Overcoming Loneliness

Loneliness differs a lot from being lonely. You may be sitting at your home with nothing to do and feel lonely. You call up a friend, meet up and your problem is solved. But what about that kind of loneliness that takes you down when you are amidst people, maybe drinking and having a normal time?

Nature of Loneliness

Such kind of loneliness generally does not develop in a day or week. It grows over the years taking its time to slowly integrate itself in our mind and body. It can attack you anytime and anywhere not caring about the circumstances. You may be travelling in a bus, working in your office or chatting with your friends – it comes as an overpowering sense of helplessness that overpowers your being with nothing left in your control.

Then there is that type of loneliness that is always with you throughout the day interfering with whatever you do or think, making its presence felt all over your life. Generally this kind of loneliness is also accompanied by its peers and friends like long term depression, anxiety, stress, etc.

How to Overcome Loneliness?

The best and quickest way to get rid of loneliness even for a short while is successfully distracting yourself to live in the present moment. It is not a long term solution unless you have unlimited supply of distractions. Usually work is a big distraction that keeps us away from the negative thoughts and feelings. Then there will be a few people spending time with whom will make you feel good and forget about your loneliness. The list can include travelling, reading books, following some hobbies or interest and anything and everything that takes your mind off negative dwellings.

Drawbacks of Distractions

Distractions are great as a solution for short term loneliness. But it is not useful in the long term to people for whom loneliness is a constant companion. The activities discussed above fail to successfully distract such people. People talk about support from friends and family, which is always a big help. But some of us are not so fortunate to find it in our life and usually this forms one of the main causes of developing loneliness in the first place.

Also, depending on external sources to counter your loneliness poses a big threat. We suppose you are in possession of enough distraction in the present. But what happens they go out of the equation? If you have depended too much on them then your condition would be like an addict who is suffering from withdrawals. With no distractions at hand, you sink into loneliness and your dark world once again!

Is There Any Way Out?

Buddhism and other spiritual lineages talk about completing yourself in order to eliminate loneliness. Loneliness arises when we are not content with ourselves or cannot find something that we feel will make us complete. In order to overcome this, we have to love ourselves, be passionate and do everything in our power to feel content and complete without the need of any external influence or assurance.

These are practical things to say but to achieve them is not so easy. It is specially difficult for those who have to fight it out everyday just to catch a moment not feeling lonely. Sometime we do succeed achieving some of them, though for a short while and that strengthens the belief that it is possible to overcome loneliness by yourself.

It is not an easy process. It takes years of practice and by the way things are progressing, for me it looks like a lifelong process. One thing that helps immensely is Meditation, but you have to develop the habit of practicing it every day. Overall it’s a mix and match of things, experimenting, trying out new methods and finding ways to steer away those harmful thoughts and feelings.

Nah! It’s not going to be easy at all. You can go for therapy, but for me that did not bring much improvement. I’m in no position to negate the benefits of psychotherapy, but for some people it does not work. For me the best way seems to develop a habit where I try to live with myself, get comfortable with myself and treat myself as my best friend. Most of the time it doesn’t work, but at times when it does – it feels good!

But then you end up asking yourself. Science has confirmed that we humans are social beings and thrive on interaction and communication with others. When such a need is programmed in our system, how can we just let go off everybody else and be content alone? Are we even supposed to try that? The situation becomes clichéd involving the mystifying working of paradoxes!

Please don’t be mad at me as I won’t be able to serve the exact method of overcoming your loneliness. These are things that I have experienced, explored and researched and tried to implement in my own life with some positive outcomes. I’m not sure if they will work for others, but it’s worth a try. One thing that I can assuredly suggest is Meditation. Maybe it is the reason why Yogis are able to spend 3-5-10 years in retreat alone in caves without feeling lonely at all!

Desires, Acceptance and Letting Go

Accepting some things are easy. For example, your bike gets stolen and you never recover it.  Few days of discomfort, few days of thoughts dedicated to accepting the fact and forgetting about it gradually. Not much of a challenge.

Now take this scenario - Your best friend steals your stash and you find out. (Just an example!) You spend hundreds of nights fighting with yourself trying hard to gulp down the emotions and feelings hindering the process of acceptance. For me, there have been few things I am still struggling to accept and let go.

That brings in another important fact- ‘Letting go.’ Accepting by itself is not such a tough job. You just need to tell yourself “Okay! This happened. All right, let’s face it and accept what happened.”  But along with it you have to deal with the feelings and emotions that arise with this acceptance. Sometimes those feelings are disturbing, sometimes they are deeply related to memories or ideas we have created with so much hope.

I feel acceptance always comes with letting go. In case of the bike example, you may not need much effort to let go of your bike. You accept you are not going to get it back and make peace with the sad feelings or regret that comes with it.

It is always difficult to let go of things that are related to someone close to us. It hurts to accept the facts and letting go takes years if not the entire lifetime. And why is it so difficult? Letting go becomes painful when we are strongly attached or clinging to the thoughts or ideas that we want to let go. These thoughts and ideas mostly take shape based on our desires and cravings.

So, lettings go begins with breaking the thoughts and feelings down to realize our own desires. It is not possible to control our desires completely unless you practice some form of meditation. Buddhism holds the view that you can overcome your desires by meditation. But in normal life many of us end up suppressing our desires in trying to overcome them.

There is a HUGE difference between suppressing and overcoming. You can also overcome your desire if you indulge too much in it. For example, you crave for chocolate ice cream and eat it regularly for a year. Then one day you open the fridge, take the cup of ice cream out and realize you don’t want to have it anymore. You had so much that you are content and that desire has been met. Like in economics. When demand meets supply there is equilibrium.

This has to done for each particular desire separately. But what happens when you don’t have means to satisfy your desire? Or maybe you just don’t want it to control your life or go out of bounds. Then foolishly we suppress our desires at the same time craving them. Gradually the frustrations and pain caused by trying to stay away from those desires combine with the cravings and build up enough power to cause an outburst, like maybe an atom bomb. A great person once gave a perfect example for this. A popular firecracker called Tubri or Flowerpot is made by stuffing the mixture inside a cone with a great magnitude of pressure. When ignited, this pressure causes the sparks to rise up to great heights above the ground. Desires which you keep holding down, will build up pressure and burst out at greater rates eventually. It is not possible to get rid of desires just like that, you have to find some way to overcome them.

Back to the topic, once you have made peace with your desires, letting go will be an easy process. I haven’t been able to find out exactly what needs to be done to actually let go of those few painful things, but what I have been able to do is break down the process and identify the areas which need to be worked upon. It all goes down to reaching inside yourself and understanding the self. This is not an easy task and cannot be done in one day. You have to develop the practice and take the time to sit down with yourself.

 I have found that asking yourself proper questions leads to better discovery. For example, ask yourself “Why am I feeling this? What exactly is the basic need or desire which is giving rise to this feeling?” You have chances of getting a proper answers which help in the overall process of accepting. Form the proper questions and do not ask yourselves things which can only be answered by another person. Every thought, every feeling and every want stems from you and no other person is responsible. They are in you because you have given them the permission to be, either consciously or unconsciously. So stick to yourself only when you are dealing with things like accepting and letting go.