How to Handle Loneliness

Having been single for just over eight years, I know a thing or two about loneliness and how dangerous it can be to wallow in it.

I've developed a strategy that helps me conquer it.

A complex experience, loneliness is usually an unpleasant response to isolation - the sense of being disconnected from the world around you. The experience is often associated with the state of being single. However, married women can be even more lonely than their single girlfriends. But since single ladies are my peeps, this post is specifically for and about you.

I know how it can unfold. It's late at night, you're home alone and it's not a decent hour to call one of your friends. You're suddenly hit by the (untrue) thought that you are alone in the world and a sadness quickly creeps in. You feel this ache of wanting in the pit of your stomach for someone or something. A hollow feeling starts in your mind and filters into your body: your shoulders slump, your head bows and you want to wrap yourself under the covers. Sadness hovers you like a dark cloud.

The Psychology Today article "Three Surprising Truths about Gender and Loneliness" states says, "To remedy loneliness, women throw themselves into serious one-on-one relationships. While men, pursue groups of casual friends." (Hmm.... I think they meant "casual sex.)

When women experience loneliness, it automatically triggers the desire for a romantic relationship. I am quite familiar with that auto-response. I have long known that when that familiar sadness crops up, I will immediately, and almost unconsciously, reach for my phone and start swiping. I had the belief that a relationship would solve my loneliness, but as I have allowed myself to sit with it, I have come to undo that belief.

I was forced to really look at my experience of loneliness and a healthier way to handle it this past year, having taken a vow of celibacy. The no-sex mandate meant that jumping on to Tinder was no longer an appropriate soother. Not being able to reach for my usual pacifier allowed me to observe this automatic response of running to finding a date, which had been going un-checked for years.

As a personal development junkie, I knew that facing something was the first step in defeating it. So in an effort to evolve beyond my usual mechanisms, I decided to turn around and look my loneliness, in dead in the eye.

This face-off forced me to be present. When I was present with it, rather than running away from it, loneliness stopped being the scary monster that I had made it out to be.

When I looked at it, what I saw was a body of emotion that had only come to visit; not to stay. I observed that it would pass through me after a few minutes. But if I reacted to the feeling of the emotion, I would be left with consequences that stayed long after the feeling had moved on.

In his fantastic book, "A New Earth" Eckhart Tolle sites loneliness as one of the symptoms of what he calls, 'the pain body'. The pain body is an energy entity of old painful emotion that is triggered by painful thoughts and causes more suffering. The Huffington Post article "Living in the Presence of Your Pain Body" says, "the pain body takes over your mind and your internal dialogue which is dysfunctional at the best of times, now it becomes the voice of the pain body talking to you internally." If you are identified with the pain body, you believe every negative thought that it is telling you. Your mind might spew lies like, "You will always be alone. No-one wants to hang out with you. Nobody cares about you." And hence you may feel like committing an act of self-sabotage in the moment, like calling up an ex or seeking out casual sex.

But the pain body shrinks in light of your stare. The article continues to say, "That is everybody's job here - to be there, to recognise the pain body when it shifts from dormant to active, when something triggers a strong emotional reaction."

It does not want you to observe it directly. The moment you observe the pain body or loneliness - feel its energy within you, you break your identification with it. Your higher consciousness comes in, letting it know who is the boss.

So what can you do to give loneliness the boot?

Observe. Be the witness to it. This might seem counter-intuitive because when you feel discomfort your immediate response is to run away from, so this is going to take courage and practice. But if you are present, the pain body cannot feed on your thoughts anymore.

So develop a game-plan for when it comes up. Once you sense loneliness is about knock on your door. Go into a quite place and sit in meditation. Close your eyes and observe what is happening in your mind and your body. Observe how you feel in your body and you will notice that you can tangibly feel the energy of sadness as a separate entity from the real you. Set a timer to sit in this space for at least 5 minutes. Breathe.

The painful thoughts will still come at you in the first instance, but they will dissipate after a while. The awareness that as a consciousness you are separate from the feeling of loneliness, will increase. The sadness will start to shift and you will feel more like yourself. After the 5 or 10 minute is up, do something healthy and fun that will engage your attention - read a book, listen to a personal development podcast, work out or go work on that personal project.

Use loneliness as an reason to do you.

We usually allow emotion to overtakes us. We give it the wheel and let it drive what we do and what we say. But taking back control of your mind is the very process of human evolution. How many times have you said something in anger that you wished you didn't? Or called someone when you were lonely that you wished you hadn't? The path to being the better version of you is to observe how you feel and take back control of your mind.

Create some distance between you and the feeling and take back your power. I promise that with practice, loneliness will not be the scary monster you have to run away from. It will be an opportunity for you to grow.

#howtohandleloneliness #howtobesingle #howtohandlesadness #singlenessandloneliness