Loneliness Also Protects Us From What Is Not Good For Us

The freely chosen solitude at a specific moment in our lives, can act not only as a balm, but as an effective therapy to reconnect with ourselves. Sometimes, it is also a way of establishing a healthy distance from what does not suit us, from what clouds, annoys or alters our inner peace.

We are talking about what in psychology is often defined as “functional loneliness”, a concept that shapes something that more than one will be familiar with: the need to get away from an environment that is harmful or exhausting  in order to find ourselves again. and thus recover our psychological well-being.

We are not referring here, therefore, to an unelected loneliness, to that isolation caused by poor social relationships, or to that sadness linked to the lack of meaningful company. In this case, there is an essential therapeutic component, and it is being able to recompose such basic dimensions as self-esteem, one’s own priorities, or to give us back that own, intimate and private space that had been taken from us.

As Pearl Buck, writer and Nobel Laureate in Literature once said, within each of us there are springs of great beauty that need to be renewed from time to time to continue feeling alive. Strangely enough,.

The feeling of loneliness in company, a dangerous abyss

Most of us are scared of loneliness. In fact, it is enough to imagine ourselves walking through a deserted mall on a Saturday afternoon, so that the second our brain sends us an alarm signal. We feel fear and anguish. This is due to a basic mechanism, an instinct that reminds us that we cannot survive alone. The human being is social by nature and this is how we have advanced as a species: living in groups.

However, in our day to day we find events even more terrifying than a shopping center without customers. As several studies reveal, almost 60% of married people feel lonely. 70% of adolescents, despite having a large number of friends, feel lonely and misunderstood. All this forces us to remember that loneliness does not refer to the number of people who are part of our life, but to the emotional quality established with these links.

On the other hand, something that happens to us very often is that we validate and perpetuate deficient dynamics over time that generate a declared unhappiness.  We feel alone, misunderstood and “burned out” in our jobs, but we continue with them because “we have to live on something”. We go out with the same old friends because, indeed, they are those of “a lifetime” … How can we leave them now?  And even more, there are those who extend their emotional relationship despite feeling lonely, because they fear the emptiness of not having anyone by their side even more.

All these examples give shape to that dysfunctional loneliness where oneself many times come to create authentic defense mechanisms so as not to see reality, to tell oneself that everything is going well, that he is loved, that he is loved and that others value everything. what one does. Thinking this is like someone who is drowning and still pokes their head out to ask for more water.

Unhappiness cannot be cured by more suffering. Nobody deserves to feel alone being in company.

Taking time to ourselves is a recipe that never fails. It is to recover privacy and own spaces,. Something like this may take us a few weeks or a few months. Each one has its own rhythms and times that must be accepted and respected.

The loneliness freely chosen in a specific period of our lives not only heals, it not only restores many of our broken pieces, it is also a way of learning to build adequate personal filters. Those filters through which tomorrow we will let in only that or those that make us feel good, that adjusts to our emotional frequencies, to the privileged corners of our heart.