Being Alone

Loneliness comes from feeling disconnected from the emotional support of friends and loved ones. In the modern world, the number of people who say they are lonely is rising sharply, leading some observers to call it an epidemic. Despite technology making it easier than ever to connect with people all around the world, it is ironic that never have so many people been so lonely. Being Alone can help you or someone you know to transform the negative experience of being alone to a positive one of enjoying your own company or that of others. If you already enjoy solitude, Being Alone can show you the deeper dimensions of solitude. Feeling lonely is an unavoidable fact of life, one cannot avoid it entirely. Other times we are alone because we choose to be. If you are lonely and want to know how to feel better about it, Being Alone can show you how. Being Alone takes a holistic approach based on evolutionary psychology to the treatment of loneliness. It goes way beyond the standard advice of "get out more" and "join community groups". This ground has been well covered already. Instead, we help you to understand the underlying nature of loneliness and what you can do about it today. The Basics: There is a dynamic tension within us all, created by the opposing needs for solitude and social contact. The degree of pull that each exerts will vary over time. Sometimes the pull from each end is about equal and we feel the balance OK. And sometimes we want to be alone when we have company and other times alone and craving company. We cannot change this aspect of human nature. It is hard-wired into us at the most basic level. But we can develop certain cognitive strategies to help us work constructively with the varying desires for solitude and company. Loneliness and solitude - two words separated by a gaping chasm. In solitude you experience an aspect of your inner life that you find enjoyable; introspection leading to personal growth. Loneliness is outward looking and focused on what you don't have. It is like being hungry and craving food. It can feel like the problem is out of your control because it requires other people to remedy it. A good approach to dealing with loneliness is to regain control of your thinking, of what is going on in your own head-space. It is to realize that what happens in your head is really the only thing that you truly do have control over. What happens out in the world, the way people think and act, is not really controllable, although we can exert some influence. An excellent place to start is to realize the universal truth that there are those things in life that we can control, and those that we cannot. For example, we can control our opinions, our activities, our likes and dislikes and so on. And that includes what we think about being alone. By their nature, the things we can control are free because they are subject to our will. Those things not under our control are constrained by the will of others and so they are not free. If you try to control those things, you are likely to become frustrated and perhaps angry. The experience might even cause you to lose faith in what is good. But if you focus on your own affairs and stick to that which you know is yours, then no-one will have a problem with you. You will not be inclined to find fault with others nor accuse them of wrong-doing. You will have no enemies, and no one will seek to harm you. All of that through minding your own business.