As I'm sitting down in my office this morning, having issued a statement to my clients Thursday evening, I’ve received a quite few responses and inquiries around feeling lonely. Many of you have reinforced and brought to mind even more so the imperative of the theme of loneliness amidst what’s going on right now. Many of my clients, colleagues, and friends here in Seattle are now asked to stay at home to not spread the virus and are thus feeling quite isolated, which is bringing about an even greater sense of loneliness. We're flirting with and experiencing a sense of disconnection from one another, which is moving folks inward and realizing the feeling of loneliness they carry within themselves.

My timing of reworking my writing on loneliness and turning it into a research paper for school was quite timely at the beginning of February, as it occurred just a few weeks before the Covid-19 or Coronavirus issue began in China. There's a sense of urgency surrounding this topic, as the issue is readily at hand, and palpable to many of my own clients and friends. However, I feel I will do the importance and power of loneliness a dis-justice. So, I hope these resources provide some ground and opportunity that this time in history and circumstance invite us into.

Please be gracious regarding any writing errors. I’ve been sitting with a flurry of emails and I usually work on a piece for months, as opposed to an hour, and hire a professional editor before I post. In this case though the urgency is worth the risk and vulnerability.

What to read while stuck at home?

Having said this, I wanted to invite you, my readers and followers, to take a look at these two books: Loneliness by John Cacioppo and William Patrick along with Loneliness by Clark Moustakas. Both books are available via Kindle. So, do your UPS and Amazon person a favor and for now pick it up electronically via your tablet, phone, or computer. You’re welcome Amazon.

Loneliness by Clark Moustakas

I first discovered Clark Moustakas just a year and a half ago in beginning my methodological research for my dissertation. He's most known for developing Heuristic Inquiry, a phenomenological and humanistic research method the focuses on the primacy of researchers' experience to understand a phenomenon as they go about studying others' experience and their own. The researcher selects something that's intimately connected to their own lives and that they have a felt-sense of immerses themselves in it and finds co-researchers who share this experience, and together they work to come to a fuller understanding of that experience.

Clark was most known for his work with loneliness. His book Loneliness is a beautiful weaving of philosophical, psychological, and poetic writing. One of Clark's main messages is that loneliness is one of the richest places of self-discovery and a place where we begin to cultivate a sense of richer vitality and relationship to life-itself. This is truely a beautiful book as he moves in and out of description and also story of his own experiences and those he worked with in researching loneliness. I find it to put such a humane and kind light on loneliness. There was a book published later called The Touch of Loneliness which was a collection of letters that he received from those who read his book. One of the letters is shared via my instagram at @caleb.a.dodson.

The Contemporary Research of Loneliness - John T. Cacioppo

Experience with others in my own being of a person and psychotherapist has revealed that loneliness is one of the most painful experiences that we can go through. It's widely accepted in research that loneliness is very much so a subjective experience. Some can be alone and not lonely, while others experience immense pain. So the experience is very nuanced and centered in relation to that which is most personal and unique to us as individuals - our being.

Interestingly enough, it lights up many of the same neurological pathways as physical pain in our brain and activates such a micro-level state of vigilance that it slowly wears down our nervous system and begins to affect our cognitive level of processing and ability to heal and get restful sleep. The late Cacioppo is the leading researcher in loneliness and has published well over a dozen quantitive research studies on loneliness. You can read about much of these findings in his book. Though it's highly research-based, he recognized the importance and existential nature of the phenomenon of loneliness and made this book highly accessible to the lay reader.

The one thing from his research that I'd like to share is that getting together with people didn't solve the problem of loneliness. The most effective treatments for loneliness weren't getting folks together, but understanding and being with the cognitions of the person. It's worth noting that in quantitive research, much of the treatments of choice are in a more CBT treatment orientation. Though, as you read these two recommended books, you'll find that there's this level of accompaniment and acceptance and awakening that begins to take place that we see so clearly in the phenomenological, humanistic, and existential traditions.

The Power of Empathy

As you immerse yourself in the vocabulary and language of loneliness in Clark's book and get some grounding in the science of Cacioppos book, you’ll begin to get an experience of closeness. Both authors do such a beautiful job of describing this state that it's as though their there with you. You begin to feel a sense of inner closeness to yourself that's quite warm and intimate, as opposed to the cold emptiness and ungroundedness when we're first facing these experiences. This is the power of empathy and presence that I hope you'll experience in psychotherapy. True psychological contact or an I-Thou connection with another.

This experience of loneliness is a truly existential issue and is something that we all carry around with ourselves. None can hide. We can never truly know an other, and thus can never be truly known by others. In this light, I'm reminded of one of my professor's questions that we all have to grapple with of "what's it like knowing you can never get all of your needs met?" Carrying that forward, it’s a signature of my practice and life as a therapist, echoing the words of John O'Donohue, the deepest longing of the human soul is to be seen. Loneliness is some of the richest soil to begin to cultivate a relationship to first ourselves and then others and eventually a flourishing that we may have never witnessed before.

Closing Thoughts

The intersection of a more existential, phenomenological, and humanistic approach to loneliness is very much so the focus of my research paper. A blending of getting to a deeper understanding and communication of the experience of loneliness and the implications of a more existential, phenomenological, and humanistic approach to the being with, moving through, and thriving from the fertile soil of loneliness. Take care, and stay tuned.

If this was helpful, given the times we’re in, if someone comes to mind, please share the link. I truly believe the heart of the work of therapy openness, acceptance and giving from a place of life and self.

My name is Caleb Dodson I’m a private psychotherapist in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle, WA and I’m most passionate about bringing kindness to and excavating a sense of humanity in the most challenging experiences to bring about a more full life.