We Are Lonely episode one

Episode 1 - an introduction

Jemma Sbeg
We are Lonely is recorded across a number of Aboriginal lands including Gumbaynggirr Nation and the Eora Nations.
We would like to pay our respects to the Elders and custodians of these lands.
We would also like to pay our respects to the custodians of the land on which you are now listening.

Holly
Isolating myself has been a habit, and being lonely I guess, it's become a habit for me.

Tim
I think loneliness is something I’ve definitely struggled with.

Deidre Anderson
Everyone feels lonely at some stage in their life.

Tessa Blencowe
When we don't talk about it, when it's left unsaid that's when it can start to spiral and build up then turn into something much greater.

Ian Hickie
And that has adverse effects on your mental and physical health.

Lisa Mundy
Connection is everything as humans and as mammals like having that connection with other people is part of our part of my DNA, part of our evolution is that we require that connection.

Tessa Blencowe
That anxiety, that trigger of loneliness that we get, when we don't have that is actually really important, because it's that reminder of, okay, there's something missing here, we need to reconnect.

Deidre Anderson
Loneliness to me is a question, rather than a situation that you can’t get out of.

Jemma Sbeg
It seems as quickly as we’re filling this planet we’re each becoming more isolated.
One in three Australians is experiencing loneliness, but it’s a worldwide issue.
The UK now has a Minister of Loneliness and the US Surgeon General has declared loneliness a health epidemic.

Tim
There's a big shift towards individualism and people wanting to pursue what they perceive is making them happy.

Jemma Sbeg
When you picture loneliness you might think of an elderly person sitting alone.
However the idea that only older people experience loneliness is a massive misconception.

Ian Hickie
I think we know from surveys internationally, and now in Australia, that loneliness is actually often reported, not simply by the elderly, and the obviously physically isolated, but increasingly by young people. The period in which loneliness actually peaks in many of those surveys is amongst young adults.

Tessa Blencowe
It makes a lot of sense, in that, you know, that is a time where, you know, there's a lot of radical change and transformation going on. And there's a lot around figuring out who am I? What is it that I'm doing in this world? How am I contributing? And is it okay to be who I really want to be?  

Jemma Sbeg
This is different to other podcasts you might’ve heard.
I think of it as a documentary, reality podcast with heart.
We’ve connected four people in their 20’s with mentors who are helping them build strategies to reconnect.

Holly
Not only was I lonely, because I didn't have any friends. I was lonely because I didn't know who I was. Because I'd had everything taken away from me, that made me who I was.

Tim
I just want to stay inside, people are like do you want to go out and I’m like do we have to?

Jemma Sbeg
Over the next six episodes you’ll get to know these four  amazing people and follow their paths to reconnection.

Charity
I’m not comfortable or confident, just trying to figure it all out.

Aleks
I still end up prioritising work over spending time with the people I love or something like this.

Jemma Sbeg
This is We Are Lonely, and I’m Jemma Sbeg.
This Podcast  is part of Medibank’s ten year initiative to combat loneliness.

Holly
My Name’s Holly, I’m 24 years old and I live down the coast in Victoria.
So I guess what drew me to the podcast was probably being drawn to the opportunity for connection.

Charity
Giinagay my name is Charity and I’d like to pay respect to the Elders of the land we walk upon today.
I have been longing for the last two years for something like this for the last few years for something. Praying and praying. Not praying but not from Christian perspective, as a higher self.
Just because I’ve been so lost.

Aleks
My name’s Aleks Hammo, I’m 26.
I feel relieved to be part  of a project like this because I often feel like when I am burnt out or when I feel lonely, the things I do often increase these negative feelings but I think that there is a way out of it, and it is quite close by.

Tim
So, my name is Tim, I’m 24.  For me it's important having that representation even as niche as a half Asian, Australian, queer person in Melbourne.  It's nice knowing that having that out there maybe someone else can resonate with that.

Jemma Sbeg
Before we get into things, I want to let you know that, being about loneliness, this podcast gets personal and vulnerable.
We’ll be exploring sometimes difficult themes including Stolen Generations, intergenerational trauma and body image.
If this raises any issues for you, you can call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or go to ReachOut.com where there are dedicated resources for young people.
We’ve worked hard to create situations that will be safe and comfortable for everyone involved.

This is Holly and her mum talking about being part of the show.

