why do you feel so alone keep watching
this is life mastery gym I'm Damon Cart and I teach people just like you cutting
edge NLP processes and techniques so you can master your life and take charge of
your destiny so if that sounds good make sure you click that subscribe button so
you can get these videos on a regular basis these are very strange times we're
living in right now and with a lot of us staying home from work sheltering in
place staying indoors unless we absolutely have to go out like to
grocery shop it can feel more lonely than usual a lot of us do deal with
loneliness but it can feel like it's compounded right now so this is a great
time to understand what what is happening when you feel alone and to
actually do something about it because it's not it's not like you're just stuck
there is something you can do about this I have a lot of experience spending time
alone actually in many cases enjoy spending time alone I'm a more on the
introverted spectrum than an extrovert I do like being around people and I need
to be around people and connect with people but I'm also quite happy being
alone but there have been times where I've been surrounded by friends and felt
incredibly lonely so I don't like feeling lonely just because I like being
alone and a lot of introverts are the same way they enjoy their alone time
because it helps us recharge our batteries so to speak but we don't like
the feeling of loneliness I don't know anyone who likes the feeling of
loneliness one of the most memorable times that I felt an intense amount of
loneliness was when I was flooding with my ex-wife and moving out of the house
where my kids lived which was really really difficult because I had always
been in their life very close living in the same place as them and suddenly I
was out on top of that I had never lived alone I had
of course when I was a kid I listen with my parents and my brothers when I was in
college I had a dar mate and then when I moved out of the dorm I had an apartment
with roommates after that I moved in with my girlfriend who then became my
wife and so suddenly at the age of 37 I was living alone and I remember it was
probably about a week after I had moved out and I was woke up one morning and I
was washing my face and I just had this strange feeling come over me and I had
to stop and really ask myself what is that feeling it felt familiar but then
it felt kind of foreign at the same time and I just realized I was like oh yeah
that's loneliness it's probably a good idea to kind of get used to that also
around that time I was just getting back into dating and I hadn't been in the
dating scene for about 15 years so this was very strange I wanted to date to
understand better what a good relationship would eventually be I
wanted to eventually get back into a good relationship but I figured I needed
to get to know people all over again it was a very strange period of time and I
got to the point where I had a very full dating life or I was going on dates a
few times a week but the strangest thing again was it was also one of the
loneliest times that I ever experienced and I couldn't understand it because I
there was always someone I was engaging with and when I wasn't dating of course
I was visiting with my kids I had clients and yet I felt really really
lonely what I started to understand about loneliness was that it was a
feeling of distance between myself and other people one of the models or the
main model that I study and that I use in my coaching practice is the
self-concept model created by Steve Andres and even at that time when I was
experiencing a lot of loneliness I was very good at this model and I made it
work for myself and for my clients and it's all about installing qualities that
you value and to your identity so that you have
greater self-worth greater confidence greater self-esteem and so I was
experiencing all of those things and I was experiencing loneliness and I didn't
know of a quality necessarily that I could install on my identity so that I
wouldn't feel lonely but I was overlooking this other part of the model
that has to do with connection and boundaries and how we feel disconnected
from people and it also uses the process of mapping across which and mapping
mapping across is one of the earliest processes in and NLP but you find it
throughout almost all NLP processes there's some form of mapping across
because NLP is a model for modeling and mapping across is one of the ways that
we model so what you can start to understand when it comes to feeling
disconnection is that it has it often has to do with a boundary that you've
created around yourself a boundary that you created in order to protect yourself
now this boundary can be very useful in the sense that it can alert you to
dangers or possible people around you who could be could pose a danger to you
but what's interesting about neurology is we tend to react neurologically to
physical threats the same way that we are rather we tend to react
neurologically toward emotional pain the same way that we are the threat of
emotional pain the same way that we would Iraq react to the threat of
physical pain so when I think of giving getting up and giving that talk and I
remember being humiliated or embarrassed you know years ago when I was a kid then
I start to feel that same sort of threat like it's it's life-threatening even
though it's really not and my border goes up and I want to protect myself
just as if someone was going to attack me
and we do the same thing for people who we think might be verbally abusive or
you know we have that border in place or somebody who might give us criticism
that is unwelcome we have a way of putting that boundary up and
but this part of the model does is it shows you how to elicit that boundary
and not only that you can take times in your life when you were very connected
to one or more people where you were very much in rapport with a person and
go back to that time and remember well what was that like and where was my
boundary then so one of the ways that you can listen your boundary is to
imagine there's a person you don't know not a sinister looking person not a bad
