Might I Be Feeling Lonely Rather Than Worried?

We may be no strangers to worried moods. Something awful often feels like it is about to happen. We fret that we have a lot of enemies. Our pasts seem like they are full of things that are going to come back to ruin us. Perhaps someone will soon realise that something we said two decades ago offended them and they will come for revenge. Perhaps we spoke to a colleague in the wrong way last week and discipline and disgrace are on their way. Perhaps we were speeding and a camera caught us. Our kidney may be failing, our minds disintegrating. Or, more broadly still, civilisation may be on the edge of fracture.

We might – as we worry – be lying in bed. It might be Sunday evening. We might not be seeing anyone until tomorrow and may have been in the house by ourselves since yesterday. It doesn’t feel like we can be in touch with anyone, as they are mostly with their families. Or at parties. 

At this point, we might ask a question of our mood that sounds deliberately and provocatively strange: Might I principally, at heart, be lonely rather than worried?

The question rests on a particular thesis about the mind: we may prefer the discomforts of persecution to the quiet torments of isolation. We may get into the habit of using panic to keep us company. It may be appalling to think that catastrophes are about to happen to us, but at least these imply that people – perhaps many, many people – are thinking of us. We may not have friends but we have an adjacent thing: a plethora of enemies holding us tightly in mind. We may favour persecution over neglect; the wail of a siren to the eeriness of silence. 

We may also unconsciously have found an answer to a problem posed by our companionless state. Why have we been left alone? Because we must have done something wrong, because we are fitting targets for neglect, because we are bad people.

Our way of thinking may have a history. We may have lacked suitably warm and supportive company since the start of our lives – and may have become accustomed to appeasing our alienation with foreboding and trepidation. The deserted child evolves into the always-worried adult. 

To attempt to reverse our way of thinking, we should learn to pay attention to what might be happening around the time our panicky moods set in. When did we last speak with someone kind? How long have we been by ourselves? How supportive are our bonds to those around us? We may – without noticing – have reached unsuspected levels of alienation.

We may at such times have to learn to trust our feelings a little less. These feelings might insist that doom is at hand, but we may need to remember that our real yearning could be for a proper friend. We may need to sit with ourselves, as we would with anyone we cared for, and try our best to be kind. We aren’t appalling people. We’re just not good at building and maintaining close connections – for reasons that go right back to the start. 

We need to hold on to what will at first simply feel like an idea rather than a native truth. We have done nothing wrong and nothing awful is imminent. We are just – below the surface – distinctly lonely and craving solidarity. And probably, a long tight hug too.