Holly
So how do you feel about me participating in this podcast with everything that I guess I've gone through over the past few years?

Fiona
I think I'm proud. I think I am watching how you have persevered and how you are allowing yourself to be in an even more vulnerable space, putting yourself out there to share your story. Which is interesting cause I feel like that's where you're going to go in terms of moving forward.
I think you got an interesting story to tell and I think it's going to be something that will resonate with people and I think that it's a positive thing.

Holly
Do you have any concerns about me doing this podcast?

Fiona
I think anytime you put yourself out there there's going to be judgement. I’m sure that something that you thought about yourself. Concerns how people will perceive your story and you because they don't know the full story. I think that's always the case cause you're only seeing such a small clip of your journey so I think that's probably my main concern but I just feel that the positives far outweigh the negatives.

Jemma Sbeg
I’ve studied psychology, and I have my own podcast about psychology in our 20’s.
When I heard about this project I knew it was something I had to be part of because I think loneliness impacts people in their 20s very differently and it’s something I feel really passionate about.
To make sure we’re on top of the complexities we’ve also reached out to people who have researched this topic for a long time.

Ian Hickie
So loneliness is a really interesting concept.
I'm Professor Ian Hickie. I'm the co director of health and policy at the Brain and Mind Centre of the University of Sydney.

So it goes back to a really a fundamental about mental health, mental health is really underpinned by two concepts, one's personal autonomy, be able to make choices for yourself, live the life that you choose, go where you want, enjoy good health, agree, enjoy good education, enjoy good social opportunities, but the other is social connected, is actually staying connected. They're not really opposites, you need to do both, you need to have a capacity to live your own life. But you also need to stay socially connected. And many would argue that in many Western cultures, progressively, due to our wealth, and our good health, and our opportunity, we're getting that balance increasingly wrong, with an over emphasis on just pursuing your own goals, and less emphasis on staying connected in relationships in situations that really matter that provide mutual support, to provide capacity to cope, that actually assist us to live more productive, and better emotional lives.

Lisa Mundy
My name is Dr Lisa Mundy and I’m the program lead of the longitudinal study of Australian children at AIFS. The Australian Institute of Family Studies.
I think in terms of loneliness obviously COVID has been a big disruptor for us as a society and as individuals so and I think it really highlighted how much as humans and individuals, we really need connection and we really need to meet with others and to have that time with other people.

How much connection varies from individual to individual and how much they are energised by that connection. We’re thinking of extroverts who thrive on that connection and want to be out and about and with people all the time versus introverts who need the connection but need some downtime as well to recharge the batteries. But the reality is that you know that there's a continuum and that we’re all somewhere on that continuum from kind of needing a lot of connection to only needing some but we all need connection. That’s part of being humans and part of being mammals that we need to have that connection.

Jemma Sbeg
Let’s get into it, and get to know Holly, Charity, Tim and Aleks - and of course their mentors.

Holly
If  you said, well I'm not the picture of what loneliness typically or stereotypically looks like.  I think that maybe just what the majority of people look like that are lonely are similar to me.
It’s that longing for connection and for a deeper sense of community that so many people don’t have.

I have an amazing relationship with my mum, and my grandparents. And I have a beautiful partner. I've got pets, and you know I have a few amazing friends. But I think it's important to shine a light on the fact that you can have connections and it's really normal to have people in your life and still feel lonely and still feel isolated. But not even saying, “I feel lonely.”, It’s like reframing it and to go, I want more connection, or I want a bigger community. I want a bigger tribe of people.

Just after I finished high school, I was 17. And I experienced some pretty significant trauma. And I guess, as a result of that, I develop PTSD
And then I sort of pushed it down and didn't really address it. And then, I guess, as a result, developed chronic fatigue. But yeah, it was really debilitating. And so, from 17 until 22, I was pretty much bed bound. I spent those years just in bed and seeing doctors and spent some time in an inpatient clinic, too, because I couldn't look after myself.
And I guess that was why I wanted to potentially be on a podcast, to be able to share my story and for people that are experiencing illness, of any kind, or grief, I think to be able to see in someone that it's okay to be in that situation, and you aren't alone. Because, yeah, that's all you feel.

And on top of that, you lose connection, because people are living life, people are wanting to go out and go to nice dinners and have a few drinks and go have a dance and can't do that. And so when you can't do that, people stop reaching out. And it just reinforces how you already feel about yourself.
You come out the other side and it's probably not going to be what you want it to look like, at whatever age you are. And for me, it was 23 and I was the loneliest I've ever been in my life.

