Flip Your Script

By John J. Schessler, CMT, ET-C, Sports Injury/Pediatrics

Most of us, if not all of us have been lonely at some point in our lives, probably more times than we care to think about. For us introverts, some of us actually enjoy being alone with moments of being around crowds and other people sprinkled in for good measure but there’s a blatant difference between being ‘alone’ and being ‘lonely’. The older I’ve become, the more I enjoy my solitude, which if you asked the 20-something me about, would be a foreign concept because for most of my 20’s, I purposely surrounded myself with friends, family and acquaintances to avoid being alone. What I didn’t realize at the time was that as we age, the more solitary we become and most of the time, it’s not on purpose, it’s more just a fact of life…friends start dating, getting married and having kids, etc. and because of these facts of life, friendships and relationships suffer somewhat in the meantime. However, what I’m talking about in this article isn’t what I just described. What I’m talking about is the epidemic in the US right now surrounding loneliness and how we are self-sabotaging ourselves into lives of recluse. I could be very blunt and say that technology is to blame but that’s only part of the problem. Given the recent climate of the country in the past few years, I can understand why people wouldn’t want to go out with friends as much or be in large groups of people. When fear overtakes our natural want of being together with others, there’s a definite problem and it’s one that’s growing bigger.

According to MDLinx, a news source for doctor and medical professionals, loneliness affects 47% of American adults, which is double the number from a decade ago (Loneliness: A New Epidemic in the USA | Psychology Today, 2024.) In 2017, Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy often talked about how emotional well-being and loneliness was a major public health concern because social connections are essential for human growth and development, no matter how old you may be. Before we get into the thick of this, let’s look at what loneliness actually is from a clinical perspective.

Loneliness can be described as a tendency to feel, perceive, behave, and think in relatively consistent ways across time and across situations, would consider loneliness as present in detached, melancholy prone, solitary individuals, with limited interpersonal interactions and restricted affective experience and expression. (DSM-V, 2013.) Given this definition, loneliness is a very layered thing. Look at it this way: being sad often leads to isolation and becoming isolated can lead to loneliness and then leads to depression. It is a vicious cycle that one can find themselves relatively quickly, depending on the situation. Let me say this too, that it’s more than OK to be sad and stay there for a while. It only becomes a problem when it stops you from doing the things that you have to and want to do.

Why is this more widespread in the country nowadays? Well, let’s look at the things that we as citizens have had to endure in the past few years. Let’s start with the pandemic. We all experienced that collective trauma that really was a day-to-day pandora’s box of anxiety and worry. Thousands of people died, more became violently ill and nobody really had any firm direction on how to navigate our way through it. The stress, depression and general sadness from being isolated for days, weeks or months from people was enough to drive anybody crazy and being alone tends to mess with your mental state if prolonged. Our minds are a really complex machine and every if we think that everything’s working correctly, it may not be.

Aside from the pandemic, which is a lot, we also have constant fear of getting shot or killed when we go out. Let’s get rid of the smoke screen here…. people are more empowered today to make some sort of lasting statement for lack of something or not getting their way. Unfortunately, that thing to grab people’s attention is usually in the form of school shootings, killing of innocent people and a dozen other useless ways to prove a point. I know myself that I won’t go to movie theaters or certain other places just because of the possible chance of getting shot (I can’t even believe I have to put this in writing.) Millions of people fear the government and how they’re not doing enough for us in ways of protection but also in the fact of taking our certain rights away and it’s just undue stress among average, working people in the country. So, how do we cope we tense social climates like this?

I think that we first have to recognize is that incidents like we see on the nightly news are often isolated incidents and they very rarely happen in most areas of the country. You may be thinking, “John, people are crazy though!” People are on the whole, misguided and ill-informed, not necessarily dealing with mental health issues that need monitoring. I think when something like Sandy Hook, Columbine or Virginia Tech happens, we panic and point to where we think the bad guy(s) are. The problem with that is while we’re concentrating on who we think is to blame, we’re missing an important part of the process, and that is trying to figure out how this affects us in a mental health way. What we usually do is get angry that an event like this has happened for a few days, get angry that government officials didn’t see it coming and after about 2 weeks, we return to normal. That is the current trend here in the good old US of A.

As we have seen in the past few years, mental health awareness and medical care needs to be more widespread and accessible so people who need to avail themselves of it, have access to it when needed. Maybe if we decided to take mental health more seriously among the general population, we wouldn’t have these certain kinds of events every few months. At 42 years old, I never dreamed that we still would be having issues at this level with mass shootings, but here we are. I’ve kind of gotten off track here and that’s okay because I think beginning a dialogue is how I tend to cope. I pride myself on being a great writer so this is how I express myself.

Let’s take care of each other and also, practice self-care. It’s a dangerous world out there but it’s also something beautiful too. Don’t spread too much time perseverating on the bad stuff too long.

You’ll never make it out alive.

John J. Schessler, Jr. is a Pittsburgh-based Personal Trainer, Motivational Speaker and Writer. He is also a Senior at Southern New Hampshire University majoring in Child and Adolescent Developmental Psychology and plans on moving to a career in collegiate student affairs or college admissions counseling. John has been working in the fitness and medical fields for over 15 years and has certifications in Sports Injury, Pediatric Physical Therapy, Tactical Conditioning and Exercise Therapy. John currently resides in White Oak, PA and works full-time for Planet Fitness LLC. For speaker bookings or training inquiries, please email pghwellnesspt@gmail.com.

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