Podcast: Are We in a Loneliness Epidemic? (Lydia Brownback)

February 28, 2022 by: Crossway

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

The Loneliness That the Pandemic Revealed

In today's episode, Lydia Brownback talks about her experience of the pandemic and its effects on her social life as a single person, and how Christians can rally together and support one another in the wake of two years of social isolation, masks, and lockdowns.

Finding God in My Loneliness

Finding God in My Loneliness

Lydia Brownback

Lydia Brownback offers biblical encouragement for women to help them see how God can redeem seasons of loneliness and draw them to the only true and lasting remedy: union with Jesus.

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Topics Addressed in This Interview:

00:58 - Has Loneliness Increased?

Matt Tully
Lydia, thank you so much for joining me again on The Crossway Podcast.

Lydia Brownback
It’s great to be back with you, Matt.

Matt Tully
It’s fun to reconnect, this time at a distance, but still really good to chat.

Lydia Brownback
We always have good conversations on this podcast.

Matt Tully
For sure. Just this month Harvard University published a study that they ran related to loneliness in the US during this COVID pandemic that we’ve been living through together. I want to read their summary of their findings and then hear you respond to that. They write: “Our new report suggests that 36% of all Americans, including 61% of young adults and 51% of mothers with young children, feel serious loneliness. Loneliness appears to have increased substantially since the outbreak of the global pandemic.” Are you surprised by those numbers?

Lydia Brownback
Not at all. In fact, I would say that they were probably in place before the pandemic and it just wasn’t talked about or recognized. I think loneliness can be one of those things that is in everyone’s life to some degree. It runs as an undercurrent like white noise so much of the time that we’re not even aware it’s there. Or, if we’re aware that something is a little off, we don’t define it as loneliness. People don’t talk about loneliness. It doesn’t come up in conversation: I’m lonely. Are you lonely? It’s there, but sometimes we don’t recognize it as loneliness. So, those numbers in the study, I think loneliness has come front and center through the pandemic because suddenly people are isolated—they’re cut off—and then it became more of a topic of conversation. It brought out what I think was probably there to begin with.

Matt Tully
Would you say that’s maybe a silver lining on the pandemic on this front, in that it maybe has made it more okay for us to vocalize our experiences of loneliness in a way that maybe before it wasn’t as culturally acceptable?

Lydia Brownback
That’s a really good point. I do think that is a silver lining. It can definitely be one if it’s used to address the problem. The UK, actually, addressed this before the pandemic when they appointed a Minister of Loneliness. They were aware of that over there. The government recognized it as an epidemic actually. If you think about that, the pandemic did bring this to the forefront, and now people are talking about it. People are trying to put in place ways of dealing with it. I don’t think society has come up with anything yet, but at least they’re talking about it.

Matt Tully
It might be surprising to some to hear that 51% of young moms, according to that study that we talked about—people who presumably have a lot of face time each day with their kids and probably also their husbands—they, nevertheless, said that they were struggling with serious loneliness. What does that reveal about the causes of loneliness, or maybe the ways that we incorrectly assume what the causes might be?

Lydia Brownback
That’s another great question. I think a lot of it is because we assume that if you have a husband and children, you’re not going to be lonely. I think especially in the Christian community, that’s supposed to be the remedy for loneliness. If people are married and they have a family and then they struggle with loneliness, they feel guilty about it, they don’t recognize it as loneliness, or they’re afraid to talk about it because it feels like they’re betraying their family or what the Lord has given them. In reality, it’s just the way we’re hardwired. Loneliness is part of the human condition. I think it also reveals the fact that having a family, having a spouse, having children doesn’t complete us. We are complete only in the Lord, of course. We find great benefit in having a marriage and a family. In fact, that is God’s gift for fellowship in addition to the church. It’s one of his primary ways of meeting those yearnings in people. And yet, I’m thinking about those moms you’re talking about and how they would feel lonely. They’re not able to connect with other mothers dealing with the same things they’re dealing with. If you think about it, in day-to-day life they’re taking their children to school, they’re doing play dates and other things, and discussing the struggles of motherhood with other women going through the same thing. Suddenly, they’re shouldering those burdens alone with no one to talk to about it who can totally relate in the same way. That’s an isolating feeling. When you are processing problems and issues and frustrations all by yourself, without anyone who can say Yes, I can understand. I’m going through the same thing, I think that would produce loneliness.

