Hello and welcome to The Healthy Coconut Blog. This blog is dedicated to bringing you information on trauma and trauma healing from a holistic perspective. I’m Gabbie Bodkin, a licensed mental health counselor, and this blog’s author. Today I’ll be sharing information covering the topic of loneliness as it relates to childhood trauma and what you can do in response to this symptom.
Studies show that loneliness is a growing epidemic affecting roughly 50% of US adults (Harris, E., 2023). In June of 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General referenced a journal published in PLOS Medicine that outlined that the impact of loneliness is comparable to smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day. The impact of loneliness and aloneness is profound from a psychological and physical perspective. Loneliness has been linked to issues including heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, depression, anxiety, and dementia (Amen Clinics).
The difference between aloneness and loneliness
The American Psychological Association defines loneliness as an "affective and cognitive discomfort or uneasiness from being or perceiving oneself to be alone or otherwise solitary." While loneliness pertains to the emotional state of feeling disconnected from others, aloneness is the actual physical state where you are by yourself.
Loneliness as a response to childhood trauma
Feelings of loneliness after childhood trauma is often characterized as a complex emotion. Complex emotions are ones that vary in appearance from person to person and usually consist of two emotional states such as worthlessness and self-pity. Feelings of loneliness as a response to childhood trauma can take on many forms. Below I categorize the progression of loneliness after childhood trauma based on 3 main stages.
The first stage encompasses the feeling of being unrelatable and isolated. After a child experiences trauma, they often feel that no one they talk to will understand them and therefore feel alone in both their recovery and circumstance. Even if they are old enough and their brain is more developed to rationalize that other people may have experienced trauma, they still feel alone, and the thoughts such as, "Why did this happen to me?" become stronger and they feel more isolated. In cases where children have at least one healthy caregiver/ support person following a trauma, they often will try to emotionally protect that caregiver by holding their pain within especially if they can see their sadness/pain makes the adult sad.
The second stage is loneliness as a protective measure. This often depends on the type of trauma one experiences, however, because of how the brain is wired, keeping people at a distance often feels safer than maintaining close relationships. This is because the primary goal of the brain and all the neurological systems is to keep an individual safe.
For example, if someone was abandoned by a parent or caregiver whom they felt a healthy and secure attachment with prior to the abandonment, they will naturally question the safety of all relationships. The brain would wire these thoughts together: “The closer I am to someone, the more they can hurt me when they leave me, therefore I’d rather not be close to anyone so no one can hurt me.”
Another example of loneliness as a protective measure is in response to abuse- either physical, sexual, or emotional. When a child experiences abuse they may feel safer keeping people at a distance. Studies that have examined the correlation between childhood abuse and loneliness in adulthood indicate that "childhood abuse was uniquely associated with greater loneliness, and this relationship was partially mediated by the perceived availability of social support (Landry, J. et al., 2022)."
A child will often experience low self-esteem as a result of these types of abuse. Lonliness in this case is a by-product of other trauma-related symptoms. Trauma symptoms include depression, anxiety, posttraumatic stress, anger, and dissociation. The symptoms of anxiety, posttraumatic stress, and dissociation are all protective measures the body goes through in order to stay safe. When an individual is experiencing these symptoms, it's difficult to maintain relationships. This may be because the people around them do not understand how to help or manage these intense responses to trauma. The people around them may cause them to feel shame and guilt for responding the way they are. Sometimes adults who are not trauma-informed may label a child as a "bad kid" or "hyperactive" when they are experiencing a natural bodily response to trauma. These individuals will often experience negative self-perception, trust issues, and difficulty interpreting, expressing, and managing emotions. The defense mechanisms can range from one extreme to the next but often the responses to these symptoms can include variations of social withdrawal.
