Ep #370: Widows and Loneliness

Welcome to The Widowed Mom Podcast, Episode 370: Widows and Loneliness.

Welcome to The Widowed Mom Podcast, the only podcast that offers a proven process to help you work through your grief, to grow, evolve, and create a future you can truly look forward to. Here’s your host, Master Certified life coach, grief expert, widow, and mom, Krista St-Germain.

Hey there, welcome to another episode of the podcast. One of the most common things that widows tell me is that they are lonely. And if that’s you, I want you to know that you are not alone. Loneliness is by far one of the most universal experiences after the death of a spouse or a partner. And I remember after Hugo died, feeling incredibly lonely. And what’s interesting is that I often felt that way even when I wasn’t actually alone. I had people around me who loved me. Friends were checking on me, family was checking on me, my kids were there with me. I wasn’t isolated from all human contact. And yet, I remember feeling incredibly lonely.

I also remember moments in my first marriage where we were laying in the same bed together and I felt that deep loneliness. And yet my partner was less than two feet away from me. And looking back, these were clues that eventually helped me understand what loneliness actually is. Because if loneliness came from being physically alone, and it was solved by being around someone, it would be a different experience, wouldn’t it? But that’s not how it works.

If you’ve ever felt lonely in a room full of people before your person died, after your person died, I know you know what I am talking about. And that’s why today I want to talk about loneliness. Why it’s such a common part of widowhood, what it actually is, what doesn’t help, and what does. And before we get into that, I want to remind you, if you are watching this on YouTube, subscribing to the channel, make sure that you will never miss an episode. It also helps me understand that you like the podcast, you want more of it. It gets in front of more widows. And the same with any other podcast platform that you might be listening to. You can follow it. You’ll never miss an episode and it’s a way of telling the podcast gods that this podcast is good and hopefully other widows will find it.

Let’s start with something important. You are not wrong for feeling lonely. In fact, you are never wrong for anything you feel. You lost someone who mattered deeply to you. You lost the person you shared your life with. You lost routines and traditions and plans and inside jokes and maybe you’ve lost friendships. And maybe you’ve lost parts of your identity. And you’ve lost the history of having someone who knew your life, someone who witnessed your life. And so it makes sense that we would experience all of these feelings, including loneliness.

And of course, it makes sense that loneliness often gets louder around milestones. So birthdays and anniversaries and holidays and death anniversaries and family events. Moments when something happens and your brain immediately wants to tell your person about it, and then you remember. So of course loneliness is part of your experience. Nothing has gone wrong if you feel lonely. It is a natural, normal human emotion and it’s certainly a normal emotion in widowhood.

So I don’t want you to hear anything that I am about to say and take that to mean you shouldn’t feel lonely or you’re doing something wrong if you’re feeling lonely. Now, here’s where I want to offer you something that has the potential to really help change your experience of loneliness. So please listen. Loneliness is a feeling. It is not a circumstance. It is not a fact. It is not caused by the things that happen to us. It is not caused by how many people there are or aren’t in the room. It’s a feeling.

Why does that matter? It matters because feelings come from thoughts. So let’s imagine two widows sitting at home alone on a Saturday night, Friday night, we know, weekends are usually the worst. Same circumstance, they’re both at home alone. One is thinking, this is exactly what I needed. And she’s feeling relieved. And the other one is thinking, I’m all alone, and she feels lonely.

Same circumstance, different emotional experience. Now, one widow is not right and the other widow is not wrong, but also the feeling isn’t coming from the circumstance. It’s coming from the thought, from the interpretation of the experience. Now your brain might be arguing with me. That is okay. I want to say again, I am not suggesting that you shouldn’t feel lonely or that you should feel relieved. I’m not saying that you should like being alone. I’m not saying that you should believe the thought that this is exactly what I needed. That’s not it. You are not doing anything wrong if you’re believing a thought that makes you feel lonely. What I am saying is that circumstances don’t create feelings. Thoughts create feelings. And when we understand that, it opens up possibilities.

