from my past. These are regular thoughts I have. Research has suggested that people with BPD may especially be sensitive to social disconnection and perceived rejection. Needless to say, COVID was really hard. Lockdown here in Australia was brutal. And as much as sometimes I don't like people, I discovered I needed people because the intense loneliness was so much worse. Straying slightly. As a result of loneliness, I've often experienced not simply just being alone, but I've experienced this as a profound emotional pain that could affect my mood. They're two very different states. Being alone, being happy in your own company versus lonely. We just want that connection with someone else. So how have I overcome being alone and loneliness? Well these are some ways that I've done this on my own. These are things that I have learned from my own point of view. But remember, I am not a professional. I'm speaking purely from my experience and what I've learned. I believe it's important that we remember that there is an element of choice when it comes to being alone. We can choose to be alone without others and be completely fine. But there are times when we find ourselves alone, usually circumstantial and out of our control. So some things that I have done, and I still do to this day to help with this, but include things like this. I'll text or call a friend and have a chat. I'll try and catch up with a friend and go out for coffee, or might even just try and go out for coffee on my own, just so there's at least people around. Still working on that one. For me, I watch a good movie that makes me feel good. Usually I find feel good movies help me to what's the word? They help me kind of reprogram. So instead of focusing on my loneliness, it kind of takes me out of that bubble. It breaks that bubble a little bit. I listen to songs and music that encourage my soul, like the one I played at the beginning of this episode. Sometimes I'll jump in my car and I'll drive down to the airport just to watch the planes. And I'll go take photos. And I'm pretty lucky because where Sydney Airport is, there's also a lot of water. So I can go and chill by the water. I'll spend time with my dog Hugo, who's not sure where he is at the moment. I think he's outside in the sun. But he gives the best cuddles. He's not human. But I have that connection with him. I also like to journal. I find for me personally, writing things down actually helps me feel less alone in a weird way. And to be honest, it usually helps me sleep better too. I call it my brain dump. I take everything that's in here and just throw it down into my journal. If you've never tried it, you should give it a go. You got nothing to lose. I think the hardest thing with being alone is finding peace in being alone and not needing to be around others. As I said earlier, I spent a lot of time as a kid alone. Not always a bad thing. And I used my imagination playing with my toys, or I'd push myself to get into a good book or something. But finding peace in being alone when you have been alone for so long, it's a struggle. It's a struggle. Especially when you've got those negative thoughts of no one wants me, I'm not valued, I'll be alone forever. When they're creeping in, finding peace in being alone is really, really challenging. And obviously, for me, being alone was amplified and overpowered by my intense ongoing feelings of loneliness about and this isn't something that can just be forgotten. You can't just flick a switch and oh hey, I'm not lonely anymore. It doesn't work that way. I wish it would. But being in an emotional state, it's actually not as simple as making a choice to feel happy. So many times I've had people say to me, like, just be happy. Like you just need to snap out of it. Or you just even need to just choose to be positive. Whilst I appreciate the sentiment and hear me out, from my heart, it's not that easy. If I could just snap out of feeling loneliness and the intense feelings that come with it, I 100% would, without fail. It's not a surface thing. It's a deep down rooted inside you kind of thing. You can't just snap out of it. I don't know that I have any actual solutions for dealing with loneliness. But probably the most powerful thing I've learned in my own personal journey so far is naming it. In many times of extreme loneliness, it has felt like this. Like I am crying and screaming in a crowded place, no one's paying attention, everyone's going on with their day. Maybe this is a feeling you felt or can relate to as well. It's not something you can just get over. Trust me, I wish it was. But by acknowledging how I feel to myself or to someone else, who I can trust, not just anyone. I have to explain it to someone I trust, who I know is not going to judge me for it. My mom or one of my really close friends. By speaking it, by acknowledging it, the grips of the loneliness start to break. And the gripping feeling starts to release a little bit. Does it fix it straight away? Heck no. Not even close. But it's a start. We've all got to start somewhere. There's huge power, I think, in naming and identifying and acknowledging something of this magnitude. Remember, I said this isn't a surfacing. It's not like, oh, I'm alone. Oh, cool. It is something that is deeply rooted inside. Identify it, name it, an acknowledgement starts