person but just a person you don't know and imagine that person coming closer
and closer to you how far how close would you allow that person to get to
you before you go stop you're too close that's one way
that you can start to get a sense of where this boundary is and your boundary
has a shape to it as you elicit it you can give it a color and the colors will
make it feel differently you can check in with what's it like inside your
boundary and what's it like outside of your boundary and you can even give that
a color so that you can have a better sense of this now you might be thinking
well well you know we just sounds like you're just making stuff up when you
elicit it and you start playing around with that boundary you will feel it it
will feel quite different and so you could say sure yeah I'm making this up
but it's just as real to you as anything else it's just as real as somebody
getting too close to you and you go ah you know it's like how do you know to do
that that's what the boundary is there for but we put that boundary up a lot of
times when it's really not needed when we're not under any real physical threat
sure anybody can say anything to you at any time and it can be mean and hurtful
but we don't have to take it that way and now I'm getting into other processes
but there's a lot of NLP processes that can help you with that as well and the
mapping across one I've done a video on mapping across you'll find that in the
description below what I want to bring your awareness to though is that
boundary and ask yourself well what happens if I were to either let that
boundary drop or open that boundary to include people who I want to connect
with and when you really have a sense of that boundary
and you can consciously make that choice to include people inside that boundary
and maybe you need to to just know that you trust that person and and then you
you feel safe to let them in you will feel connected with people immediately
it is amazing how well this works so take some time and elicit that boundary
and think about times when you felt really connected with people and times
when you felt really disconnected with people and then actually drop into those
memories and and think about okay well where was my boundary here and when you
felt really disconnected you're gonna find that boundary was like a fortified
wall a concrete wall or something keeping you keeping your distance from
people and it may have been completely unnecessary in fact a lot of times it is
because you're not under you're not under any real danger and then go to the
Times drop into the memories when you felt very connected with people almost
like you were one with them and where was your boundary there and you're gonna
find that they were inside your boundary they were that and that's why you felt
so connected to them that's why you felt so close and the more you play around
with this and the more you work with it the more you will have the feeling or
the sense that you you are in control of this you can let that boundary drop
completely but if that if that feels too unsafe you can just learn to include
other people in your boundary and they don't even need to be in your presence
you know you ever think about someone and you get a warm feeling about them
it's because you're feeling their presence you can think about people who
mean a lot to you and imagine they're right here inside your boundary now I
know we're you know we're not supposed to go out we're not supposed to
congregate but we can do video calls and I've been doing that lately with friends
because I do miss being around people and even when you do video calls you can
imagine that person being inside your boundary and you will feel more
connected to them it doesn't matter that you're looking at a two-dimensional
screen or any of those things because it's really about their presence and you
carry the presence of people in your neurology that's the way that you can
remember who they are that's that's how you have a sense of who they are it's
not like you have to be in that person's presence to
only have a sense of them you don't forget your friends when they're not
right there with you you you carry your friends you carry your loved ones with
you so you can feel their presence more closely just by thinking about them and
thinking about them in terms of being inside your boundary there's one other
thing I wanted to add to this it was a wise person who told me one time when I
was mentioning about my feeling lonely or feeling disconnected and he said he's
very zen kind of Buddhist type guy and he said you know that that's the that's
the strange thing about human beings is we don't want to be alone but the the
actual truth is is that we're always alone even when we're around people
we're still alone because we can't share our individual existence with anyone
like there is only me or there's only you occupying your existence we can't
share that you know we can be around people we can be close to people but
we're always really alone and that's the thing that probably has plagued humans
for since we were conscious intelligent beings but here's what you can think
about and this is going meta to it all is that though we are alone technically
speaking we're not alone in our aloneness now that's something you can
sit and think about and meditate for quite some time you're not alone in your
Alumnus we're all the same if you'd like to learn more about this model the self
concept model and you'd like to take this even deeper if you go to the
description right here down below you will find a link and you click on that
link and you can take a free assessment you just answer some questions and your
results will be emailed to you and it has to do with who you perceive yourself
to be what area of life would you like to work on who would you like to become
in order to have the life that you want to live it's an absolutely free
assessment take advantage of that like I said it's in the description right here
down below make sure you click the like button if you like this video and if you
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