God created us to relate with people. We always have people around us. So why do we still feel lonely? How can we deal with loneliness?
Disclaimer: most of the points I talked about are from this video from YouTube “The REAL Reason You Feel Alone”. Click here to watch the video, it’s very eye opening on how to deal with loneliness.
Deal with loneliness is not easy. Loneliness in itself is not something easy to talk about, but I think is necessary because this is a wound that it needs to heal.
Dealing with loneliness was one of my biggest problems during adolescence. I cried to sleep for many nights. Inside I still remember the void that I had in my heart and I remember how much it hurt. I don’t want to complain about my past. People in my life loved me and cared about me. But that feeling of loneliness never left me, it was ready to overwhelm me.
I don’t member when all the bad feelings started, I don’t know the first time I started to feel lonely. One thing I know is that anytime I felt broken I wrote my feelings down. I always hoped that someone would read my notes and rescue me. For many years I soaked my pillows with my tears, I hugged them to fulfill the emptiness that I had inside.
For a long period I thought there was no salvation for me, I almost gave everything up. I thought I was too lost to be found, but I never realized that I was never alone.
The times when I “talked” to myself, someone else was there listening to me – it might sound crazy but God was there with me. When I thought nobody was by my side He did. When I felt lost and lonely, He cared about me.
Feeling lonely doesn’t mean that you are alone. It’s completely normal to feel down and alone sometimes. It’s normal because we are humans with feelings.
As I said before, when you feel lonely you are not really alone because God is always next to you. If He showed up in my life He can do the same in yours, you just need to invite Him. Jesus will never leave you behind because He has your back, He supports you even when your situation seems hopeless.
Why do we feel so lonely, especially in the teenage years?
During these crucial years you might lose important people – people might reject you. When all these events happen, you feel like nobody wants you, you feel like left out.
Feeling alone in these years is pretty normal even if it hurts. It’s normal because you are constantly searching yourself, and sometimes you don’t fit in other people’s lives or other people don’t fit in yours. Feeling like that is okay because we were created to interact with each other, and when this interaction doesn’t happen it seems that something is missing in us. It’s normal to feel lonely because, as I said before, we are human beings and we have feelings.
Instead what is not normal is to recognize your situation and decide not to do anything to overcome the situation. It’s not normal to know what hurts you and yet you don’t make the next step.
Now I want to tell you about the 4 steps that you can take if you want to deal with loneliness.
1. You have to stop focusing only on yourself
When you put your focus on your life then you will feel lonely. You will be lonely when you only see what you don’t have.You need to stop putting yourself in the center, because when you put your focus on what really matters, like the mission of your life, you won’t feel lonely anymore. When you put your love towards someone or something at the first place, your hearts will be fulfilled and there will be no room for any bad feelings.
2. You need to start loving who you are
You feel lonely because you didn’t learn how to stay with yourself yet. If you don’t like who you are then you won’t know how to stay alone with yourself. There are many things that you think you need to change. Yet you didn’t accept who you are.
You need to learn to love yourself if you want peace when you are “alone”. You need to appreciate who you are right now and encourage yourself every day. It’s really important that you accept what you have and be happy about your blessings. When you put your focus on what you don’t have, you are leaving a room in your heart/life for something bad.
3. You don’t need any other people to complete you
You have to acknowledge that no person can fill that void that you feel at times. Understand now that you don’t depend on other people, you can’t complete yourself with someone else. God is the only one who can fulfill the emptiness in you, you can’t pretend that someone else would do it.
What this world taught us is that we can’t feel complete if we don’t have that other person in our lives. What the world taught us is so wrong – if you feel unfulfilled with yourself then you will never feel fulfilled with someone. You really need to learn who you are and try to complete yourself with the help of the Holy Spirit, there you’ll find real happiness and real peace. “You can not be lonely if you like the person you are alone with” (Dr. Wayne Dyer).
4. You need time of loneliness sometimes
I know that before I said that we need to interact with other people in our lives because that’s how God created us. But there will be times when you need to be with yourself, you need time to be lonely.
In times when you are alone with yourself, you learn more about who you are. You can reflect about your life and your projects. You need time to be lonely because you need to understand your person and by doing so you can grow.
What can we do to deal with loneliness then?
The only way to deal with loneliness and overcome it is to stop focusing on yourself. You need to start to think about those who are in need. It might be crazy but you can heal your brokenness by helping other people who are broken too.
If you feel lonely go and make the first step, you need to talk about it. I felt lonely for a long time and I thought nobody cared, but what I didn’t realize is that they didn’t know about my feelings. I never talked about it and nobody could help me. So don’t wait for someone to rescue you; instead make the first move to rescue yourself.
Be always grateful for what you have. Stop complaining about what you don’t have. Like after every storm there’s always a sun. I’m sure that also in between your wounds there is something or someone great in your life.
