One of the saddest and most dysfunctional aspects of our current culture is that it encourages loneliness. It’s not hard to imagine that when most people lived in tribes or small towns, loneliness wasn’t the epidemic it is today.
Loneliness is the feeling we get when we want to connect with someone and there is no one around to connect with, or the person or people that are there are closed off and not available to connect with. We can feel lonely when we are alone, and we can also feel lonely with other people who are closed off and closed to connection.
We are social beings and are programmed to crave connection and shared love. Hopefully understanding that loneliness is a natural core painful feeling that stems from a primal need will help you remove any judgment about feeling alone. Judging yourself for feeling lonely is the opposite of loving yourself. Judging yourself only serves to make you feel lonely inside, and the combination of loneliness and loneliness leads to depression and despair. Loneliness is hard enough to deal with to make it harder by judging yourself for it.
As an only child with disconnected parents, I often felt very alone. The loneliness was so great that I learned seemingly positive ways to avoid feeling this feeling: reading, doing crafts, immersing myself in school, and spending as much time as I could at my friends’ houses. In fact, I did such a good job of avoiding this feeling that I was completely unaware that I often felt very alone.
It came as a shock to me when one day I felt a shooting pain throughout my body. I asked my Spirit Guide what this feeling was and she told me: “This is loneliness.” “Wow!” I replied. “No wonder I’ve avoided him all this time!”
My Guidance suggested that I stay with the feeling, welcome it, embrace it, and be open to learning about what it had to teach me. I was with him for two months and he taught me a lot. One of the things he taught me was how to love myself through loneliness.
The first thing I learned to do was become aware of the feeling, then name it and embrace it compassionately. My inner child feels seen, heard, and loved when I name the feeling and embrace it with compassion. It is easy to use various addictions and other forms of self-abandonment to avoid feeling alone, but this is not loving ourselves.
The next thing I learned to do is open myself up to learning from feeling. If I feel lonely when I’m alone, it’s telling me that I need to connect. Sometimes being alone doesn’t feel lonely and other times it does. If so, loving myself means taking loving steps for myself, like calling a friend or family member. Loving yourself can mean that you need to make friends. Loving action can be searching meetup.com, or taking a class with like-minded people, or joining a spiritual or religious organization or 12-step group, or some other activity where you can meet like-minded people. . What love is not is judging yourself or avoiding the feeling with some other form of self-abandonment.
If I feel lonely when I’m with someone else, I need to check in first to make sure I’m open. If I’m not, then I need to do my internal linking work to re-explore what I’m protecting, what I’m trying to control or prevent. If I am open, it is likely that my loneliness tells me that the person I am with is closed to connecting with me. I then have the choice to love myself by opening up to learn with them, or to lovingly tune out. If you often feel lonely with your partner, loving yourself may mean seeking help with your relationship, even if your partner isn’t open to counseling or facilitation.
If I’m with a group, the feeling could be telling me that this group isn’t my tribe, or it could be telling me that I need to move within the group to find one or two people I can connect with. .
There can be a lot of information you can gain from compassionately attending to your loneliness. Loving yourself through loneliness means accepting it, learning from it, and acting lovingly on your own behalf.