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Overcoming Loneliness: Navigating Life Alone · Start Your Comeback: Rebuilding after Divorce, Empty Nest, and Loss of Spouse

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Is there a major life transition benching you?
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: I know you may be asking what's next?
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: What's my purpose?
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: What if?
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Because I've asked those too.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Start your Comeback Podcast.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: I'm Toni Thrash, a certified life coach, and I want to share the tools and practical steps to help you create a winning game plan to move into your new adventure.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Hi, welcome back.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: You're listening to episode 41.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Last week on the podcast, I discussed divorce and having no children.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: This proves to be an exceptionally lonely period of time because when you divorce with kids, depending on your schedule, you're possibly lonely 50% of the time.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: When you are divorced with no kids, you find yourself wishing a ghost would appear to have a conversation with.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Not really, but for those of you sitting on the sofa in the dark watching reruns of the Office, this podcast is for you.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: How do you live life alone and, worse, settling in for periods of loneliness?
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: There is a fine line between being busy, too busy and overextended.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: To combat that loneliness.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: There's a fine line between being busy, too busy and overextended to combat that loneliness.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: I remember being divorced and alone in my new apartment and I've said this before in earlier episodes, but my therapist had counseled me to live by myself for at least a year and come to terms with me being me.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: I kept busy during the day.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: I was teaching, I was coaching, I was seeing my grown kids and I was so exhausted at night that I went straight to sleep and had no trouble sleeping, and I would repeat this process daily.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: I became a leader and a mentor in our young adult community at church.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: I trained small group leaders, led a small group and spent some of my evenings each week mentoring, slash coaching a few who sought me out.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: I was playing volleyball with them and loving that I was busy, but I kept myself so busy because I did not like feeling lonely.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: I discovered that being alone was good for me, but loneliness slowly ate me for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: I loved the freedom I had and the activities that kept me busy, but in no way did it heal me from the loneliness.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: The loneliness was still there, just kind of undercover.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: I dreaded Fridays after I got off work.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: I'm usually so tired on Friday that I don't plan much, but because of the loneliness this was beginning to send me spiraling into a place I didn't want to go.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: Keeping busy is extremely important.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: However, it doesn't erase the loneliness that still sits on your chest like a 500 pound weight.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: I still had to learn to deal with the loneliness and let me say here don't mask the pain and emotions you're feeling by covering up with being busy.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: Those emotions are still there and they will pop up the second you have downtime.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: So for those who do not come to terms with loneliness, it is a shadow that follows and never releases its grip.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: But I have some tips today that I want to share to help you become aware of your loneliness and how to manage it.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: Number one practice being home to yourself.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: What does that mean?
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: Well, we learn to lose ourselves with busyness and activities that distract us from the discomfort of anxiety and other difficult emotions.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: It's our new normal that has made its way front and center.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: We have the urge to rush and be active, and it is still counterintuitive to sit with your feelings.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: Just sit with your feelings.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: Sitting with your feelings will cultivate an awareness.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: You become aware of your longing for connection.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: So as you sit with your feelings, you become acutely aware of who you are.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: Being home to yourself is a way of connecting with yourself and accepting where you are and what is.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: No, it doesn't mean that you can't change that.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: Number two quiet the noise by putting away electronic devices for a definite period each day.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: Your phones, your iPads, your laptops, your TV just learn to be quiet.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: It has been said that in America, the average person spends seven hours looking at a screen each day.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: Your computer and cell phone distract you from being connected with yourself.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: You would think social media would help us to connect with others, because we're made for human connection, but a screen does not provide the connection we are longing for.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: It is an illusion that social media helps you connect with others.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: Technology does not reduce loneliness.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: In fact, in my opinion in my opinion only.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: I've not done a study, I've read no studies I think it adds to the loneliness.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: So take time each day to turn off your phone and all the other technology to cultivate conscious awareness.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: Be intentional with this, and this includes your Apple Watch.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: Just the other day I went to therapy and I took my Apple Watch off so it would not buzz during my session.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: Number three connect with here and now.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: Distractions keep you from being present.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: What do you need to be present for?
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: You might be doing something important, but your mind is somewhere else.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: We've all been there.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: People go through their lives distracted, without being connected to the present moment.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: Be aware of your feelings right now.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: Many people will never experience this reality and reflection because they don't know how to connect to the present moment.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: They're always looking back or looking ahead.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: Number four go inside.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: Typically, I say go outside and take a walk, but go inside, and here's what I mean by that.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: You see, when we feel that loneliness and it seeps in, it's telling us that we're feeling disconnected from other people.
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: You can't connect with others really until you connect with yourself.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: Becoming a social butterfly can make you popular with many acquaintances, yet you can be lonely in a crowd of people.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: Loneliness will disappear when you go inside.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: This is daily meditation, daily prayer.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: Again going back to number three just sitting quietly learning the sound of you.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: I use this time to journal, so I would make it a practice to work on one particular thing at a time.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: This is where you calm your spirit and connect with God.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: It all begins by cultivating a lifestyle of going inside.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: Once you get acquainted and aware of all of that, then, once you hang out with people, then you start those you know all too well, those relationships, awkward conversations, of learning to meet new people and go past the hey how are you doing?
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: Questions.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: And finally, number five free yourself from the prisons of the past.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: We can live with a vacuum inside that makes us uncomfortable connecting with others.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: We have been wounded and betrayed and we've been let down by others.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: Maybe that's a boss, maybe that's your ex-spouse, Maybe it's a family member, doesn't matter a friend.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: We end up not trusting ourselves or others.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: Our brains have mistaken beliefs that lock us inside an emotional prison.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: Freeing requires an act of daily forgiveness, which simply means that you will no longer hold this destructive behavior against yourself.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: One of the things that can happen when we keep ourselves busy is that we become addicted to being always on the go and not having time required to work through.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: The emotion of loneliness, again, there's that fine line not to cross between never sitting and healing to constant activity.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: We do ourselves a big injustice when we do this.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: We're not letting ourselves heal and becoming emotionally healthy.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: Loneliness is the hardest emotion I've had to deal with.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: Right on its heels is grief.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: Obviously, these go hand in hand.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: The biggest lesson we can learn is to be home for ourselves.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: Then we have one of the most useful tools for others.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: In our pocket, we then get to help them get off the bench of loneliness and find a home in themselves that will be their forever home.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: Listen, if you're lonely right now, I want you to reach out.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: I want to guide you through this period.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: The good news is is that it doesn't last forever.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: I would love to serve you in this way.
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: This road was long for me and I want to help shorten yours.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: Hey, thanks for being here.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: Next time we're going to start to gear up for back to school.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: Can you believe that we're almost there?
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: Yep, we are almost there.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: We are getting close to the chaos of August.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: I'll see you next time.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: Hey, thanks for listening.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: I don't take it for granted that you're here.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: You didn't listen by mistake.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: If you want to reach out, you can DM me on Instagram at Tony Thrash Until next week.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: Remember, there's still time left on the clock.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: Let's get you off the bench to start your comeback.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: I want to give a special shout out to Country Club for the original music.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: You can find them on Instagram at Country Club.