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A friend wrote:
Rand, I was interested in what you wrote about aloneness and depression. How our culture says that if you're alone you are a loser. Keep writing please.
Why this topic, aloneness, depression, being a loser?
I don't feel very connected with other people and I find comfort in being by myself. Always thought it was not right to be this way. But I want to accept its how I am and live w/o criticizing myself.
I felt completely alone as a kid. I couldn't think about it, it was too painful, and shameful. It was wonderful to have a friend in 9th grade, and then he disappeared to spend time with a girl. Then I began to hang around the periphery of the smart kids in 10th grade, and in 11th we started to be friends. 12th grade was comparatively a social whirlwind, but in some ways it was too late. My brain patterns had been trained to make me feel alone.
In my late 20's and early 30's I did some work on it, beginning in the Landmark Forum. I discovered that somehow, I had decided at a very young age that I wasn't wanted, but that truth was too painful, so I stuffed it way down. And so that was the personality I got. That almost completely colored how I experienced life. There are 5 rich topics here:
I have thoughts like these, too, that I "criticize myself." It's like there's an automatic judgment machine in my brain, and all it does is find fault. I used to think I should stop, as if "I" was doing it, and as if it meant something. I used to hear & feel the criticism and think it was true, significant. But it seems to be just the output of the circuitry. It listens for patterns of judgment from society and friends and even random thoughts and then salts them away to shoot at anything that moves, even me.
Of course, when it criticizes the other political party, or those bankers or those celebrities that fall from grace, that's fine. But why does it have to criticize me?
As for not being particularly connected, that's my default feeling, too. I grew up with no friends until 9th grade, then gradually got into the nerd group in 10th. But the feeling of being disconnected was rock solid by then. It's my default way of feeling.
I take courses from Landmark Worldwide (the Forum is the best adventure on the planet.) I used their approach to look at what connection really is. Can I really feel alone? Do other people feel differently, and if so, what exactly they feel? When I looked objectively, "alone" seems to be just thoughts, sensations, emotions and memories that my brain associates with each other. Actually, there seems to be no "connection" to feel.
So I began playing with it. They have a seminar called "creating happiness" which is really about studying ones experience. So I brought "connection" to that seminar and studied it. They have wonderful ways of looking at things. Over the weeks of the seminar, I saw that the only difference between me and a "connected" person is these habits of thoughts and feelings. I sometimes feel connected, but since it's a good feeling, and not a problem, I don't reflect on it, my brain doesn't talk about it, so I barely notice it.
Sometimes I do, though. Sometimes I'll connect really well with my wife, or with someone in a conversation, and I'll start to wish I could do that more often. That wishing is also a very old pattern for me. I spent my childhood feeling lonely, wishing I could have friends, wishing I mattered to someone (not realizing that I did, a lot). In contrast, I thought people mattered to me (even though I didn't know them.) So I spent my childhood deeply ashamed of not mattering. It hurt so much I couldn't think about it, so I mostly blocked it out.
But after an episode of connecting with people, I'll start to wish I could do that more often and the old patterns of thinking and feeling arise, including the shame followed by not wanting to think about it.
When I was a kid, I had a great family, including loving parents who took good care of me. To this day I don't really know how I decided that I didn't matter. I mattered to my parents and family as well as teachers. At one point I even asked some high school friends what they had thought of me back in grade school. They all knew me and many would have liked me to be a friend. I mattered to them. I was so aloof, they soon ignored me, but it was all created by "me."
So, it turned out my reality was just that, mine. I suffered in a very real, consistent world which I made up. I thought I wasn't connected, then I perceived the world that way and it seemed true because my feelings were completely consistent with that world.
Unknowingly, I actually chose to be disconnected. My personality, my whole experience of life for almost 3 decades, was designed by a little kid...
So what would it be like to be connected? It turns out being connected is also some kind of head trip. Besides the comforting thoughts are wonderful emotions and sensations. I discovered that like being disconnected, it's a choice.
It doesn't seem to be a choice. Neither does playing the piano. I can't play the piano! It turns out, though, that all it takes is practice. (And, it takes surprisingly little practice to feel connected!)
There are 4 other people in my house right now, plus my dog. I can think, "I'm alone in the family room, typing." Or I can think, "I'm in the family room, typing, connected to my wife in the kitchen, my son and his girlfriend whose voices I can hear, and my older son, who's also typing on his computer." When I think these thoughts, I begin to feel connected. With a bit of work, I can feel their love and respect and see the intricate entanglements of our lives together. We're connected.
I've done some incredible thought experiments where I "connect" to lots and lots of people. I'm breathing air that has been in lungs of billions of other people. The same with the water. Almost none of my thoughts are unique- those, too, are really shared. Some come from the common language, others from the culture, plus we share so many stories in the news, movies, songs and TV shows.
Sometimes when I jog I'll "connect" with people around me in the cars and houses I pass.
You and I can do whatever anyone else can do to "connect". I've been "one with everything." Identity is completely invented. We're so used to inventing the same identities that often we think they're real. Try being Everything, God. It's kinda cool.
Namaste,
Randy
PS: This is finished in this blog...
Copyright 2013, Randy Strauss>