Anna Kalita: Is loneliness like unemployment – when it’s long-lasting, does it get into your blood and become a second skin?
Mirosław Brejwo: That’s an accurate comparison. When the feeling of loneliness lasts for a long time, the person experiencing it may feel that the situation is completely out of their control, that they are doomed to such a life, which leads them to stop making any efforts to change. In psychology, this is called learned helplessness. That’s why it’s important to emphasize that it’s not a life sentence or a state that cannot be changed.
It’s also worth noting that there’s a difference between being alone - someone is alone when they are not in a romantic relationship, but also when they don’t have friends - and the feeling of loneliness, which we can experience even when people are around us, but the bonds connecting us to them are not strong enough.
A sense of loneliness is often experienced by people in romantic relationships. Research shows that they can account for up to 60% of those struggling with loneliness.
It’s possible not to be in a relationship and not feel lonely. In such cases, it’s a much more comfortable situation for mental health than being in a bad relationship, where our needs are not being met, and we don’t feel important.
Subjectively! Because what’s unsatisfying for one person might be perfect for another.
In your book, you refer to the research of Eisenberger and Lieberman, who found that experiencing social rejection activates the same areas of the brain as physical pain.
That pain is a message to humans. It’s an alarm: steps should be taken to change the situation.
You don’t believe someone can feel lonely and not want to change it?
According to the definition, loneliness is the feeling of lacking bonds that causes suffering, so the question must be asked: Is the person really content with that suffering, or are they masking, for example, a fear of change or the effort of building a relationship with another person by saying, "If love is meant for me, it will come on its own"? Generally, to build a good relationship with another person, it takes effort.
But finding a partner today seems so simple: just download a free dating app, and you’re all set.
We live in times where it’s exceptionally easy to have many relationships, but extremely difficult to find quality ones.
When it comes to dating apps, we observe a paradox: the ease of accessing potential partners often leads to not putting enough effort into building a relationship. People tend to give up very quickly. How often do you hear, "It was nice, but I don’t know... Maybe I’ll meet someone better"?
We’re living under the illusion of an almost unlimited choice, with the promise that eventually, we’ll find the perfect match?
There are hundreds, thousands of candidates around! When our choices are limited—say to a few people—we put much more effort into exploring the relationship, checking if it has potential.
This applies to other aspects of life as well, such as finding a passion. It’s trendy today to say, "Do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life." Great, but how do you find your passion? Many people believe that if they try a new activity and it doesn’t captivate them on the first or second attempt, then it’s not for them. And so, they keep searching endlessly, living with a sense of unfulfillment.
Studies show that love or passion "at first sight" is rare because to enjoy something...
You need to know how to do it?
Exactly. And usually, that requires time. It’s the same with relationships.
That’s very rational. In your book on how to overcome loneliness, you basically suggest a task-oriented approach.
At the very beginning, it’s worth asking yourself: on a scale from zero to ten, how lonely do I feel? This helps gauge the situation and later check if and to what extent it has improved.
When giving advice, I try to balance giving hope - yes, change is possible - with tempering excessive enthusiasm - it’s unlikely that if you experience chronic loneliness, you’ll completely rid yourself of it overnight. This is where the task-oriented approach comes from.
What’s crucial, and the opposite of learned helplessness, is focusing on what is within our control. Even if it’s not much. The point is to be able to honestly tell yourself that you’re making an effort. This month, I did a bit more to not feel lonely than I did last month.
Expecting love to fall from the sky - the classic "they bump into each other on the sidewalk" - is wishful thinking? That only happens in romantic comedies?
Such situations are rare, and love at first sight, that sudden infatuation, has the characteristic that because we don’t have much information about the object of our affection, we rely on imagination. Disappointment comes easily.
Is it true that we instinctively consider physically attractive people to be good?
True. Such people even get lighter sentences in court. "Someone that cute can’t be all bad," right? This has been scientifically proven, just like the fact that romantic relationships don’t usually begin with a lightning strike but grow gradually between people who know each other: from school, college, work, or social circles.
I’m curious, do the people who come to you with loneliness issues usually try to change their situation first, or are they asking you to point them in the right direction?
They often claim they’ve tried to meet someone but "can’t," yet when we look closely, it turns out that not much was "done" in the real world. They stayed at the stage of thought experiments. "Am I alone? Sure, I could use a dating app, but it doesn’t make sense because no one will like me anyway."
I’m lacking in friendships? I once had a friend, but we lost contact two years ago. Sure, I could reach out, but what’s the point? After so long, they probably don’t care about me anymore.
Many people feel they are doing a lot to change their lives, when in reality, they’re doing little or nothing.
I know a single woman who believed that if she made space in her wardrobe - rearranging things so that half of the hangers and shelves were empty - it would signal to the universe that there was room in her life for the man of her dreams. And so she did. And waited.
