We normally tend to think that being alone by ourselves, and not having enough friends are the causes of our loneliness. Or maybe not having girlfriends or boyfriends who we can share love with makes us feel lonely. However, if we examine this further, the cause of loneliness goes in much much deeper and in this blog post you will learn the real cause of loneliness and what we can do to overcome this problem.
If you’re lonely and if you think that loneliness can be solved simply if you were out with more people, I’d have to stop you there because that’s not quite true. This is a very big misconception. Because if you’re in a new social setting for example in a classroom where you do not know a lot of people the situation itself will make you feel lonely even though there are plenty of people around. And sometimes we may even feel lonely in groups when we know the people around us, but perhaps feel disconnected.
And in the contrary you might be living all by yourself with very few human interactions doing WFH (Work From Home) like in right now during COvid-19 and yet not feeling an ounce of lonely but completely free from within.
So the cause of loneliness isn’t not being around people. But it’s acutally all in your perception and how you deal with the reality.
To give you a bit of background about myself, I grew up feeling very lonely most of the times. Because at school I often felt disconnected with other kids in my classroom. And at home, I had two older sisters who were around the same age who always often partnered up with each other and I used to feel left out all the time. And later when I grew up, I still feel left out in social situations and gatherings. I didn’t even seriously start dating until I was 21 or 22 years old. So I was as lonely as I could be 🙁
At one point I felt though that I had enough so I went into a deep process of introspection and I started to do more meditation to get to know myself better. That’s when I realized that my loneliness didn’t come as a result of me being alone. I was always around other people, and yet I couldn’t stop feeling lonely.
So when I started to do more reading and research on how I could be more social and make more friends, I realized that a lot of the cause of loneliness was actually coming from the stories that I was telling myself. For example a lot of times in social situations whether it be in family gatherings or in a classroom I would often tell to myself “I don’t belong here” or “I don’t think anyone here like me”.
And sometimes no matter how close the people were be to me in relationships, I used to often think that “They don’t understand me” so I often kept a distance from my family and friends.
I started realizing that all these thoughts were being created because of the stories I was telling myself. And these were happening at such an unconscious level that I wasn’t even aware that I was actually holding myself back this way. These stories are being created by our limiting beliefs and may arise from our upbringing. And also I realized that a lot of these lonely thoughts or stories were being created because of the sense of lack that I had inside of myself. These thoughts and feelings of not being enough being the most predominant ones.
Now let’s talk about what we can do to overcome this sense of lack, these thoughts of not being good enough. Normally this sense of lack arises due to our inability to deal with the present moment. Whenever we try to sit in stillness that’s when we start experiencing this extreme discomfort. Eckart Tolle in his book “Power of Now’ describes this feelings of lack or void as “pain bodies”. It may have arose from traumatic experiences in the past and sticks around because these painful experiences were not fully faced and accepted the moment they happened.
These pain bodies that exist within ourselves and they create a lot of discomfort in our lives and they create all these crazy thoughts that keep coming back and keep haunting ourselves. Until and unless we are able to deal with the pain bodies, we might not be able to achieve any kinds of fulfillment, happiness or satisfaction in our lives.
I would like to reflect back on Eckart’s simple solution for this, which is to just be in the now just stay in the present moment. Try to be more grounded and try to see things for what they are, not as you want them to be. Getting completely rid of pain bodies is a process and it can definitely done. But you can simply not react and ground yourself in the present moment. Meditation can be a very powerful technique for that. If you’ve never tried meditating before I highly suggest you watch this video which will help you get a quick meditation experience as your focusing on directing your breath towards your heart. It’s sort of mindfulness practice which basically means you’re getting out of your head and being in tune with the present moment. You’re noticing and observing your expereinces in your periphery but you’re not judging them.
And when you start doing this you will see that a lot of these problems are just perceptions in your mind, that they’re they’re not actually real-world problems that exist. And even if there may be an actual problem in your life that’s keeping you from becoming more fulfilled, you’ll start noticing that there is always a solution for this.
With mindfulness you start shining light your inner thoughts and stories, and then we can see that they’re not actually true. And that they’re just being created in our own minds, because our mind is usually just trying to find some problems to give sense to this physical discomfort that might be created when you’re not feeling good in your own presence. And that’s what what pain body feels like.
With some meditation and yoga practices I was able to be in tune with these discomfort and physical sensations. Instead of focusing on them, I started to see them for what they are just some discomfort arising due to unfamiliar situation. And slowly these stories we have you start seeing that they start dissolving away gradually. There’s such a magic in the process because you will start sensing this huge sense of relief after these discomfort fades away.
Being in the now is the solution and I highly recommend you reading the book “Power of now” and also start looking up some meditations and just more mindful practices that that’s gonna shine some light to the kind of thoughts that you’re having because a lot of times we don’t notice our own thoughts and how they start to lead you into the path of misery. But being control of your thoughts is gonna make you resilient as well as more fulfilled. And whether or not if you have enough friends or if you choose to live a solitary life, you will never feel lonely again!