Matt Tully
You make a point in your book of distinguishing between loneliness and being alone. I wonder if that connects with what you’re saying here. How much of the definition, or understanding of loneliness, should be less about whether or not we’re actually with other people, technically speaking, but how much of it is actually about having someone else to, as you just said, shoulder the burdens of life together with you? Is that, in your mind, the core of why we feel lonely when we do is because we don’t feel like we have not just someone near us, but we don’t have someone to help us in the midst of struggles?

Lydia Brownback
Yes, I think so. I think the loneliest people I know are not single people; they’re people in a difficult marriage. I think people can be even lonelier in marriage than single if they are married to someone with whom they can’t communicate. Even in a typical, ordinary marriage struggle, when communication isn’t at its best and when people are feeling short with one another, that’s a lonely feeling. I’ve talked to some women who have explained it like this: The one person they’re supposed to be closest to is the one person they can’t talk to. And yet, they’re lying next to that person at night trying to sleep. It’s the loneliest feeling in the world when you can’t talk to the person you’re supposed to be closest to. In some senses, that is a more intense form of loneliness than someone who is alone. Now, of course, there is definitely (and I think the pandemic brought this out), for people who live alone, all of that isolation was not good. Think of when God said “It’s not good for man to be alone.” He did provide a spouse for Adam. At the same time, he said that before the fall. That’s why we have to say that some of that not-goodness of being alone is part of how he created us. It’s not all wrapped up with sin. He hardwired us to yearn for and need connection. He made us to need one another, but he also, primarily, made us to not be able to feel complete apart from him. I think that’s just a beautiful gift he gave us—the capacity to feel lonely—because if it weren’t for that, we would never bend to other people. We would never give ourselves and make the sacrifices it takes to be in relationships, and we would never follow the Lord or pursue him. So, that ache inside is a gift from God, but then he’s also provided for it. If you have a spouse, that’s a wonderful provision. If you are alone, then there’s the church and there are other means. The pandemic definitely cut the solitary off from those kinds of connections. Zoom just doesn’t cut it. Can you imagine the pandemic with no Zoom? How hard would that be with this many people today who are living alone? Never before in history have this many people lived by themselves. I did a podcast over in Australia with some people a few months ago on this theme. Their lockdown was longer and more intense. It was something like 800 singles who are around the world tapped into that podcast because they were dealing with this issue. I had friends say to me You have no idea how hard it is. I just need a break from my family. I need to get out of here. We’ve been all cooped up together for so long. I said *That’s true. That is a very great challenge. But God never said, “It’s not good to have too much time with your family.” He said, “It’s not good to be alone.” I do think that people who were isolated during the pandemic, quite honestly, had a harder time and are still feeling the effects of that. But, to your point, it doesn’t mean that people who have children and a husband or were living with roommates and others during the pandemic didn’t—and still aren’t—battling with extreme loneliness.

10:28 - Experiencing the Pandmeic as a Single Person

Matt Tully
Speak to the other side. As a single woman, what was it like for you? How did you proactively seek to battle against feelings of loneliness or isolation that you might have experienced?

Lydia Brownback
I have to say it was really difficult. I’m so blessed to work with other believers. When I get up in the morning and go to work, that is my fellowship. I am with believers for the majority of my waking hours. I’m at an age in life where I just can’t go out every night anymore, meet up with friends after work, or go to church functions every night. So, I’m out maybe three nights a week connecting with people after work. That means four evenings a week I am home by myself. That’s great if you’re at work all day, but if you are waking up and you’re doing everything from home and you’re maybe not seeing another person for three or four days outside of Zoom, it’s hard. I think at least we were able to get outside and go for walks in the good weather. In bad weather, that didn’t happen so much. I think the remedy and the only thing that helped-little manna in the wilderness— was the Zoom calls, my job to connect with my colleagues, and getting outside to walk. I tried getting a puppy. That didn’t work.

Matt Tully
What kind of dog was it?

