In withdrawing and stopping contact with others, we make assumptions that

• others will get fed up with us and won’t understand.
• we will spoil things for other people.
• we have never really fitted in, in the past, so why try now.
• there is something wrong with us and that everyone else is having a successful, happy life.

The problem is that once we assume something, we look for evidence to support our assumption. For example, if we assume that others won’t understand us, we will find evidence to support that assumption. The person who reaches out to us and tries to understand what we are experiencing is discounted because it doesn’t fit with our assumptions.

So how do we manage loneliness, particularly over the Christmas period?

Check your assumptions.

You may be assuming that because you feel lonely now, you will always feel lonely. We do not know who we will meet or what opportunities can come our way that help us connect in meaningful ways to others.

You may be assuming because your last relationship didn’t work out, all your future relationships won’t work out and you will never have a successful relationship. There is no basis for this assumption because the lessons you learned in a failed relationship may mean your next relationship will be successful.

We need to check our assumptions because they do not help us manage our sense of loneliness.

Put yourself in the way of life.

As mentioned above, often when we are hurting, we withdraw from life. This reinforces our sense of loneliness. Sometimes we must go against our tendency to withdraw and put ourselves in the way of life.

Rather than staying home and scrolling through social media, go out to places where you can be surrounded by people. As men, we often go out with the intention of ‘picking up’, ‘hooking up’ or at least meeting someone who we could potentially ‘pick up’.

Rather than going out to meet someone, go out with a sense of curiosity about what could occur rather than an intention to make something happen. If we go intent on making something happen and it doesn’t occur it can reinforce our sense of failure. Going with a sense of curiosity is just an experiment to see what happens. There is no right or wrong; success or failure, it is just curiosity about life around us.

The power of sound
Music is powerful because it bypasses our rational mind and connects to our emotions. When we are sad, we often play sad music because it can be a powerful expression of our emotions.

In similar ways, music lightens our mood, particularly music we can dance to. As we move our bodies to the rhythm of the music, we allow negative, dense emotions like loneliness to begin to shift.

As men, as we get older most of us stop moving our bodies to the beat of music. Our bodies become rigid and stiff as we hold ourselves together. Remember the quote “Dance like no one is watching”. Fill your house and your room with music you can dance to. Allow the power of music to move you and lift you.

Remember what you enjoy.

Loneliness makes us forget what we enjoy. The colour bleeds out of our lives, and we live in monotone grey.

All of us have something we enjoy or did enjoy doing. Something which made us lose track of time and filled us with a sense of satisfaction and quiet joy.

When we are lonely, we must become archaeologists and sift back through our lives to rediscover the things that gave us joy.

One of the reasons men come to The Men’s Table is because of loneliness. Men realise they have drifted away from the friends and mates they had. For many men, their friends are the friends they had when they were in a particular relationship and when that relationship ended, so did the friendships.

Through The Men’s Table, men have been able to check their assumptions that they will always be lonely. They have discovered the power of new friendships. These are men, who realising their loneliness, have put themselves in the way of life by attending an Entrée and then joining a Table and in the process have found a connection with other men.

~ David Kernohan