We get access to solutions that otherwise wouldn’t be available to us. And that really, really matters because if we believe that their death is the source of our loneliness and we can’t undo their death, then we have no choice but to believe we will always feel lonely unless we find another partner to replace them. And that’s not very helpful. It’s very limiting, and it’s just absolutely not true. So, here’s what helps.

When loneliness shows up, which it probably will, because you’re a human, I want you to get curious. What am I thinking right now? Not what happened, not how many people are in the room, not about the circumstance. Get curious, what am I thinking? What am I believing? Some common thoughts that create loneliness might sound like, nobody understands me. I’m the only one going through this. I’ll never have that kind of connection again. Everyone else has someone. My life will never be the same. And I’m all alone.

And again, don’t hear me saying that these thoughts are bad or that other thoughts are somehow superior. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t think these thoughts. I’m saying that they’re very common thoughts in widowhood, also that thoughts create feelings and I’m simply pointing that out. When we can identify the thought that’s causing our feeling, then we have more options. And that’s what I want for you, is options.

One thing I see widows doing a lot is mixing together two different issues. Sometimes we want different circumstances. So maybe you want more humans in your life to connect with. Maybe you want different people to connect with, deeper friendships. Maybe you would like to be around people who understand widowhood more. Maybe there is someone in your life that you just don’t really want to have in your life in the way that you did before. You kind of want to right size that relationship. You are growing in different directions and you don’t really want them to play such a significant role in your life anymore. Maybe you do want to date again and you’d like a partner. Or maybe you just like a bigger social life. Or maybe you don’t want a bigger social life, but you would like a smaller quantity of closer friends. All perfectly valid desires. Nothing wrong with wanting different circumstances, different relationships, different amounts of people in our lives, different amounts of time with people.

So, we definitely can change our circumstances. The second issue though, is the feeling of loneliness. And we sometimes get these tangled together. If we believe loneliness is being caused by our circumstances, then we end up either waiting for our circumstances to change before we can think and feel better, or we end up thinking our circumstances need to change before we can feel better. And we tell ourselves things like, well, you know, when I have more friends who get me, when I meet someone, when I’m in a different place and I’m out and about again, when my kids are around more, right, things like that, then I won’t feel lonely.

But think about your own life. Think about a time when you were in a room full of people and you felt lonely. Most widows have experienced this. Maybe it was before your person died, but you’ve probably experienced this. You’re in a room, people all around and yet you feel lonely. And then think about a time when you were physically alone, nobody else was around you, but you felt deeply connected. Most of us have experienced that too. Even if we really have to go back a bit and think about it.

And so circumstances don’t create feelings, right? If they did, then every time we were in a room full of people, we wouldn’t be lonely, and every time we were by ourselves, we would feel lonely. But that’s not how it works. That really matters a lot because if we think again, loneliness is coming from our circumstances and we’re powerless to change that particular circumstance, or we sit around waiting for that circumstance to change, or we think we have to change it before we can feel better, then grief gets harder than it needs to be. I don’t want to see you waiting.

I don’t want to see you waiting for people to show up differently or thinking that it needs to be different in order for you to feel better. We don’t need someone else to change our circumstances or even for us to be around other people for us to feel differently. It’s a very helpless place to be and I don’t want you to be that. I don’t want you to be in that place.

Some other things that don’t help, arguing with yourself about how you feel, doesn’t help. Trying to convince yourself that you shouldn’t feel lonely. I absolutely do not want you to listen to this podcast episode and then tell yourself, “Oh, well loneliness is caused by my thoughts and that means if I’m feeling lonely, I’m doing something wrong, therefore I shouldn’t feel lonely.” That does not help, especially if in that moment you are feeling lonely. So we don’t want to should on ourselves. We don’t want to convince ourselves that we shouldn’t feel something that’s already in our body right there.

