In our modern age, even as meeting and communicating with people becomes easier and the world becomes smaller, we become lonelier day by day. Last year, the Turkish Language Association (TDK) even made a new name for this: “crowded loneliness.”
In this article, I will discuss three of the reasons I believe are important for why individuals feel lonely.
1) Rumination and Lack of Self-Compassion in Pursuit of Increasing Individual Expectations
With the adoption of technology and social media, our society has prioritized competition and the lives of others, and our individuality has become a marketing tool over the last dozen years. In this marketing environment, people find themselves struggling to find themselves in a never-ending field of personal development and to return to themselves.
The modern narcissistic age has succumbed to a narcissistic culture, and the consumer society it has created has reached a new level, particularly in terms of loss of empathy and entitlement (Twenge & Campbell, 2009). Over time, we strive to exist within a space where being known or admired, or rather, being the center of attention, brings pleasure.
This forces us to invest our attention and energy not in the unique characteristics that make us who we are, but in an image that will make us the ideal self. We see the real us as our ideal self and believe that only by achieving this ideal self can we enjoy the fruits of this life — richer, more aesthetically pleasing.
While trying to address these shortcomings may seem like a solution, it actually traps us in an unsolvable and endless cycle, leading to what we call a chain of negative thoughts — rumination (Watkins, 2008). Rumination cognitively distorts our self-perception over time, leading us to perceive ourselves as different and negative.
From this perspective, it feels like we are obligated to perceive others as merely serving ourselves and as elements that will enhance our own self. We feel compelled to consume both ourselves and others out of a desire to add to ourselves, and we become isolated.
2) Our Unexpressed Emotional World and the Feeling of Incompleteness and Meaninglessness
During the time of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, a disorder called hysteria affected a significant portion of women, and medical experts launched a campaign to address this condition.
All of them were causing women to experience symptoms of hysteria, which caused muscle spasms, coquetry, and sometimes infantilization. While they were able to relax women through a technique called hypnosis, under the leadership of Jean-Martin Charcot, a leading French neuroscientist of the time, they were unable to identify the physiological causes of this phenomenon.
Freud’s mentor, Joseph Breuer, challenged conventional thinking and believed that this problem might stem not from women’s bodies but from their inner worlds and psyches. Freud expanded on his teachings and, drawing inferences from his patients, attributed hysteria to the repression of women’s sexuality (Breuer & Freud, 1957).
Freud actually reached this conclusion inspired not only by the female patients he listened to, but also by Goethe, the author he admired. Women who read Goethe would go to rooftops and throw themselves off them, committing suicide in the name of love. Because the romantic writer Goethe expressed women’s repressed erotic feelings. When expressed, women could name the deficiency and their minds could consciously process this concept.
A similar principle applies to our emotional intelligence today. It is the empathy that allows us to express unspoken feelings and act appropriately based on what we understand. This is precisely what narcissistic culture has taken away from us (Dağtekin, 2022).
In a society where individualization is prioritized over traditional, modern structures, families have belittled their children’s emotions. By belittlement, I mean precisely that the felt experience has not been mirrored by someone — in this case, the parents — and they have not provided the child with the material to express it.
Parents have done this unconsciously, projecting what they perceive as their own shortcomings onto their children, ensuring that their children perceive the reflected experience as a genuine experience. This makes them feel valued. For this reason, they perceive their children as well-behaved and reward them.
The child, in turn, perceives this as genuine love (Goldberg, 2002). However, as we age, the individual’s mind begins to struggle to make sense of their lives. Because what gives us meaning are not feelings attributed to us, but feelings that come from our core.
However, our attachment dynamics with our parents have rendered this inexpressible. Because of this experience, we pursue fulfillments and dreams in our human relationships that are not actually verbalized or inherent to our essence. This, combined with an ideal self rather than the real one, elevates our relationships to an impossible level and isolates us.
3) Comparisons with Others’ Lives and a Lost Feeling of Confidence
Sociologist and psychologist Leon Festinger introduced a social psychology theory in 1954 called social comparison theory. He proposed that people have a drive to evaluate their competence levels, such as skills and talents, and that this assessment is made by comparing themselves to others who share similar characteristics.
He believed this was a natural way to obtain an accurate definition of one’s own competencies. According to Festinger, this comparison also serves to enhance and advance the self.
For example, a sprinter might compare themselves to a better sprinter and mentally plan to improve their own performance, or they might learn from negative experiences and become more cautious. It also allows them to internalize negative experiences that occur to them because they are similar to them.
This characteristic is one of the reasons we rejoice in the positive experiences of others and develop a secure bond with one another.
Today, however, as a result of this comparison — especially through social media — people receive negative feedback about themselves rather than positive feedback and sympathy for the person they compare themselves to (Asıcı, 2022).
So, in light of this information, what should we do? The way out of the vicious cycle created by individual expectations, the void created by unexpressed emotions, and the sense of security damaged by comparison is to cultivate self-compassion, express our feelings, and view comparisons with others not as competition but as a learning ground.
Only in this way can we position ourselves and others in a meaningful connection and rebuild a true sense of unity amidst the crowded loneliness.
References
Breuer, J., & Freud, S. (1957). Studies on hysteria. Basic Books.
Dağtekin, A. (2022). Tüketim toplumu-narsisizm ilişkisine sosyolojik bir bakış. Yayınlanmamış yüksek lisans tezi. Bursa Uludağ Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü.
Asıcı, E. (2022). Instagram’da Yapılan Sosyal Karşılaştırmaların Ruh Sağlığı Üzerindeki Yordayıcı Rolleri. Muallim Rıfat Eğitim Fakültesi Dergisi, 4(2), 106-126.
Goldberg, A. I. (1999). Being of Two Minds: The Vertical Split in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203779941
Twenge, J. M., & Campbell, W. K. (2009). The narcissism epidemic: Living in the age of entitlement. Free Press.
Watkins, E. R. (2008). Constructive and unconstructive repetitive thought. Psychological Bulletin, 134(2), 163–206. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.134.2.163