Why is personal growth so lonely?

A group member said something in the first week of one of my groups that I still think about. Healing comes with so many goodbyes.

And then the second half of it, which is the part that stays with me. That it leads to some of the loneliest times in our lives, where it feels like it would be easier to just put up with all of it and go back to dealing with things the way you always had, instead of holding the new standard you've set for yourself. And that it's just deeply, deeply lonely.

Nobody in that group had named that cost until then. I've heard versions of it from a lot of people since, and I went through my own.

Why does it get lonelier after the breakthrough?

Because the change clears out the old arrangement, and some of the people who fit it, before anything new has arrived. And the high of finally having done the thing fades within a few weeks. What's left is a new standard you're holding by yourself, with nobody near you doing the same thing, and that stretch is the lonely one.

The loneliest stretch comes after the change works. Which is backwards from how it gets sold. Personal development sells the arrival, and the arrival is real, it's just short.

One participant made the hardest call of their year and spent the first week afterwards, in their words, surfing a wave. Motivated, inspired, and naively thinking that was it. Grieved, moved on, time for the next chapter. The week after, they'd been sad, borderline depressed, and it came as a shock.

I see this with nearly every guy I work with after a breakup. First it's yeah, I'm free. Then usually it takes two to three weeks for the reality to hit. Growth runs the same way. You get the insight, or the retreat, or you finally have the conversation you'd been putting off for a year, and there's a lift. And then you go home.

Another participant put it well. Anyone can be enlightened on retreat, with all the breath work and the meditation and the sunshine and the sea. But then you go back home and you get the reality check.

Why do I want to go back to how it was?

Because going back is the one option that ends the loneliness straight away. The old way had people in it and a role you knew how to play. So the pull gets strongest right when the old thing has gone and the new one hasn't shown up yet, and putting up with it starts to look like the reasonable choice.

And your head helps you get there. One participant said that when the grief came in, their mind was quite clever at it. Maybe it should have been. Maybe we should still be together. All of that. What got them the clarity back was talking to their mates.

This stretch is hard partly because it's so undramatic. A group member described it as what's left after you've cleared out all the really big stuff. The residue at the bottom of the pot, the sand that's really hard to get into the dustpan. The big moments had other people around them. The residue you tend to do on your own.

Is it normal to feel lonely with people all around you?

Yes, and it's a very common version of this. The lonely stretch is about whether anyone around you knows where you're at right now. You can be surrounded all day and still have the answer be nobody, mostly because you haven't told them.

One group member told us they're never on their own. Ever. And in the last five years they'd been more lonely than at any point in their life. What they wanted was small. Someone to come home to and say, ah, this happened today. Someone to make dinner tonight so they didn't have to think about it.

When you get underneath it, the want is usually that small, and it needs another person to do something.

Why is it so hard to tell anyone you're lonely?

Because saying it means admitting you can't handle this part on your own, and for someone capable that's the one thing that feels off limits. So you keep busy, you keep it together, and the loneliness grows underneath the busyness until it's too big to hide from.

That was me. I had just enough going on to keep myself distracted from being lonely, until it grew so much that I couldn't hide from it any longer. And when I did finally say it, the saying was the hardest part.

Because that was, I think, the hardest thing for me. To acknowledge it and admit it to myself, and then say it to someone else. I don't know whether it's different from a man or from a woman, just to say that, like, I'm lonely.

Daniel Lawson

The reflex in this stretch is familiar to anyone who's been the capable one for a long time. One participant described it when someone they'd been counting on pulled back a little. Straight to: fine then, I don't need anyone, I'm good on my own.

Being able to hold it yourself is real and it's gotten you a long way. It's also the same not-asking the growth was meant to change, and in this stretch it shows up looking like strength.

What moves it when you're in it?

Telling one person where you're at, as you are in that moment, and letting them contribute something. It's the small tweaks that can influence the biggest changes. Going out to meet a pile of new people tends to go badly for a while, and doing more work on yourself adds to the load you're already carrying alone.

A group member made the case against going out pretty convincingly. You step outside the door to try and meet people, somebody strange shows up, and you go straight back home. So then I'll just sit and be lonely. I get it. What I've seen shift it, though, is one person who knows.

The evidence one matters more than it looks. When you're in the lonely part, it's very easy to decide nothing changed at all.

It's easy to go and have the change, not look for evidence of it, and claim that nothing happened. And I think that's bullshit. So I'm looking for the evidence of the change.

Daniel Lawson

The catch is that change is easier to see from the outside. A participant said exactly that to me once. They couldn't see much change in themselves, and they could see it clearly in me.

And the group member who named the goodbyes had a question they used on themselves when it got bad. Who did come before me? They got curious about the people in their own family who'd been through hard stretches. Their way of putting it was that you arrive anywhere as the ten thousand people who came before you, so you're never on your own. That's a different kind of company, and it counts.

Common questions

How long does the lonely stretch last?

Somebody asked me this in a group and I couldn't give a clean answer. I wanted to say it was ages. It felt like a lifetime. And looking back, it might have been a week that felt like months. What I do know is that the more we want it to pass, the less it passes, and the more we lean in and let ourselves feel it, the more it moves.

Should I just sit with it?

A participant asked that too. What else is there to do other than embrace it and sit in the sadness? Feel it, yes, fully. And tell someone you're in it while you do. Sitting with it by yourself is the part that makes it drag.

Is it normal to lose friends when you change?

Some people will go. Usually without a big row, they just stop fitting and you stop fitting them. That's real and it's worth grieving. The lonelier part, for many people, is the stretch afterwards, when you're holding the new version of yourself before anyone near you has caught up.

If this resonates

The lonely stretch has two things in it that you can't do for yourself. You can't see your own change from inside it, and you won't say the word lonely to the people who are counting on you to be fine. Sometimes I notice myself keeping busy instead of saying it.

So you need somebody who isn't counting on you to be fine. Someone who can see the change before you can, and who you can say it to while you're still in it rather than a year later.

The Reconnected Man and The Reconnected Woman are our groups where we have these conversations together.