Loneliness – It’s When You’re Cut off From Yourself

Everyone feels lonely at times, but not everyone suffers from a chronic feeling of loneliness…

of feeling disconnected and cut off from other people. This type of loneliness is a loneliness from the best parts of you that no longer have any basic fundamental contact with life experience. You are lonely because you are alienated from life,

Dead end streets

Think of how you drive a car. You recognize potential dangers, potential time sucks, and potential mechanical problems as you drive so corrective action can be taken before you screw things up for yourself. Expand this to the body and how it responds to pain.

• That cut needs to hurt- otherwise you will ignore it.
• That loneliness needs to hurt – otherwise you will ignore it.
• A pattern has emerged…have you been paying attention?

“Lonely” is designed to help you achieve fulfilment and success as a human being faster and more efficiently by forcing you to address that disconnect from your best self. If life was without friction, pain and difficulty, none of us would be pushed to to grow. We would ignore that cut.

Cut off from yourself

The fix is not simply other people. You can be in a city or college or place with thousands of other people around you and still feel lonely. I was having a beer (LEO to be exact – it’s a common brew here in Thailand) with my friend Mike the other day and we were talking about how odd it is to have the sensation of loneliness in a city of millions. Mike talked about how he felt lonely and was sick of being in Bangkok with few friends during his first few months of traveling in Asia.

It was not the lack of friends you see that was the problem, he was cut off from himself.

The lonely person is alienated from himself. They do not know what brings them joy and happiness. They are lost. This makes personal contact with others unsatisfying – starting a cycle of social reclusiveness that can be difficult to break.

Going to work, coming home, going to work, coming home. Not doing anything and feeling bad about your boring lonely life. You think that you should go out by yourself, that you should socialize or try to meet other people online or whatever the hell you’re supposed to do – but it leaves you wanting and missing the better days in the past. So you don’t.

The tragedy here is that is that personal contact may feel unsatisfying, but it is the best way to finding yourself -

by that I mean to losing yourself in social activities where a person begins to take a genuine interest in other people while at the same time casting aside the shame and false pretenses that we all walk around with and show to strangers.

Socializing and finding our “thing” helps us thaw out – we become our real selves around other people. We feel that connection and commonality with someone else. We stop being lonely. We finally feel we belong somewhere.

Are you afraid of other people?

What a stupid question that might seem – how can you be afraid of other people…

Loneliness is also a form of self protection, a protection of who we think ourselves to be. Being lonely happens when communication and emotional ties are cut down to a minimum. This protects your idealized self, that “best” vision of you that you have in your head from:

1. Rejection
2. Hurt (hint – you’re going to get hurt anyways)
3. and disappointment.

Ironic the cost of self protection from pain is pain.  This happens because the lonely person is afraid of other people.

When I say “afraid” I don’t mean that the person is a damn coward suffering from a phobia. That he is literally scared shittless around other people. No, it’s the person who complains about not having enough friends and orchestrates everything in his life consciously or inadvertently to make it so other people have to make the first move and invite him somewhere.

His passivity does not contribute value or enjoyment to the lives of others – why would anyone include him?

It never occurs to this lonely person that he has a fear of other people, a fear that prevents him from going into social situations with confidence and gusto (you probably need bigger balls btw) by contributing something to a social situation. Instead his passivity makes him ignored, over looked, and alone. WTF he thinks, why do I have to do all the work.

Persist and conquer

Forcing yourself into social situations will be awkward and uncomfortable particularly if you’re naturally a quite or shy person. But much like those first few minutes after jumping into a pool you will eventually warm up and begin enjoying yourself. Once you find your thing, your group, and have some decent social skills that is. Nothing happens without your decisions.

You need to steer the ship as I like to say and choose the direction to which you head. Passivity, shyness, and indirectness are useless. They result in you hoping and waiting for life to carry you somewhere interesting when really all that happens is life passes you by. People grow and leave you lonely and cut off.

Social skills 101

I won’t insult your intelligence by acting as some sort of lame high school guidance counselor – social skills 101 for lonely people feeling the edge of loneliness: actively contribute to the lives of others in a positive and social way.

Add to the happiness of others by developing social skills like dancing, singing, playing an instrument, conversing, whatever. You know you better than I do – learn to contribute and add value. It’s the only way. No one wants to be around someone who takes and takes or is completely useless.

Do this activly and consistently over time and you will discover people to be welcoming, friendly, and accepting of who you really are. Shyness and timidness will be thrown out for the useless traits they are. You will form deeper connections with other people. You will reconnect with yourself better and loneliness will subside. The acceptance from others will enable you to accept yourself.

Loneliness is simply resistance to other people.