80 Navigating Loneliness Through Christ’s Example

“We are not meant to be lonely. We are meant to be socially connected and a part of the body of Christ.”

Dr. Kevin Vost on Navigating loneliness

Who is Kevin Vost?

Kevin Vost, Psy.D., obtained his doctorate in clinical psychology from Adler University in Chicago and has taught psychology and gerontology at the University of Illinois at Springfield and Aquinas College in Nashville, Tennessee. A revert to Catholicism after 25 years of atheism, Kevin has written over 20 Catholic books from Memorize the Faith! to The Catholic Guide to Loneliness. The father of two sons and grandfather of three grandchildren, he lives with his wife Kathy in Springfield, Illinois.  

Navigating Loneliness

In this episode, Dr. Kevin Vost talks about navigating loneliness. He explains:
-How being alone is different from loneliness
-Why it is not good to be lonely?
-How Christ teaches us to navigate loneliness

When I wrote to Kevin about his book on loneliness, it was something that we were praying about for a long time. It was never on our list for 2021. One of our guests had COVID, another cancelled and I was praying about what we talk about for Christmas and whom to invite.

Through this season, I was also having so many tentative thoughts about this ministry and whether any of this mattered. I hate to say it, I was feeling lonely on my own personal walk and I wrote to Kevin based on that slight prompting from the Holy Spirit. He’s a famous author and I honestly didn’t even think he’d reply. But God has a way of surprising us. Kevin reached out to me twice. I was so glad he did because this message is so apt and wonderful especially as we face another COVID lockdown.

More people are struggling with mental health and finding it difficult to connect. Kevin has some practical advice. It’s a mix of physical, emotional, and spiritual steps.

His research showed that 1 in 4 people don’t have a close friend that they can share their emotions with. And I know many people will say how can you be alone when you have Jesus?

That’s what Kevin explains so well. Even Jesus had friends and his close three. We can only learn how to to deal with loneliness like Jesus did. By focusing on others rather than ourselves.

Kevin does a great job explaining it and I hope you will find encouragement in his words. I’m so grateful that he agreed to talk to us about this.

This Christmas Help People Deal With Loneliness

This Christmas, I urge you to reach out to people who are lonely. Ask God to show you who you need to share a few words with or make a phone call. If there’s someone who’s weighing on your heart, that’s the Holy Spirit’s nudge. Even if it’s a gentle nudge, don’t ignore it. You might be that person’s hope and reason to live or smile.

Don’t assume things because of social media or ignore that nudge because they always look happy. Talk, call, share a meal, a cup of tea, greet people, and smile. It makes someone’s day!

Let’s try and make this Christmas season meaningful for others and through them, for ourselves. 🎄

We Hit 80 Episodes

We also hit 80 episodes. I don’t know how we came so far. All I can say is “But by the grace of God.” I’ve said this many times, I’m not qualified as a podcaster, don’t have the knowledge, or the experience. God provided this ministry and He has sustained it.

I only ask that you support this ministry by praying for me and the guests that come on. One small prayer for us will do. Also, share us widely with people who might benefit. We don’t know what people’s needs are but God does. And so I pray that you can sow this podcast as a seed and God will take care of the harvest.

ENJOYED THIS PODCAST?

We hope you enjoyed this podcast. Check out our podcasts on St. Thomas Aquinas and Preparing for Advent. Finally, if you liked this podcast, like us, leave us a comment and share our episodes on social media with those who may benefit from it. If there is a particular saint that you would like to hear about us, tell us and we’ll add him or her to our future episodes.

We are on iheartradio, Stitcher, Itunes, Spotify, Pandora and tunein.com. We’d love to hear from you.

Episode Transcript

Pamela: Welcome to a new episode of “The Christian Circle” podcast. And today we have a new guest who’s going to talk to us about loneliness, especially as we’re coming upon the holiday season. And so we have Dr. Kevin Vost. And I hope I’m pronouncing that right. He’s gonna talk to us about loneliness. And he’s actually written a book on the subject. So Kevin, welcome. And tell us a little bit about yourself and your ministry.

