Learning from Loneliness

“Loneliness can only be understood, never escaped or overcome—except temporarily.”

Darlene Lancer, Conquering Shame and Codependency

Loneliness and codependency often go hand-in-hand. For years I tried to bury my loneliness through losing myself in other people. I thought that if I could just fade into someone else, all of my emptiness, all of my loneliness would dissipate. But it never did.

When fading into someone else wasn’t alleviating my inner-emptiness, I tried to escape my loneliness through other addictive behaviors. Shopping always worked best for me. Buying anything gave me that TEMPORARY respite from my loneliness and my emptiness. But it was always TEMPORARY—very temporary.

The problem here is the solution we addicts so often use. We want to escape from our uncomfortable feelings. Escaping is a solution that never works. Instead of trying to escape from difficult feelings, like emptiness, loneliness or anxiety, we need to welcome these feelings. We need to welcome them, sit with them and accept them as OK.

Darlene Lancer goes on to say that “loneliness can be a doorway to aloneness—which in contrast, is not isolation.” There is a huge difference between being “alone” and being “lonely.” Many addicts are uncomfortable with the idea of being alone, but being alone is a natural state for everyone. Choosing to be alone at times with our thoughts and feelings is healthy. Running away from others, ourselves and our feelings is not healthy. That is isolating and it is usually based in fear.

I’ve learned through recovery to sit with my loneliness and to embrace it. I have learned to better understand loneliness and all it has to teach me about myself and my patterns of behavior, which often serve to ensure loneliness. The more I have accepted feelings, like emptiness, loneliness, shame and anxiousness, the more I have understood that they have a purpose in my life, and the more I have realized that if I choose to run from them I am rendering myself powerless over them.

Sitting with feelings, learning to welcome and accept them and allowing them to simply be as they are is how we begin the process of learning what these feelings have to tell us about life and ourselves. If we feel that this is too big of an assignment for us, we can always call on our Higher Power to help us.

We can choose to temporarily escape uncomfortable feelings through addictive acting-out, or we can choose to welcome our feelings, learn to get comfortable with them and actually learn from them while retaining our personal power to grow into being healthier people. Which will you choose today?