Manifesting reality and the law of attraction: imagine yourself living with the perfect partner, and he will appear in your life! These beliefs aren’t backed by scientific research, but they are currently popular because they offer easy, convenient, and low-effort ways to solve problems. Making space in a wardrobe is quite a simple action. Incidentally, the popularity of such theories increases when we feel a lack of control over the situation, for example, during an economic crisis, but also when we are at a personal crossroads in life.
When you’re at a life crossroads, you could also go to a fortune teller, who will say: "Honey! A bright future awaits you!"
But when you go to a psychologist, you find out that you actually have to work hard. Looking for good relationships is like looking for a job.
So I was right with that comparison to unemployment.
We have control over where we apply, how many attempts we make, and how we present ourselves. It’s the same with relationships. There’s no guarantee that the first person we go on a date with, or the first call to a friend with whom we want to reconnect, will result in a wonderful relationship, but as the number of attempts increases, our discomfort associated with making them will decrease, and the probability of success will increase.
What do you mean by discomfort?
It’s important that what we do is suited to our needs and capabilities. Jumping into something too deep isn’t a good method. Returning to our scale: at the start, we don’t take on a challenge that causes ten out of ten anxiety, but rather something at five out of ten. It’s not easy, but it doesn’t make our stomach churn with fear. The first step for someone who is very afraid might not be calling an old friend to suggest meeting up, but sending them a message on Messenger.
After some time, virtual relationships with other lonely people might flourish and never leave the virtual world. That’s why it can be a very important step, as long as it’s not the first and last one. That the person doesn’t stay at the Messenger stage, out of fear of transferring the relationship to the real world.
The idea is that we’re working on building relationships. And if we’re working on it, that means we’re gradually overcoming fear. At first, sending a message on Messenger might be five out of ten in terms of difficulty, okay, but at some point, it’ll only be two out of ten, and then—the hard work lies in constantly monitoring yourself and updating the situation—we ask, what would be five out of ten in terms of difficulty today? Maybe suggesting a meet-up? Not necessarily in a restaurant where we’d have to talk for two hours. Maybe it could be the cinema: we’ll spend time together, and at the same time, we’ll have a guaranteed topic of conversation. Among the readers of this interview, there will definitely be some who say, "Going to the cinema? What’s the problem?" but also some for whom this is nine out of ten on the fear scale.
It’s important not to compare yourself to others and to make progress at your own pace.
Many people equate finding love or friendship with happiness. And in the search for happiness, moments of doubt can arise. Life won’t necessarily change with the wave of a magic wand.
That’s why a little patience is essential. I need to try again, give myself another chance, and check if it really doesn’t satisfy me.
The key word is to experiment. We make attempts, repeat them, and introduce changes. It’s like with the aforementioned passion: if I’m looking for a sport I’ll enjoy and go to play tennis once, it might be hard to tell after that first try whether it’s the passion for me. It requires repetition and time. It’s worth setting a checkpoint for yourself: I won’t analyze after every date whether this relationship is "the one," but I’ll give myself some time, say a month, and then see how I feel about it.
And what if we’re not the ones ending the relationship, but others "thank us for our time"? In therapy, the difficult moment is surely realizing that some work needs to be done on oneself.
The truth is, everything we’re talking about is one big process of working on oneself. Usually, the starting point is examining what beliefs we have about what relationships should look like. If, for example, we expect the other person to guess our needs, we’re doomed to failure. People can’t read minds.
It’s crucial to observe cognitive errors, such as black-and-white thinking. Someone who usually wants to meet with me turned me down today. Aha! They don’t like me! If we draw conclusions this way, we’ll give up on relationships far too quickly.
But sometimes, certain relationships genuinely can’t be repaired, or the chances are close to impossible. If, for example, our parents are alcoholics, abusive, and unwilling to change, sometimes, for our own good, an adult child decides to distance themselves. Yes, it might cause a sense of loneliness—because contact with the parents will now be rare—so we need to work on accepting this situation and think about whether the gap can be filled in another way, such as through friendships.
After how long can a person who’s making a genuine, consistent effort to overcome loneliness say that they’ve succeeded?
It all depends on the starting point, the goals they set for themselves, and additional circumstances that might hinder change, such as social anxiety or personality disorders.
Addictions?
Of course. If these factors are present, the process of change will undoubtedly take longer than in a situation where, for example, someone feels lonely in their marriage. In this latter case, it often turns out that a significant change is achieved by applying a very simple but, for many, eye-opening solution—telling their partner about their needs. We’re not spending enough time together just the two of us? So we’ll go on dates twice a week. It may seem like a small thing, but it can trigger a domino effect of positive changes in the relationship. Everything is individual. Both the experience of loneliness and the path out of it.
Are there hopeless situations?
From the perspective of someone feeling lonely, that thought might arise, but from a therapeutic standpoint, there’s always room for maneuver.
It’s not necessarily possible to completely eliminate the feeling of loneliness, but it may be possible to reduce it from ten out of ten to seven out of ten or even eight out of ten. And that already brings a different quality of life! It’s always worth the fight. There’s always something—anything—that can be changed, so there is hope.