Lydia Brownback
I got a Bernedoodle puppy. So sweet, but if you ever saw the movie Marley and Me, this was that dog. It was not the solution to my problem and it lasted five days. I will say that at the same time it was one of the most difficult seasons, I also drew so near to the Lord during that time, as we do when we have life stripped away from us in whatever way. Whether it’s a loss, an illness, or whatever crisis or tragedy or difficulty the Lord puts us in, it’s an opportunity to know his strength and his grace in a way that we wouldn’t otherwise. I think that’s a time for believers to say, like Paul when his thorn was not removed, he was able to rejoice in his struggle when the Lord said No, I’m keeping you in this difficulty because the Lord said to him My strength is made perfect in your weakness. I think that these are opportunities for us to know the strength of the Lord and his grace in a way that we would not know apart from the difficulty. That’s the redemption in it.

Matt Tully
I want to get into some of those spiritual realities and factors at play here that too often we ignore, but before we get into that, you mentioned getting a puppy and going for walks. There are all kinds of positive, healthy ways that we might try to cope with loneliness that we might be feeling, or address that in our lives. And then there are perhaps ways that are less positive and less healthy, whether that’s binging Netflix every night and distracting yourself, eating too much, or even more harmful things. Are there coping mechanisms that you feel like you are tempted towards that you feel like aren’t helpful that you’ve had to discipline yourself in and recognize as temptations for you?

Lydia Brownback
Definitely. I think alcohol sales went up something like 246% during the pandemic. I think those numbers went up and they have not, and maybe they’re not likely, to come back down anytime soon. People developed habits during the pandemic, and some that will not be very quickly broken. They will become a little bit more permanent in their lives as coping devices. I think personally, with all that isolating time, for me it was shortening up the evening hours however I could. It was usually binging something on television, then looking at the clock and saying It’s 9 o’ clock; can I go to bed now? It was just sort of escaping by sleep. I would rather be up alone at 4:30 in the morning than after 9:00 at night. It’s just something for me about night time that is lonely, so that is how I would cope. It got me through, but even then it didn’t really get me through. It was the Lord that got me through. Those are my tendencies, and I ended up going to bed at 9:00 every night. Usually, when I finished work, then I would sit there and either escape into social media or binge something and just sort of park there until it was time to go to bed—clock-watching the whole time until I could turn it off. The worst thing is my job necessitates quiet. As an editor and a writer, I have to have silence during the day. When the work day ends and I have no human around, I don’t want more silence. I don’t feel like reading a book. I want a talking head in my room. I certainly don’t think it’s wrong to watch television or to read social media. Those are gifts as well, and they are a wonderful blessing. They do connect you with the outside world. To say that those things are wrong, of course I’m not saying that. The temptation was to misuse them to escape difficulty in such a way that you’re just tuning out. It’s not the thing itself; it was what was underlying some of my evenings of doing that.

Matt Tully
As you think back on your own journey through seasons of loneliness and think about the ways that God has brought you through those experiences, do you feel like you’ve had to learn what those tendencies are and come to recognize progressively over time Oh yeah, when I’m feeling lonely, I can be tempted to distract myself with TV or something else? What role does that learning play in dealing with our loneliness as Christians?

Lydia Brownback
I think it exposes to us how much we actually don’t trust the Lord at times, or how we’re unwilling for his ordering of our lives. I think as Westerners (Americans), we’re unwilling for a little discomfort. In my own situation, what’s the worst thing if I had a quiet day and then I have a quiet evening? If there’s nothing worth watching on television or reading on social media and I can’t find anything that day but I decide to just stay with it to escape, what if I were to turn it off and just sit in silence? I would feel very uncomfortable. Is that the worst thing in the world? Maybe those are the seasons where I’m going to lean most on the Lord if I’m willing for that discomfort. I think so often as Americans we are not willing for that because we are told we don’t have to. We’re told we don’t have to be uncomfortable and we have ready solutions for our discomfort, whether it’s the next drink, the next chocolate bar, the next episode of whatever we’re binging—anything to ward off those fears or anxieties or feelings of loneliness and depression. But the Lord is right there to meet with us if we are willing to power through those uncomfortable feelings, to just be with him in those hours. Sometimes I think that’s the best thing to do.