Jemma Sbeg
This habit of loneliness and isolation can be broken with a little help.

Tessa Blencowe
Alright, hello. My name is Tessa and I am a counsellor in private practice.

Jemma Sbeg
Tessa has also made some powerful art installations where people shared their stories of being lonely, and she’s Holly’s mentor.

Tessa Blencowe
And I guess what I've really learned about loneliness, both from a personal perspective, but also through my work is that it's not obviously just about necessarily a social isolation. And actually, the more sort of intense feeling of disconnect that I think I felt was largely with myself at different points in my life.
And so, I guess that's sort of why I felt so personally motivated to be sort of doing something on loneliness, like the exhibition. But the whole point of it as well was to kind of really try and reduce some of the shame and stigma that surrounds it.

Holly
Well it’s just not sexy is it? Everyone’s started talking about so many other aspects of mental health like, you know, anxiety and things like that. But loneliness is just, it's not sexy. Like, no one wants to talk about it. And you're right, like, the shame is huge around it. I think that's why people sort of hide it. And it's not normalised.

Tessa Blencowe
It's interesting, though, because we think other people are gonna judge us. But actually, what happens when we open up about loneliness, is that it's a driver for connection. So it's when we say, you know, I've actually been feeling lonely, most people will respond to that with how can I help? Or what's going on for you? Or yeah, I felt it too. As opposed to oh, you're weird, get away from me.

Holly
I feel like if I said it to someone they would get secondhand embarrassment for me, being like, I feel really lonely. But yeah, it's so interesting, to actually know that that's a thing, that the stigma is not there. It's actually just us perceiving it to be there.

Tessa Blencowe
It's especially so among young people. The stigma is even greater among younger people. Because I guess that feeling of like, you know, I should have friends, I should be like this. What's wrong with me? We have so much judgement, I guess, when we feel lonely.

Holly
I think that from being unwell and my past, and then having had COVID and also even just being an only child, isolating myself has been a habit of being lonely, I guess, it's become a habit for me. It's just easier for me to isolate myself since. Now that I'm better and I'm, well, I still kind of feel like that version of myself and so yeah.

Tessa Blencowe
There is a real tendency, it becomes a cycle, loneliness when we feel isolated. So then when we isolate ourselves, but in that time, it's very common for us to then just not build up a sense of not being able to trust the world as much anymore. And so then it's hard to then put ourselves back out in it and so then we isolate ourselves. And so then it becomes a self perpetuating cycle that  can feel really hard to get out of.

Holly
Yeah it just kind of becomes a cycle, it's hard to break, and it becomes comfortable, like being isolated,it's become my normal. So it's now comfortable.

Tessa Blencowe
Yeah the discomfort is putting ourselves out there.

Holly
Yes that would be very uncomfortable.

Tessa Blencowe
Loneliness is a really sort of  innate part of our biology. And actually it’s been key to our ability to evolve as a species over time, you know, we learned a long time ago, our ancestors learned that if it was separated from the tribe, then we're at more risk of being eaten by a tiger. And so you know, that dependency on collective collectivism, and that tribe nature of, you know, being connected to people and being having a clear sense of purpose with each other that was really important.

And so, that anxiety, that feeling that we get, that trigger of loneliness that we get, when we don't have that is actually really important, because it's that reminder of, okay, there's something missing here, we need to reconnect, just like when we're hungry, we need to feed our bodies, or thirsty, we need to drink. But because we are afraid of it or afraid of what it might mean when we don't talk about it, when it's left unsaid that's when it can start to spiral and build up then turn into something much greater.

A lot of the way that we're speaking about loneliness, and how we're defining it is emotional loneliness, social isolation, and existential loneliness. And the way I kind of categorise those is disconnect from others, disconnect from ourselves and disconnect from the world around us.

What I've tended to notice is that, that disconnect from self, that loneliness in relation to not feeling like they really know who they really are, or feeling, they can be who they really are. That, to me, has shown up a lot more among those that are young. And I think it makes a lot of sense, in that, you know, that is a time where, you know, there's a lot of radical change and transformation going on. And there's a lot around figuring out “who am I? What is it that I'm doing in this world? How am I contributing? And is it okay to be who I really want to be?”

