⚓️what is aloneness and how can it help you trust yourself?

There is a lot of research on how loneliness relates to trust. Most of them find a connection between those who can’t trust others and their feelings of loneliness. But let’s remember that being lonely is not the same as being alone. A lot of people enjoy their time alone since it allows them many types of freedom.

What happens when we are alone? I saw a TikTok recently where a girl was talking about her experience with “aloneness.” She was describing something that had happened to me now that I recently live alone. I started to enjoy my alone time a lot, you can even say too much. The girl explains how it then become an addiction and doing things with other people was now becoming very hard. She didn’t want to see anyone and at the same time, she missed her social life.

There are a lot of things that come with being alone. Many of us need to learn how to do it but most of us need to find a balance.

So how does trust come into this equation? In order to enjoy being alone, you need to be able to trust yourself enough to purely rely on yourself. We have been talking in the last few blog posts about being your own safety blanket and your own support system. Now we are going to talk about how to create it and a key to that is that enjoyment of ourselves.

Let’s set an example.

Let’s say that we have a partner and we enjoy being with them a lot, and as it often happens in relationships we start to merge together with that person. Ideally, in the healthiest relationship, each person would have their space and time in a day. Not to mention, other people outside the relationship who they can rely on.

When these types of relationships in which people are extremely dependent on one another break up people can feel extremely unsafe existing as one person.

This not only happens in romantic relationships but it can happen with a lot of things. People hate their alone time so they find a replacement for it with other people.

I have found people hate their alone time for 3 reasons:

1. They don’t actually hate it they just forgot how good and restoring it can be
2. They don’t like the idea of spending time alone because they feel weird
3. They don’t trust themselves enough to be their safety blanket

of course, there are many other reasons why but I find it all boils down to these three—lack of balance, judgment and lack of trust.

Trusting yourself enough to be the safety blanket.

If you think about it it is all a cycle that never ends. You don’t trust yourself enough in order to be your safety blanket because you don’t know how to be alone. But you don’t know how to be alone because you don’t trust yourself enough to be your safety blanket.

So how do we throw ourselves out of that cycle and start enjoying being alone? Because I think that is the start, not the other way around.

If we start enjoying being alone then we can trust ourselves to be there when no one else is.

*Disclaimer: I’m not saying that solely relying on yourself is the answer. It is important to have a support system with people that we trust, but sometimes when we can’t trust anyone and when we hit rock bottom the first person that can help us out is yourself. *

Be alone to trust yourself

This is sort of like proving to yourself that you are well trained to take care of a child. But a lot better I think because you get all the benefits.

I’m going to give you some prompts to give yourself some ideas. But don’t forget to let yourself roam, when you let your mind go is when you find the connections that your brain needed to make.

1. List 5 things that you have promised yourself you would do (for fun) when you found time.
2. List 3 things that you are using your leisure time for that don’t sound as great as those 5 things you wrote
3. How does being alone make you feel and why do you think it makes you feel that way?
   1. commit to doing the first step to one of those 5 things you promised (even if it is only research)
4. What are 4 attributes that people need to have in order for you to trust them? Do you have those attributes? If not how can you create those in yourself?
5. How have you betrayed your trust in the past and how can you make amends with yourself?
6. What does your inner child need in order to trust you as their caretaker?

These prompts will help you understand your needs and how can you utilize your alone time so that you feel safe with yourself.

As we have been discussing, in order to trust others, get out of your comfort zone and grow and expand you need to trust yourself first. Trusting yourself comes with a lot of beautiful attributes that will help you reach your goals like:

1. Gaining confidence
2. Learning how to set boundaries
3. Acknowledging your abilities and your strengths

When you spend more time with yourself you get to know yourself better and you find not only that life makes a lot more sense but it becomes brighter as you start aligning with your goals and desires.

You got this!