It has been a long time since we’ve had to hunt for our food and protect ourselves out in the wild from predators, our ancestors of many many years past had many more threats from their environment than we do today, and the threat of being alone when what you are hunting might be hunting you was a legitimate sign of danger. Like animals in the wild who are vulnerable to prey when alone, so were we as humankind, and those thoughts and instincts are still in us from that time even though, most of us, live in a very different environment today. So when the feeling of loneliness creeps in our natural human instincts react to that as a threat and we feel like we’re in danger.
When I was living in the dark I felt very alone, and, I did feel like I was in danger. The danger of being hurt, the danger of falling deeper into my depression, the danger of being found out I was a fraud, a million different forms of danger. That put me, my mental health and physical body in a constant state of emergency, which had me in a fight or flight mode all the time. Now, living the way I was and taking the chances I was with my care and well-being, not all of the danger I was feeling was perceived, I was putting myself in harm’s way, but much of it was within my control, and the more I ignored it, the more it had control over me. My loneliness grew as I began to let my life be dictated by fear and that fear separated me from family and friends, I isolated and withdrew from much of life, only going through the motions when I did show up but never really being present, which only add to my loneliness, and, the lonelier I got the more in danger I felt. I also stopped living in reality during that time. I told myself lies and romanticized my condition and convinced myself I was better there, and like my loneliness and fear, the longer I let myself live there the darker the thoughts were the more I believed that was were I belonged. I began to suffocate in that dark and the fear became so overwhelming I didn’t think there was a way out that I could survive but I found hope in someone else’s story and that finally gave me the courage to reach out for help. That help came in the form of a group of people who were just like myself, some ahead of me in their journey, and some right where I was, but hearing them speak about their own fear, their loneliness and self-harm, as a result, gave me comfort, for it was in those honest shares and their support that I no longer felt alone.
We never truly are alone unless we choose to be, and if we have chosen to be alone we have the power to change that. We may feel that the people we have in our lives don’t understand us, or won’t if we share our truth, but there are people out there just like yourself, trust me, as much as we may tell ourselves that we are unique, and we may have unique things about us, there are always people out there who will understand us because they are like us. When we share our truth it loses power over us and it connects us to those like ourselves working to better ourselves on this path. That sense of danger disappears and is replaced with comfort, with friendship, with support and with love, and we can focus on building ourselves and our lives up knowing that we have nothing to fear because we’re not doing it alone. The antidote to our perceived danger within our loneliness is to reach out to each other, because when we do we know others have our back and will walk us out of our lonely place to a place of happiness and of self-love. SLAY on!
SLAY OF THE DAY: When you are lonely do you feel like you’re in danger? How so? What do you do to combat that feeling of danger? What do you do to curb our loneliness? Do you realize that your sense of danger is not real? Or do you succumb to it? How do you do this? How does that harm you? What can you do to help yourself walk through it? Who do you have in your life that you can confide in? If no one, who in your community can you confide in? If you don’t know, where can you look for people like yourself that can offer a safe place to share your truth? When we feel lonely we are missing something in our lives, and when we’re able to identify what that is, we can seek out those people, places or things that fill us up, just make sure you’re filling yourself up with positive things and not just distractions from your fear.
S – self L – love A – appreciate Y – you
State Of Slay™ 