With all of the interactions I’ve been having with people these days I’m observing a theme where people are actually afraid of being alone with themselves. I know it sounds a bit crazy, but it’s legit. People are afraid to be alone with themselves because they don’t love themselves. Wait, what? How’s that possible? Shouldn’t we be our biggest fans and carry our own torch. You would think…but most of us are not. As a matter of fact, we’re our biggest critics. ⠀

Most of us will do anything to avoid being alone:⠀

  • Staying in relationships that seem “amazing”, but don’t pull us forward in our soul story—the life we were uniquely made for.⠀
  • Over scheduling ourselves so we never have to be alone with ourselves.⠀
  • Over stimulating ourselves socially so we have a constant flow of external validation instead of drawing from our inner strength and inner truth. This includes over stimulating ourselves on social media. ⠀
  • Over energizing ourselves (aka: remain in hyper state) so we’re constantly getting that adrenaline hit—a surrogate sense of joy. It’s for real addicting! The reality is that your body, mind and soul can’t maintain this level of high energy so there will eventually be a crash and the crashes are devastating. If you’ve experienced one, you know what I mean.⠀

I am guilty of all of these in my life…maybe that’s why I can recognize similar behavior in others. If you can relate, there’s no drama. As a matter of fact, you don’t have to change anything and you will probably have a good life. But there are some of you who know you were created for more and you’re ready to face this fear of being alone…head on! And I am right here with you. We can do it together.

 

So let’s get started.

 

Since facing our fear of being alone can be a little scary, let’s just pick one of the following areas to focus on first:

  • Staying in relationships that don’t support the life you were uniquely made for
  • Over scheduling yourself
  • Over stimulating yourself
  • Over energizing yourself

Below are steps you can take for each one of these areas to help you create healthy behaviors that overtake your fears in these areas.

  • Staying in relationships that don’t support the life you we’re uniquely made for
    • Ask yourself why you’re in these relationships? Is it for companionship? Is it because they’re better than your past ones? Do they fulfill a sub-conscious need—like the need to take care of others instead of yourself, or a need for external validation of self-worth?
    • Ask yourself does this relationship pull me forward? If it does, then that’s a good sign. If it doesn’t, than does it hold you back? Or maybe it just keeps you in a comfortable space of neutrality. Comfortable isn’t bad, but it won’t help you fulfill your soul story.
    • Ultimately you choose you relationships from a place of wholeness, self-love and self-worth. When you believe in you, then you will develop relationships with people who believe in themselves and in turn believe in you. This is what you’re working towards in relationships. It might take a couple to get there but if you keep this as your goal, then you’ll never settle for anything less than Supawesome!
  • Over scheduling yourself
    • When was the last time you had hours of time just by yourself and you were okay with it? As a matter of fact, you were more than okay with it. You freaking loved it! And this time alone fueled you at your soul…and you didn’t long for interaction with others or didn’t check your phone. You just got lost in whatever you were doing by yourself. If it’s been awhile, then start scheduling blocks of time to do this for yourself. You can start small and work your way up. This also means you will need to reduce your social activity schedule.
  • Over stimulating yourself
    • How do you feel about yourself when you haven’t any external validation from others (i.e. likes, comments, incoming texts, etc)? Of course, it’s okay to appreciate positive input from others but if your self-worth depends on it, then it’s out of balance.
    • How long can you go without external validation from others? The longer you can go, the less dependent you are on external validation which most likely means you’re drawing your validation from self-love and self-worth.
    • See how long you can do the both of the above. Use that as a benchmark and then measure progress (not perfection) by increasing the length of time. In your time with yourself, do things that you love. Do things that build your confidence in yourself. This will make it much easier because as you create these healthy behaviors for yourself, you will find it easier to disengage in the unhealthy behaviors.
  • Over energizing yourself
    • Some might categorize this as hyper activity or hyper productivity. If you’re so busy “doing”, then you don’t have any time for “being”. And many of us avoid being with ourselves because that’s when we truly “feel”—most often we feel our painful emotions. But the good news about “being” is that if you do it enough, the painful emotions will move through you and happy emotions will remain.
    • The state of hyper activity is a very physically addicting state. The more hyper you are, the more you produce, the more you feel better about yourself. However, this is a false sense of self-worth. Self-worth is not always measured in productivity. And here’s another downside to hyper productivity…eventually you will crash, but it’s impossible for your body to sustain that level of energy. And when you crash, your productivity goes down and so does your perceived self-worth. Some people even go into a state of depression.
    • So let’s avoid the downside and start saying no to non-essential projects. If you can handle it, I would cut at least 1/3 of the activities of out of your life so you make time for the following:
      • Schedule time for eating healthy, quiet time, rest and doing things that build your self-worth from the inside out (i.e. things that you’re passionate about).

As I mentioned, we’re in this together so please feel free to ask me questions or share your success in reducing your fear of being alone so you can live the life you were uniquely made for.