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Overcoming Loneliness

The reason is that I am writing this book is to let people know that many people are lonely across the globe. I am one of the people that can talk about loneliness because I have been through it.

Feb 21, 2024  |   16 min read

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John Odebiri
Overcoming Loneliness
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The Reason Behind This Book

I welcome all my readers here!

If you ever think you are the only person on earth that is lonely, you may be wrong. I am one of the people that can talk about loneliness because I have been through it.

Love is supposed to be the best thing in life, and everyone says you have to be in love to know what it is, yet you do not need to be in love to fall deeply in love. And if you do have to be in love to know what love is, you’ve already lost it, and it’s already over. And yet love, love is never over. It’s just that it is no longer new.

I abandoned every gripping moment of loneliness and decided to move forward with life. I was all alone for some years as a result of disappointment, rejection, betrayal, and emptiness. I am used to this kind of feeling. I weep in silence in most cases, leaving my pillow soaked with tears all night, with no one to neither persuade nor stop me from weeping. I face the challenges I have before me in the daytime.

It doesn’t matter whether you have a husband or wife, boyfriend or girlfriend. Your closeness to them means nothing to them, there are some things they don’t understand about you and they won’t feel your pain. No matter how you tell your story not all people will understand you. If peradventure you confide in your counselor, group of friends, or even your best friend, none will be able to understand how you feel or feel your pain as well. It is you alone that can feel your pain.

  

The most important thing you need is to realize the role people played in your life at any point in time of your life.

I knew how you feel my dear friend because you are not alone in this.

But I have good news for everyone with lonely hearts out there. I have been through it and have successfully survived it. I have a way of solving it or reducing the pain to at least the barest minimum.

I wrote this book to be able to achieve a few things:

How to understand the perceptiveness behind loneliness to better understand yourself

 

How to understand and express the feelings attached to loneliness

 

Growing a healthy feeling of a new love that will make you defeat problems

The practical way to break the obstacle or cycle of loneliness

Overcoming loneliness with sweet and healthy thoughts

It is my sincere belief that after you have read this book, you will have a better understanding, of how to prepare yourself to manage and overcome loneliness. In other words, you might not feel lonely, but you may know a lonely person. Make use of the information in this book to encourage and help them better their lots and create a conducive environment, and make the world a better place for them to live.

All Alone

At a point in time, everyone in the world has an emotional feeling of loneliness. Firstly, we must understand what loneliness means.

Loneliness is a state of emotion in life. It is a stage where you get disconnected from people around you and have a feeling of emptiness, thereby making people around you a meaningless company. Everyone around you looks as of no use to you.

The study of communication is the study of relationships between people, or the study of the exchange of information between individuals. Communication is the process of conveying information from one person to another. This may be done via written or spoken means, such as email, social media, or a telephone call. The field of communication is often divided into three main branches; verbal, non-verbal, and textual.

They find it very hard to connect with others and experience emancipation from meaningful relationships.

This is different from being alone.

Being alone is not the same as being lonely. Sometimes it pays to be alone, as this might allow you to refresh your brain, rediscover and regain your life. Sometimes, when you are alone, you think more about the future and how to achieve your set goals. 

There are common factors to being alone, which I have highlighted in this book. I am sure you might have some of these factors too.

You might think you have a unique problem that no other people understand.

 

This has made you feel like you don’t have anyone as a friend, while other people have friends all over the world.

 

You feel you are alone in all the things you do.

 

You feel embarrassed whenever you do something wrong.

 

You feel completely overwhelmed by the voices of the crowd whenever you are in their midst.

 

You find it difficult to connect with people, even though you are among them.

 

Having a shy feeling and being afraid of other people.

 

You have low self-esteem within you.

 

Feeling angry, critical and defensive attitude 

 

Inability to initiate a conversation with strangers or known people around you.

Having a personal conviction within you that things are not right with you.

 

Having a miserable feeling about yourself, you are isolated. 

 

Having a continuous feeling that you will fail in everything you do.

 

Having negative and suicidal thoughts.

In The Mist Of Crowd, Still Alone

Have you ever had that feeling or thought that your husband or wife does not understand you? Your spouse or the people around you don’t have any meaning in filling the missing gap.

Even though you are blessed with lots of people around you, you feel insecure among people and you remain lonely.

