Befriending Loneliness

In this introduction, the intention of the programme is outlined. Instead of resisting loneliness and thus making it worse, you are invited to turn toward it with kindness to heal the associated pain of disconnection, vulnerability, unworthiness, and shame. A beautiful poem and a metaphor are presented to help guide and inspire you on this journey. You will receive practical tips for how to approach this course and its practices.

You get to explore your feelings toward loneliness through a playful imagery exercise. You get to see these feelings clearly and begin to welcome them instead of wishing them to be gone. You are invited to discover the common humanity in your personal suffering by hearing about social factors contributing to loneliness and its potential to help us grow across the life span. You get to understand how blame keeps us trapped and you learn how to validate parts that hold anger.

To be useful in daily life, self-compassion practice must balance being, feeling, and doing in a pragmatic way. You are introduced to the three tenets of not-knowing, bearing witness, and loving action. You then get to experience the three components of self-compassion – mindfulness, common humanity, self-kindness - in the first guided practice.

The goal of this session is to help you find inner safety when you are actually alone and feeling lonely. Fears of being vulnerable can hijack our threat system and make us suffer a lot. To calm your threat system, you will be guided through two exercises, which aim to ground you in your adult self, which in turn can reassure the vulnerable part.

If you dread being left alone with your own mind, fear not because you can actively invite good company through imagery. In this practice you get to imagine a wise and compassionate companion. We can thereby begin to develop a healing dialogue with ourselves that is not shaming or critical. Over time this practice can help you to trust in your inner source of wisdom and compassion.

When we feel empty or vulnerable, we usually need grounding. You will be introduced to the many gateways that can help you feel more grounded, alive, held, and connected such as the body and the senses. You will learn about the physiology of soothing touch and the role of warmth.

The goal of this practice is to help you feel as comfortable in your skin as you can. Sometimes we wish we would live in someone else’s skin - especially if we are experiencing emptiness or vulnerability. The body is our faithful companion and our home in this lifetime. In this nurturing body-focused practice you are guided to feel embraced by Mother Earth and Father Sky.

Shame makes loneliness chronic as it tells us that we are unworthy of attention and care. It is therefore important to understand shame and how it affects us, so we can free ourselves. Through self-reflection and an encouraging fairy tale, you begin to understand the workings of shame and exclusion in your psyche.

In this first guided practice, you will start to familiarize yourself with shame in your body and discover what supportive or loving words would help to act as the perfect antidote to the shaming voice. By discovering our own inherent goodness, we can liberate ourselves from this prison of unworthiness and exclusion and feel like we belong again.

In this second guided practice, you can deepen your practice by repeating the supportive words you have found earlier in front of a mirror. Whilst this might be challenging, this additional behavioural element of seeing yourself through loving eyes in moments of shame can strengthen your compassionate voice in daily life when you need it the most.

Loneliness reveals our longing for connection. Some of us ignore this longing whereas others let their lives be guided exclusively by this longing. Neither strategy deals with longing in a healthy way. Explore how you prevent yourself from feeling what you truly long for through addictive patterns in a reflective exercise.

You may know what you long for to feel less lonely such as friends or a partner. Do you know what deeper need in you would be met if you had those friends or that partner? Only if we understand our unmet emotional needs, can we begin to meet them ourselves right now without waiting for anyone on the outside to fulfil them. Discover the deeper unmet need which drives one of your more superficial desires in this exploration.

You will learn about the principles of working with longing by staying with the direct experience in the body instead of acting on impulse and fulfilling it temporarily with the usual comforts. A fairy tale aims to encourage you to trust in a source of abundant love and connection within you, which may reveal itself when you pause and feel. In this guided practice you are invited to surrender to the sensations associated with longing for a few minutes and to offer yourself compassion throughout.

You will learn about grief as an important emotion of the care system. Grief can be transformative as it helps us heal and let go of the old. It usually only occurs at the end of a struggle. Grief differs from depression. You will be invited to see how mourning a loss can help you alleviate feelings of loneliness.

You might still be holding on to some blame or resentment that no longer serves to protect you, but which prevents you from mourning. In this exercise, you get an opportunity to make space for, to welcome and to fully validate any residual feelings of blame towards others.

Although it might sound odd, grief can be healing and offer us a gateway to compassion and joy. Many of us interpret crying and mourning as a sign of weakness and or that we are “losing it” or falling apart. In this part, you will learn about common blocks to mourning and crying and identify your own and hopefully develop the courage to let this emotion move you.

After having understood the healing function of grief, you are invited to be your own best friend whilst letting yourself feel a pain about something or someone you have lost and that you have not yet had the chance to mourn fully. In this guided practice you learn to comfort yourself whilst letting grief move through you.

You are invited to consider new ways in which you can experience connectedness and belonging in an effortless way to counteract the increasing sense of disconnection in our urban societies. Our hardwired connection to nature, for instance, gives us access to an unconditional sense of belonging. By discovering connectedness in places where you had not seen it before, you can break free from inner isolation.

In this guided imagery practice you can get an extra boost of care and connection by imagining several compassionate companions offering you what you need right now. After having recharged your emotional batteries in this way, you may feel enough good will to carry it with you into your immediate environment and thus to become an emotional climate activist.

If you are loving company to yourself in a moment of loneliness, then connectedness arises. Experiencing connectedness independent of the presence of others turns loneliness into pleasant solitude. In a guided practice, you get to furnish and enrich your inner and outer sanctuary. From a place of humble self-confidence and belonging you are invited to re-evaluate your social contacts so that you prioritize quality over quantity.