239. What is the 'loneliest' chapter of our 20s?
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Hey, I'm Emily, revealing incredible jobs that are out there. Ah, here's Winston with his burning question. Emily, can race cars top jet planes? I gotta know. Classic. He's a charmer, but his timing could use some work. Winston loves trucks, so we'll explore construction, car racing, and more. Join us on Growing Up, the Lingo Kids podcast inspiring you to chase all your dreams. Listen to Growing Up on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

wherever you get your podcasts. Hello everybody and welcome back to the psychology of your 20s, the podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology.

Hello everybody, welcome back to the show, welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world, it is so great to have you here back for another episode as we of course break down the psychology of our 20s.

What we're talking about today is very near and dear to my heart. You know, I wouldn't say it's my favorite thing to talk about because it's not a very pleasant topic, but it's something that really, I think, strums on my heartstrings. It really follows me around for long stretches of time. And it's something that I have begun to feel very at peace with. And that thing is

Loneliness. Loneliness is something that all of us in our 20s are going to experience. If you're not experiencing it now, it is coming for you. It's going to be around the corner. But what does it actually mean to feel lonely during a time of your life that everybody will quickly tell you are the best years of your life? Everyone's going to say your 20s are where you should be most social. You'd have the most fun. You should be meeting your forever friends. And

But what if that is not your experience? Where do we find ourselves? How do we cope? This is actually an experience I've seen on the rise. Friends, listeners, strangers asking me, why do I feel so lonely? Why do I feel so lonely despite having people around me, despite being young and carefree, despite feeling like I'm doing everything that I can to build community?

And I have an answer for you. It's what I like to call the loneliest chapter of your 20s. This is a specific period that we all go through, the loneliest chapter, where regardless of how many relationships and friends we have, how many hours we spend socializing, how often we are surrounded with others, we

We still feel inexplicably lonely and emotionally isolated, not necessarily physically isolated, but like we are kind of an island within it all. And this lonely chapter, it's going to hit us all at some stage. I actually think it's a rite of passage. I think it's a really important transition and milestone. And, you know, it feels really hard to explain, especially when you're in it, but I'm

But afterwards, you kind of end up realizing that this was something that you had to go through. Perhaps, you know, you had to go through it because you were outgrowing people and we needed to speed up that process. Maybe because you're going through a major life change and you need more time to reflect on your own experiences and your own emotions. Maybe you've just seen your broader social circle change.

And you need to kind of realize that it's time to maybe move on from those friends, make new friends, move into this new chapter. I don't know what it is. I can't speak to what you're going through personally, but I do think that it's unavoidable. And I think that it's actually quite important.

necessary for us to experience this kind of sacred solitude early on in our lives in our 20s or this shedding of relationships so that we can truly know what fills our cup we can truly fall in love with our own company we can know that solitude is not scary it's sacred and we can grow through it and actually by going through this lonely period we end up coming out more

social and connected than ever. And I'm going to explain why that is. So this is what we're talking about today. What is the loneliest chapter of our 20s? Why might you be finding yourself there right now? Why is it completely normal? But more importantly, why is it really valuable not to run from this loneliness and fill up your time with empty relationships and with destructions and with random people and instead be

Invest in the relationship you have with yourself that is the longest relationship you are ever going to have. There is no relationship that will outlive the relationship you have with yourself. So let's talk about when loneliness factors in to this equation. Let's find out together. Without further ado, I want to explain exactly what is going on if you find yourself in this period, in this chapter right now. Let's get into it. Music

A few years back, I came across this like spirituality phrase called the dark night of the soul. And it just stuck with me. The concept of like the dark night of the soul, it originated in Spain, I think back in like the 16th century, if I've got my history right. And it's basically used to describe a really painful period in your life.

a crisis that completely transforms you. It creates a complete shift in how you see the world, how you see yourself, your values, the meaning that you apply to experiences. And it actually doesn't need to be triggered by anything. It's more of a unconscious or not even unconscious, more of an ego death, a rethinking of who you are.

Now, some philosophers would tell you that they actually believe it's necessary to grow through this dark night in order to really understand yourself and your life. And if you don't go through that, you never actually gain self-actualization, clarity and true fulfillment.