18:22 - The Relationship Between Depression, Anxiety, and Loneliness

Matt Tully
You just mentioned depression and anxiety. We’ve seen other studies come out around the pandemic that have demonstrated that rates of depression and anxiety have also been skyrocketing of late. What’s the relationship, in your mind, between depression, anxiety, and loneliness?

Lydia Brownback
I think loneliness that is just escaped from is going to result in depression and anxiety, because if we’re afraid of something to the point where we’re ducking it, we’re going to be anxious. We’re going to be anxious and it’s going to creep up on us and grab us. If we are feeling the anxiety and the loneliness but we’re not dealing with it, we’re going to get depressed. Hopelessness, I think, is linked to depression. When we see no way out of something, that’s when depression really sets in. If we allow it to continue, it will eventually devolve into despair and utter hopelessness. The remedy is the same. It’s to acknowledge the problem and turn to the only source of help, and that’s the Lord. It doesn’t mean we don’t do practical things. God does not call us to deal with our loneliness by saying, I’m going to turn off the TV and sit in my chair and pray all night. We have to be proactive too. God has given us all kinds of resources to be proactive and we can make use of those. Yet, there are times when we do everything we can and our problem isn’t fixed. That is when we go to the Lord, and sometimes I think the way to avoid the depression is to just be so real about where we are. Too often I think we are either afraid to acknowledge it to ourselves, maybe to others, and even to the Lord. There’s nothing wrong with saying to him This is so hard right now. I don’t know how to go on another day. I don’t even know if there’s any answer to this or any remedy. I can see no solution in front of me. Truth be told, Lord, I can’t see how you’re helping me. Where are you in my life right now? To be that real with him is not to be disrespectful. It’s not to dishonor him. It’s the cry of an honest heart. We see that all through the psalms don’t we? You can poor out and be truthful with him. I do think that even if there’s not a solution ready at hand, the very honesty with yourself and with the Lord is an opening. It’s a beginning that can dispel depression. From there, it’s continuing to pray for and seek solutions. Through the body of Christ, we are not meant to live by ourselves. The Christian life is not meant to be a solitary thing. Even if we live alone or dealing with loneliness, we are not meant to do life by ourselves. If you have to resort to the phone or Zoom or something like that, God wants us to be connected with other believers—way more than he wants us to get a puppy. Think about Psalms 68:6: “God sets the solitary in families.” He loves to connect people. You think about Jesus and his dying agony on the cross—his final hour—what did he do? He saw his grieving mother at the foot of the cross and matched her up with his best friend, where we’re told John took Mary home to be with her from then on. The Lord cares that we’re lonely, alone, suffering and grieving the loss of people. He loves to remedy that. If we don’t have a husband and children—and even if we do—we need the body of Christ. We are not meant to live apart from that.

22:12 - Christian Community

Matt Tully
Do you feel like you’ve learned anything important about the nature of Christian community and maybe even the nature of the church and the role of the church through this season of dealing with COVID? Has God revealed new things to you?

Lydia Brownback
I’ve learned that I can’t battle my sin in secret. I think single people can battle that anyway—that temptation to hide your sin. If you live alone, it’s easier. Then, suddenly, you realize the sin is getting the better of me. Gone is your worry about someone finding out. It’s like Oh, I have no one to talk to about this. Sin that’s exposed doesn’t prosper; the book of Proverbs tells us that, so I’ve learned the necessity of being open with other believers about my sin struggles. When we’re cut off from others, that can come front and center: Wow. I can’t deal with this by myself. I need the church, friends, other Christians praying for me, and I need someone to confess this to. When we’re busy with people all day, we’re not thinking about that. We’re thinking more about hiding it because we feel like we have more of a grip on it. We’re out and about with other people and it’s not going to get us as much. But when we’re alone, sin can really overtake us. During the pandemic, I have a close friend I talk to every Monday morning at seven o’ clock. We pray together, we are very real about our sin struggles, and that has been a lifesaver for the last year. Sometimes I’ll dread that call because I’m going to have to tell her Yeah, I fell down on that again. Are you so frustrated and impatient with me now and rolling your eyes because I did it again? But the very fact that I know I’m going to be talking to her is huge. So, I’ve learned that about the value of the church during this time, that even if we’re not in a building together on Sundays, we can stay vitally connected when it comes to confessing our sin, praying together, worshiping, and just continuing to share life with the Lord.