Dr. Vost: Sure. Thank you so much for having me on, Pamela. And yes, the name is Kevin Vost. I live in Springfield, Illinois, Central Illinois. It’s the city that was the city of Abraham Lincoln. I live here with my wife, Kathy, and we have two adult sons, and three grandchildren. Professionally, I worked for 32 years in the disability evaluation field for social security administration evaluating mental and physical disability cases for children and adults. During that time, I also obtained a doctorate in clinical psychology and specialized in neuropsychology or examining things like brain injury, Alzheimer’s disease focused on normal aging. And I did my dissertation work at a local medical school at their Alzheimer’s center. After that, I taught college at various colleges, including the University of Illinois at Springfield and Aquinas College in Nashville, Tennessee for several years part-time.

I have been retired from full-time work since 2016, and now I write books and do talks and things like that. As far as my faith journey, I’ll just tell you very briefly, I was raised a Catholic. In my late teens, I read the wrong kinds of philosophers, became an atheist, considered myself an atheist for 25 years until I read the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas in my early 40s. And to my amazement, I found myself back with Christ, back with the church, a full, you know, strong believer again.

And since that time then, and that was in 2004, shortly after, I started writing Catholic books because I discovered even while I was away from the church, God was preparing me as I was learning things that could be put into the service of the church. So since I’ve come back, I’ve written 20 Catholic books and 4 more in various stages right now, and they deal with various psychological and theological topics, and most of them pull in one way or another from the writing of St. Thomas Aquinas.

Pamela: Wow. So you’re the second fan that I’m meeting of, you know, of Aquinas, and hopefully someday in the future, people will be reading your books and coming back to the church like you did with Aquinas.

Dr. Vost: Oh, thank you. I hope and pray still. I’ve met a few people who have through the good St. Thomas.

Pamela: Wow. So since you wrote about loneliness, and I know this was not on our list of questions, what made you write about this particular subject?

Dr. Vost: Yes. Yes. Because most of the books, you know, I offer these ideas to the publishers, but sometimes they’ll reach out to me. And this was one where the publisher, Sophia Institute Press, they did reach out to me knowing my background as a psychologist. They were aware of this literature on a growing epidemic of loneliness. And this was going on, well, like the year 2016, I think, is when they approached me. So long before our COVID situation, there was concern about this growing loneliness in the world, and they asked me if I’d be interested in writing about it.

I honestly did not know much about it, but when I started doing my research, I was really wowed. You know, I was unaware of this, a problem of this magnitude. So I was happy to do that. So I tried to survey all the research out there in psychology and medicine, actual research articles, insights from clinical people who worked with people who were lonely, to try to put together a guide that would, you know, give both people who are lonely themselves and people who have family members and others they know who are lonely to help give them some ideas what can we help to do about this.

Pamela: So right now, we are, like, on the cusp of the holiday season, and there are really lots of people who will feel, despite the fact that they’re surrounded by people, you know, they feel lonely. Now, how is being lonely different from being alone?

And how do we know that we are lonely? I mean, whether it’s in a marriage, whether it’s in a party and you’re surrounded by so many people, but still, how do you know you are at this moment lonely?

Dr. Vost: Yeah, that’s a very important distinction because it has been pointed out for a long time ago, even the American writer Mark Twain talked about how lonely I believe he was in New York City. Even though he was surrounded by millions of people, he didn’t feel connected to them. On the other hand, there can be some people who are isolated, who are living in solitude for periods of time who don’t necessarily feel lonely. You could be surrounded…like you said, at the holidays, some people may, if they’re able to, get together with family and friends at the holidays and yet still feel lonely. So what is that distinction between being alone and actual loneliness?

Well, and the researchers and clinicians usually define loneliness as a perceived isolation. You feel like your social connectedness is not what it should be. You feel there’s a lack there. And the degree of connectedness a person needs to feel not to be lonely will vary from person to person.

But I will point out, I like two distinctions that are sometimes made in describing loneliness.