Now, I think that the loneliest chapter of our 20s does the same thing. But instead of being for our perspective and our identity, it's for our relationships. And you do need to go through this in order to deepen how you inevitably connect with people and what you see as important. So what does this chapter look like? What does it kind of, what are the symptoms or the signs that you're going through this? Well, I think loneliness above all else, but not just loneliness because of a lack of flexibility

physical relationships, like a lack of people around you. You know, it's very natural to feel lonely if you are struggling with any friendship, you know, if you actually just don't have friends. But I also think it's a sense of boredom in your pre-existing friendships, almost like an apathy towards wanting to hang out with them. There's a great desire to withdraw away or to not feel like you're fulfilled by your current relationships.

There also may be like a heightened level of self-criticism, feeling like you don't deserve the level and the depth of the relationships that you crave. A sense of restlessness, like, oh my God, I need to be making new friends. I feel so lost. I feel so aimless. And also some existential reflection. Being around people is definitely one of the

best distractions from looking straight at our thoughts and so when being around other people is not available as a distraction when it's not doing its job anymore all those thoughts and feelings that we have unintentionally suppressed become very loud and

It's really common, you know, for people to experience this when they move to a new city, a new country, when they go through a breakup, when they have their first child. You're going through a transition that disconnects you and that's when you really enter the lonely chapter, right?

The other big indicator for me is it feels like you're riding what I like to call the friendship rollercoaster. Now, we have spoken about this on the podcast before, but this is a term that I originated. And it basically describes how at one moment you might feel incredibly fulfilled and happy and delighted by your friendships. The next moment you're at the bottom of the rollercoaster, you're constantly feeling

feeling miserable about your friendships. You feel at a low point and then you're back at the top again and it's exhilarating and it's anxiety inducing and it's stressful. Nothing is changing, right? You're still in the same vehicle. You're still strapped into the same spot. The people in the roller coaster with you have not changed, but it's the path that you're taking. And it really does feel like at one moment you have so many friends and then literally the next day nothing's changed and it feels like you have none.

And that is, I think, really indicative of this lonely chapter. It's indicative that something needs to change. Sometimes I think it also comes on slowly, right? You might wake up one day and realize that your level of socialization, how often you see people, the amount of quality time you have with people has declined. It could have been a rapid descent, especially if there was

really major life change for you or it could be gradual and I like to give the analogy of the frog in boiling water so if you don't know this analogy it's kind of a sad one but essentially if you put a frog in a big a big what's it called a pot a big pot a big pot of water and you put it over the stove and you start to slowly boil the water the frog actually will not jump out

and it will end up being burned alive. Whereas if you dump a frog into a pot of boiling water, it will immediately jump out. This can go with friendships. You might slowly see that, you know, one friend dropped off, one friend moved, you know, one friend you don't talk to as much, one friend got a boyfriend so you don't talk to her as much, another friend, you know, you stopped working with them so it's not a daily interaction and it's kind of happening one by one. The water is slowly boiling down

And then one day you just kind of realize like, oh, this is who I was two years ago. This is who I am now. And there is a huge difference and a huge distance in who I see, who I am, how fulfilled I feel. I was talking to my friend Sarah about this the other day and how when she first moved to Sydney, her social calendar was just

Oh my gosh, so intense. And she is still a relatively social person, but she was talking about how she would pack a bag for Friday and she would go and stay with friends on Friday and she would have...

like her day was split into I think like five sections four or five sections so she had a pre-morning which was like five till nine then she had a normal morning which was like 10 to 12 and she had like afternoon which was like one to three then she had like dinner time and then she had like the evening slot and she would see a new group of people or she would see people in every single block

of time. Every single one of those blocks would be full for the whole weekend. And she was like, I just, I just don't do that anymore. And she was, I don't realize, I didn't realize when it happened, but I kind of like woke up and like, that just wasn't my life. And I had that same experience where I felt like I had this awakening where I was like, wow, I just don't socialize the way I used to. Something needs to change because I'm feeling quite lonely. And

This is going to sound ridiculous, but the thing that triggered it for me was Brat Girl Summer. Yes, the Charli XCX album.

and all the stuff that came along with that I that I don't know what it was but it reminded me of like who I perhaps was maybe four or five years ago and how I wasn't her anymore and it really made me take a real good look at my friendships and be like huh I've kind of been coasting on relate on the backs of relationships that I've had for years without making new friends I since have but

For a long time, you know, I was just slowly adjusting to a way of life that actually felt inherently lonely. And I felt like I was very displaced in the reality that I've created. So why does this actually happen? What would, you know, developmental psychologists tell us about this? Tell us about this transition or this huge drop?

