Antidotes to Loneliness

Building a "House of Belonging" Brick by Brick

Have you ever been lying next to someone you love, or among a group of friends, and paradoxically felt a heartbreaking loneliness?

I used to experience crippling bouts of loneliness in my 20s, walking through crowds of vibrant people, feeling as if my insides were decaying.

Back then, I mistakenly projected this void onto finding a partner, attributing my periods of misery to my single status. With hindsight, it is obvious that my relationship status had nothing to do with my discontent and clear that outsourcing my self-worth was a recipe for suffering.

Yet, these truths were obscured by the shadows of internalizing toxic social conditioning and gender norms, practically from birth, telling me that my worth as a human being was directly linked to having a heteronormative romantic partner, with marriage as the ultimate goal. (I mean, we played the card game Old Maid growing up, ffs!)

Relationships brought me band-aids of affection, but the loneliness was still there, lurking below the surface.

When I was alone, I often felt the pangs of loneliness most intensely. I looked outward for relief, mistakenly viewing being alone as the enemy, and thinking my single status fueled my loneliness and malaise. I tried to avoid and ignore those emotional gremlins by distracting and numbing, leaving unattended the deeper wounding that created the sense of loneliness in the first place—a disconnect from my own self.

The truth is that the love of a romantic partner, while potentially a powerful and positive force, is not tantamount to healthy self-love and self-esteem. Projecting all of our hopes, dreams, and needs onto an—often idealized—romantic partner is a Disney recipe for co-dependency!

Seeking our value or self-worth through extrinsic validation (jobs, people, things) only breeds loneliness and disappointment, because we are tethering our well-being to something external, often diluting our own truths and needs in the process. External validation is also fickle—like the football Lucy holds, elusive to Charlie Brown’s kick.

Similarly, defining ourselves through our relationship status is like chasing a mirage when we're thirsty, as opposed to just pouring ourselves a glass of water within our reach.

We all have within us everything we need to nurture an abundance of love from within and to feel deeply loved. As Anne Lamott eloquently explains, self-love is an “inside job.”

There is almost nothing outside you that will help in any kind of lasting way, unless you are waiting for a donor organ. You can’t buy, achieve, or date serenity. Peace of mind is an inside job, unrelated to fame, fortune, or whether your partner loves you.
― Anne Lamott, Almost Everything: Notes on Hope

The antidote to loneliness, therefore, lies not in any external source, but through going inward and embracing our true self, our essence, our soul. The path to healing loneliness is a homeward journey built brick by brick, to reach what David Whyte elegantly refers to as a House of Belonging (see poem in full below).

When we shed the masks, the pretenses, the shoulds, the inner critic, the feeling inadequate, and the self-loathing—replacing them with compassion, kindness, and love for oneself—we heal the disease, the parts of us that feel broken and lonely, and the symptoms of loneliness fade.

This is because the gift of being human is to love and be loved. At our core, we are love generators, with the potential to receive and give love abundantly.

Yet, we begin to weave barriers to this source of love from an early age as a survival response to wounding, trauma, and social conditioning, which form stories within us of all the ways we are not worthy, not enough, or undeserving of love. We then entertain unhealthy relationships that perpetuate the myth of being unloveable or unworthy through self-fulfilling prophecies. We live half-awakened lives, denying our needs, desires, and dreams, for we carry a story that we are undeserving or “too much.” We place all of our efforts on pleasing others, to the expense of our own self, sucking our lifeforce out of us. We abandon ourselves and speak mistruths in our misguided efforts to seek love and approval from others. Being disconnected from our true selves creates a rupture in living out of alignment with our values and integrity.

When we delve inward and heal the wounding of not enoughness, our light of love becomes luminous. Our hearts bloom and our ability to love grows. Our own suffering decreases, while we feel the suffering of others more intensely. We come to understand that our big, beautiful, tender hearts are a gift in a world that seeks to numb and distract us from our feelings. We allow ourselves to feel the currents of our heart more acutely, as if our heart could burst with joy and shatter in grief. We create ripple effects of healing through our awakened hearts, our gateway to our higher self, to our ancestral wisdom, to the collective consciousness of our quilt of humanity. The language of our hearts, our emotions—pure and powerful—are never the issue, but rather, it is our reactions to our emotions that can get tricky at times. Ultimately, building a sense of respect, trust, compassion, and love in oneself is the true gateway to freedom, confidence, inner peace, and connection.

Embracing self-love is also a threshold to accessing our spiritual gifts, and the awareness that we are a part of something bigger than ourselves, along with a richer perspective on the meaning of life and sense of our purpose on this spinning blue dot amidst infinite galaxies.

As we shed the barriers to love from within, both our self-love and our capacity to love others expands. That is, stepping into self-love paves the way for healthy love with others in all of its beautiful forms—friendship, familial, romantic, agape, and more. For when we heal our shame, meet our shadows with compassion, and embrace all of the facets of who we are with love, we are able to do the same with others. Otherwise, we project our criticisms, defenses, and fears on to others, minimizing our ablity to accept another’s heart fully, keeping them at a distance.

You see, we need both deep connections with others and with our own self. Humans are wired for connection, belonging is a primary need, and intimacy boosts our well-being. Embracing our relationship to our own self isn’t mutually exclusive with being with others. Rather, it’s a complementary dance of deepening our relationship with our own self while cultivating relationships with others.

Vulnerability is a foundation to forming human connections, and the only way we can courageously step into vulnerability, risking heartbreak and disappointment, is if we dare to embrace and revel in our stories, our pains, our joys, and our triumphs.