One, they will talk about emotional isolation, a sense that you don’t really have close confidants, somebody you can really tell your deepest secrets to. And some studies in the United States from the 1980s to the early 2000s, showed that more and more people reported they did not have even one close confidant. I know that the data showed in 1985, 1 person in 10 said, “You know, I don’t really have anybody I can share these deep, important issues with.” So 1 person in 10 in 1985, 20 years later they found that moved up to 1 person in 4. You know, so this growing sense of this emotional isolation.

But the second broader sense is this thing called a sense of social isolation where maybe you do have some close friends or some dear family members, but you feel a little bit disconnected at the broader level. Like you don’t feel that you’re a meaningful part of a group. Maybe your coworkers at work or your school mates, if you’re a student, or your parishioners, maybe if you belong to a parish. So things like that. It’s basically either or both, you know, you feel this lack of close social confidant or emotional confidants, or you feel like you don’t fit into broader groups in the way that you’d like. So just, in essence, you can have one or both. But it’s this feeling that your connectedness is not what it should be. So it’s a feeling of discomfort over the situation.

Pamela: What is the problem with being lonely? Why is it not good to be lonely? Why should we seek community and parish and, you know, other people?

Dr. Vost: Yeah, that is a very essential question because in the short-term, some researchers point out that in a certain way it’s good to be lonely because it’s, as you suggested there, it is a really a kind of a warning signal because we are meant…we’re not meant to be alone for extended periods of time. We are meant to be social and with each other, you know, with family, with friends, as a member of a church, as a part of the body of Christ.

So if we feel, hey, you know, I don’t feel this connectedness, it’s been compared to, in a sense, pain, you know, or also it’s being compared to thirst. It’s kind of a warning, “Hey, you know, I don’t like this feeling, it hurts, or I’m kind of thirsting for some connections.” So it can motivate us to go out there, and hopefully, and connect, but why is it not good to be lonely?

If this loneliness tends to persist for a long time, you know, if it’s not motivating us to get out there and connect, or maybe if we try a few times at first and it doesn’t seem to be happening, if loneliness persists over time, it could be very detrimental to our mental and even showing in our physical health. Some say that prolonged loneliness compares to things like, you know, obesity and certain other…hypertension, and certain other diseases as a risk factor for, you know, shortened lifespan. So this prolonged feeling of not relating to each other is not good for us mentally or physically.

Pamela: One of the things that I often say is if we’re experiencing something it’s to often look at the example of Christ, how does he deal with, you know, whatever situation we’ve gone through, whether it’s hurt, whether it’s shame, whether it’s betrayal. And loneliness is something that Christ himself experienced, something that he didn’t want. And he tried to keep his people together even at the last minute before he praised that, you know, let them all be one. So your book talks a lot about Christ’s example and draws from his last moments.

So what can we learn from Jesus himself when it comes to loneliness?

Dr. Vost: Yes. I try to kind of pattern the book where we kind of move our way towards Christ’s example as the ultimate chapter. We look at things like, you know, psychological methods we can all use, we look at growing in virtue. We look at the example of some saints, you know, people who particularly tried to be like Christ and what they can teach us.

But that ultimate example, you know, is Christ himself. And there have been some theologians who argued that Christ’s loneliness on the cross may have been even a greater pain to him than the physical pain.

So we need to think about this, Christ, God chose to become human for us and to suffer immensely for us not only physically but emotionally. So before I get on the folks on the cross though, as I was researching this book, I came across a book by a saint from the 1400 and 1500s, St. Thomas More. And he wrote this amazing book called “The Sadness of Christ” while he was awaiting his own execution in the Tower of London from King Henry VIII. He meditated a lot on Christ’s own suffering and loneliness. And he really zoomed in, even before the cross, on Christ’s night of prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane.

So, you know, if we recall this, it’s reported in all the gospels, he goes up to pray, you know, knowing his passion, his death on the cross looms ahead of him.

He brings three of his dearest friends, Peter, James, and John. Jesus goes off to pray and he asks them, you know, to stay awake, to be there for him while he prays. We learned that he goes and he prays, he throws himself on the ground, prays to God. He says he’s fearful, he’s anxious almost unto death. He actually sweats blood.