Matt Tully
What is your church doing these days? What does corporate worship look like for you on a given Sunday?

Lydia Brownback
I’m in New York, so the restrictions are just lifting here. We had masks at one service for a season, and then masks were optional. I think that’s really governed a lot of churches—where people come down on masks and vaccines and all of that. Unfortunately, that has been so divisive in the church. Our church’s policy is that they don’t talk a lot about it. We do the Lord’s Supper by going up to the front every Sunday. Just out of courtesy and love, everyone puts a mask on when they go up there. Then, when you get back in your pew, you can take the mask off. But nobody is talking about; you’re just doing it out of love and sensitivity for those who might be concerned and worried. So, that was our approach. I think there were a couple of months where the church couldn’t meet at all, and that was before I came, but it was more limited with size. You could only have twenty-five people, so our church broke into several small gatherings of twenty-give to be able to meet in person. They masked up and did whatever they had to do. Then they continued to have missional communities that meet on Wednesday nights—those continued on Zoom. They were very, very good about elders following up with all the people in the church and keeping everyone connected. I will say that the church grew in number during the pandemic. We didn’t lose anybody. We almost doubled in size.

Matt Tully
Wow! That’s amazing.

Lydia Brownback
Yeah, it is.

Matt Tully
That’s amazing and pretty uncommon. Maybe it’s more common than we’re led to believe when we read the headlines.

Lydia Brownback
I think it was the effort to stay connected. Back to the loneliness thing, I think they recognized that they had to do whatever it took to continue to shepherd people individually. There are eight pastors in my church, and it’s not a huge church, so they’re able to shepherd well everybody there. I think that’s why it happened.

Matt Tully
I feel like the pandemic has helped me to appreciate more deeply and experientially the truth that God made us as embodied people and that has an impact on how we are called to interact with one another as Christians. Take the masks as an example. Without taking sides on any of the debates surrounding masks—which is, as you said, quite controversial—I felt even more acutely the relational loss associated with not seeing other people’s faces for maybe much of the last couple of years at church. Do you resonate with that sense? Maybe you understand better the embodied nature of who we are and in our relationships?

Lydia Brownback
Yes, especially with our faces! We’re not meant to cover up our faces. We talk about seeking the face of God and there’s this whole idea of the closeness, the presence, and seeing facial expressions. Obviously, we don’t really see God’s physical face, but it’s this whole idea of knowing him. It’s that same way with our faces. We know one another through smiles and through facial expressions. To have half of the face cut off, it’s really hard. Even in the grocery store you ask yourself Is that person smiling at me or frowning at me?

Matt Tully
We’ve all gotten good at reading the eye lines and trying to discern if it’s a smile or a frown.

Lydia Brownback
Right! You learn how to make your eyes work in certain ways to communicate. One of the things I think this has helped with is, at least in my understanding, what so many Muslim women live with all the time. They have face coverings from the time they are teenage girls whenever they are out in public. So, I think it’s given me some sympathy and understanding. I never thought before how hard that must be. That’s been helpful in that regard, thinking about what others deal with. I think loneliness is enhanced by covering of the face, and that’s why I think a lot of people are wanting to rip those masks off and maybe why that’s been so contentious. It’s not because you have a mask on your face. It’s not convenient or pleasant, but it’s livable from a physical standpoint. I do think it’s more the loss of communication that angers people so much. I shouldn’t say angers; it frustrates them.

29:23 - How to Encourage the Lonely

Matt Tully
We’ve spent a lot of this conversation talking about the responsibility and the call for individual people who are feeling lonely—what they can do to try to address that in healthy, biblical, God-honoring ways. The other half of that is the responsibility of other Christians in a church or in a community to intentionally be reaching out and building relationships with other people who might be struggling. What are some practical ideas for how Christians can effectively reach out and care for others, recognizing that right now in particular there are probably a lot of people who are struggling with feeling lonely?