There are tragically increasing barriers to forging connections with others. Our culture is hyper-individualistic, and the rise of social media, screen time, streaming, and devices, is eroding our foundation for forming true connections. We used to write letters, pages long, corresponding for years with our friends and family. These heartfelt letters were replaced by emails, which initially resembled letters in length and depth, and then became reduced to snippets. Texting then usurped emails as a way to stay in touch. We’re now communicating by soundbites, missing opportunities to form closer and lasting relationships. We also used to live in intergenerational family structures, now replaced by nuclear family homes scattered many miles apart.

The invitation is to seek out communities that resonate, and intentionally deepen relationships with others, as we befriend our own self. Belonging is a double-sided key—to ourselves and to others.

Self-love is a mindset and a practice. We can think of it as a muscle that gets stronger over time or as planting seeds that bloom into a flourishing garden. Reclaiming our voice, our truths, our dreams, and our desires is a pathway towards falling in love with our lives and ultimately with our own selves. When we live a life aligned with our values and integrity, and treat our own self with the utmost care, respect, and kindness, we model to ourselves that we matter, and we set the bar very high—we do not accept anything less from anyone in our lives. We become a queen guarding a castle, only allowing down the drawbridge for those who are worthy of our time, energy, and resources.

Solitude is sacred in this journey homeward. There is a difference between being alone versus being lonely. It is in stillness and quiet that we access the buried treasures within us—our creativity, our intuition, our whispers dreaming up a better life. It is how we integrate our minds with our hearts and process emotional undercurrents that may be keeping us stuck or in suffering. It is in solitude that we can best expand our capacity to be deeply present, to shed the egoic, busy, fearful thoughts typically swirling about. There is such freedom, and an invitation to truly know oneself, in the depths of quiet and peace.

If I were to write a letter to my younger self about the many ways to enhance self-love as a practice, I would tell her:

• Your relationship with your own self is the most sacred relationship of this lifetime. Do not walk, run towards all that is holy within.

• Build a life you love, and you will fall head over heels for the experience of living it fully, authentically, presently, passionately.

• Being alone does not equate to loneliness. Befriend solitude, especially time in nature.

• Travel solo! Each day will unfold like a gift, expanding your senses, state of wonder, and your imagination.

• The next time you hear a love song, instead of thinking of an ex or partner or lamenting being single, turn the words inward. Direct the lyrics to yourself. You are your own greatest love story.

• Cultivate a garden of community. Surround yourself with people who you can be your quirky, authentic, creative, true, authentic self around. Do not wear masks or pretend to be someone you are not.

• Spend time at dog parks—witnessing dogs’ unbridled bliss will remind you of your capacity for joy. Joy is our birthright and our resistance.

• Seek out moral beauty, where human kindness shines through, and your connection to humanity is restored.

• Take yourself to concerts, museums, and on other artist dates.

• Become mindful of critical thoughts and change that narrative to kindness; talk to yourself as you would speak to a beloved.

• Do the things that light you up, whether it be creative endeavors, fitness, or other hobbies. Look to your childhood for clues. Embrace a beginner’s mindset and shed perfectionism.

• Journal, meditate, and see an Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapist to heal deeper wounds. Meet all facets of yourself with compassion.

• Treat yourself to indulgences that you would gift to a partner—buy yourself flowers, a massage, a nice dinner out.

• Speak your truths, even if it scares you; model to yourself that your voice is important.

• Become a boundaries badass—boundaries are our superpowers.

• Align your actions with your words. Integrity is your north star.

• If you make mistakes, be kind, trusting you did the best you could with what you knew; learn from mistakes.

• Celebrate your successes—big and small—and embrace the art of receiving compliments with gratitude.

• Ask for what you need from others. Having needs does not make you “needy.”

• Seize moments of desiring external validation as opportunities to flip the script and self-validate instead.

• Honor your intuition. Listen to your inner voice. Trust your gut.

• As you shed things that no longer serve you and bolster your sense of self, your loneliness will recede, and you will find a sense of home within yourself.

I am convinced that what we call loneliness is rooted in a disconnect from our own heart and spirit, for when we embody self-love, our baseline is buoyant, radiating a sense of feeling deeply at home in oneself and connected to others. Through this, we attract and surround ourselves with a loving and safe circle of community.

I sometimes imagine a world where children are raised to cultivate healthy self-love as the greatest love of all, where princesses rescue themselves knowing they have infinite strength and power, instead of expecting a knight in shining armor to appear. We are truly the ones we have been waiting for.

The House of Belonging

Written by David Whyte

I awoke
 this morning
 in the gold light
 turning this way
 and that

thinking for
 a moment
 it was one
 day
 like any other.

But
 the veil had gone
 from my
 darkened heart
 and
 I thought

it must have been the quiet
 candlelight
 that filled my room,

it must have been
 the first
 easy rhythm
 with which I breathed
 myself to sleep,

it must have been
 the prayer I said
 speaking to the otherness
 of the night.

And
 I thought
 this is the good day
 you could
 meet your love,

this is the gray day
 someone close
 to you could die.

This is the day
 you realize
 how easily the thread
 is broken
 between this world
 and the next

and I found myself
 sitting up
 in the quiet pathway
 of light,

the tawny
 close grained cedar
 burning round
 me like fire
 and all the angels of this housely
 heaven ascending
 through the first
 roof of light
 the sun has made.

This is the bright home
 in which I live,
 this is where
 I ask
 my friends
 to come,
 this is where I want
 to love all the things
 it has taken me so long
 to learn to love.

This is the temple
 of my adult aloneness
 and I belong
 to that aloneness
 as I belong to my life.

There is no house
 like the house of belonging.

Illustrations by Majali, Lonely island - Etsy shop