Well, what creates this experience is actually two parallel experiences. The first is the loss of old friends and the difficulty in maintaining those relationships at the same level within the changing circumstances of our 20s. And the second is difficulty in making new friends, not necessarily replacing those old friends, but just creating that same sense of belonging with new people in a similar way to the people that we previously had in our lives.

Where can we find those environments and those spaces where we actually feel like we belong? So I'm going to begin by focusing on that first experience, the loss of old friends, even if they're not necessarily out of your life.

we do tend to notice the further we get into this decade, a distance. And I think that can be explained by three things that typically occur during this period of life. First, we have splintering paths. You know, if you grew up with a group of people at the same time, you're the same age, you're going through the same experiences as

at the same time so you know you are in primary school you're in high school you're going off to college off to university you're working those part-time jobs together you have all this time together the experiences are very parallel you could spend the ages of like two to like 22 in the exact same environment doing the exact same thing as someone else and

Then things splinter and you no longer have those parallel experiences in the parallel environments. You no longer have the convenience of seeing others at school or seeing others at a part-time job or seeing others, you know, studying with each other at university. There is no longer the ease and the convenience of maintaining a long-term friendship with someone who you've been really close to for a whole lot of time.

This can also be precipitated by a big life change. You know, people do move. People have children. People experience a whole crazy different amalgamation of life experiences. They're not all going to be the same. So sometimes if someone's priorities and complete path in life is suddenly directed, we can't always keep up and the relationship falls by the wayside.

Finally, and this is a huge one, especially in our, I would say mid to late 20s, is that we get life partners and we get partners. A lot of us start to take dating a lot more seriously. It's a big transition, I would say, or a big distinction between people who are in emerging adulthood versus full-blown adulthood. It's the prioritization of partnership.

So I say this a lot, actually, and this is a very deep belief of mine. I think that your friends are the most important relationship between like 18 and 26. But then after 26, about 50% of us start or a large majority of us really start, you know, putting our partner as the most important relationship. And.

until, you know, we have kids. So that is how I see like our relationship priorities changing over the course of our life. If you're in your 20s, you might be smack bang in the middle of that transition, the transition towards partnership. And if you don't have a partner, but your friends do, it can feel like you're left out.

It's interesting because according to research done by the University of Kansas, we lose an average of two friends per year in our mid to late 20s. And that carries on into our 30s. I think it's a combination of all these factors, of all these different lifestyle shifts and changes and environments and situations and contexts and blah, blah, blah, that all combine to make friendship during this decade a lot harder.

Now, when it comes to making new friends, we've already spoken about this, but you know, you're no longer in environments that make friendship convenient and that are effortlessly social. The number one way that people make new friends in adulthood is through work. Even that, that's not effortlessly social. It's just that you're close by to someone and you're in the trenches together. So it's easy to form a relationship.

Those environments, you've got to remember when we were kids and when we were teenagers and when we were in our early 20s, there are a lot more of those environments available to us. Here's another really interesting insight. The most valuable factor for predicting whether a friendship will take place between two people, according to researchers, this is the number one factor that they cite, it's familiarity. Familiarity followed by similarity and proximity.

But essentially what they will say to you is that if you want new connections and you want new friendships, the more familiar you are with someone, the more bonded you feel. And what does familiarity require above all else?

It's time. It's time. Something that we have less and less of the older we get and the more our day is split into quadrants and pieces and quadruplets and everything just everyone wants a piece. We have less time devoted to friendships, but time is the crucial element. Jeffrey Hall, he's an expert in the psychology of friendship and he studied 450 individuals over the course of I think six months to a year.