We don’t want to be talking ourselves out of our experience. We don’t want to be trying to force gratitude at the expense of what we actually are feeling, right? When we’re feeling lonely, and then we don’t let ourselves feel it, and instead we tell ourselves we should feel grateful. Now we’ve got loneliness that goes unfelt and forced gratitude on top of it that feels pretty icky, right? At least I have my kids, at least I have my friends, at least I have a house, at least I knew what love was like and I got to experience it. All of that, when done in the spirit of forcing gratitude because we are trying to talk ourselves out of how we feel, actually makes grief harder. So now we’re lonely and we’re judging ourselves for being lonely, right? We’re lonely and we’re forcing ourselves to feel something that just doesn’t feel great. So that takes us away from the experience we want instead of toward it, not helpful.

Another thing that doesn’t help is staying constantly busy. I know this one very well. I tried very hard to do this, especially in the first year. A lot of widows become experts at staying busy. We are told just stay busy, right? We’re told that. Staying busy is not the same thing as processing a feeling. Staying busy doesn’t let us allow our feelings to flow through and choose a new experience for ourselves. Busy can distract us from the feeling of loneliness. Busy can postpone the feeling of loneliness, but eventually that feeling is still there waiting for us.

Resisting loneliness also does not help. This is where I often use the analogy of a beach ball because it’s such an easy visual. So if you imagine trying to hold a beach ball underwater, right, you can do it for a while, but the harder you push the beach ball down, the more forcefully it eventually wants to pop back up. And that’s what feelings can be like. The more we resist them, the more power we actually give them. So whatever we resist persists. I know you’ve heard that before.

Besides curiosity, what actually helps? The first thing is naming it and normalizing it. Right now I feel lonely. I notice I have the emotion of loneliness in my body. This is the part where I notice loneliness in my body. All right, we’re naming it. It’s okay for me to feel this loneliness. I’m safe to feel this loneliness. Nothing has gone wrong because I’m experiencing the vibration of loneliness in my body. How human of me.

Notice how different that feels from telling yourself, I shouldn’t feel this way, or get it together. Pull it together. Why do you feel so lonely? You should be further along by now. Or I can’t handle this feeling. Or I’m not supposed to feel this lonely. Other people don’t feel this lonely. Feels different. Naming and normalizing can reduce so much unnecessary suffering. And back to curiosity, especially in the presence of resistance, get curious. What am I thinking right now? What story is my brain telling me? What is it I’m believing that has me feeling this way?

And again, it’s not so you can judge yourself. It’s not so you can tell yourself that you’re wrong because of what you’re thinking. It’s not so you can just poof, immediately replace the thought. It’s so you can see it. It’s so you can see the thought as a thought. It’s so you can see the source of the problem, which is the thought. Because awareness comes before change, and curiosity helps increase awareness.

The third thing is remembering that loneliness isn’t dangerous. It’s uncomfortable, but it’s not dangerous. Uncomfortable and dangerous are not the same thing. Loneliness is a feeling. Feelings are temporary experiences in the body, and you can feel lonely and still be safe. You can feel lonely and still go to dinner with a friend. Right? You can feel lonely and still, I know it sounds crazy, but it’s really true. You can still build a life you love even in the presence of loneliness. It can’t actually hurt you. You don’t have to eliminate loneliness before you can take steps toward what you want.

Then, of course, there are also tools that can help you process the emotion and let it flow through. You know I’m a big fan of tapping. Tapping creates safety in the nervous system, which helps emotions flow through. Movement can be so helpful. Breathwork can be so helpful. There’s so many different grounding exercises and body based tools that we can use that make it easier to be with the emotional experience we’re having so that emotional experience flows through easier. These tools are not about getting rid of emotions. When we use them, it doesn’t imply that we’ve done anything wrong. They’re about helping our body relax enough, feel safe enough so that energy can shift and move.

Finally, community. Community can be a great tool. It doesn’t make loneliness disappear, but the right community can really help. What community often does is it helps us see our experience in other people. Right? When we see our experience in other people, it’s so much easier to have compassion for it. So for some reason, it can be so much easier to have compassion for someone else. And very often, when I have conversations with women, unless I get them around a group of other women having the same issues, widows specifically, they tend to think that whatever’s going on for them is a them problem. It’s some sort of personal flaw, it’s a character flaw, it’s some sort of weakness. It’s something that’s only going on for them.

