Why you Feel Lonely, and How to Eliminate it from your Life
Posted on Setember 23, 2023
Video version of this post:
Why do you want a friend? Is it because you are lonely?.
It may be paradoxical that we feel lonelier than ever in this day and age of instantaneous and global communication. You may have hundreds of "friends" on social media and message them during the day. But at the end of the day, you are alone with your thoughts. And you feel lonely.
This loneliness epidemic damages our mental health and self-esteem. After all, if all these people out there are having fun, what's wrong with me?
I'm pretty introverted, and even though I don't need to socialize a lot, there were periods in the past when I felt intensely lonely. Have you ever experienced this feeling in a room full of people? That sucks.
Despite that, the typical advice to combat loneliness is to "be more social" or "have more friends." The thing is, as you may have experienced, that loneliness is an inner game problem. It's not solved by having more people around you. If you cannot connect with them, what's the point?
Let me be clear here. Having a healthy social circle or doing things with others can be a source of much enjoyment (even for introverts). But this by itself will never solve the problem of loneliness. To solve it from the root, we need to understand first loneliness. Once we do that, we can tackle it at once and for all.
What is loneliness?
The ache of loneliness fills our hearts, and the mind covers it with fear. Loneliness, that deep isolation, is the dark shadow of our life.
Loneliness is not the absence of people around you. Thus, need to dig deeper to go to the root, as we did in the post about fear (I recommend you check it out first).
First, observe that loneliness is a feeling. It's a sensation within you. Sometimes, you may feel lonely while being alone, but at other times, it may occur in the presence of others. This is crucial since we must convince ourselves that loneliness is an internal state of being independent of our surroundings.
I used to feel alone because I couldn't connect with others. Sometimes, I've found it challenging to connect with people since my interests are pretty "niche." After all, how many people are doing real personal development? I craved to share some of these fantastic ideas with others, but my social circle back then didn't share my interests. Also, I didn't bother looking online. I felt that it wouldn't be enough.
Additionally, I felt I wasn't interesting enough or "boring". My lifestyle is quite minimalistic. I live 80% of the time like a monk, while the remaining 20% is for enjoying the pleasures of life. That usually means I'm not particularly eager to party or do many social activities. Usually, I'm delighted to be with myself. However, I was insecure about being upfront with others about my lifestyle. I thought that if I showed up the way I was, most people wouldn't be interested in me.
In this regard, I had to swallow a bitter but liberating pill. No matter what you do, most people won't find you interesting. And that is OK. Actually, it is quite good. All I was looking for was a handful of people to be myself.
This leads to two problems: inauthenticity and neediness.
You are inauthentic
You will say, "But I'm authentic!" Let me tell you something. I also believed that crap myself. But the more personal development you do, the more you realize how much bullshit you have to keep around you 24/7. This is especially true if you see yourself as "independent." As I mentioned, I usually don't need to socialize much, but sometimes, in the past, I fell into the trap that "I don't need people." But this is a coping mechanism. Since you don't care much about connecting with others, you tend to ignore or not cultivate your (incipient) friendships. This, in turn, makes other people end up walking away from you, leaving you alone. This strengthens the self-fulfilling prophecy of "I don't need people."
Deep down, we fear being vulnerable and willing to connect with others. This is fear of intimacy. By being yourself, you are risking rejection, and we HATE rejection. A lot of us would rather not risk being rejected than try. I've done this dozens of times in the past, and you probably too.
Another reason for being inauthentic is that you don't see yourself as worthy. Many of us try to mask this insecurity with bigger muscles, makeup, plastic surgery, or fancy clothes. But none of those will change who you are. You may trick someone into getting you know based on your appearance or status. But this farce will collapse at some point. After all, this material stuff will come and go. The only thing remaining is yourself. And the ugly truth will be exposed sooner or later.
Your feelings of low self-esteem boil down to your beliefs- who you believe you are. This will be a topic for a future post. For completeness, let me mention that this, again, is an inner-game issue. You can change your beliefs according to your needs. But you will resist changing them, especially if they regard who you think you are.