Lydia Brownback
That’s a great question. I think that it is being cognizant that people are alone. But also, like the mother we talked about at the beginning who is feeling lonely even though she’s home with her kids. I think it’s realizing that everybody is struggling with it to some degree, and not assuming that because someone has people in their day to day life that they’re fine. I think if, as individuals in the church, if we think about the fact that probably every person in our church is struggling with it to some degree—and it doesn’t mean we can pick up the phone and call them all—but I think an awareness of that and being sensitive to how different people are struggling with it, and not to assume that they’re not, is the best thing. It’s a starting point anyway. Then, when there are opportunities to reconnect, whether it’s online or in person or whatever, to encourage one another to go, to offer to go with someone. I think even of the situation where my elderly mother is in assisted living now. She’s always been someone who can go days by herself and be okay, but in her older years that’s been less true. And yet, she will not go to the group activities because it’s awkward and uncomfortable when you don’t know anybody. They have volunteers who come in there and come door to door and say Can I help you come down to this function? Can I push your wheelchair and we’ll go? My mother is attending everything because someone comes to her door each day and asks if she wants to go and if she wants some help getting there. She’s having a great time. How can we do that in our own context? How can we show up and say to someone Can I go with you? It can be a phone call, driving them, or just an encouragement to attend an event. What if it’s reaching out and saying The last few months have been really hard for me as a mom, and I’m struggling especially with my teen. How have you been with yours? Can we talk about that for a few minutes? Just draw someone out in a similar situation, or one that you might not have thought would be lonely, but being clued in to the fact that maybe they’re communicating that it was. Talk to them, draw them out. I think there are some simple things we can do within our own context and with the people in our day to day lives. It begins by saying They’re probably lonely, whether it looks that way to you or not.

Matt Tully
That’s so helpful. Whether it’s the issue of loneliness or a whole host of other things, we can sometimes feel this pressure to have the right answers, or if someone says they’re struggling with loneliness to have some way to fix that quickly. But so often that’s not really what’s needed. What people need is just someone to be there with them, to walk alongside them, to pray with them, and that often makes a huge difference in people’s lives.

Lydia Brownback
It does, Matt, and one more thing along those lines. We talked before about people hidden away and how sin can take over at times as a coping device for loneliness. That could also hinder people from getting back out there again, if they’re stuck in sin. One of the ways that I think we can help people is to say I’ve really struggled with such and such a sin, and I’m still battling that now. Be the first in your Bible study, small group, or friend group to admit your sin. Confess it and say I’m really struggling with this right now because someone has to go first. I think that if we will put our own struggles and sins out there, it’s an invitation to others to feel comfortable doing it as well. Someone’s gotta go first, and why not us?

34:36 - Fixing Our Eyes on Jesus

Matt Tully
Maybe as a final question, Lydia, you write in your book, “Relief from loneliness comes only as we acknowledge our loneliness and as we turn to God and his word for the help and understanding that we need.” We’ve also talked about very practical things that we can also do; healthy things to pursue as a way to address the loneliness that we so often feel. But what would you say to the person listening right now who would say I am struggling with very severe loneliness. I feel very alone. I feel isolated. I’ve tried turning to God. I’ve tried going to the Bible. I’ve tried praying to God. It just doesn’t seem to be helping. What encouragement or advice would you give to that person right now?

Lydia Brownback
I would say, once again, try a fresh look of fixing their eyes on Jesus, who was the loneliest person who walked this earth. You think about how he was rejected by the people he loved. He kept pouring out his heart and getting stomped on by people. He was rejected and he was hurt, and yet he didn’t stop loving. If you think about his life from the beginning, he had a hard time. Right up through his agonizing death when he cried out on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” If Jesus experienced that, even if you may not feel him there, he knows. He’s there and he cares. It’s not a matter of feeling him; it’s believing that he does care, that he wants to remedy your situation, and he’s not going to leave you there, anymore than he left his mother alone at the foot of the cross. He is not going to leave you there. It is God’s will for you to be connected with other people. If you don’t see it yet, if you don’t feel that God is there, trust and believe that he is, because he is. There is going to be an end to this problem.

Matt Tully
Lydia, thank you so much for taking the time today to share some of your own experiences of loneliness in this pandemic and offer helpful encouragement for those who continue to struggle and will struggle in the future. We really appreciate it.

Lydia Brownback
My pleasure, Matt. It was great to be back with you.

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