to break the chain. While there is no actual fix for the deep dark feelings of loneliness, it's little things along the way that help me move forward. Music for me is really helpful with this. If you haven't figured it out yet, music's a huge part of my life. And I love songs that encourage me and lift me up when I feel down. Once I identify and acknowledge the loneliness, I can start to overcome it slowly. Slowly but surely. Listening to songs like the one I opened up with just help to lift me up and encourage me. And I can't explain it. But the impact of certain songs, the way that they can make you feel. There's nothing else like it. We don't always have the words. And words fail. But music. Music can speak. So as I start to head towards the end of this episode, if you are alone. Or you are experiencing loneliness, I want to remind you, you're not on your own. I feel that these are the sorts of topics that are not discussed openly enough, hey? Like in society, we just brush it off or whatever. We put it down to being a digital world. Yeah, true. But it's time we opened up the doors for these conversations. It's time that we stop suffering in silence. And if you're like me, you often don't want to reach out to people because you don't want to burden them or bother them because you know they're probably busy. But sometimes you just have to reach out. And yes, I hate doing this too. Because I've always felt like a burden. I've always felt like I'm going to interrupt their busy life, or, you know, I'm gonna get in the way of their plans. I'm speaking from my own truth. I hate reaching out to people. But we are human. You cut us, we bleed. We're human. And humans were designed for company. We are social creatures. Connection is as natural to us as breathing. We're built for belonging, not isolation. People flourish in connection because relationships are part of what makes us human. Whilst we may choose to be on our own at times, we are not destined to be alone permanently. I've always told my friends that my phone is on 24-7 and they can contact me anytime. I saw this as an open door opportunity for my friends to have someone, anyone that they could reach out to in those times of being alone and or loneliness. The funny thing is, I never used to take my own advice, ever. And I still struggle to this day. I would be all alone and extremely lonely. And I'm talking the deep, intense loneliness. But I wouldn't reach out. I didn't want to burden people, I didn't want to upset people, I didn't want to bother people. I would continue in silence and I would just keep going on my own. Now, for the record, this is something I am getting better at. Only the other week I actually wasn't doing great and I texted two of my really close friends, something which I wouldn't have done in the past. And I just explained what was going on. I said, just pray for me. And I've learned, and I continue to learn, that we are designed for connection. We are solely connectable beings. My encouragement for you today is this: don't feel that you bother people if you reach out to them. It's going to bother them more if they find out you're suffering and don't reach out. Let me say that again. Don't feel that you are going to bother people by reaching out. It's going to bother them more if they find out later that you are suffering or you were suffering and you did not reach out. You may choose to be on your own and in your own company from time to time, and that's completely okay. I'm on my own now. Minus the dogs. But don't let being alone and loneliness take control of your life. Don't let it take control of who you are and stop you from living. I've done it. I've let that intense loneliness stop me from living my life. I don't recommend it. We can change a physical state fairly easily. But the emotional state takes longer and requires more specialized connections. So find the right people for you. People who will encourage you and listen to you. People who encourage you to your face and then tear you down behind your back. They're not the sort of people you want. They're actually going to enhance your loneliness. When I was down the other week and I reached out to my friends, they both texted me back. And that was enough for me to realize that I am valued and I am important to people. The chains of loneliness that was strangling me that day began to break. And slowly but surely, I started to feel less lonely. Whilst I was physically alone in my actual setting, I wasn't as lonely as I had been. All because I reached out. You are not a burden. You are not in the way. Reach out to your chosen people. And do not let the loneliness drown you. Because it will. And you are not in the way. In fact, you are valued, you are important. And the right people in your life, the right people in your life will make time for you. Even if it's just a text. It's time we overcome it. Identify it. Name it. Acknowledge it to someone you trust. And start to break the chains that are holding you back. We can change being alone because that's physical. But we can't change loneliness in an instant. It takes work. Because at the end of the day, we're all on our own journey to becoming unapologetically imperfect. Because you know what? That is the best way to be. Thank you for listening to this episode, and we'll see you next time.