How often do you feel lonely?
Maybe you don’t see family and friends enough, or you’re single and not loving it, or maybe it’s because you struggle with binge eating and no one understands what you’re going through.
Any of these can lead you to feel lonely and cause you to run to food to keep you company and be your friend.
You may think the solution to not feeling lonely is to find someone to love and spend time with.
Well, I have great news for you. You don’t have to!
You can be alone without feeling lonely.
I know because I do it all the time.
Where there times I spent time alone and felt lonely? Or felt lonely because I was single? Or felt misunderstood and alone because no one I knew could understand how difficult it is to binge eat and not know how to stop doing it?
Yes.
But, I’ve also spent time alone and not felt lonely. I actually love spending time alone most of the time. I’m also still single and I don’t feel lonely.
So what’s different?
How I think about being alone.
Being alone does not equal being lonely. Thinking sad thoughts and throwing yourself a pity party causes you to feel lonely.
And by the way, what’s the best thing to bring to a pity party? A TON of food!
Don’t throw that party. It’s never useful and ends up not being a good time at all.
You don’t have to be with someone to not feel lonely. You can be alone and enjoy that time.
This might be hard for you to do though.
Maybe you don’t have a good enough relationship with yourself. Maybe you don’t like yourself.
If you don’t like yourself, you’re not going to want to spend time with yourself.
If you’re spending time with someone you don’t like, and that person is you, there’s a good chance you’ll feel lonely.
Work on liking yourself.
When you’re alone, feeling lonely is not inevitable. You can even be with someone and feel lonely so right there, that shows you that loneliness is all in your head.
Look at how you think about being alone and see how that’s causing you to feel this way.
If you don’t want to feel lonely, you don’t have to change anything except how you’re perceiving the people in your life, including yourself.