But then an hour or so later he comes back to his friends and he finds they’ve all fallen asleep. You know, they were not there for him. So he asked them, you know, wakes them, if they would stay awake for him. He goes back and he prays again. This happens three times. And each time, you know, he’s found, to his disappointment, that his friends, you know, that they were not…they were not there for him in his greatest time of need. And yet there was another friend, another disciple, or at least a man who pretended to be his friend, Judas Iscariot, you know, was wide awake and was plotting, you know, plotting for Jesus’ death. So, you know, later in the gospels we read that when Judas comes with the others to arrest Jesus, Jesus’ first words to him, to paraphrase, you know, basically, “What brings you here, my friend?” So he’s calling, you know, Judas his friend, but Judas is there then to betray him.

You know, so we can just imagine then Christ, you know, before he’s even on the cross, he’s relying on these three dear friends and they let him down, this other friend is actively betraying him. So I think one thing it can do is make us aware of Christ’s suffering, that if we’re suffering from loneliness, we’re not the only ones, Jesus did, you know….he did himself. And it can also make us kind of reflect, you know, well, have we let down or maybe have friends let us down when we’re in need, or have we let other people down when they are in need? So it can open us up to all kinds of reflections on the reality of loneliness and what we might do to try to help people who are lonely.

Pamela: So there are two aspects to this, what steps can we personally take when we know we are feeling lonely, and

what steps can we take to recognize other people’s loneliness and help them?

Dr. Vost: Yes. Yes. Okay. So what do we do when we’re feeling lonely? Well, it is, you know, a feeling. In a certain sense, if you feel lonely, to some extent you are because it is your own perception, you’re feeling disconnected. So one thing is just to be aware of it. In certain cases, we wanna be able to admit it. There’s like stigma associated with being lonely. I know one researcher said he would give big talks on loneliness, and even asked the audience, “Who in this crowd has been lonely at some point in their life?” and he said virtually everybody put their hand up. Then he’d say, “Well, who’s lonely right now?” And almost no one ever would, because it almost implies, you know, that you’re admitting something’s wrong with you, “I’m lonely. You know, why do people reject me? Why don’t I have connections?”

So, you know, we need to be willing to admit that in ourselves. You know, and when we do realize that we’re lonely, then we do need to make some steps to change that. And again, there could be good reasons that we’re lonely. Maybe a person’s bereaved, they just lost a loved one, a spouse, or a parent, or a sibling. You know, there can be good reasons for that. But we do need to start to make the steps that once we’re over our, you know, mourning, we try to reconnect, form new friendships, strengthen old bonds. So one of the steps, the psychological research shows that if people who are lonely for a long time, sometimes their thinking gets distorted. They call this maladaptive social cognition.

So people who are lonely for a long time are more likely to expect rejection, think, “Oh, I could reach out to somebody to make a friend but they’re not gonna…they’re gonna reject me. You know, who cares about me?” Your thinking can get disturbed this way. And it can also color people’s memories.

They might be more likely to think about times they were rejected or where someone left them down in the past and forgetting all those good times that might encourage them to reach out again.

Even expecting maybe I’ll be rejected, maybe I’ll ask someone to go do something with me and they’ll say no, or they’ll make some excuses. Well, that might really happen, but I can do it again with someone else, you know. I can try again.

So it’s a matter of trying to think about things differently and then just trying to take some actions. And I will note that many of the people who are involved with the lonely note that this is what they need to do most, they need to reach out. But it also tends to be a very, very hard thing for them to do if they’re in this state where they’re thinking, you know, it’s a bit distorted. So that kind of also leads us into that second step, what do we do to be aware of the other people who are lonely and then what we can do to help them?

Well, on the spiritual level, one thing, when I was writing this book, I started incorporating in my brief prayers everyday is just to say, you know, “God, you know, please open my eyes to the lonely, make me be aware of them. When I go out there today, I’m gonna come across lonely people.” Now, probably none of them are gonna tell me they’re lonely, you know, but we need to keep our eyes open for a person who maybe is isolated in a social setting. People are together in some group activity, here’s a person off by themselves. Well, maybe in that case, maybe we can walk over them, you know, to them, try to take some gesture.