And he found that it took about 45 hours of being in the presence of another person's company for you to consider that they are no longer an acquaintance but a friend. To move from casual friend to a meaningful friendship took 50 hours over a three-month period. And to move into the inner close friendship circle, it took another 100 hours.

When we were younger, we had that time to invest in friendship, shared experiences, core memories. But now that time is filled with work, chores, just being tired. I was also speaking to a friend about this the other day, about how if you move cities or you move countries, people often have their established social circles. It's very hard to...

kind of find your way in. So if you are the expat, the new person in town, you're also going to, I think, particularly struggle. It's interesting because I'm seeing a lot of friends of mine and a lot of people that I knew from uni and high school, like all moving to London or moving to Europe or New Zealand or the US, and they all end up finding each other again because they already have that pre-established sense of familiarity. So it's

All this goes to say, if you're experiencing this period of riding the friendship roller coaster, if you are entering or in the midst of the loneliest chapter of your 20s, you are not alone. There is a whole developmental transitionary shift occurring in your life that is meaning that your day and your weeks and your months feel a lot more devoid of a sense of connection and a sense of being seen.

We're all going to go through it at least once, maybe even more. And I want to talk about where to next, because what's really important to state is that this is actually a chapter. It is not permanent. It is not the rest of the story. And each of us will get through it.

We are meant to get through it. There is something brighter on the other side. There is a reprioritization of certain relationships. There is a reaching out. There is basically a conclusion to this chapter that I want you to find and something better that comes after it. So we are going to talk about all of that and more after this short break. ♪

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It is my belief that I've stated many, many times, but I really wanted to come across that loneliness is actually not a curse. It's not a disease. It's more than that. It's an emotional cue.

It is a physical cue. It is an instinctual evolutionary cue. The same way that we experience hunger and thirst as indicators that we are in need of something, we also experience loneliness. So take it as a sign from your body and a sign from your mind that it's simply just a need that is not fulfilled and that you do need to reach out.

When you can also learn to be lonely and to turn that into a skill, you importantly are no longer reliant on relationships that don't fulfill you because solitude is no longer a punishment. The psychologist Carl Jung actually believed that

That solitude could almost be medicinal, could almost be healing because it led to deep personal growth and self-actualization. Especially in a world that is full, full of so many interactions, full of so much noise, so much stimulus, so much information coming in. When do you get a time to yourself?

When was the last time you had a time to yourself where there wasn't something in front of your face or in your ears or, you know, something that you were interacting with?

Solitude provides us with that space. Being alone gives you a chance to reflect on who you are, on your goals. It can bring greater self-awareness, personal development. You also gain something else really valuable, which is the ability to tolerate discomfort instead of going back to shit people. I see a lot of people who have

if I'm being honest, not great friends, really terrible friends who they actually don't like and who are quite awful to them. But they continue to feel this really intense obligation and loyalty to them because they are the only thing that is between them and loneliness. And when you are scared of loneliness, you will accept, you know, the hell that you know.

Over that uncertainty and over that discomfort. People try a lot of ways to get comfortable with discomfort. They try ice bars, they try extreme sports, extreme meditation. But who would have thought that just sitting with a lonely feeling is another way to reap the same rewards and to actually, and I'm going to say this, make you less attached to the people who don't deserve your attachment.

I'm not saying that it means that you need to withdraw or that you need to deliberately isolate yourself. I mean that when you have a sense of allegiance with your loneliness, when you feel like it is your friend rather than your enemy, you are not scared to choose the solitary, lonely path if it looks better than the one in which you have, you know, crap people around you, in which you are being mistreated, in which you are being...

poorly treated, I guess, as well. So that was a really important lesson for me to learn, especially. I used to have a real intense fear of loneliness. I used to be really scared of what it would mean to be ostracized, be isolated. It made me feel unlovable to not be around people all the time. It made me feel like I was forgettable. And that led me to really stay in situations that I didn't deserve to be in.