A lot of people have such feelings because we all have individual differences in this life. I must tell you this:

There is no one in the whole world that God created to have the same feelings, ideas, personality, and needs. None, even twins, do things differently even though the same mother gave birth to them. Any human can cater for the needs of all individuals on earth? The answer is NO, except GOD alone!

There is a Bible quote that says “first remove the speck from your OWN eye, thereafter, you can then remove from your neighbor’s eye.”

How does this relevant?

This means that we must not rely on other people to help fulfill our needs; we should learn to be self-reliant and expect less from other people, as this reduces the pain we tend to go through.

When we stop expecting from people, we tend to do more on our own and achieve better results than when relying on or waiting for people to do it for us. By so doing, we will overcome loneliness.

Remember, we are part of the addition of the five people that we spend our quality time with daily. 

If you find yourself in a group of people with negative thoughts, it may affect your thinking and may weaken your spirit all the time, which will make you lonely. Bring yourself out of the group of people that usually poison your mind. You need to mingle with people that have positive thoughts, who will encourage you and lift your spirits.

Global emotional pains due to a lack of love

The ability to recognize emotions in one another is fundamental to human interactions. It is also crucial for the psychological and social well-being of individuals. Research has shown that, although most children can recognize emotions by the age of four, most adults fail to do so.

Happiness is a good name for the feeling of pleasure. The opposite of happiness is sadness, which is a good name for the feeling of pain. Emotional or mental pain is a form of pain. The pain is from the suffering of depression.

  

For me in the early years, all the emotional pain started with my mother's death. First, my mother died, and I lost my only source of comfort. Second, it was not expected.

I always feel sad whenever I think about the way I treated her. I feel relieved whenever I think about the way she treated me. I feel sad whenever I think about what she wanted me to do that I didn't like.

The agony of loneliness has found its way into the hearts of men and women globally. Even the men and women of thin and low caliber were not left out. Icons or successful business moguls around the world were part of the loneness group. 

Many of them were admired by millions of people across the globe, but deep inside of them, they were not happy because they were lonely. The majority of the celebrities we see around us today are not happy due to loneliness, and many of them feel unfulfilled because they lack love in their lives. 

The majority of what causes loneliness is just that we fail to love one another genuinely. Loneliness symptoms increase the pains, thereby making it impossible to pay more attention to ourselves, and that leads to self-engrossment that stands as an obstruction to loving other people.

Did you ever experience a stomachache? What are you thinking at that moment that causes that?

This shows that we only think about ourselves and nothing more. This indicates there is a dreadful pain in this world we live in.

Consequently, the pain will go away just like a normal stomachache. What we refer to as a mid-life crisis in the world today has gradually become a “young adult” crisis, making suicide rates get higher by the day, while some have turned out to be mentally induced while waiting to be cured in our psychiatric hospital wards.

The foundation of trust is being eroded between people and many are not opening up to one another any longer. Failure to open up to other people has increased the level of loneliness we have in our society today. You need to open up to others first and let other people open up to you too.

Love – The Content Word, Not The Feeling

If you love someone, if you want to be free from loneliness, but if you fail to love, it leads to loneliness in one’s heart. It is an unfortunate and scary fact to know that we are predominantly surrounded by people (it comprises one of the five groups of people we spend the most time with). They control our destiny with their hands.

We got to where we are today as a product of people who refused to love us or those who genuinely loved us.

Love is a product of life for some people. We must not forget the fact that you need to show love to someone but must first love yourself. What you have is what you can give others freely. In other words, you can't give someone what you don't have. 

You cannot love a handsome or beautiful girl. If you don’t genuinely love yourself, (there is a song that goes thus: I became somebody after I met you. I got a meaningful life when I met you.

You may look up to someone and cherish that person because he or she is pretty. You may adore him or her, thinking he or she is better. You may even wish to sacrifice your life for him or her to satisfy your selfish interest and self-pleasing pride. That doesn’t mean you love. It is a deception; you need to truly love yourself before you can love other people. 

Love is an action. It is a verb form. The true feeling of love is a substance of action or verb. By first loving yourself, it builds the foundation or base upon which you place your love for others, which is why it seems to be loving.

How do we then love ourselves if, indeed, we have never been in love? We will dig deep into this in the next chapter.

Learning the Way to Love

How do I take the first step to deal with loneliness? Learn to love. But first, we must examine the contradictions in love.

