On Being Alone

Being alone has so many meanings for most of us. The fear of being alone is usually not felt as such; rather one races to phone others so as not to feel alone. Why is that? Because of the compounded pain of being left alone a lot in childhood and infancy, added to the ultimate aloneness right after birth when no one was there for the newborn. That imprints a primal terror where a naïve, innocent and vulnerable baby has no one to lean on, to be held by, to snuggle up to, to be comforted. To be loved. And that also has multiple meanings: no one wants me; there is no one there for me: no one wants to be with me; I have no love and no one who cares, and so on. These become compounded and drive behavior when early life duplicates that feeling and hammers home its message: no one cares. One runs from the feeling and struggles mightily not to be alone. Or, depending on earlier events one stays alone out of that same feeling. These are by and large the depressives, the ones who were imprinted with hopelessness and helplessness.

And to be caught alone at lunch or at a store can mean: gee I am alone cause no one wants to be with me. Everyone can see that no one wants me. These feelings are terror-ridden because of their very early meaning when the imprint was set in and when being totally alone and unattended could have meant death or disaster. Just look at kids who are left alone in the dark; how terrorized they feel. Now imagine a one day old.

Whether one runs from the feeling or wallows in it depends on many other factors, not the least of which is the birth process, where a certain tendency was stamped in. Here the struggle to be born may have gone on for a short time when a massive anesthesia shuts down most of the baby’s vital functions and renders birth impossible or overwhelming. It is struggle and fail. Giving up is stamped in and later on in the face of that alone feeling one gives into it right away and does not fight it. Whereas a birth that ends up successful after a struggle can lead to a syndrome of fight and succeed. And this person does not wallow in the feeling, she fights it all the way.

What makes the behavior so importuning, so urgent and unwavering is the process of resonance. Remember how at the start of life events are imprinted in the lowest part of the nervous system; the brainstem and archaic forms of the limbic system.

Here is where deep and often catastrophic feelings/sensations lie. And they get re-represented in company with higher brain levels as they come on line. This follows our personal evolution until each distinct brain level has a representative of the first, primal imprint; an imprint that is only a memory but also contains the deep terror that occurred originally. The importance of this is that in the present when something happens that resonates with those early imprints, say, a feeling of hopelessness and frustration, there is a resonance as each level is triggered off. Happily, when the defense system holds we are not immediately driven to act-out; to get on the phone or to go visit someone. But when the defense system is weak, when the child was left alone time after time, then when there is resonance he must act out. He is without a good defense. The original feeling is close at hand, about to reach awareness. Let me clarify once more: the early terror is imprinted; it is re-represented on higher levels as the brain evolves. The experiences and the feelings become unified, congealed and compounded into a unitary force. When something in the present occurs which is similar to an old feeling; “I cannot do what I want. It is hopeless. I am all alone and no one wants me,” the old feelings are triggered off (usually, I submit, by similarities in electrical frequency of the pain and chemical similarities) and the whole feeling rises toward conscious/awareness where it must be combated. Either the person wallows in the feeling and is overwhelmed by it even when she doesn’t even know what “it” is. Or the compounded feeling drives the act-out, forcing the person into some kind of social contact. The difference is between acting in and acting out. The feeling may be the same; the reaction is different depending upon other early imprints which sway the person in different directions. Those who do not have this kind of pain can tolerate being alone very well. They do not stay alone as a defense; the use it to think and reflect and enjoy. Whereas, those with pain use it as a buffer against themselves; a different, lower part of themselves.

Those without an inner life, without access to themselves and their feelings must stay outwardly focused, must keep moving, and must avoid being alone. That is their sentence. So we see how the behaviorists have got it wrong. Two people can both like being alone; one enjoys it and uses it positively, while the other uses it to keep from feeling the pain. We could not tell from the behavior alone; that is why no single behavior is neurotic in and of itself. And unless we see the determining motivation we have no idea about the background of behavior. But if we ask, “why are you along?,” we begin to make headache into the feelings. If we take the behavior, any behavior, alone, we do the opposite.