Where exactly does loneliness live in your body? Sit with it and find out, because that is more useful than any advice about getting out more.
They tracked people for decades, took bloods, checked their health, asked how they felt. What came out was not about diet. It was about connection. So is loneliness only evolution punishing us, or is there something underneath it? Usually what we are missing is security. Somebody there. A safety net, and somebody to bounce ideas off.
One thing to try: Sit and ask where you feel it in your body. Just locate it. That is the whole exercise.
In this episode
(0:03) Two podcasts in one, and where this one goes
(2:57) Everything being part of something bigger than ourselves
(4:55) The bloods, the questionnaires, and what they found
(7:04) Is it only evolution, or is it deeper than that?
(9:57) Sit down and ask which part of the body it is in
(11:48) Usually it is security, and having somebody there
(14:20) Pull the curtains, lock the doors, I need out
Support the podcast and join the Weekly Calm: stevenwebb.uk
Thank you for listening.
Steven
The question this answers
Where exactly does loneliness live in your body?
That is a stranger question than the usual advice about getting out more, and it is far more useful. Sit with it and find out.
The heart of it
You can be lonely in a relationship, in a full house, lying next to somebody.
What is usually missing is not company. It is the feeling that somebody has your back.
You could not be lonely unless at some point you had it. Which means it can come back.
There was a study that followed a couple of thousand people for decades, taking their bloods, checking their health, asking how they were. When they looked back to see what had made the healthier ones healthier, they expected diet and exercise.
It was not. It was having people around them in their fifties and sixties. Somebody to talk to. Somebody to bounce things off. Somebody who made them feel safe.
That is the clue about what loneliness actually is. It is not a shortage of humans in the room. It is the sense that nobody is holding anything up behind you.
I have felt it in a bed with somebody in it. They were there and they were not present, and I suspect you know exactly what I mean.
I miss my dog Bounty for this reason. I sleep with two single beds pushed together because it makes dressing me easier, so when my partner moved out he had a whole bed to himself. I would wake in the night, reach across and stroke him a couple of times, and I always thought I was comforting him.
When he was gone I understood it had been the other way round.
One small thing to try
Sit with it rather than run from it.
Say I am feeling lonely rather than I am lonely, because one comes and goes and the other sounds permanent.
Then find it. Which part of your body is it in? What shape is it? What colour, what texture?
Mine is in my chest. Square, purple, and smooth in a matt way rather than a silky one.
That sounds daft and it does something. Once it is an object you can watch it rise and fade, and something you can watch is something you are no longer entirely inside.
Questions people ask
Should I not just ring somebody?
Ring them, by all means. Just do the sitting first, because otherwise you will keep treating the symptom. Most people find that what they were missing was security rather than conversation, and that changes what actually helps.
Why does pushing it away not work?
Because feelings behave like water against a dam built out of sand. You can hold it for a while and you cannot hold it indefinitely, and when it goes it takes you with it.
Does anything help in the moment?
Somebody saying they feel it too. Not advice, not a solution. Just knowing you are not the only one, which is a smaller thing to ask for than it feels like.
Read along
The transcript
It follows the audio. Press any line to jump there.
loneliness · relationships · acceptance
Read the transcript
Hey, welcome to this week's podcast.
I'm Stephen Webb, and this is Stillness in the Storms and Living
Deeper Lives.
It's kind of two podcasts in one.
So some of them we're talking about getting some inner peace and
other ones we're talking about living deeper lives and going deeper
into what it means to be a human.
This week I want to talk about being lonely and I want to really
talk about it doesn't matter whether you're in a relationship
or whether you're not in a relationship or whether you're just
elderly or feeling alone as a teenager.
There's something about humans that every now and again we feel
alone.
You can be with somebody, you can be literally, I was in a relationship
and my partner would crawl into bed and even some nights we
would cuddle up, but I felt alone.
They were there, but they weren't present.
And I'm sure all of you can relate to that at some point.
So how do we deal with loneliness?
What does it mean to be lonely?
Why do humans feel lonely?
That's what I want to talk about on this podcast.
So let's get on with it.
Let's face it, even if you're a child, when you're like maybe five,
six years old, at some point you'll feel lonely.
You'll feel like you don't fit in.
And we spend so much of our lives after we develop the ego at
the age of one, one and a half years old, trying to find out where
we fit into the world.
And when we become, when we're at school, we're trying to fit in
with the in crowd.
We even change ourselves to fit in.
And all of this is to avoid the pain and suffering of feeling
alone.
We don't like feeling alone.
And it's, it's funny because why is that?
What?
Why do we have to feel like we have to be with somebody or we have
to feel like we're part of something?
There's some kind of, whether it's self love or self respect, there's
something about when you're in a relationship or when you're in
that gang or when you're part of something that you almost feel
more whole.
And I'm paralyzed just below the neck and I'm in electric wheelchair
and being a, being a man and been a male macho man, I thought
that being in a relationship, having a girlfriend, made me into
more of a man.
