READ THIS IF YOU ARE FEELING LONELY

 

 

Read

This

If You Are Feeling Lonely

 

Loneliness is the cost that you need to pay sometimes if you want to grow.

 

Because you can learn within a group but also you need to be alone to learn by yourself at some point.

 

Especially, for people who are not used to being alone, it is crazily hard to concentrate on learning alone.

 

And people get overwhelmed.

 

But it doesn’t mean that we cannot do anything about it.

For example, through the COVID era, we have learned to know more about being digitally connected.

 

I am taking this seriously.

 

Because feeling lonely may possibly go up to a point where depression occurs.

But again, being alone is a necessary evil for us to gain personal growth including a language-learning.

 

It is my belief that we need a certain education to be able to be alone for our own personal growth.

 

Whatever it is, at some point for some time, we need to be alone to grow.

 

The question is how to deal with this emotion?

 

During the COVID era due to the massive lockdown, we were isolated and many people got depressed.

 

Recently, I read the books written by 

 

Gabor Maté: 

 

“When the Body Says No, The Cost of Hidden Stress” 

 

and “the Myth of Normal, Trauma, Illness & Healing in a Toxic Culture”.

I really recommend that you should read these mind-blowing books.

 

Dr. Maté is a physician with twenty years of experience in family medicine 

 

and an expert in the field of psychoneuroimmunology,

 

which studies the connections between physical and mental health.

 

His book 

“In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts”

won the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize in 2009.

 

 

He explained that

Our stress is a signal to tell us that something is going on.   

 

Our bodily signal is a warning.

 

We often ignore it.

 

This clarification got stuck in my head and running around my brain for a while.

 

This is incredible advice.

 

Because I am the one who tries to ignore those signals saying “I am fine” or “That’s OK”, whatever happens to me.

 

I would like to share another book that I read recently, which I thought is relevant.

It deals with how to set boundaries and our limits in life.

 

Set Boundaries, Find Peace by Nedra Glover Tawwab

In her book,

Many office workers are trying to be a good employee to meet up with other people’s expectations, 

 

most likely their boss.

 

As a result, they are overworked and exhausted.

 

The quality of your work deteriorates along with the quality of your life.

 

Nedra Glover Tawwab is a licensed therapit with more than 12 years experience. 

She suggested that we need to set boundaries in any contexts

Because we all have limits.

She also lays out the foundation for those boundaries in an unconventional way.

In her interpretation, setting boundaries is not like building walls and keepint people at distance.

And those boundaries in fact will enable us to get closer and help to establish healthy relationships.

She dissected boudaries by 6 subsets.

• Physical
• Intellectual 
• Emotional 
• Material
• Time
• Sexual

This method is crazily mind-blowing.

I thought about only physical boundaries when it comes to boundaries. 

But actually there is somethig more to it than that.

At some point, you need to say NO to your work, your boss telling your limits.

Because at the end of the day, you are constantly tired

 

That affects your private life and also the quality of your work.

 

I believe that this is very true.

 

We need to know ourselves and listen to our inner voice

And it is essential to set boundaries calibrated to our own limits.

 

So coming back to loneliness.

 

I came to realization that what we need to do is not fight against loneliness.

 

Now I can try to see the feeling of loneliness as a bodily signal to tell me how I am, my status quo.

 

I also came to realization that:

 

It sounds counterintuitive but in order for us to be able to be alone, we need human connections.

 

Our satisfactory social life makes us not feel lonely when we are alone.

 

As Nedra explained, it is essential to know our limits and set boundaries.

If we feel alone when we study by ourselves, 

we should stop it becuase that's our limits.

Instead, what we need to do is to go out and enjoy.

Because we retain that kinds of generosity and happiness derived from human connections and joy, then we can be alone for our personal growth.

 

I don’t have all this figured out 

 

but I hope this article will help you to deal with loneliness to some extent to continue asking questions.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Pay attention to your bodily signals, whatever happens, you are not wrong.
• Setting boundaries is essential.
• Knowing our limits is also essential.
• If you feel alone when you study, just stop it and go out and enjoy.
• That is actually a good strategy to study alone because you don't feel anymore in that way.
• In doing so, we can live a healthy life. 

 

Thanks for reading,

Hilano Aquihisa