There’s a Catholic blessed, a young man, Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, a very dynamic, athletic, young Italian guy who died in his early 20s. But his sister said about him, whenever he went to a social gathering, he would kind of look for the person who seemed the most isolated, the most lonely, maybe the most down, and he would seek them out first and try to make some contact, you know, try to have a conversation with them. So I think that’s one thing we can do, be aware. Studies show maybe one person out of three in the United States now really feels lonely.

So chances are we’re gonna come across lonely people every day. So some we can specifically seek out, but even in our superficial interactions with people, you know, at the grocery store, at the gym, when we go to church, when we go to work, just simple gestures, making eye contact, smiling, you know, saying hello, showing the people we meet that we recognize, hey, you’re there and you’re important, you know, can go a long way towards helping people who are suffering from loneliness.

Pamela: And what about the people who actually choose to do this deliberately in the sense that they choose to be lonely either because they have been rejected or they have been hurt or, you know, their previous experiences have colored the way they look at life? So what about these people, what can you do to convince them that they need to seek…they need a community, they need a parish, they need family?

Dr. Vost: Yeah. That is very important. I will say, you know, and not in all cases, but in a certain percentage of cases, we’ll find, you know, an overlap of loneliness with something more serious like a major depression or an anxiety disorder, you know. It doesn’t mean everyone who’s lonely has this, but some do. So if a person is just, you know, really poorly functioning in other areas in their life, in their work, or whatever they’re doing, you know, they may wanna let a mental health, or even their medical…a regular medical professional know this, you know, “I’m feeling lonely. I’m feeling sad.” You know, sort of take some steps along those lines.

But for the average person though, how can we convince them? Well, it is true that different people have a different need for social interactions. You know, some people wanna be surrounded by a group of people at all times. Other people can get by very, very well, you know, on just one or two close confidants. And that is fine, there’s individual differences there. But one thing to think of, for the lonely who are Christians, you know, is that there having great saints throughout history who have purposefully had times of solitude. They’ve spent…go out into the desert.

We had these people called the desert fathers and some women, mothers. There were these Irish saints that would go out into the woods. There were Russian saints that would go out into the wilderness. You know, it’s kind of a worldwide phenomenon. Some of these saints do purposefully spend significant amounts of time in solitude, you know, in prayer and meditation, doing things on their own, but most of them either come back into the world and then do great things, that it’s like they charge their batteries during this time with God, to then go out, you know, and reach out to other people.

Christ said we’re to love God with all that we are, and then to love our neighbors as ourself. So in a sense, you know, we can use that time of solitude to love God with all that we are, and then to get that energy from God to go out there and share that love with others. So even those who are lonely, you might find some solace in solitude, which is a good thing, but we are still called to reach out to others. And I know some modern writers have said that, you know, sometimes people…Christians get this idea of the personal relationship with Jesus Christ, which is, of course, essential, we want that, but it’s not just me and Jesus. You know, Jesus calls us to reach out, to be part of a church, to recognize other people as our brothers and sisters.

So even if you’re down, even if you don’t feel like reaching out, remember at some point you may not…you’re definitely not… Yeah, if you’re lonely, you are not alone. There are other lonely people out there. And that’s kind of the sad irony of this. If the many, many millions of people who are lonely would connect with each other, that loneliness could be alleviated, you know? So I’d say even if you’re a lonely person and you’re thinking, “Well, maybe there’s no hope for me. I’m always gonna be lonely.” So I’ll say, “Okay, well, can you still maybe try to reach out and help somebody else who’s lonely who may not have to remain lonely?”

Pamela: And it’s good you mentioned all these saints and stuff. So if somebody’s taking this in prayer, one of the first steps, what exactly will they pray for? Is there a novena, is there a saint that they can reflect on, an experience, or do it in a healing retreat?

And is loneliness really a sign that you require some inner healing?

