Thursday, September 18, 2014
When I wrote last week's free think post, The Science Of Loneliness, I didn't plan for it to be a two-part series. But my sister-in-law made a comment on the piece that made me think more about loneliness. In short, she offered two solutions: The first, "you are responsible for connecting yourself" and the second, "you have to be your own best friend."
Initally, I looked at these two nuggets as mutually exclusive -you either subscribe to the first school of thought or the second. But, the deeper I thought about things, the more I realized they go hand-in-hand.
I'm going to back into how I came to this conclusion by expanding on my theory of what causes loneliness.
Originally I stated that it's a disconnect. But what causes this disconnect?? I believe it can have three sources:
1.) You legitimately do not to care about people or causes outside of yourself - I'm not going to focus too much on this group because it often goes hand-in-hand with immaturity. Really the solution for this is just to grow up.
2.) You're out in the world but choose or pretend not to care about people or causes outside of yourself - this is far more likely because people use it defensively to protect themselves from being hurt.
3.) You purposefully isolate yourself from the world - although common, a smaller number of people inhabit this group. These individuals are highly empathetic and experience emotions, especially pain, on a deep level. As a result, they build up walls around themselves for the same reason as the individuals in the second category, to protect themselves from being hurt.
Initally, I looked at these two nuggets as mutually exclusive -you either subscribe to the first school of thought or the second. But, the deeper I thought about things, the more I realized they go hand-in-hand.
I'm going to back into how I came to this conclusion by expanding on my theory of what causes loneliness.
Originally I stated that it's a disconnect. But what causes this disconnect?? I believe it can have three sources:
1.) You legitimately do not to care about people or causes outside of yourself - I'm not going to focus too much on this group because it often goes hand-in-hand with immaturity. Really the solution for this is just to grow up.
2.) You're out in the world but choose or pretend not to care about people or causes outside of yourself - this is far more likely because people use it defensively to protect themselves from being hurt.
3.) You purposefully isolate yourself from the world - although common, a smaller number of people inhabit this group. These individuals are highly empathetic and experience emotions, especially pain, on a deep level. As a result, they build up walls around themselves for the same reason as the individuals in the second category, to protect themselves from being hurt.
To quote my recent tweet,
So many people in the world and so many are lonely for fear of being hurt. - @midnytebloom June 7, 2014
Regardless of what type of walls you build, once they go up, they not only disconnect you from the bad in the world, they also sever you from the good. And once you allow negativity to impact you this way, your light dims and you're not able to connect with yourself.
I'm finally to my point. Last week's post was the first step to reversing feelings of loneliness - if the last effect in feeling alienated was not being able to connect with yourself, then the first step on the road to reconnecting is re-developing that relationship with yourelf. Do this by exploring and expanding on the things that made you who you are, love that person and be your own best friend. But expand on this, the purpose of this blog is to look at how we can contribute to the larger journey. So in the spirit of collective positivity, and in the words of another of my tweets:
Let's stop this cycle of hurt or be hurt. - @midnytebloom September 4, 2014
Let's do this so we can all go back to being connected.
~ With ♥ from Halima
In part one of this series, I asked what you've done to connect with yourself recently. This time I want to know what you've done to connect with someone else today??
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