Whenever we are lonely, we feel like we are in an intolerable prison house. As a result of its nature, loneliness is more or less like a stomach ache — the attention is focused on us. During this period, we thrive to fill this vacuum by finding others who will show or give us the exact love we desire.

Sometimes people do lots of things for others to win their love. They exchange favors with each other, thinking they have found loving or caring people, but in the long run, they will fail them. The only thing that can cure our loneliness is for us to love others, and by so doing, other people’s love will fill our hearts genuinely.

The contradiction of love is this:

If we look for the emptiness of our loneliness in searching for love from other people, we will find no solace, but rather mysterious devastation. Otherwise stated, if we look for the love we need, we might not find it.

When a man prepares in a particular direction, such as satisfying his motive, and goes out to look for the love that he desires, he cares only about himself, irrespective of his pitiful situation. So far, he concentrates on himself; it will be difficult for him to love. 

How can we get over this?

If someone decides not to be loved but is willing to give love to others without attaching anything to it. 

We need to stop worrying about ourselves and start worrying about others. Starting mostly with an outcome in mind – focusing on the outcomes of the act of loving others without regard to self-gain – is the first step toward receiving affection and alleviating the pain of isolation.

Every human being on earth can love in some way

We also have the power to shift our energies away from ourselves and toward the interests and concerns of others. It is only to the degree that we are prepared to share that we will accept the same amount of love from others.

When we inquire of others, "Is there anything you have done for me?" "We struggled to love."

And if you can only love a little at first, you can be loved a little. The same love will allow you to develop and create more love, as well as obtain more love from others.

But keep in mind that for this self-donation or self-sacrifice to succeed, our thoughts must still be directed away from ourselves.

The Laws of Attraction

A man is what he thinks

Have you ever wondered why some people are greeted with a friendly, respectful "Good Morning, Sir," and others are greeted with "Hey Bud" or "Hey, Mac"?

Consider this for a moment.

Aside from a hundred billion dollars and a pair of skyscrapers, what is the difference between Donald Trump and a beggar?

 

The solution is the sludge inside your brain.

You see, how people respond to you is determined by how you perceive yourself. Why do you believe people judge a book by its cover or a poor character by the clothes he wears? I know it's irrational, but how a person feels in their heart determines how they appear or even live.

The Law of Attraction is not a modern concept; it is just the way things are. Murphy's Law demonstrates this: the stuff we least expect to happen to us always does, which is why a fallen buttered toast often lands on the bad side!

And as a child in kindergarten, I always prayed that if I saw someone sitting in class who didn't know how to respond to questions asked by the teacher, I usually said in my mind, "Don't choose me. Please, don't choose me, "and eventually the teacher did. The instructor had this mind-reading skill that knew I didn't know the solution or wasn't paying enough attention no matter where I was.

How much impact does this have on loneliness?

You will feel hurt if you are not wanted, and you will be ignored by your mates. In some cases, you will feel like a dripping unwanted dog that has just run away from the farm.

Speak to yourself, "You like my pleasant company, a lovely and desirable touch." It is a bitter truth that we don't all have to remind ourselves how we are cute, desirable, and that people like being around us.

However, since we have no say in what people think, this kind of validation simply tricks our minds into believing we are beautiful and lovable.

Give it a try and watch out for its results.

Practical Steps to Overcome Loneliness

There are many approaches to coping with depression, including the desire to form bonds, do something for yourself, or learn to feel better for yourself in general.

Tell yourself all the time that the feelings of isolation are temporary and that you will get over them.

 

Attempt to converse with a new person. It might be a bit difficult, but you need to build confidence, and the first move is normally the most difficult but most important.

 

Put yourself in new circumstances that will allow you to meet new people.

 

Meet up with folks who share your interests.

 

Don't pass judgment on new individuals based on previous interactions with old folks. Instead of being judgmental, try to see each individual you encounter from a different perspective.

 

Close friendships typically emerge over time as people are taught to express their inner thoughts and feelings. Don't hurry into a close friendship by providing too much information or expecting others to do so.

 

Don't just look for romantic partners. Friendships that are platonic or even casual can be immensely satisfying.

 

Never overlook the importance of adequate diet, exercise, and rest. The absence of those elements is one of the main causes of depression, which also leads to loneliness.

