Loneliness is a horrible feeling, especially if you’ve been abused while growing up. Isolation and the silent treatment were used as punishment by your parents to make you think about what you did. Since you weren’t experiencing real love, it felt like the most bone-crushing experience. As you grew older, you began to associate being alone with being an outcast and possibly death. Hence, you always needed to have someone around or be in a relationship with the opposite sex.

Experiencing loneliness

For those who were brave, rather than wallowing in their sorrows and becoming bitter while alone, they began to think and reflect on what was going on in their lives. They thought about the mistakes they’d made and forged on a path to take corrective action. But still, being alone and experiencing silence with your conscience felt wrong, as if it were something to be avoided. When the manipulation tactics, such as gaslighting, are added to the loneliness, you can’t even trust your own judgment. However, for your psyche to heal, it must be alone and able to freely communicate with you. Your next step would be to turn this loneliness into solitude.

Turning the page

To start taking steps toward solitude, the path to finding yourself must begin. This is a lonely road that few will ever travel. The first thing to do is accept yourself as you are with compassion. You will also need to be more selfish and make choices that benefit you as much as you make choices that benefit others. Doing this will start to peel away people from your life, but don’t let that worry you. The relationship you had with them was built on your disappearance. When you start to appear for yourself, you will begin to see the truth of who was really your friend and who accepted you for who you were.

Begin to sit with yourself and let your real feelings and thoughts surface. As you feel your being without judgment, allow your emotions to flow freely. Start examining all your relationships, honestly, starting with those closest to you. Feel where you’ve overextended youself for others and the same has not been done for you in return. Grieve these interactions and set the stage to begin observing relationships more. Start visualizing yourself responding more slowly and being more selfish in your interactions with them.

“It is a long, lonely road. But a road well worth the trip.”

After doing this for a while, start to observe the relationships in the real world. Notice where you automatically react (unconscious living) versus where you process what is being asked of you and respond. Observation plays a huge role in turning your loneliness into solitude.

Your Inner child

To really enjoy your alone time, you want to start your inner child healing. This is better done with a psychotherapist; however, it can also be done by speaking to your inner child and letting them know they are safe. It may help to find a photo that resembles the real you when you were younger. Speaking to your inner child and giving them the compassion and unconditional love they never received means you are never lonely when you are alone. You can converse with your inner child, or let it take over your body for a bit. It really is a joy to be with yourself and your inner child if you do the work correctly. 

Solitude bliss

Once you are comfortable being with yourself as you are without judgment, it will become easier to be away from others. While you are around people, you will realize you need space to be alone. This is where solitude starts to take shape. As you become more in tune with yourself, you will need time alone to process your day, especially if you experienced negative emotions. When alone, you can return to yourself without having to fend off incoming manipulation or be distracted by requests from others. At this point, you will be on solid ground in your healing journey.