381: Overcoming Loneliness, Part 1 of 2

This is the first of a two-part series on loneliness, featuring the courageous personal work of Dr. Orly Marmur with Drs. David Burns and Jill Levitt as co-therapists.

Orly is a clinical psychologist from Southern California and member of our Tuesday TEAM-CBT training group at Stanford. She loves to hike, and recently went on a 25 mile solo hike from the North to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, an arduous hike that she planned for a long time  She happened to be hiking on October 7, 2023, the day of the Hamas invasion of Israel.

The hike was a huge victory for Orly, but when she arrived at the top of the South Rim, her cell phone was instantly bombarded with news and emails about the Hamas invasion and brutal murder, beheading, and rape of many innocent Israeli citizens.

For the next several days, Orly’s mind was flooded with flashbacks of her life, growing up in Israel when the country was still young, and living through four wars. Her father and brothers were in one war together, and her brother was wounded, but survived and recovered.

Orly felt guilt and shame because she was not there to help. She said that she wanted to go to Israel to help her brother with his farm, but was conflicted because she did not want to abandon her clinical practice in Southern California.

She explained:

I grew up with the people who started the State of Israel. Those were idealistic, heroic times. My grandmother left Europe when she was 17 and settled in Israel. The focus was on building. We learned to be heroic.

A few days later, in the Tuesday group, David noticed that I was feeling down and lonely unable to focus and “checked out.” I had  a hard time feeling my feelings. I had shut down.

I began being flooded with memories of sexual molestation at my grandparents’ house when I was a girl in Israel. I remember standing next to a tree, and feeling like I was “different” from the other kids,

I started feeling sad and guilty about losing so many relationships over the years. I’ve alienated so many people, and now I want to accept responsibility for that.

When my daughter was 1 year old, I became friends  with other parents at the day care center. We became like an extended family as our kids grew up, getting together on Fridays for dinner, celebrating holidays together and being there for each other.

However, during the pandemic, I began to feel rejected by them. And sometimes there were individual rejections. We had often camped out together over the years, but all of a sudden, I was not invited. I was the only single person. The rest of the group are couples. Over the years, I was told a few times that, at times, my presence makes things difficult.

Since then, I’ve been invited to some but not other functions of our group. I haven’t felt like people are interested in me, or like me.

I also want to feel my feelings and develop a sense of empathy for others and greater pride in myself—after all, I DID survive.

I became very politically active with others interested in supporting Israel after the October 7th invasion. I was hoping to feel close to people, but it didn’t work because I still felt alone. I had hoped they’d be impressed with my political activism, but it didn’t help.

My problem was not the war, but me.

I’m hoping today you can help me to feel my feelings again! I realize that I tend to jump to action rather than feel my feelings. I think that it has to do with my upbringing and the circumstances and culture that I came from. Next week you will hear the exciting conclusion to the work with Orly, and a follow-up several weeks later.

Thanks for listening today!

Rhonda, Jill, Orly, and David