Transforming Loneliness into Golden
Solitude
Loneliness has the potential to be
transformed into meaningful solitude. When lonely, you might experience
yourself as empty and void of vitality. You might long for someone to come into
your life and save you from the isolation that people often feel with
loneliness. This is why many people get into unhealthy relationships as a
desperate way to not feel alone. The pain of being alone can cause you to have
superficial ties to others and can put you at risk of becoming needy and
clinging. You might also try to get rid of your lonely feeling with activities
like excessive drinking, drug use, overeating, and overspending. Even though
our extroverted culture encourages you to get rid of your lonely feeling with
superficial activities, you can pay attention to your experience of loneliness
with the intention of growing from it.
When you feel lonely, it’s important
not to judge or compare yourself to others who seem happier. How you define
your experience of being by yourself can impact how you feel about it. For
example, if you think being alone means you are not a lovable person then
loneliness can feel like a humiliating experience. Having shame for being alone
can only make you feel worse. It is important to embrace loneliness as part of
life and not personalize it as a shaming experience. Having compassion and
empathy for our life’s challenges is an important step toward understanding
them and eventually transforming loneliness to solitude.
To do this, it helps to get support
from a friend or guide who is mature and experienced in mining the gold found
in solitude. Sometimes loneliness can feel like being lost, and having a guide
to help you start the journey towards solitude is important. This journey can
include working with your inner child, journaling, dream work, and active
imagination. It can also involve spiritual practices such as mediation.
Loneliness can be difficult to tolerate
when you don’t have a conscious relationship with yourself. Sometimes
loneliness can feel as though a small child is crying within you and in need of
holding. If you have not cultivated self-compassion, you can’t take care of
your lonely inner child, the child you once were which continues to live in
your adult body. You might have felt lonely and abandoned growing up.
Consciously connecting with these childhood experiences of loneliness and
abandonment, and making emotional discoveries about them, are part of the
healing process. Your inner child can be helped to feel safe. The key is
consistency; you need to take time and reach out to your inner child. You can
do this by meditating on the image of holding and loving the child you once
were. This loving image can have a profound healing effect on your experience
of loneliness and can strengthen your capacity to experience solitude. It can
also help you to cultivate self-compassion. Getting in touch with painful,
repressed feelings is a very intense process and should be done with the help
of a psychotherapist or other knowledgeable guide.
You can examine your loneliness through
journal writing. By writing about loneliness while you are experiencing it in
the moment, you can bring consciousness to it. Writing in a journal can help
you organize the contents of your mind and avoid keeping things inside. You can
put your lonely experience in perspective and gain more clarity when you write
about it. The writing needs to be done with an attitude of caring and
compassion. Blaming and criticizing yourself or others for being alone is not
going to help you to grow from the writing experience. With patience, the light
of consciousness during the writing process eventually transforms your
loneliness to a more meaningful experience.
Psychological inner work such as dream
work can help you to open yourself up to messages from the unconscious. Through
writing your dreams in a dream journal and making efforts to understand them,
you can have a profound experience honoring your unconscious. Dream work can
deepen your relationship with yourself. Knowing yourself can help you to become
your own caring friend, which reduces loneliness. One of the Sufi poets who
have inspired me to pay attention to my dreams is Rumi. In his poems on dreams,
Rumi encourages us to pay attention to wonders that manifest in sleep.
Working with the power of the active
imagination can transform loneliness. This technique can help you imagine and
explore your inner world. You can dialogue with different parts of yourself
including your lonely self. Showing curiosity toward this lonely self, and
having a dialogue with it through active imagination, are important steps to
reduce the feeling of isolation and create solitude. To learn more about active
imagination, I recommend a wonderful book, “Inner Work,” by Robert A. Johnson.
Adding a spiritual perspective can move
you to a new and higher level. It is like climbing a hill and being able to see
the whole countryside. Each of us can find a spiritual path and spiritual
practices that feel right.
One of the spiritual practices that I
am familiar with is meditation. Meditation can change your loneliness and
become a doorway to a sacred place in your heart. In this sacred place is a
window that opens up to a field with light and intoxicating fragrance. This
intoxication is a divine experience that words often cannot describe it.
During meditation you can be aware of
your breath. Each breath can connect you more deeply to your higher Self. You
have the potential to be a spiritual purifier by the quality of your breath.
Through this practice, your loving thoughts, feelings, imagination, and actions
can impact the universe.
The psychological and spiritual work
you do can help you grow bigger than the painful experiences of loneliness. Working
on yourself can help you enter a vast space of solitude where you can be part
of the community of people who are consciously alone for the purpose of
enlightenment. Spiritual practice such as meditation can add sweet fragrance to
your experience of solitude.
Just like an alchemist, you can turn
something like loneliness to something more like solitude. Psychological work
and spiritual practice are the fire needed to transform the lead of painful
loneliness to golden solitude. What deep and lasting contentment you can find
in your life as you enter nourishing solitude.
© Dr. Payam Ghassemlou MFT, Ph.D. is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (Psychotherapist), in private practice in West Hollywood, California. www.DrPayam.com