Jemma Sbeg
This question around being who I want to be, whether I can show up as myself, it’s a universal question.
It also explains part of why people in their 20’s are at a higher risk of feeling lonely.
We all feel more lonely times of transition.
Grief, moving, graduating university, having a child, retiring.
And a lot of these major life transitions have changed.
Only a couple of generations ago, the transition from adolescent to adult was pretty short - by about 23, most people had the hallmarks and responsibilities of being an adult - they had the house, they had the career, a life partner.
But these days ask most 27 year olds if they feel like they’re an adult and you will probably get a pause.
So this time of self discovery, of transition and uncertainty is elongated, and that makes for a longer period of feeling disconnected and alone.
We also can’t talk about loneliness without talking about discrimination. Because of discrimination and prejudice, this issue of isolation is worse for some people compared to others.
77% of young people who identify as part of the LGBTQIA+ community are experiencing loneliness.

Sean Szepps
To understand why a queer person is more likely to be lonely, you have to kind of go back to every queer person's childhood, and look at their origin story. And obviously, all of us are very different but the one thing we have in common is that the world is very straight.

Jemma Sbeg
Sean Zeps shares stories about parenting and mental health and about being queer - he has a podcast, he’s on Instagram, he’s written a book about his parenting experience called “Not Like Other Dads”
And he’s also one of our mentors.

Sean Szeps
Queer people, our stories are not always represented in the media. Our love is not highlighted in movies, our heartache is not often the subject of great television shows. And so when you're a young queer person, it's really hard to feel like your problems are not problems that are worthy of being told and discussed and picked apart and worked on.

Sean Szeps
If you are a young person, and this is not just if you're gay, but if you are a young man on this planet, or a non binary person, who is not the Aussie definition of masculinity, then your childhood is a little more difficult, that's for sure. And people are absolutely going to lob terrible words at you. And that shapes your desire to be authentic, that shapes the way that you talk. Is your voice too high? Is it too low? The way that you walk? Am I walking with enough masculinity? And that means that the only places where you feel like you can be yourself is usually when you're alone.

Tim
Yeah, even within the LGBTQI+ community there's divisions within itself.

Jemma Sbeg
This is Tim - he’s being mentored by Sean.

Tim
There have been many times in my life where I thought ok, maybe I'm not masculine enough, maybe I'm not white passing enough, maybe I'm not skinny enough, maybe I'm not physically attractive enough. There's so many different things that can divide people within the community.

Sean Szeps
Hello there, how are you?

Tim
A bit nervous, like, in my mind all that's being replayed is like, hello and welcome to the pit stop.

Sean Szeps
This is your moment. This is your pit stop moment. I'm nervous too. I feel like anytime you're meeting someone for the first time and then knowing that you're gonna have to go and talk about your life.

Tim
It's kind of like a blind date. Is he gonna like me? What is it gonna be like? Is it gonna be weird.

Sean Szeps
It's totally like a date. Vice versa. I felt the exact same way this morning. You're like, okay, I'm meeting someone for the first time. How much of my life am I gonna share? How deep are we gonna go? One of the things I love to do and I'm talking to people just in my real life like not even professionally is understanding who they were before they got to the conversation. It's easy to dive right in like very deep into the present, but I don't really know a lot about you. Where were you born?

Tim
So actually I was born in Thailand.

Sean Szeps
Where in Thailand?

Tim
In a province called Ratchaburi, which is about two hours west of Bangkok.

Sean Szeps
Yes, I love Thailand so much.

Tim
Yeah, so that's like my mum's Hometown and my family's hometown.

Sean Szeps
When did you move to Australia?

Tim
Three months old.

Sean Szeps
And is this straight to Perth or somewhere else in Australia?

Tim
No, straight to Perth.

Sean Szeps
Okay, and so Perth for your whole life, your whole adolescence?

Tim
Yeah, pretty much from zero all the way through to - when did I move to Melbourne? 21, 22.

Sean Szeps
When you look back at your pre-Melbourne time do you think of it as good or happy? Did you enjoy growing up in Perth?

Tim
I think the good thing for me personally was when I was 18 I graduated highschool, went to uni and I feel like I was able to put in so much into discovering my queer identity. And that meant for me to be able to meet a lot of different people and create my own chosen family and being able to do different things and I think dedicate a lot to developing my identity.

Jemma Sbeg
So Tim is in the midst of finding his people, his tribe and his passions …. and then he moves to Melbourne.