The third stage is loneliness as a result of prolonged stage 2 (loneliness as a protective measure) When loneliness serves as a protective measure for too long, the individual loses the ability to naturally and easily connect to others. They sit in the protective zone for too long and do not push themselves to rebuild their connection and attachment to others which can result in this downward spiral of loneliness. Often this is depicted when a person experiences chronic depressive symptoms and ruminates in their self-doubt and feels paralyzed by self-pity. Basically the more a person stays in their comfort zone of avoidance, the more difficult it is to get out of that comfort zone. Remember in stage 2, loneliness is serving as a protective measure. The brain rewards the actions that keep the individual safe so it rewards the act of staying isolated. Now imagine years of staying in the safe zone and then being challenged to throw that all away and try to socialize, read people's emotions, and feel confident and protected at the same time.....it feels like a herculean effort. The prolonged isolation also diminishes the amount of oxytocin (bonding chemical) that is released in the brain. Some studies actually show that even when re-socialization occurs, oxytocin levels remain markedly low. That being said, there are however specific types of trauma therapy that can work on rebuilding oxytocin levels even after prolonged isolation.
The humanistic need for love and belonging
As humans, we all have an innate need for love and to feel connected to others. When we think about the evolution of humans, it has only been in recent centuries that human connection has become lost in society. For thousands of years, humans were gathered together, lived within family or tribal units, were part of social groups, maintained high community engagement, and shared resources and goods. The community was needed for human survival.
FMRI imaging shows specific neurological activity when humans are engaged in social connection. There are many brain regions that are activated when engaging in socialization. These areas include the amygdala (responsible for feeling emotions), thalamus (responsible for encoding sensory information and sending messages to the brain), the posterior superior temporal sulcus (responsible for detecting facial expressions and emotions in others), the Hypothalamus Pituitary Adrenal Axis (responsible for responding to threat). Another key neurological response is the oxytocinergic systems that allow humans and animals to feel connected and attached to one another. Oxytocin is the bonding chemical that is released when we feel love and a sense of belonging.
Research has compared the biological risk of individuals with chronic stress and with healthy support systems to those with chronic stress without healthy support systems. Those with healthy support systems have a lower biological risk of sympathetic nervous system activation, cardiovascular damage, immune and metabolic response dysfunction, and more. While these systems are all wired for human survival and respond to perceived and actual threats, the repeated activation of these systems is what produces wear and tear on the physiological systems. Therefore, finding ways to reverse this wear and tear is crucial for longevity and overall health outcomes. Social support is namely one of those protective factors and the reason why the social isolation epidemic needs to be further discussed.
According to research from the Blue Zones, the world’s longest-lived people maintained social circles that supported healthy behaviors. This suggests that not only is a sense of belonging important but the influence and behaviors of the group are also important. Brene Brown is a best-selling author and research professor at Houston University and specializes in vulnerability, shame, and empathy. She stated in an interview with Forbes that, “True belonging is not passive. It’s not the belonging that comes with just joining a group. It’s not fitting in or pretending or selling out because it’s safer. It’s a practice that requires us to be vulnerable, get uncomfortable, and learn how to be present with people without sacrificing who we are.”
Now, although the need for love and belonging is an innate humanistic need, there are cases where this need can become dormant in the psyche of an individual. For example, individuals who meet the criteria for Autism Spectrum Disorder may have deficits in the brain regions responsible for socialization and emotional encoding and therefore may appear more distant and detached from others. So although they have the same humanistic needs, the activation of the brain regions responsible for connection is slowed or nonexistent and therefore cannot activate the circuit of responses in a fully developed brain. Other examples of psychological disorders that hinder this socialization system include trauma and stressor-related disorders including reactive attachment disorder and disinhibited social engagement disorder. There is also a classification of disorders including impulse control and conduct disorders where human connection does not present to be a need and there is actually an aversion to connection and lack of empathy. These are only a few of the classifications of disorders that illustrate the adverse response to what is generally an innate human need for connection. These disorders are often linked to childhood trauma and require therapy to mitigate the behaviors and re-wire the brain to a healthy state.
