Loneliness

Well, aloha and good afternoon everyone, and welcome to the “Secret Art of Huna”, I’m Dr. Jane Lewis, and I thought today I’d talk about loneliness.

Now first of all I have a confession to make, this is actually my second go at talking about loneliness as a live, I was looking at the little counter and there were people coming on the live and disappearing very fast and I thought that maybe they couldn’t hear me,

so I ended it, went and checked and actually the sound had come through, they could have been hearing me, so I deleted it and decided to start again. So, we’ll see if we do better this time.

So, loneliness. It’s certainly a subject that I know a lot about, I spent a lot of my life being lonely and it’s only really in the last, mm, I don’t know, five year, 10 years, that I’ve been able to overcome it, that’s it not an issue for me anymore.

So it’s something I know about, it’s not something that I’ve generally talked about but I think in the current circumstances, in the current situation, it’s becoming a really live issue for a lot of people,

and it’s becoming a live as well for people who never experienced loneliness before. So, as humans, loneliness is actually a very natural thing, as humans we evolved in social groups,

we evolved in social groups for good reasons, we needed social groups to stay safe, we’re better in social groups in terms of going out and hunting for food and gathering and so on and so forth.

As a collaborative enterprise we’re more successful, we’re more likely to survive, so being in groups has always been important to us, it’s important, as I say, from an evolutionary perspective.

There’s some really interesting work by a guy called David Rock, he was a coach and then he got into, he got interested in neurobiology, neuropsychology,

I beg your pardon, neuropsychology, and the relationship between that and leadership. And he’s done a lot of stuff on this whole thing about how our brain is wired in terms of it requires a social setup and we actually require within that social setup a sense of status

’cause if you’re the runt of the litter, you get last dibs on the food, you’re more likely to die, it really boils down to that level.

But if you’re interested, take a look at David Rock because he’s got some really interesting point about this from a, as I say, from a leadership aspect.

But I’m not really talking from a leadership perspective today, I’m talking from an individual human perspective about loneliness. So we’re hardwired to have community, to have connection.

Touch is incredibly important, not just for new babies, it’s important for new babies when you stimulate, it actually stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system when you stroke the skin, but it’s not just new babies.

Touch also fires up oxytocin, now oxytocin is in the mothers milk, it’s a bonding thing, so the baby and the mother can bond, but oxytocin also is fired up when you cuddle somebody, when you touch their skin,

when you hug a lover, the oxytocin, the bonding that makes you have happy vibes is fired up. So, we have this craving for this connection, it’s very, very fundamental to our existence.

And one of my favourite psychological experiment stories is of a lab somewhere in the world, I forget where, and they got rabbits, and each rabbit was in an individual cage, they’re all kept separate, and they were feeding these,

I think they were testing, I don’t know, cosmetics or something, it doesn’t really matter what they were testing on the rabbits and what they were using them for.

But they found that this one particular group of rabbit, completely contrary to the expectation, was thriving, the rest of the rabbits were unhappy and dying and suffering,

and there was this one group that were thriving and they didn’t know why, so they investigated and they found out that this particular group of rabbits were all being cared for by one particular lab assistant.

And what she was doing every day, because she felt sorry for them because they were in little cages on their own, she’d take each rabbit out and she’d give it a stroke and a cuddle, and it was helping the rabbits thrive.

So, as mammals generally, we need the contact, we need the strokes, we need the cuddles, we need the touch and we need the connection, with or without actually being in the presence.

So, as I say, it’s something I know a lot about because it’s something I experienced a lot of, and I think there’s big steps you can take towards overcoming loneliness, and there’s little steps that you can undertake to overcome loneliness.

I’ll talk about the big step first, I’m not gonna go into detail about it, but for me at the essence of it, after a lifetime of loneliness, after, I don’t know, 45 years of something, 45 or 50 years of loneliness,

what really, really transformed things for me was coming to terms with who I am and starting to love myself for myself. That really transforms things for me, it made such a difference.

Now that took about 20 years to achieve, so I’m not saying it’s an easy process, but when you do really start to know your own value, know who you are, know what you stand for, know that you’re lovable, know that you’re likeable,

know what your qualities are that other people respond to, it makes such a difference. One of my biggest fears was dying a lonely old age, I don’t fear that anymore, I mean I’m gonna die, we’re all gonna die, but I don’t fear the loneliness that could come.

Isolation for me, being on my own is actually quite a comfortable place to be, I like to be on my own and I also like it when I’ve got people around me.

I’m probably more introvert than extrovert, but I still need that connection with people because I’m a human, and that’s what we need as humans.

But really honing in on who you are, really becoming at peace with yourself and at peace with yourself as a human being on this planet, having a sense of purpose,

a strong sense of purpose and being able to do things that honour that sense of purpose, that’s amazing in terms of loneliness. And finding communities that you like,

one of the challenges that I’d had was that I’d never really found communities that I enjoyed being in. I’m a bit of a misfit in some ways, and a lot of the communities that I got associated with where very straight and I didn’t feel that I fitted.