Tim
I moved here in the middle of the pandemic, it was after the first year and I Was like Melbourne has been through the world’s longest lockdown that’s not going to happen again, it happened again.

Sean Szeps
What was that like for you?

Tim
I’d moved into a little studio apartment, so my life was like computer, bed, bathroom, kitchen.

Sean Szeps
I’m projecting now myself did you find that started to shape your personality a little bit because it’s not normal for us as humans.

Tim
100% and I think it still does to now, I wasn’t a crazy clubber or partier before the pandemic but now I find myself, I just want to stay inside, people are like do you want to go out and I’m like do we have to?

Sean Szeps
Iis that safety blanket, of that routine you were talking about? That routine gets set, this is my room and my bathroom, I have my routine it works.

Tim
Yeah I think so, I think it’s just we get comfortable in that space and especially now even after being with some friends I’m like I love y’all but I need 5 mins to be on my own recharge a little bit and then come back.

Sean Szeps
I can relate, I feel like there’s not enough conversations about social anxiety and I’m not saying that's what you have and but that feeling we get when we’re around people a lot whether it’s at school or work or with family that need to come back and recharge. But a pandemic or any from of isolation you get much more comfortable with needing that don’t you so its like before you might push yourself a little bit because that’s what everyone else is doing but during a pandemic  we had a really good excuse and so it becomes a crutch, I’m literally projecting this is me talking about my experience to you but clearly it’s resonating a little bit.

Tim
100%. I think gaming was the one thing that single-handedly got me through Covid. Being on the opposite side of the country from my friends in a lockdown during a pandemic, gaming was the one proper social activity that I had that I felt really got me to be able to talk to other people.  It got me through the feeling of loneliness and isolation. Even if it was just for a little bit.

Jemma Sbeg
Tim’s always loved gaming, but this intense period of physical isolation did shift his relationship with games.

Tim
Definitely it’s overtaken a large part of my life and I’ve  made the decision- ok do I play a few games with a friend on my own or do I go to the gym today? Do I play a few games or do I go out to this event that my friend has invited me to? And I think because it's so easy to fall into the trap of- I'm just going to stay in my room on my computer on the TV, it can really consume and take over.I think as humans we need and we want varied social interaction. Our brain craves things to shake up routine occasionally. It likes to be challenged in different ways, to talk to different people.
You need that diversity in interaction to be able to grow and develop as a person to have new ideas come in - to be able to to be able to really fully engage with life.

Charity
Well Giinagay, my name is Charity.

Personally I’m not going to lie, for me to be connected I need to have the confidence to be connected, I’m so used to hiding away that I go outside and, it causes anxiety and just meeting a social group, like a ukulele group, or something like that, that gives me anxiety because I’m not confident who I am as a person as of yet.

My mother was part of the stolen generation, I was raised by a mother who was in survival mode the majority of her life, because of what happened as a three year old and it wasn’t because they wasn’t being looked after or anything like that, it was purely because they was Indigenous. It affects everybody, it affects the blood line not just the individual.

For me to get confident I need to look after myself, nurture myself, respect myself, whether that be through exercise, meditating or anything like that I’ve got to do that to feel confident within myself appreciate the way I look who I am as a person and then that way I feel, I will be able to connect with people who are on the same wavelength because like I said I come from a family of pretty hectic trauma and I don't want to be held back by that. I want to be able to shoot for the sky.

Jemma Sbeg
I do want to take a moment here to let you know that we connected Charity, and all our participants, with a psychologist to make sure they’re safe.
As well as leaning on a psychologist for advice, we also connected Charity with a very experienced mentor.

Deidre Anderson
Hi Charity it's lovely to meet you. My name is Deidre Anderson but most of my friends call me Dee I guess my background’s always been around people particularly in the Elite Athletes space.

Jemma Sbeg
Dee is one of the biggest names in transition and sport in Australia.
And she’s worked with hundreds of people during times of extreme change.

Deidre Anderson
So I’m hoping I’ve got a lot to offer and maybe somewhere in amongst all that there’ll be something for you ok so that's my hope anyway so would you like to just introduce yourself and tell me a bit about your story?

Charity
My name is Charity, I was brought up in a pretty large family isolated I spose at the same time but I'm just looking for change to be able to get to where I need to go to be comfortable where I want to be.