But after a breakup, actually quite a few years ago, around six years ago, I went and spent some time with my grandma. Now,

My grandma has the most amazing, beautiful house in the Gold Coast in Queensland in Australia. It is like a jungle oasis next to the beach, up in the hills. We have our own gardens. We have these chickens. There's baby quails. There's kangaroos. There's bridges and streams. It's glorious. And I spent a long amount of time there.

in that house just with her really healing after a breakup where I felt like I couldn't trust myself to continue to be around people who I knew were bad for me because I was constantly going to choose them over myself. And in that time, it was hard. It was really, really difficult. But I rewired and I reprogrammed part of my personality and I would say my social blueprint that craved any form of a validation of

from being around people, any form of it, even when it came at my own expense. There is very little promised in life, but I think, yes, loneliness is one of those things. But the other thing is change. It can't stay like this forever. And so whilst you are in this lonely chapter, I really want you to get the most out of it that you can. As Carl Jung said, you know, it might actually be one of the biggest gifts to have a moment alone, to have a moment where you're not scared to be alone.

So this is how I want you to actually, I'm not going to say enjoy the moment, but receive the gift from the lonely moment. Firstly, acknowledge your feelings. Please don't bury them. You will feel terrible at times. It isn't comfortable because humans aren't meant to be alone forever.

But the people who miss out on the lesson from this period are those who avoid ever feeling that feeling at all. They do seek comfort in distraction. And that is a form of avoidance, which means that we actually continue to sustain the unhealthy and fearful relationship we have with loneliness, which is a perfectly helpful human emotion.

psychologists and more importantly researchers who study our unique emotional approaches to loneliness they've actually found that people who view this emotion as an opportunity for self-discovery rather than something to escape from they find a lot of meaning in

It feels less like isolation and more like personal space, but they also become more clear and more focused on their goals. Here's another amazing benefit for you if you're going through this right now. According to a 2020 study that looked at our perceptions of loneliness and the interactions or the correlation with emotional intelligence amongst young adults, it

Having a mature grasp on loneliness makes you more emotionally intelligent. It means that your ability to name, identify, appropriately respond to your own emotions and then also identify those emotions in other people and have a successful response, make people feel like you relate to them and that you care about them. Your ability to do that improves like no tomorrow.

That is what we're gaining despite what we feel like we're missing. We're actually gaining a more keen social and emotional ability.

The second way that I think you can really help yourself through this period is to firstly take a social media detox. You know, I'm not trying to say that this loneliness is like the best thing ever and that you need to be happy about it all the time. It actually does still feel quite painful. So don't make that experience more painful than it has to be. Take a break, take a step back, disconnect from social media, rethink your relationship with it.

and whether it is contributing to your fear of missing out, and meaning that you are only focusing on your experiences in comparison to what others look like. I think that you'll find that the answer is yes, and when you have less opportunities to engage in that comparison, the joy comes back. Romanticize the experiences that you have on your own as well.

I have a friend who does date nights with themselves. Once a month, they go to an Italian restaurant, they order a glass of wine and they bring their journal and they answer a series of five questions. You know, what am I proud of myself for? What do I want in the next month? What is something that I'm going through? How am I feeling? Like a genuine check-in and they really look forward to this date with themselves once a month.

I have another friend who does regular solo trips, another friend who goes on daily walks in different neighborhoods. And that's like her alone time just for her. And she's like, it's like the best time of my day, which I love. Another friend of mine has a to-do list. And I actually have one of these as well. It is like a folder in my phone, like an album of things that I've experienced when I was on my own that only I got to enjoy in that moment.

Something that I put in there the other day was like I saw these like, oh my God, this huge mass of bees like pollinating these poppies. And sometimes when you see beautiful things like that, your first inclination is to be like, oh my God, who can I show? Who can I tell? And I was like, wait.

I am having this experience on my own and that is actually really beautiful. So I'm just going to, obviously I've just shared it with you. So I get the irony and hypocrisy and what I'm about to say, but sometimes really appreciating that your own company and your own experience of something is worthwhile in itself is

means that you're no longer afraid to experience those things by yourself. You've got to see the romance in it. Sometimes that is the best mindset shift is to, instead of seeing like a danger or a torture, is to be like, how can I make this beautiful and lovely and special? I start a new hobby as well. Now, this one is like, should have been number one at my list. I started a ceramics class like almost four months ago now that I've continued to do.

