So I’ve been mentioning “The Loneliness Trap” in some pages of my site. Now it’s time to illustrate what it is and how it works.
Why do lonely people STAY lonely?
Loneliness makes you depressed, lazy, and passive. Yet, if you dwell on that depression and try to figure out WHY you’re depressed, I think you’re going to waste a lot of time.
It’s normal for your body to feel bad when you’re not around other people. It has no deep meaning about you. It’s universal. Everybody has it.
Loneliness (or lack of social bonds) makes you feel threatened and in danger. That, we inherited from the early men and women who could not survive alone. They couldn’t hunt alone and couldn’t fight tigers alone.
So, when alone, deep inside us, we feel exposed to danger. Deep inside, loneliness equals danger.
And we become super-sensitive to imaginary signs of rejection. Add to that the lowering of self-esteem that comes from a WRONG LOGIC that goes like this: I’m Lonely = No One Likes Me = I suck = I don’t deserve to be friends with anybody = Everybody will reject and humiliate me = I shouldn’t bother people
Don’t be fooled by loneliness. It makes you think you should HIDE when you really need to go meet people.
When you’re lonely, the easiest thing to do is to stay in your comfort zone. Stay home and avoid rejection. But, in the long term, that’s the worst thing you can do.
You have to actually IGNORE your feelings sometimes to survive. Ignore the fear of social rejection.
When you feel lonely, it’s not time to Hide, it’s time to Snap Out! I have prepared an article to help you Snap out of this loneliness trap, I’ll publish it in a few days. So stay in touch.
-Paul Sanders