UNDERSTANDING DIFFERENT TYPES OF LONELINESS (CONTINUED)

In the context of Covid 19, building and strengthening healthy quality mental health is imperative and loneliness emerges as one of the major challenges we need to know with its signs and indicators. Be reminded that loneliness is one of the most uncomfortable and disorienting feelings affecting people across the spectrum as it has no selective manifestation, but it varies from person to person and from situation to situation. Loneliness is a deep-seated feeling that injects social pain due to a complex distress one may be encountering leading to failure and or struggle to connect with others. These social disconnections can usurp the power inherent in healthy social connections and subsequently impinge on relational intimacy. Let us note also that loneliness does not reflect whether one has people around or not and being in solitude may mean one is even more in connection than a person surrounded by many people or in crowds and so relational depth is critical. Different sources and kinds of loneliness also impress on us that loneliness may originate from failure to find relational connections that satisfactorily meet the demands for what we consider meaningful and purposeful in our relations. In some cases, emotional states may overwhelm our emotional coping resources leading to emotional lethargy. The downcast emotions such as sadness and depressive encounters can potentially take away the desire to engage in healthy quality social connections. In some cases, the person may be experiencing chemical imbalances in the brain hence the reactions may be interrupted when producing corresponding feelings and, in such cases, pharmacological therapy may be needed to reset the desirable balance. In other cases, loneliness may be due to failure to find vocational engagement, relational intimacy, marital connections including shared visionary outlook that is purposeful and meaningful. Spiritual loneliness is one such kind of loneliness that is often misunderstood because individuals, families and societies often anchor identities in other values except the spiritual meaning. Spiritual loneliness may then originate from failure to find that which connects us with a higher source of being hence the need to find a meaningfully connected reality for our purpose.

Irrespective of whether the source is mental with psychological orientation, social inclusion with significant others such as family and friends, intimate relations including romantic connections as the list goes on, similar residual effects are injected on the experiencer. The unbearable social and emotional pain is deeply ingrained with indescribable sense of powerlessness. This may be coupled with lack of control over the situation which can imprint feelings of worthlessness and helplessness. One may not find interest to engage in regular activities hence the tendency to spend more time in isolation, sleeping, refusing to eat or eating too much and lacking desire in the ordinary things one used to do with ease. We need to pick new worrisome behaviours as we build our understanding on loneliness that is context and situation based because different people will experience it differently for no one size fits all. A human creation was never created to exist in isolation without a healthy social connection with other people. God never created us in His image to disconnect us from Himself and others for communal existential patterning has always been His sovereign purpose for humanity. We need to consciously guard and protect our relational connections as we seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness for all the things we need, and desire will be added unto us (Matthew 6:33). This is not a passive word of exhortation to give us permission to sit back and do nothing with our lives but more of settling us in our divine godly promises as we confront loneliness. It is necessary for when this word is established, all shall be added by God with our active engagement including healthy social relations. Anything and anyone who intimidates and most of all takes away and or steals our peace is undesirable and not fit for our overall edification. In cases where there is no reason to question chemical imbalances that may require seeing medical help, it should be possible to support people who are experiencing loneliness. There are several strategies and coping mechanism that we shall share in the next column.