Deidre Anderson
So clearly you’ve got a lot of strengths because you’ve survived whatever you’ve been through. Hopefully that will help you get to where you want to go in the future.

Charity
Thank you.

Deidre Anderson
See what you think in a few weeks time.

Deidre Anderson
I want to pull out those strengths so you will be able to understand your history and connect if you want to, to different communities and country and you can take your strengths forward.

Deidre Anderson 
If you lift up your left hand, and look at the lines on your hand now look at the lines on your right, they’re very different. I often think the right hand is the life we’ve been given and the left hand is the life we choose to live. You’ve clearly been dealt with a life or a stack of circumstances but you have choices and that is what this is all about.

Charity
Eager.

Deidre Anderson
Good, Love it.

Charity
Self discovery.

Deidre Anderson
That’s an interest for you?

Charity
That’s my biggest interest It’s because I’ve been so lost when people say where are you from, I’m like I don’t know.

Deidre Anderson
So you’re talking about that from a heritage perspective?

Charity
No as a whole.

Charity
Here in the Gumbaynggirr country is the closest I’ve felt to belonging somewhere but from my understanding you’ve got to be able to be welcomed onto country but I haven’t been welcomed onto country anywhere, I was brought up in Biripi country and my grandfather is from Dunghutti country but I’ve never had a sense of family there. but I’ve been here since I was 17 and this is the closest to.

Charity
You know how you leave and you come home and then you go back there, this would be the place I come back naturally.
Everybody knows everybody and it’s such a small town. Whereas I hide myself away because I’m too embarrassed so it’s like I did this and I did something wrong or this person knows that person.
I don’t want to be living how I’m living. Like I would like my own little pad so I can learn independence and actually be able to be comfortable using my voice with my nose and that’s ok that’s not ok. and that is something that has been shoved deep down. I’m very loud, very vocal, very  I walk through the shops singing and I get told Charity you can’t be doing that’, you’re too loud, people are looking at us. It’s just dimmed a lot, I don’t want to be dimmed anymore. Illuminate.

Deidre Anderson
I’m going to write that, I don’t want to be dimmed anymore - I’m going to remind you of that.

Charity
This wall has been years and years and I haven’t had the mentor or that stability or that crutch. It's me just trying my hardest to climb out of a ditch for years.

Deidre Anderson
Well you're out of the ditch.

Charity
I’m just walking around going what direction do I go in? Should i go this way, be an artist, or travel, or self discovery, or end up that way and back in the ditch, no thank you that’s that way for a reason

Deidre Anderson
It’s clear that’s something you don’t want to do.

Charity
No thank you.

Deidre Anderson
I like to see loneliness as a junction point, where at that moment in time you don’t feel happy with where you’re at in that space and time. If you don’t understand who you are you get locked in a cycle of emotion and logic telling you go left, go right, stay still.

Loneliness to me is a question, rather than a situation that you can’t get out of. And I think often the options that we’re faced with, particularly young people, is that they see so much potential and opportunity but they feel disconnected from it. They don’t know what they have to physically do to engage in that space.

Jemma Sbeg
As the world becomes richer (it might not feel like it, but it's true)
We have more choice, more ability to be who we want to be - and that means we’re breaking away from the society we’re embedded in.
We’re less rooted in our suburbs, in our families, in our cultures.
That’s not a bad thing - we don’t want to lose our choice.
But it also means we’re all on our own path.

Aleks 
I often wonder this about my generation. I remember really vividly in high school again and again being told that we were free to do what we wanted.
My name’s Aleks Hammo, I’m 26. I was raised in Melbourne in the Inner Northern suburbs and I recently moved up to Sydney for a little bit.
I do a bunch of different things with my life which is nice, because I enjoy the variety but it’s busy and it’s stressful. and it’s hard to balance all these different things, i’m currently writing a philosophy thesis but I also teach a philosophy course and I have a podcast and I make videos and I build websites and I tutor.
I guess when you do a number of different things I think you do isolate yourself, you have to be really committed to each of them. I enjoy the freedom of being able to do all these different things but I also find it really scary constantly and so it feels that every day is complex,

Barry Conrad
I am really excited about this project because I’m able to draw on a lot of my experiences. Going through my own loneliness, my own isolation

Jemma Sbeg
Barry Conrad is an actor and a musician based in Sydney.
You might have guessed that he’s also Aleks’ mentor.