Self-help tools on how to establish social connections
1. Self-compassion: this is often the first step in any healing journey. Understand that the loneliness you have felt up until this point is not because of you or what you have deserved. Instead, it is because of the things that happened to you and how you felt you could best survive. Remind yourself that you now have the understanding and awareness of how the brain and body respond to trauma and others. If you're wanting to leave a period of isolation, self-compassion is needed to set the foundation of worthiness to be loved and feel like you can be yourself in a social group.
2. Social skills building: this part of the healing journey requires freshening up on the tools and neural circuits that may have been dormant for some time. This can be a progressional journey that involves tuning into your own emotions, identifying emotions in others, and learning how to feel for others and communicate effectively.
emotion recognition- practice identifying different emotions and managing those emotions independently. Then practice recognizing different facial expressions in others. You can do this by finding emotion identification cards online, tuning into the facial expressions of tv or movie characters, etc.
listening skills- the ability to listen to others and be fully present in a conversation (verbal or nonverbal) is important for any healthy relationship. Active listening involves hearing words, identifying emotions that are being expressed, and picking up on non-verbal cues as well. Showing you are listening may include eye contact, head nods, and responding once the other person is finished speaking.
fostering empathy- empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another person. Even if you have not experienced the exact circumstance that is creating their emotion, you can understand the emotion and then feel in a physical sense the same emotion the person is describing or expressing. For example, if someone is describing the emotional pain of losing their pet, I may not have experienced that same loss, but I could imagine what it would feel like to lose something/someone I care deeply for. It's different than sympathy which maintains more of a "poor you, that stinks you're suffering" type of response.
practice communication- healthy communication includes active listening skills, maintaining an appropriate tone of voice, and presenting with open and respectful body language.
gradual exposure- this involves creating a hierarchy of your social comfort starting with the most comfortable scenario and progressing to the most uncomfortable scenario. For example, if you're naturally socially anxious, you may need to start visualizing yourself in different social settings. When you can do this without experiencing physiological distress, you can move to the next level on the hierarchy until you can reach being in a social environment.
3. Belief in self: Often with loneliness comes a negative self-perception. The thoughts about yourself that have accumulated for all this time are strong and will often talk you out of pushing past your comfort zone. Managing these thoughts and developing positive self-talk and self-worth is an important step in your comfort when you are in social settings. It may be as simple as saying kind things to yourself or identifying where the negative thoughts stemmed from in the first place. Or it may include practicing body postures that are confident in nature and make you feel more confident even when you may not mentally be there yet.
4. Build healthy relationships: This involves creating and maintaining social support but it also involves ensuring that the relationships that are established are healthy ones. This includes finding people who are kind, and caring, and who make healthy and safe choices in their own lives. It includes being able to be vulnerable when you are around this individual by being your authentic self. A healthy relationship will allow you to feel no judgment and the relationship is safe for you to express your emotions and be who you are.
Additionally, there are therapeutic options for enhancing social connection and healing past trauma. They include:
Support Groups
Individual Therapy and counseling
Retreat Centers
Thank you all for reading this post. As always, I hope you found this information useful. This information is purely intended to inform, not to treat. If you are struggling with brain health issues or childhood trauma, speaking to a healthcare professional is recommended to receive a specific plan for treatment and healing based on your individual needs. You can follow along for more posts and psychoeducational tools on trauma and trauma healing from a holistic perspective. You can also check out my website, thehealthycoconut.com or Instagram @the_healthycoconut for more resources or to book a free consult with me. If you found this blog helpful, please like and subscribe to support these resources.
Safety Disclaimer:
If you find any of this information triggering or do not feel safe being alone with your thoughts, call a support person or 911 if you feel you are at risk of hurting yourself or others.
Sources:
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Harris E. Surgeon General Offers Strategy to Tackle Epidemic of Loneliness. JAMA. 2023;329(21):1818. doi:10.1001/jama.2023.8662
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