Soledad: The fear of being alone and the path of disagreement with oneself

“Do not be afraid of loneliness. Be afraid to live fooling yourself, looking at reality as you would like it to be and not as it really is. ”

Paulo Coelho.

Loneliness, the great enemy. The silence, the fear, the anxiety.

We are social beings since the beginning of the history of man. We have the instinct to belong to a group to survive. We also have the habit of learning about ourselves by observing ourselves in the eyes of others.

We need the other, that is a reality. However, that does not mean that it is normal to rely on the emotional dependence of being among others to feel that all is well.

In addition, it can lead us to make decisions or take actions that harm us.

What secrets are hidden in silence?

Everyone repeats that being alone for a moment can bring us many benefits. And at least, we know that being alone cannot cause us any physical harm. However, we run away from loneliness . It terrifies us.

We have not been educated in the practice of knowing ourselves, and we are scared of what we may find inside . This common fear, known in psychology as autophobia, may be the key to the explanation of our discomfort.

In any case, loneliness is also presented to us as the possibility of spending quality time with ourselves. Reaching inner peace has to do with this, and it is a very interesting way of overcoming.

What is emotional loneliness

Mainly, we should consider what loneliness is .

For this anguish that generates us does not necessarily occur in relation to physical isolation. In other words, it is not an objective loneliness . It is a subjective loneliness, a psychological isolation, interior. It does not have to do directly with the fact of being or not surrounded by people. It consists in any case, in a mental state, an attitude towards life.

This is why it is called emotional loneliness . Because we feel alone, even if we are not. Although there are more and more people in the world. This emotional loneliness does not vary then with what happens in the outside world. Always remain inside us waiting for silence to be noticed. It slowly leads us to sentimental isolation, which makes it a vicious circle. Feeling alone leads us to isolate ourselves, which in turn fuels this feeling of loneliness .

In this way we run the risk of curling into a mechanism that is self-supporting, that feeds back and at the same time undermines our balance from the root. We are faced with our incompleteness, our lack, our imbalance. Something we are reluctant to face.

In this way, we resort to a defense mechanism that is older than loneliness itself: escape .

We run for our lives. And when we notice that we cannot hide from ourselves, panic spreads. We are helpless . It is fear, in its purest expression.

Does it make sense to be afraid without knowing exactly what is feared?

What is the fear of being alone

Living is hard.

As we grow older we become more sensitive to suffering. Our interpersonal relationships change meaning, as we also begin to identify ourselves from the people with whom we move.

In addition to this, there is a paradigm in the world that life must be beautiful . We must fulfill our dreams, have vacations, a beautiful family, a house, a dog. We have to be protagonists of a story that is worth telling others.

But many times, life is far from our expectations . We all suffer, to a greater or lesser extent. We are all presented with experiences that surpass us, that bend us.

If a person assures them that he has never suffered anything in his life, he lies to them.

This is part of our essence: we are imperfect and incomplete beings, with defects and insecurities. And with an intrinsic search oriented to what completes us.

That search, poorly focused, can cause us to project what we lack in money, in fame, in power. In the same way you can get us to convince ourselves that another person or group of people completes us.

The fear of being alone is no more than a reflection of how lacking we are. Of our imperfection, that our life is not a fairy tale . That we have anxieties, fears and frustrations, that sometimes we make bad decisions.

While we fill our lack with things from a sensitive world that is dynamic and changing, so will our state.

How to overcome the fear of being alone

So, this fear that solitude causes us has to do with not admitting who we really are, with refusing to accept reality. If nothing outside of us has the power to fill that void we have inside, it's time to check the inside.

Ironically, a fundamental requirement for introspection is to achieve a state of loneliness . Face yourself . Stop refusing to listen to what we have hidden for so long. Fight that battle.

We must stop covering the void, and see it in the face. Admit and accept imperfect. It is not bad to feel sadness, it is not bad to feel fear, or anguish, or frustration. These feelings are just another kind of information about ourselves . What do they tell us?

If you feel sad, do it. Accept the sadness and learn from it. Recognize it as part of life and you.

We have a bad habit of wanting to overcome fear without facing it. The bad news is that it doesn't work that way. It's like wanting to be a swimmer without getting into the water.

To reach a goal we have to travel a path that leads to it. With patience, effort and discipline . And this serves any goal we have in life.

"Know yourself"

They lied to you: life is not rosy . Never was.

But even so, we have the privilege of witnessing the universe in its magnitude. Of the forces that govern the world and us, and be part of them. We have the ability to know and love, and that is no small matter. As a starting point, we can start by knowing and loving ourselves.

In the pronaos of the Temple of Apollo in Delphi, in ancient Greece, the Greek aphorism "Know yourself" was inscribed. This law, as you can see, is nothing new.

Perhaps knowing each other in depth we realize that we were always complete . That there is nothing in the outside world that can empower us, but we have that capacity as well.

Learning to live also implies learning to cope with sadness, frustration, anger, the anguish that life brings you at times. To heal is to stop denying them the entrance to those sensations and to embrace them.

The change starts inside.

With yourself. Lonely.

Well, facing fears is that you get to know them, and nobody fears what they really know.

AUTHOR: Lucas, editor in the big family of hermandadblanca.org

SOURCES:

• https://mejorconsalud.com/reconciliate-la-soledad/
• http://www.doctissimo.com/ar/bienestar/psicologia/relaciones-sociales/tipos-de-soledad
• https://www.tuestima.com/enfrentar-la-soledad-emocional-vencer/