There I was, I've got a girlfriend, you know, I'm not paralyzed,
I'm not useless.
I'm you know, I'm manly here, so I thought having a girlfriend
shown people that I was something.
And I guess that's the same with trying to fit in with whether
it's into a gang or in with the locals or whether it's Hell's
Angels or Mafia.
You know, I know that's a stretch from in the relationship
to the Mafia, but it's all been part of something bigger than
ourselves.
And when we're home alone, we don't feel part of that bigger picture.
Who are we?
What are we?
Why do we feel so lonely?
Why is it so.
Why is it so painful to feel alone?
You know, humans.
Humans have evolved to be separate creatures, to live a separate
life.
You know, on the spiritual sense, we're trying to be part of
the bigger picture.
We're trying to be finding our way home.
Wayne Dyer would say, so what is the real big issue with just sitting
in loneliness for a while?
But we don't like it.
It's really painful.
The older we get now, more people are living alone.
More people are not in relationships later on.
You know, I'm 47.
I'm not in a relationship at the moment.
I have been most of my life.
You know, this is the first time in my life that I really lived
alone.
I have carers, they stay at night.
They don't stay if I've got friends over and things like that.
But it comes down to more and more of us are living single lives.
We're in our 40s, 50s, even in relationships, we're living in separate
houses.
And there's this great future generation or our generation when
we get to older age, we're going to be living alone.
There's going to be more loneliness than ever.
And I remember the biggest study ever in human history that
they were.
They found over 2,000 people, and they followed them year after
year after year.
And they took their bloods and they looked at their health each
year.
They also done a questionnaire of how they felt and everything.
And when they got to their 70s, 75, obviously there's a lot
less of them because some of them have passed away and moved on.
They lost contact.
The ones that were left, the healthier ones, they decided to look
back in the 50s and see what.
See what led to them being more healthier.
And they thought it would be exercise, they thought it would be
eating healthy now.
And it wasn't.
It was the fact that in the 50s, when they were 50s, in their
60s, they had people around them, they had people that they could
talk to that they could bounce off that they could spend time with.
They had someone around that made them feel secure and safe in
life.
And I think that's one of the main reasons about why we don't like
to feel alone.
When we're alone, we feel as if nobody's got our back.
We feel as if nobody's going to be there for us.
And that's why you can be in a relationship and perhaps that partner
is disengaged.
Perhaps there's something going on.
Perhaps they're not interested in being in a relationship with you
anymore.
I don't have any reason why, and I don't want you to.
If you're in a relationship and you're feeling a little bit alone,
I don't want to put thoughts into your head to what your partner
is thinking.
But we can certainly be in a relationship and feel alone.
And what is that loneliness?
Is it really just the fact that we haven't got no one to talk
to?
Or is it something deeper?
That we feel as if loneliness is an evolved state in order to help
protect us?
Because in groups we're safer.
When we have someone to have our back, we're safer.
If I was going to go into a forest that I did not know, I'd much
rather go in with two or three of us as a group than I would alone.
So it makes sense to evolve this fear of loneliness, a feeling
of uncomfortable to be alone.
But is that all it is?
Is it literally just something that's evolved and now we're suffering
because of it?
Or is there something deeper down on the spiritual sense that
means we have to have this real connection with people, or even
if it's not with people, with animals and dogs.
My little bounty passed away last year, and I miss him greatly.
What do I miss?
I miss the companionship.
I miss the fact that I woke up in the night and he was there.
I used to wake up every night and I put my arm out and I would
stroke him a couple of times because I got two single beds next
to each other because it's so much easier to dress me when we move
one of the beds out.
And chaos can get either side.
So when my partner moved out, literally he had a whole single bed
to himself.
So I would reach out my arm to him and I would stroke him in the
night.
And I always thought I was comforting him.
And I may be.
Maybe I was, I don't know.
But when he'd gone, I realized it was comfort for me knowing he
was there.
What could he do?
I Don't know, but just knowing he was there.
And in the morning when I used to sit up and do my meditation at
6:00 or 6:30 he used to hear the Insight Timer and a plug.
Now on Insight Timer, there's my meditations if you ever want to
check it out, just type in Insight Timer on Android or Apple.
So, so when he, when whenever the bell used to go on inside timer
he used to come and plonk himself right next to me and I always
wonder whether it's because he knew nothing was going to happen
for 30 minutes or maybe he come and plunk next to me because
he knew I wasn't going to move and he felt safe and he wanted to
relax and he wanted to feel that connection.
I don't know.
I remember lying there and breathing the same time as he was
breathing a little bit difficult because he was a little
westy and I got big lungs I've got.
But I could breathe for so long, same breath as him and when
I had my hand on him there was that connection.
I don't know whether he felt it but I felt it and I miss that.
I really do miss that.
So what is it about this loneliness?
What is it we're longing and I really do think it's that sense of
safety, that sense of someone's there to have my back.
So what can we do about the loneliness?