Barry Conrad
It can be really isolating doing what I do as well, being in the entertainment industry. Oftentimes you’ll find yourself in a hotel room alone at the end of the day. And learning how to navigate that and cope with my own feelings around that has been invaluable and I hope that meeting Alex today, I’m not an expert, I’m not a psychologist, but hopefully we can connect on an even playing field and I can share some of my lessons with him – see what happens.

Aleks
It’s interesting, because I usually interview people and so I’m usually trying to extract stuff. At least at the beginning of an interview, when you’re trying to figure out who the other person is and actually, we don’t know that much about each other yet.

Aleks
How do you describe yourself in a way that is comfortable and true to people?

Barry Conrad
Straight off the bat, this guy is interviewing me for sure. How do I describe myself as something that feels comfortable and true? I love life. I love food. I love adventure. I’m passionate about travelling, performing, family. My time with the people that I love is everything.
I was almost not here, I had a close call just a few years ago and that drove that home even more for me so that I would really go for what I want, and what is important to me and the people that I love, and for doing what I love and being able to do that at my own pace. And to not subscribe to the societal pressure of ‘do this by this time’ or ‘this is the gig you should be taking for this amount of money.’
How about you if I ask you that question?

Aleks
It’s cool that you have a comprehensive list of things, I’m not sure I have that kind of list. I think maybe my priorities aren’t as clear, sometimes they are clear but that doesn’t really do anything for me – I still end up prioritising work over spending time with the people I love or something like this.
I am pretty introverted and find it stressful being in busy social settings and stuff.

Barry Conrad
Thanks for sharing that, where does the thing come from where you feel like you can’t stop?  

Aleks
I think ultimately, I think this comes from this expectation in my family to take your work really seriously, to not settle for less – to constantly be challenging yourself. I think my parents, in a really incredible way, would also do this. My dad, for example, would always encourage me to do things with my opposite hand, or as a very young child he would  expose me to new ideas – I don’t have too many memories of my childhood, but these are the memories that I have. and this is something that has really stuck for me.
But I find it to be super isolating, in a really clear way. Because it means that I find it really hard to do things that people normally do. There’ll be a TV show that everyone is watching and talking about, and I’ll watch five minutes of the first episode, and I’ll be like ‘I should watch something else, or do something else – why aren’t I reading something or learning something? And it also means I pull away from social situations like going to a bar or something. But this is such a foolish way of thinking about anything, because, as you said, early on, spending time with people is the most incredible thing – that’s how you learn, there’s only so much you can learn from a textbook.

Jemma Sbeg
So that’s our four participants and mentors.
Over the next little while, they’ll be meeting regularly and working on strategies to build connections.

Tessa Blencowe 
There's always a need to strengthen the skills required to reach out, to put yourself out there and to build friendships.

Jemma Sbeg
Their stories are all very different, and they are much more complex than the few minutes you’ve heard here today, but over the next five episodes you will get to know them pretty well.

Sean Szeps
Hello Tim.

Tim
Hello Sean.

Sean Szeps
How are you? Nice to see your pretty face.

Tim
It’s good to see you again too.

Deidre Anderson
What about things you’re good at if we talk about skills?

Charity
I don’t know my skills, that's the whole point of self discovery, what are my skills, what are my strengths?

Aleks
It’s been pretty hard because it involves a pretty big change in my attitude towards how I spend my time.

Tessa Blencowe
Does that sound really abstract or does that sound like something?

Holly
No that sounds really exciting in a weird way, I’d be keen to do that.

Deidre Anderson
So are you ready to kick into this? May as well.

Jemma Sbeg
If this show has raised any issues for you, remember there are always places to turn, such as Lifeline on 13 11 14; BeyondBlue.com.au; and ReachOut.com, which offers dedicated support for young people.
For more information and tips to help you if you’re feeling lonely, visit wearelonely.com.au
We are Lonely is produced as part of Medibank’s ten year commitment to addressing loneliness.
I am Jemma Sbeg.
This show was produced and edited by Liz Keen and Simon Portus from Headline Productions.
Music is by Kenneth Lampl.
Fact Checking by Jess Choong and our team psychologist is Alison Howarth.
Our junior Producer is Monika Vidugiryte.
Our team from Medibank include Karen Oldaker, Nigel Davis and Demi Michael.
And project and Production Management by Rob Ranieri and Nick Randall from Ranieri and Co.