But the reason I did it was because I was like, every thing that I do for fun is with other people. And I'm feeling actually quite detached from myself. And so I know that when those other people aren't around, I'm going to feel very lonely. So I want to do something that is just for me. And I signed up for this class. I think it was like $300, which a lot of money up front, but then it pays itself forward. And it has been one of the best things for my mental health and for my feelings of isolation during this time in my life.

I've also made a lot of friends through it. It started off as a solo practice and has actually become something upon which I've built community. You know, I have a friend from Ireland who was doing the course with me. I've got like, you know, the woman who sits across from me, I'm not going to say their names because they might not want me talking about them on this podcast, but this woman who sits across from me is like 50 and last week she brought me in honey and

And all of that came from not being afraid to do something alone, even if it felt lonely, and finding that there were these other people who were doing the same thing

who were also looking for connection and we found it in each other. If it is the case that you're the root of your loneliest chapter and the root of your loneliness at this point is a deficit of good people, try and build a routine in which you will see the same people. So this is, you know, the ceramics course is one of those things where every Tuesday I know that I'm going to see these people and that we're forming a bond and that we feel like we belong together and we can share this experience together.

If you have opportunities to interact with the same people at the same time, like if you go to the same gym class every week, if you go to the same local cafes, you go to the same art class every week, you'll naturally create that familiarity and have that time investment that we can see is really important for building new friendships.

We also have a full episode on making new friends in your 20s because gosh, is it not hard? And I'm totally in the same boat with you when it comes to this. So if you search that in Spotify or Apple, you will find it. And finally, don't neglect perfectly healthy friendships. I know that it can feel difficult when we're going through this lonely chapter to look around and be like, oh my God, I just feel miserable.

No one understands me. I don't have the relationships that I want.

actually sit with yourself for 10 minutes maybe it's not the relation not the people it's the type of relationship you have with them so maybe they don't need to be completely blacked out kicked out of your life the relationship isn't over it just needs to be redefined so focus on those healthy friendships focus on those people even if you're not quite friends with them yet who you do really want in your life and who you really like and who you really enjoy and try and

Spend more time with them. Put more energy into the good people, the kind people, the lovely people, the ones who make you feel that spark and that energy and that joy compared to relationships which are just continuing to fail you and leave you feeling quite worthless. My final reminder to sum up this episode, this is normal. This is totally normal.

And what it's going to allow you to do is reconnect with yourself. It's going to give you the motivation to make better friends, to be a better friend, to chase connection and good conversation. And I think it's also an important point for your future self to feel grateful for where they're at. And if that doesn't make sense, I just think that, you know, in five years time, three years time, two years time after you have exited the loneliest chapter of your 20s,

You are going to look back at where you are now and you will be in a better place and you'll say, oh my God, I get why I needed to go through that because there were all these new relationships and friendships waiting for me on the other side, waiting for me to discover something

them and waiting for me to discover the peace and the happiness in my solitude that has made me a better person in my relationships so I hope this has been comforting I hope this has taught you something I hope you know that you are going to be okay and that new relationships will come into your life as long as you focus on the relationship you have with yourself first until the

Next time, if you enjoyed this episode, send it to a friend, send it to someone who you really want to get to know, who needs to hear this, who you care about, who might be going through the same thing. Make sure that you are following along on either Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And if you are listening on Apple Podcasts, I do have a small request. If you could leave us a five-star review, that would be greatly appreciated.

Make sure that you are also following us on Instagram because if you have follow-ups to this episode, if you want to vote on what episodes come out next, you want to see when we have live events, when things are announced, that is where you'll get all of that information. And until next time, my lovely podlings, stay safe, stay kind, be gentle to yourself, especially during this lonely chapter, and we will talk very, very soon. ♪

Hey, I'm Emily, revealing incredible jobs that are out there. Ah, here's Winston with his burning question. Emily, can race cars top jet planes? I gotta know. Classic. He's a charmer, but his timing could use some work. Winston loves trucks, so we'll explore construction, car racing, and more. Join us on Growing Up, the Lingo Kids podcast inspiring you to chase all your dreams. Listen to Growing Up on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or

wherever you get your podcasts.