Alone Not Lonely: My Method for Reframing The Meaning of Being Alone

We were in our new house for about six months when my dad touched the knob of the door from our family room to the garage for the last time. He had a few belongings under his arms and he said goodbye to me, age six, my sister, age eight, and my mom. In an instant I was lost. The only way I can explain it is that I was swimming in a thick soup of loneliness, confused and worried about what would happen next. My sister went to her room, and my mom went to hers. I wondered what they were doing in their rooms and whether I existed.

I’ve been reflecting a lot lately on loneliness. How does loneliness arises in me; how, despite not wanting to experience it, I can fuel it; how I can manage it; and why I’m capable of feeling lonely in the first place. I am sure a lot of it goes back to moments in childhood like when my dad left, and I’ve handled lots of that in therapy - highly recommend doing this by the way.

As I’ll explain below, I’ve chosen to not ask why these days, so much as “what now?” Because the data tells me that, regardless of the reason, as an American adult man, I’m not alone in feeling lonely. According to the Survey Center on American Life, only 27% of American men have six or more friends. That’s wild - nearly one out of every four guys is only friends with six or less guys? That’s not wild, actually, that sucks!

But here’s what I’m driving at - my journey with loneliness has not been about adding more friends; it’s been about reframing the meaning of being alone so that I can thrive alone. Specifically, when I am alone from 7:45am to 6:30pm every day as a solopreneur, building a coaching practice by myself in my home. I’m married and have an energetic attention-hungry Border Terrier. So it’s not like I’m alone all the time. It’s just those work hours when I can fall into doubting myself, my plans, and my vision because I don’t have that familiar feeling of other people to bounce off of.

I was put in daycare when I was nine months old. Eventually I was in schools, at summer camp, on sports teams, contending with roommates, collaborating on business teams, participating in men’s groups, volunteering, organizing music and entertainment projects, and fumbling my way through romantic relationships. Those are just the nine inter-relational settings I can think of off the top of my head let alone many others, I am sure, in which I found an escape from loneliness. 

To put it simply: I grossly underestimated the impact alone time would have on me, despite working “alone” while leading a team remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, I’ve been engaging with teams, friends, enemies, and everyone in between ever since I was a baby. 

If you’ve noticed discontent in recent months and aren’t quite sure whether it’s loneliness, or why you’re feeling it, I’ve outlined a few tips just for you, because they work for me.

Ask Why Later

Despite all my many interactions I can still be lonely. Why does loneliness get invited into my heart or mind, like a stranger snuck into my home? 

As I often tell clients, we will have a lifetime to dissect the why’s of our past. And even when we get a clear answer, it might not be all that satisfying or useful. What I’m most interested in discovering with my clients is how to close the gap between today and an ideal future state. The gap I personally needed to close with loneliness was re-setting my mindset when I’m alone.

Alone does not equal lonely

To everyone out there that knows that being alone does not equal being lonely, congrats! To the rest of us who still need to reframe cognitively, and re-design behaviorally, in order to manage loneliness, it’s good to see you. I got your back.

I teach a self-management process that in its simplest form is a cycle of Reflection, Decision, and Action, practiced at high frequency and in all aspects of life. This cycle creates confidence and momentum for more change on your terms, regardless of the many external factors that constantly inundate our lives.

Here’s how I’m using self-management to embrace being alone:

1. Notice: I have a very clear set of behaviors and narratives when I’m lonely. It doesn’t matter what they are for me; it matters that you begin to notice what they are for you. Once I was able to notice the specific behaviors and interpretations of a scenario and myself were directly and only associated with loneliness I was able to use them to my advantage.

2. Reflect: I will admit that I give the loneliness narratives space to breathe. I allow myself to feel fully lonely for a moment. It’s almost like the more I can feel it, the more I can point to it. It’s like I’m calling it out from hiding, and it can’t control me. With loneliness out in the open, I can observe it and decide what to do with it.

3. Decide: being a husband, a solopreneur, and a coach who helps others overcome obstacles, I am not a huge fan of flailing around helplessly in unproductive emotions once I know they’re dominating my space. So, my decision invariably is to swiftly disassociate from the loneliness once I’ve given it a fair amount of time to be noticed.

4. Act: Disassociating from loneliness in a practical sense means that I tell myself, “being alone does not obligate you to feel lonely.” I say that a few times and logic generally kicks in. But often times I have to occupy my mind with something declarative and positive. So I have recently started writing down desirable states of mind that can be evoked by being alone, and it looks like this: 

1. I am alone and at peace

2. I am alone and content

3. I am alone and creative

4. I am alone and artistic

5. I am alone and building

6. I am alone and growing

Google or ask ChatGPT to pull up information on “Coping with Loneliness” and your results will be lists of things to do. I think that’s reasonable, to some degree, and lots of people including myself do need to be doing something in order to overcome something. I get that. 

But I also want to encourage you to consider that there is nothing wrong with feeling lonely, there’s nothing to do, and that you are enough to be in a room alone with you. 

I have to remind myself of this fact five days a week. I’m a very forgetful person, so if I can do it, so can you. 

BONUS: Cold Showers

Cold water exposure is being covered a lot these days. I’m proud to say that I was experimenting with the positive effects of cold showers back in 2015. At least in this one practice, I was ahead of the curve!

As of December 2022, I’ve returned to using cold showers, sometimes twice a day. They force me to: 

1. Control my breathe

2. Decide on my mindset

3. Endure discomfort

4. Slow down when my instinct is to speed up

5. Test my mental toughness on a daily basis

While I’m in a cold shower my mind can use it as a metaphor for something else I’m worried about wont end, such as loneliness. And when I’m out of the shower and feeling discomfort, such as loneliness, I remind myself I can endure it, just like the cold shower. This reminder triggers other positive self-talk, such as: 

1. This is temporary

2. You are capable

3. There is something to be gained

4. You’ve done this before and you can do it again

My daily ritual and the positive reframing and positive self-talk that it evokes has been hugely beneficial to me. I highly recommend experimenting with a couple weeks of cold showers. Your default mental settings, and your grit, might surprise you. 

Conclusion

I have spent years bopping around inside of and between groups and have felt lonely. And more recently I’ve spent seven months being alone, and have felt lonely. At this point, the common denomenator is me, and that’s a good thing. There’s a whole lot I don’t control but I do control me. Specifically, my mindset and my relationship with alone-ness. Maybe that’s what I’ve been searching for this whole time - to replace loneliness with the very fact-based, dispassionate reality of alone-ness, and how wildly different that is than loneliness. I’m becoming pretty cool with alone-ness and I hope you can be too. If you need help, let’s talk.