With everything in life; it is important we know so we can work on it. Awareness is power.
The aforementioned are lists that stands between us and connecting with people which in turn feeds loneliness.
1. Your relationship with yourself: yes. I am talking about self love. Getting to know your needs. Getting to know what makes you happy and doesn’t. What makes you come alive. Your fears. Your triggers. The quality of the relationship you have with others might be said to be dependent on the quality of relationship you have with yourself.
Do you respect yourself and your needs? Are you even aware of it? What sorts of thoughts do you often have? Are they often negative? Do you fully accept yourself? This will enable you to take yourself out of relationships that are not meaningful. Relationships that does not align with who you are.
2. Quality of relationships: a lot of us have friends or as the joke goes we have a lot of acquaintances but we call them friends because we don’t really know how to spell or pronounce acquaintances.
But really think about this, can you share your innermost thoughts with your friends?
Can you share your most shameful thoughts?
Or your childhood traumas or fears?
just deep deep stuff with your friends
both the positive and negative sides of your life
and not just that do you feel safe sharing those things? Do you fear you might be judged?
Does the majority of your talk with your friends revolve around superficial things or events?
if you did something you perceive to be shameful do you trust that you can tell your friends about it without feeling horrible after you shared it?
If the answer to all of these question is No then you might need to look into the quality of your friendships.
I am not advocating that you go around telling all your 1000 friends every bit of detail about you. But at least 1 or 2 out of the 1000 where you can safely express yourself without the possibility of being judged or made to feel ashamed afterwards
3. The hurt we are carrying from the past: I get it. You trusted someone in the past and they betrayed you
or did something awful and that has made you distrust every human being. I wish all human beings were bad too. Really so I at least know to stay clear of all of them. But nah there are actually a lot of good humans out there and understanding the people that hurt us, hurt people because they are hurt too helps in depersonalizing their actions
it does not mean you should put up with people’s excesses. Naah. It means when you notice something you are not comfortable with about a person; You distance yourself.
4. The Shame we carry: shame is a very tedious emotion to feel. It comes in between us and connecting with people. It reinforces the idea of unworthiness in us. “I am not good enough.” Shame tells us. But understanding that the people that really deserve to be in our lives ought to accept us as we are goes a long way. And if a person struggles with accepting a certain part of us then perhaps they should not have a prominent part in our lives.
Points of shame can be on perhaps class or intelligence or thoughts that we may have and you alienate yourself based on that. Again. It is centered around the thoughts of not being good enough
5. A competing based mindset: having a competing based mindset I think comes room an excessive need to compare yourself with others. Maybe this was a theme in your childhood of being compared with your siblings and so you took it onto adulthood. Try and be conscious of yourself when you compare yourself with others. It stops you from meaningfully connecting with them. Understand you are different and unique and there is no toher person like you. really.
BTW all the info on loneliness I have been sharing is majorly(partly from experience) from the course on loneliness offered by the personal development school(you can check out their videos on YouTube)
Which one resonates most with you?
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