Dr. Vost: Yeah, that’s a great question too, because there are gonna be many approaches to that, that loneliness has its psychological dimension and it also has its theological dimension or a dimension of our connectedness with God. Because, you know, God, one thing we must remember, God’s not gonna give us any cross that we can’t bear. You know, in the Book of James he even says, you know, “Count it joy when you face trials and tribulations.”

And though it’s hard to be joyful, you know, when you’re suffering with loneliness… I imagine most of us, I know I can, can look back on a time in your life when you were really suffering, you know, for one reason or another. But then you look back years later and say, “Boy, thank God, thank you for giving me that experience because how I grew from it, you know, how I realized I can endure hard things, how maybe it made me more compassionate for other people during their hardship.”

So we need to think of that.

You know, think in terms of prayer too, there’s one other thing I’ll mention in terms of meditation and prayer that involves Christ again himself.

And that is, okay, even on the cross, he gave us lessons even on the cross to deal with loneliness because think about this, some of us might be thinking, “Well, I’m lonely, but, you know, I’ve never been a real popular person. I’m retired. Maybe I don’t go to work anymore. I’m elderly or I’m physically disabled. What am I gonna do? What can I contribute?”

Well, think Christ, even when he’s nailed on the cross, there’s a famous tradition of Christ’s seven last words on the cross, you know, several phrases that he…seven phrases he makes while he’s nailed at the cross. And you know, the first is, you know, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” Well, what’s one lesson there?

Some of us might be lonely because of estrangement, you know, from other friends or family members. Is there a way we might forgive them and re-establish bonds? Another lesson, think of this, Jesus is there with his hands nailed to the cross, and there’s two others with him.

And that good thief turns to him, and Jesus turns to him, in a sense, Jesus forms a bond, he forms a friendship while he and his new friend are both bound to a cross. So there’s really kind of no excuse regardless of our situation, you know, that we can’t reach out like Christ did. You know, follow his example and take care of others.

You know, Christ tells John to behold, you know, his mother, Mary as his mother. So Jesus is forming those connections with others even though he knows his ability on earth to form those connections is soon going to end. So I think, you know, Christ himself, read through the scripture, read through the gospels, is gonna give us all kinds of inspiration how to endure the cross of our own loneliness, but how to still try to reach out to other lonely people while we’re here on earth.

Pamela: That’s fantastic, actually. I really like that.

Would you have any last tips or advice, last famous words to the people, especially going through the holiday season right now and they are going to face loneliness or are feeling lonely currently?

Dr. Vost: Yes. For the holiday season, I would say that when you have get-togethers try to address…you know, it’s like with your family, try to address…make sure you’ve addressed every single person there, ask them about their life, show some interest there, you know, face-to-face to every single person in your gathering if you’re able to. And for the people who maybe can’t gather, there’s COVID restrictions, they live far away, you know, take the effort to do what you can do. If it’s reaching out, you know, through a phone call or through an internet conversation, show them they matter to you, show them that you’re thinking about them.

Pamela: I actually remember my grandmother used to…she would live alone, and she had a diary. And every single day she would make one phone call to one person in her diary and call everybody she knew over a year, because if they weren’t visiting her, at least she knew that she was making sure she was talking to other people.

Dr. Vost: Oh, I love that. That is wonderful. What a wonderful way to reach out and truly show your love and care for others in your life.

Pamela: Yeah, it was wonderful. Yeah. So, Kevin, this was really great. I mean, I enjoyed everything that you said and it’s so spiritual. So if people wanna reach out to you, if they wanna write to you, if they wanna look for your books,

where can they find you online and where can they reach out to you?

Dr. Vost: Sure. My website is just drvost.com, just drvost.com. And I describe some of my books there. I don’t sell them from there. But it has a comment box on the bottom, and if people have a question or a comment for me, please feel free to use that and I will respond.

Pamela: Great. Thank you for joining us on our podcast. Thank you so much for scheduling this at such, you know, a late notice, and for being willing to talk to us about loneliness. So thank you so much, Kevin.

Dr. Vost: Oh, you’re most welcome. It’s been my pleasure. God bless.