And when you can be in the right group, not any group, but the right community, and you can see, “Oh, no, this is just grief. This is what happens in grief,” it gets easier. Also, if you feel a little bit of resistance to what I’m talking about in this episode, that’s normal. That’s common. And this is why coaching in groups can be so powerful, right? If I’m coaching someone else and you are merely watching that coaching, your defenses aren’t up. Your brain is not on guard. You don’t believe that anybody’s attacking you. You’re not feeling defensive at all when you watch someone else get coached. And so, this is why sometimes the coaching can sink in better. Someone else’s coaching in a community setting can help you because your brain isn’t defensive when they are getting coached on the issue that you need help with.

And then lastly, sometimes what it is, is their issue will be quite different circumstantially than yours. Maybe they are feeling lonely at a time when you don’t typically feel lonely. And they get coached on that. The pattern in their lives, the thought pattern that’s happening will be so obvious to you that you will then be able to apply it to your life and your own thought patterns will kind of start to crack. You will start to see things in ways that you didn’t see them before. You will start to realize, “Oh, I have more options here than I thought I did. I can see it in that other person. Okay, this isn’t a me problem, it’s a human problem. It’s a grief problem.” And this is why coaching can really help.

Also, I’ll get on a soapbox here for a second and then I’ll be done with it. But understanding a concept and applying it are two very different skills. You can understand everything I’ve said in this episode. You can agree with me. You can nod your head and think, “Yep, that makes sense.” And then Saturday night rolls around and you’re sitting on the couch and the house is quiet and you notice you feel lonely. And most of us are not very good in that moment of seeing our own thoughts as thoughts. We cannot see our own thinking. We are inside the jar and it’s very hard to read the label from there.

So we think that we’re just describing reality, right? We think we’re stating facts and we don’t realize that we’re telling ourselves a story, which makes it difficult because then we can’t put that story down and tell ourselves a different one. And that’s where coaching can be so valuable. So sometimes the breakthrough is, yes, you got to learn the new tool, but you also have to apply it. You have to have someone help you see what your brain is doing and then you have to practice, and then you get the muscle memory of supporting yourself. Okay?

If you have been listening to this podcast for a while, ask yourself, what have I learned here that I haven’t actually been able to apply to myself? What have I learned here that I haven’t actually been able to apply to myself? Again, there is a difference in understanding something conceptually, understanding that loneliness is created by a thought, and being able to catch your own thought at 9 o’clock on a Saturday night when you’re sitting alone.

So the podcast can give you the concept. It cannot give you the coaching. It cannot help you practice. It cannot help you apply. And I really want more for you than just an intellectual understanding of the concepts that I teach. I want to help you apply them to your life. So that’s why I’m so passionate about the coaching that I do inside of Grief Essentials and Mom Goes On.

If you take one thing away from today’s episode, let it be this. Loneliness is a feeling. It is not a fact. It doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong. It doesn’t mean you will always feel this way. It’s just a feeling caused by the meaning your brain is making of a circumstance. So the next time loneliness shows up, instead of fighting it, see if you can get curious. What am I thinking right now? What am I believing? What meaning am I making out of this circumstance? What story is my brain telling me? Can I allow this feeling to flow through me and then choose to think something else on purpose? Not because loneliness is wrong, but because other feelings are available to me and I am just that powerful.

If you would like support learning these skills, practicing them in your real life, I would love to help you inside of Grief Essentials or Mom Goes On. You can learn more at CoachingWithKrista.com and click on the Work With Me tab. All right, that’s what I have for you this week. Remember, I love you. You’ve got this. Take care and I’ll see you next week. Bye-bye.

If you like what you’ve been hearing on this podcast and want to create a future you can truly get excited about even after the loss of your spouse, I invite you to join my Mom Goes On coaching program. It’s small group coaching just for widowed moms like you where I’ll help you figure out what’s holding you back and give you the tools and support you need so you can move forward with confidence.

Please don’t settle for a new normal that’s less than what you deserve. Go to coachingwithkrista.com and click Work With Me for details and next steps. I can’t wait to meet you.