Finding Your People

At a recent Talk & Listen session one of the attendees, who I shall call Julie, shared with the group that she missed having a close knit circle of friends. She explained that when she was living abroad for the past two years, she'd found people that she really connected with and with whom she shared her life with. She said that she felt there was a bond between them, that they had fabulous times together and that she felt she could talk to them about anything. She described that, since she'd been back in England from around six months ago, she'd not found such people that she could connect with on the same level. This lack of friends made her feel miserable. She just wanted to "find her people" as she put it. 

A number of listeners took it in turns to offer some feedback. They acknowledged her feeling of sadness of not being able to see and spend time with her old friends and her frustration in not having found the friends that she needed since returning to this country. Someone reflected back the feeling of loneliness that Julie had expressed. This is the third time during the past couple of weeks that I have heard people talk about feeling lonely. I am generally hearing this more and more. This could be because I am coming across more people that are feeling this way, or it could be because people are somehow more inclined to expressely open up to some of their vulnerabilities. 

I have begun to question what it means when someone says they feel lonely. I myself feel this way and so I can empathise with the feelings invoked by circumstances giving rise to them. But what are the circumstances? I have concluded that it cannot simply be not having people around us. I have heard people say that they are surrounded by people, such as work colleagues, family members, people at a party and other gatherings, but they still feel lonely. I've heard words used such as isolated, dejected, unaccepted, unappreciated, invisible. So loneliness is not a symptom of not having people around us. It is a symptom of not having people in our lives that we feel connected to.

In order to connect I think we need to be authentic. To be authentic means taking risks. We need to open up to vulnerability, embrace who we are and not expend energy in trying to be who we are not. We just need to be ourselves and be able to say we are good enough. If we put on a mask to present a false version of ourselves in order to attract people with the aim of making friends, then the resulting friendships will be based on foundations that will quickly and easily crumble as soon as the real version of ourselves begins to emerge. Authenticity is what allows us to be accepted for who we really are. It brings empathy into the connections we establish with others. It allows us to "find our people".