What is there we can do in our lives on a practical sense?
Well, we can rephrase what loneliness is.
Instead of making loneliness a part of who we are and saying I am
lonely, we can say I'm feeling lonely and we can recognize it as
something that comes and goes.
So if you're feeling lonely you could do this exercise and you
can sit down and take a few deep breaths and I'm feeling lonely.
What part of the body is that loneliness felt in?
And you can identify where it's to in the body and you could
give it a colour.
What colour is that loneliness?
What texture?
What's it look like?
So you've now got a part of the body, a texture and a color.
For me loneliness really is more in my chest.
It's like a square shaped, it's quite smooth, not totally smooth,
not silky smooth, but like a matte smooth and I would say it's
like a purple color.
And when you identify it as an object you can go, well bring this
loneliness in, let the loneliness fade.
Can't say that quickly when you're drunk.
Let the loneliness so you can like bring the loneliness up and
let it fade away.
And you can imagine the object inside of you doing that.
And it gives you control over the feeling of this loneliness.
But if you recognize what it is, look at it and go, well, I'm
feeling lonely because of this.
Nothing wrong with feeling lonely.
There's nothing wrong with having these feelings.
You know, very often the advice is, well, if you're feeling
lonely, get out, Phone someone, do something.
No, sit in it.
And you'll realize it's not the fact that you're missing someone
very often, it's the fact that you're missing what that someone.
You feel that someone gives you.
And it's very often security or a sense of somebody's there, a
safety net, you know, to have someone to bounce ideas off, to chat,
to reinforce and say, you're okay, you're doing okay, and you're
right.
We always like someone to say we're right.
I certainly do.
It's like having that conversation.
I know, I totally agree.
It's like, yes, we got a connection.
Very similar to the enemy of my enemy.
As my friend, when I was more of a teenager, used to sit around
the table and go, I can't believe how they were.
And they were.
I know, exactly the same.
Especially in this really politicized world at the moment,
you sit down with someone and they dislike the same politics as
you.
Oh my God.
It's like, it's like that connection instantly, isn't it?
It doesn't.
It doesn't matter what they look like or what they're doing.
They just instantly.
You instantly bond with somebody that disagrees or dislikes
the same things you dislike.
That's very, very powerful.
But this thing with loneliness, you know, we really have
to sit with it and be okay with it.
We can't change it.
You can't push it away.
Because like all feelings, the more you push them away, the more
they arise.
And I always, I always look at feelings, whether it's anxiety, loneliness,
anger, whatever they are.
It's.
Imagine you're on a beach and when you were a young child, you
always used to.
Or it doesn't even have to be a beach, just a river or something
somewhere.
And you tried to do a little dam.
Maybe it's a man thing, maybe it's a boy thing, but used to build
this little dam and you used to try to redirect the water or even
stop it.
And you have great big ambitions because you don't realize
there's never ending amount of water.
And at some point you're really successful and you can block
it out.
And you can stop the water for just a moment, and then before you
know it, the water overflows you.
And that's the same with emotions.
If you block them out or try to push them away, at some point
they will drown you.
At some point, that loneliness or some point that anxiety will put
you on your ass on the kitchen floor with your head between your
knees.
I can't cope.
Can't deal with this anymore.
Pull the curtains, lock the doors, get everybody out of my life.
I need time out.
That's because of the overwhelm.
I talk about overwhelm on other shows and I might revisit again
in the coming weeks.
But we very often try to push away these feelings.
Loneliness is a beautiful feeling.
And when we change our reflection of the way we see these
things, the way we can handle them changes.
And loneliness is one of the great ones that if we look at loneliness
as a beautiful feeling that comes and goes.
You could never be lonely unless at some point you had someone.
Unless at some point you had that security and safety of someone
being there for you.
Which means at some point it can be returned.
It can be there.
Even if it's just in your heart, sometimes it can be there.
You don't have to be with people to be not lonely.
You just have to believe you're not alone in this.
Thinking you're not alone in this feeling, perhaps grief.
Very often someone just saying to you, I feel the pain too.
Sometimes I'm lonely as well.
Sometimes that's enough.
I don't know if you can hear my belly rumbling, but it's rumbling.
So.
I'm Stephen Webb and this is Stillness in the storms and Living
deeper lives podcast.
And hopefully you subscribe.
If you can, leave me a review, that's brilliant.
If you go to Stillness in the storms.com you can support me, download
free meditations, you can download a book, finding your inner
peace.
Most of all, you can.
I can help you through some difficult times in your life and
I can help you through loneliness.
And if you are particularly suffering from loneliness at the
moment, head over to Stillness in the storms and click the chat
button.
Book in a chat with me totally free, just 20 minutes.
And they'll come with a little page that will say, only do this
as Stephen told you to.
Well, I'm telling you to book in a chat with me.
If you're feeling lonely, you'd like me to help in some way
reframe it for you.
Take care.
Love you guys and thank you for listening and thank you for being