In the one of many communities that I do work for, there’s all sorts in there, in the Huna community where I teach, again, there’s all sorts in there.

I found some communities where I fit and I feel at home, so I have places that I can go to, but I’ve also found a place in myself where I can truly be at home.

So that if you like, that’s the big game plan, but in this current situation if you’re feeling lonely, that may take a little bit of time and you may be looking for some more instant hits.

The number one is about mindset because if you assume that you can do nothing because you’re in lockdown or wherever your country is, because depending on what country you’re in, you’ll be in a different place,

but if you make assumptions about what you can and can’t do, then you may find that you actually exclude yourself from possibility. There’s infinitely more possibility and opportunity in this situation for most of us than we really allow ourselves to be aware of.

So for example, I mean I’ve actually got two other adults staying in my house, but for example, we have a neighbour, he’s 81, he’s an extremely active individual but for his own health history he decided to self-isolate.

Since March, the beginning of March, he hasn’t been to the shops and he’s not really left the premises, he’s got a nice garden and so forth, but he’s not really been out.

So one of the things we’ve been doing for him is phoning him up if we’re going to the shops and helping him with his shopping. It’s a small thing, but it’s extraordinary what a sense of pleasure it gives you.

So, if you’re sitting at home, are there people in your street, in your community who you might do some shopping for? Are there people you might phone or communicate with?

Are there family members or friends that you haven’t spoken to for ages that you could actually get in touch with? Because believe me, at the moment, you know, previously I can think of times where I’d go, ah, no, they’ll be busy, they’re too busy,

I won’t bother them, mm, people are, they might be busy, but actually they’re welcoming communication. Get in touch with people, there’s the phone, if you don’t like technology, there is still the phone.

And there are the simpler corners of WhatsApp, the neighbour that I talked about, he writes letters. The one thing he does do on a Sunday morning when nobody’s around, he goes to the post box and he posts letters, that’s his way of communicating.

So finding different ways of communicating that work for you, and get in touch with people who you’d loved to be in contact with, but you kind of assume that you couldn’t because they’d be too busy and they wouldn’t be interested,

and they wouldn’t wanna hear from you, trust me, right now, they will wanna hear from you, they want the variety, they want the contact. So get in contact with people, see how you can help.

There’s a, certainly in our town, the various churches are doing a lot with food banks, so they’re collecting and they’re supplies and they need help with that, so people are volunteering to help with that.

I would recommend online music, but the attempts we’ve been making with Zoom for online music have been absolutely hopeless, it hasn’t worked well at all so far.

So online music’s probably a bit more of a challenge, maybe send a recording to a friend. Facebook, whatever you may say about Facebook, it does actually give you an opportunity to find communities that you like,

find communities that work for you. And the great thing about Facebook is you can join a community, you hang out in there and if you decide you don’t like it you can just take yourself out, it doesn’t matter.

So, there are those opportunities, the technology, we are so blessed that if this was gonna happen, which we’d rather it didn’t, that it happen right now where we do have these technological choices.

My parents used to live in Brazil, 40 years ago, and you used to have to book the call two days in advance to speak to them, I couldn’t have had a WhatsApp conversation with them, it was all done by telegram, and as I say, phone calls that were booked in advance and letters.

And it took time, there was no instant contact which we have now, we’re so lucky. If you’re not technological then you got two choices, one is find somebody who can help you or be really, really brave and give it a go.

Google is an amazing resource, it can tell you so much, Google and YouTube, between them, can tell you so much, you can find so much knowledge about how to go online, how to go on a Zoom call, how to have WhatsApp on your phone, there’s so many opportunities.

Now I know that a lot of these opportunities are, if you like, there’s a financial thing about it, I mean, you’ve gotta have internet in your house in order to make the technology work, it’s better if you have modern smartphone because even a six year old iPhone isn’t good for certain things.

So yes, I appreciate that there is, at some level, there’s a financial aspect to all this, but there are possibilities because most of us, even if we don’t have the internet, we have a phone, and if we don’t have a phone, or we have the internet.

So there are possibilities like that, get in touch with, find the local community groups who need help.

Yes, you might be staying at home because you’re personally at risk or you might be staying at home because a member of your family is at risk and you don’t want to go out, in which case, are there things that you can do from your home for different groups?

Write a newsletters, send out a newsletter for example, but connect, just connect, because all your survival instincts are craving this connection.

So if you are feeling lonely, the short-term thing is find somewhere to connect, and there are plenty of opportunities out there, even though we can’t do what’s natural to us and go out and give our loved ones big hugs, but that time’s gonna come,

we’ll be out hugging one another, and oh my God, I can see a great big hugathon coming along.

So, take care, stay well, stay safe, I hope some of these thoughts have useful for you, and I’ll talk to you again very soon.

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