Intimacy and Loneliness

One of the strangest of today's phenomena is young people finding face-to-face conversations - even with friends - traumatic, and thus strongly preferring texting. At the same time, loneliness & shame are becoming public health concerns, not just among the elderly living alone, but also among children & teens.

University students experience high rates of stress and mental illness. A study in the UK showed that loneliness was the strongest overall predictor of mental distress, while assessment stress was the most important academic predictor. Strong identification with university friendship groups was most protective against distress relative to other social identities, and the beneficial impact of identification on symptoms was mediated by reduced loneliness. The study highlighted the benefits of establishing strong social connections.

McIntyre JC et al. "Academic and Non-academic Predictors of Student Psychological Distress: The Role of Social Identity and Loneliness." J Mental Health 2018 https://doi.org/10.1080/09638237.2018.1437608

"Belonging starts with self-acceptance. Your level of belonging, in fact, can never be greater than your level of self-acceptance, because believing that you're enough is what gives you the courage to be authentic, vulnerable and imperfect. When we don't have that, we shape-shift and turn into chameleons; we hustle for the worthiness we already possess". Brené Brown

"Immature defenses ... are fairly common in pre-adolescent years and in adult character disorders. They are often mobilized by anxieties related to intimacy or its loss. Although they are regarded as socially awkward and undesirable, they often moderate with improvement in interpersonal relationships or with increased personal maturity."

Sadock BJ, Sadock VA, Ruiz P eds. Kaplan & Sadock's Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry. 9th ed, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2009.

Intimacy - familial love, close friendship, romantic love, as well as deep meaningful connection with pets, nature, work, hobbies, etc - is the fundamental basis of being fully alive - human flourishing.

“Everyone has the ability to cultivate a certain kind of intimacy with what’s deepest and best in ourselves. And you can’t do that if you’re rushing through your moments to get to better moments.” Jon Kabat-Zinn

The 5 major domains of posttraumatic growth are:

• “greater appreciation of life and changed sense of priorities;

• warmer, more intimate relationships with others;

• a greater sense of personal strength;

• recognition of new possibilities or paths for one’s life; and

• spiritual development.”

Tedeschi RG, Calhoun LG. “Posttraumatic Growth - Conceptual Foundations and Empirical Evidence.” Psychological Inquiry 2004; 15(1): 1-18.

"Qualitative research on peer-nominated, exemplary therapists who were thriving in their work with traumatized clients, including palliative care patients and their families, has identified a variety of protective practices that enhance caregivers’ professional satisfaction and help prevent or mitigate compassion fatigue. In particular, trauma therapists who engaged in exquisite empathy, defined as 'highly present, sensitively attuned, well-boundaried, heartfelt empathic engagement,' were 'invigorated rather than depleted by their intimate professional connections with traumatized clients' and protected against compassion fatigue and burnout. This idea, which has also been referred to as bidirectionality, refutes the commonly held notion that being empathic to dying patients must lead to emotional depletion.

The practice of exquisite empathy is facilitated by clinician self-awareness, which was identified in another study as the most important factor in psychologists’ functioning well in the face of personal and professional stressors."

Kearney MK. et al. Self-care of Physicians Caring for Patients at the End of Life: "Being Connected... a Key to my Survival." Jama 2009; 301(11): 1155-64, E1.

“Truth is a very high standard. Truth is not a plaything. To tell what is true within ourselves is not to tell what we think; it is not to tell our opinion. It is not to dump the garbage can of our mind onto somebody else. All of that is illusion, distortion, projection. Truth is not unloading our opinions onto someone. That is not truth. Truth is not telling our beliefs about things. That is not truth. Those are ways that we actually hide from truth.

Truth is much more intimate than that. When we tell the truth, it has the sense of a confession. I don’t mean in a confession of something bad or wrong, but I mean the sense that we come completely out of hiding. Truth is a simple thing. To speak the truth is to speak from a sense of total and absolute unprotectedness.” Adyashanti