Do you remember when you felt lonely for the first time?
Even if you do remember, that is probably not the first time that you genuinely felt that way.
We, humans, are born to connect with each other. That is imprinted deep inside us.
It’s not that we need each other to survive. We do. But we also need each other to thrive. As much as we need air to survive,
we need love to thrive, to live fully.
We need a love that connects us with each other.
Feeling of love that flow between us, the energy of love to fill us to create, build and live our lives fully.
Loneliness – caused by fear of being hurt by others
As much as others are our source of love, they are also our source of pain. When others withdraw their love or are not able to express it freely.
When we are born, we seek and year for closeness and connection with our parents. When they don’t respond with love, we get hurt, and we start putting walls around us.
We learn how to protect from the pain, we learn that connecting with others can be painful.
The fear of being hurt when we connect with others gets imprinted in us. We develop unhealthy feeling habits.
Today these feeling habits are second nature for us and cause the loneliness that we feel.
Loneliness – when you are with other people
Sometimes we feel lonely when we are in the midst of people. When there is no connection, on the surface they are all friendly. But deep down they are all hiding.
They are hiding their thoughts and feelings. They are saying all the right words. But when you try to feel them, they are surrounded by invisible armors around their minds and hearts.
It’s almost like nobody is there living in their body. You could not sense them and you could not connect them.
Or if you do sense them, you notice hostile, judgmental thoughts behind their empty kind words.
Loneliness – when you are with yourself
I have never met the person who does not enjoy alone time. Many just did not have an opportunity for that.
And with that, I don’t mean that they could not find time for that. No.
When you are alone, you are alone, just you and nobody else. When you are lonely it is never just you and nobody else.
That’s why I said that probably you rarely have the opportunity to have alone time just with yourself.
What actually happens, when you are lonely?
The second after you are alone and nobody is there to distract you, talk to you, you are left alone with your worse enemy.
Who wouldn’t be afraid than to be alone? And then we give that feeling the label, loneliness.
You never feel lonely, you are terrified.
You are terrified because the moment you stop communicating or being engaged by others, you are left alone with your mind.
Your mind could be your worst enemy.
You are forced to listen to endless criticism and judgment of your worse enemy- your mind.
The thing that scares us the most is, that when nobody else is around us we are left alone with our mind.
Being lonely mean that you are left alone with your worse enemy-your mind
Our minds are full of painful stories from the past. Our minds are full of you should do this, you need to finish that, shouldn’t you be worried about that
and on and on. The stories that our mind share are rarely full of praise and kind words.
Only when we diligently force them with affirmation, the kind and uplifting thoughts came from our minds.
Our minds constantly try to improve ourselves, constantly running the same movie about our mistakes and fears and comparison to others.
Who wouldn’t be afraid to be with such a persona?
The Heart is the only place where your mind became silent
Who wouldn’t be depressed after being left alone with the stories of your mind?
Mistic and poet Rumi expressed that so humorously:
God said to love your enemy and I obey him and start to love myself.
Yes, our minds are the one that we are afraid to be alone with.
Because nobody has so many bad things to say about us than our minds.
Maybe your third-grade teacher said to you That you are horrible at math. He said that once, but over the years how many times did your mind repeat the same story
in your head over and over again? Al the other stories, millions of them.
Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, pray, Love describe that with:
It took me 34 years to be able to sit together with myself in peace. (Trust me — up until that point, my mind was a neighborhood you did NOT want to walk around alone in at night.) Back in the day, I would choose to be with anyone rather than be alone — no matter how degrading the interaction might have been.
I filled my life with endless distractions, dramas, toxic relationships, terrible impulses, bottomless emotional needs — and all just to make sure that Liz and I would never be left in the same room together, unattended, forced to face each other.
With all that Isn’t normal that we are so afraid to be alone until we learn how to quiet our mind?
You would not leave your kid with his worse enemies, but you believe that there is something wrong with you if you dread to be left with yourself
and listening to your worse critics – your mind.
That actually what loneliness is – the fear of sitting down with your enemies and having nowhere to escape from.
When you understand that, I mean fully understand, then you could stop running away from being with yourself.
When you understand what is causing loneliness you could start to find a cure for it.
If the mind is the source of your loneliness, what are the steps out of it?
– Be in the body (the more fully you are in the body, the less you are in the mind)
Every physical activity would move you out of your head into your body. The secret to why some are more effective than others is in choosing the one that you like.
– humor will move you out of your mind at the moment
Find something that makes you laugh. What makes you laugh, watching comedies, reading or listening to jokes, or watching funny videos? What is your favorite way? Use it.
– be in your heart
– learn how to deal with emotions on a day to day basis
When we are lonely, we are depressed, sad in overwhelmed with all these unpleasant emotions. But emotions are not feelings. When you are deep in emotions you are more in the mind
than in the feeling state. Feelings came from your heart, joy, peace, and a sense of wonder. Emotions are stuck energy, stuck because you feel something then you start thinking and block the flow of that energy that you feel and emotion is created.
The first step to dealing with emotions is to learn how to handle them when something triggers an emotional response in you, sadness or anger overwhelms you.
One simple way to move from feeling lonely to enjoying alone time
Is it true that you don’t want to be alone?
Can you find five things that you like to do all by yourself? It could be the quiet moment after you put your kids to bed, it could be a moment of sinking into char with your favorite book and cup of tea, or it could be a moment of daydreaming about something important in your life.
Sit down and make a list:
Five things that you enjoy doing all by yourself.
And whenever you feel lonely take your list and bring back pleasant memories of enjoying alone time.
5 steps on how to deal with difficult emotions that you experience when you are lonely
Those 5 steps are like the first aid kit for situations like Monday at 6 pm when you are tired after an exhausting day at work and a small remark from your spouse triggers intense negative emotions.
It’s about 4 different ways of releasing negative emotions and learning how you could program yourself so that you start using them automatically.
- How to release emotions from your body
- How to release the energy of difficult emotions
- How to surrender your difficult emotions to the universe.
- How to release stressful thoughts attached to negative emotions.
- How you could program yourself so that you start using them automatically.
Click HERE if you want to Learn 5 steps how to deal with difficult emotions.
– Use the process – 4 loving question – the work of Byron Katie
That is a simple process that helps you to investigate all the stressful thoughts about yourself, your relationship, or love that surface when you are lonely.
Read more how I used it HERE to step out of depression and loneliness.
– start to use your mind as a tool, not as your master
A mind is a great tool for analyzing information, deciding between different choices, leading us thru our day-to-day earthly tasks, create things. But ideas, inspiration and wisdom, and
guidance must come from your heart, from your inner wise voice.
When you listen to your inner voice and use the mind as a tool to express all ideas and wisdom from your inner wise voice, your mind will be too busy with creating and will not have time to criticize you or cause you to start doubting yourself.
What happens when we start to listen to our inner voice more than the mind?
We became more of who we are. The authentic part of us starts to awaken. We stop missing in our life.
You stop being lonely with thousands of voices in your head and start enjoying and getting to know better your unique self.
Read next: One of the benefits of being selfish – feeling less lonely.