 

Spending quality time alone will allow you to reflect more deeply on yourself.

 

Don't ride your buddies. Somebody will always be there for you if you desire compassion and sympathy. However, if you go on and on about your difficulties, it becomes a bother, and your companions will do their best to entertain you.

 

Reminisce on happy times and acknowledge your blessings.

 

Try a new skill. You will be happy with yourself if you accomplish something.

If you've been depressed for a long time, it's not a bad idea to seek medical help. It's perfectly normal to be given a prescription because a lack of certain chemicals in the body can also cause depression and is easily treated. When we are hungry and seek food, the right medicine in the right dosage is the best method to combat depression and feel less lonely.

Consult a counselor and discuss your concerns in private.

Spend some time praying.

Stopping the Cycle of Destructive Behavior.

A word of warning, though:

Because you're lonely, do not even act like a superhero.

You will be amazingly surprised. Self-pity is a subtly proud state. People who are proud of their accomplishments are proud of their hardships, while those who are self-pitying are proud of their misery.

Because we are meant to have interactions with one another, it is quite dangerous to spend too much time alone.

It is an inextricably linked element of humanity that can also be eradicated. If you grew up alone in the jungle, you'll very certainly interact with living organisms and speak to them in your native tongue.

The largest concern is that if someone spends too much time alone, a few of these things can happen.

When their efforts to help the individual are rejected, the lonely addict rejects any attempts to reconnect, causing their loved ones a great deal of anguish.

People begin to neglect the lonely person, and they will feel more justified when they finally exclaim, "Look at them; all along I knew they didn't care about me at all."

Loneliness becomes part of life for some lonely people. He refuses to change because he is too lazy. His illness infected other's survivors.

That will be enough to get you to act. Don't put it off any longer; act now!

Here's a thought-provoking quote:

The first item that God's vision deemed unfit was loneliness.

Inside the Wilderness, We Find Our Mission

This is something I'm used to. Most of the time, I cry in silence, leaving my pillow soaked in tears all night, with no one to encourage or stop me from crying. I can't persuade myself not to cry, and I can't stop myself from crying. As the night progresses, I continue to cry, and my body hurts from being curled up in a ball on my bed with no one to console me or stop me from being alone. 

I am used to this sensation, but I discovered it didn't bring them closer; in fact, it frequently caused them agony. As a result, I learned to keep my emotions to myself. I cried quietly, and my pillow became a soother.

Here is another story to get you motivated. What gives us actual meaning and purpose when the inevitable happens and we've made all the money in the world, attained the pinnacle of fame, and attained the pinnacle of power?

To succeed, many living creatures rely on one another. You may have observed that a Colorado aspen tree doesn't always grow alone if you've seen one. Aspens are found in groves or clusters.

The reason for this is that the aspen roots put up new shoots. All of the trees in a tiny grove may be linked via their roots.

California redwood trees can reach heights of over 300 feet. They would appear to require incredibly deep roots to keep them anchored against heavy gusts. Their roots, however, are said to be relatively shallow to exploit as much superficial liquid as possible. They extend out in all directions, entwining themselves with other redwood trees.

All of the trees are tethered together in this fashion, and they assist each other during storms and wind. They rarely stand alone, like the trees. They can't survive without each other.

Individuals, too, are linked by the main stem. We are born into families and learn to form friends at a young age. We are not designed to live in isolation for lengthy periods.

We, like that of the redwood, must support one another. We need others to support and sustain us when we are battered by life's occasionally violent storms.

Have you ever been on your own? Perhaps it's time to enlist the assistance of someone else to hold you up for a bit. Perhaps someone needs to keep an eye on you.

Life Is Still Meaningful

This book will come to a close with a poem. Let the message of this sink in by reading it a few times.

Since we have a future, there will be time to mend—time to see your problems conclude.

There is no hopelessness in life, no matter how bad things are, provided you keep looking forward to a new day.

When you're helplessly groping across uncertainty and darkness, there is also time for dreaming, but then there's time for hoping.

Even if your heart hurts and you are in pain, if you have time to pray, you have time to heal.

If the rays of sunlight are shining through your window, give thanks to God for the promise, even though your soul and mind are aching.

Even if there is enough grain for gleaning after harvest, there is always a better day ahead, and life also has significance.

Take good care of yourself and live a happy life!

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