You are needy
Let me give you my definition of neediness: approval seeking. But this is trickier than it sounds. You may also think you are not needy, but this is likely false. To prove it, let me ask you: Can you enjoy "social" activities entirely by yourself? By this, I mean, for example, having dinner at a restaurant, going to concerts, traveling, going to museums or cinemas, etc.
If you cannot fathom the idea of doing these activities alone, then you are needy. Why? Because you need the presence of others to enjoy the activity. The same applies if you HAVE to share your experiences with others on social media or talk to your friends. Again, I'm not saying you should never do that. The question is, what is your intention behind it. Do you do it because you need the approval and validation of others? A good litmus test is: Would you share your experience even if you get 0 likes? Or if people disapprove of your actions? If you feel bad if you don't get likes on social media or praise in your peer group, then you are needy.
Now, I'm not trying to say this to hurt your feelings. Instead, I want you to become aware of it. Actually, this is not your fault at all. We are literally raised to be needy.
If you go back to when you were a baby, you were utterly powerless and needed the protection of your caretakers. It's a survival instinct to try to please them. Otherwise, we would risk not being fed, which would mean death. So, back then, it was a life-or-death situation.
Once we grow, we learn that some behaviors are "good" while others are "bad." If you do good behaviors, you are a "good girl." Do the opposite, and you will be a "bad boy." In a sense, we take those words 100% personally. And who wants to be a wrong person?
Consequently, we try to get the approval of our caretakers, doing whatever they believe is good. I use the word "believe" here on purpose because this will depend 100% on who are the people taking care of you. If they think going to church and praying daily is good, you will do it to please them. If they believe that kids should be quiet and don't bother adults, you will learn that.
The point I want to make here is that those beliefs will depend on your upbringing. Sadly, lots of people were raised in shitty environments. And whatever beliefs and values they think are good, we will take them as the absolute truth. But even if you were raised in a good family, their views are still theirs. Not yours. And you will still learn that some things are good and others wrong. So we end up people-pleasing no matter your upbringing.
As a consequence, we end up repeating those patterns in our adulthood. The problem is that, even though being needy was helpful at some point in our lives, it won't be beneficial once you are an adult. Being needy tends to repel instead of attract people into your life.
You may agree with me up to this point, but still, you may wonder how I solve my loneliness?
How to eradicate loneliness forever
In my post about fear, I claim that you can eliminate ALL your psychological fears from your life. Since loneliness is partly based on concerns about being who you are, facing your fears regarding loneliness will be necessary. I recommend you do the recursion exercise (show the picture again) listed there.
In a nutshell, you can ask yourself, "Why I'm afraid of being lonely?" or "Why I'm afraid of being authentic?" From here, a list of beliefs and fears should emerge. You may fear "showing yourself as you are" because you think you are boring or fear rejection. Whenever fears pop up, you repeat this process, getting more beliefs and fears. For all the beliefs that appear, you can start contemplating them and trying to come up to the moment you started believing them.
Chances are, those beliefs were useful at some point in your life, but not anymore. You may realize it doesn't help you anymore, and you can try to throw them away and replace them with something else. For example, if you believe you are boring, you may ask yourself when it started, maybe in school or university. It could happen because you were comparing yourself with others. Perhaps your life IS boring (for you), and you can try to do something to change it. I don't have all the answers for you here. This is true PERSONAL development.
For the neediness problem, you must learn to be happy by yourself. Of course, this is easier said than done. But a first step in that direction is to learn to enjoy alone activities you usually do with others. For example, consider traveling alone or going to a restaurant. If you feel resistance and fear about doing it, go back to the recursion exercise!
Another practice you can implement is to not share every "good" thing you do in your life. After all, if you do something you consider good (like donating to a charity), do you need the approval of others?
Ultimately, you want to learn to be completely happy by yourself. From this position, all your relationships will be based on love and selflessness. And, paradoxically, more people will want to be friends with you. Being not needy is extremely attractive.
I cannot emphasize how crucial it is to learn to face your fears. We will see in future posts more applications of it to more practical situations like this one. I hope you can see the value of it.
But remember: personal development is about DOING the practices. Don't sit and mentally masturbate with it!