The Reality Slap by Russ Harris

Author:Russ Harris
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781780335483
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Loneliness

Loneliness is another very common reality gap. However, it’s important to recognise that loneliness is not the same as ‘being alone’. You have probably had the experience (at least occasionally) of being alone and actually enjoying your solitude. Loneliness is, at its core, a state of disconnection: a turning away from reality, rather than engaging with it. And this dis -connection can happen even while we’re in the midst of social interaction; thus the common saying: ‘I was so lonely in that relationship.’ It can also exhibit itself as the unpleasant sense of disconnection we all experience when someone is with us physically, but they’re ‘not really present’.

In this state of disconnection, unpleasant thoughts and feelings arise and we tend to call this experience ‘loneliness’. The thoughts convey the idea that our reality here and now is not good enough: ‘I wish someone else was here’, or ‘I wish I was somewhere else’. As for the feelings, they are usually a mixture of sadness, longing and anxiety, sometimes mixed with frustration or resentment.

When we look at loneliness this way, we can see that defusing from our thoughts and making room for our feelings is part of the answer, but not the whole of it. Our loneliness is both a signal that we’re disconnected and a reminder that we value connection. After all, if we didn’t value connection, we wouldn’t feel lonely, right? So the other part of the answer is to actively cultivate connection.

Now we could cultivate connection with other people, but that might not be possible, or we may choose not to. So if we can’t or won’t cultivate that connection with others, we can cultivate it with ourselves, through self-compassion. We can also create that connection with nature, our work, our hobbies, our sport, our religion, our art, or anything else that meets these two conditions:

a) it is available to us in this moment, and

b) it matters to us in some way.

To connect with these things, we take action: we start doing some form of activity that plays a role in this domain of our life. We give that activity our full attention and step out of our thoughts and engage 100 per cent in what we are doing.

Often as we do this, we become so absorbed in the activity that those lonely thoughts and feelings disappear. However, when this happens, it’s a bonus; not the main aim. Our aim is to lead a life based on presence and purpose, not to try to get rid of unpleasant feelings. So if those thoughts and feelings don’t disappear, it’s really not a problem; provided we respond with expansion and defusion, they can’t stop us from having a life-enhancing connection with something important.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.