Loneliness

In 2000 I started researching the field of loneliness. As a result I have designed an intervention programme that has been tested in 2001 and 2002 with groups of people that experienced loneliness.  I call it a course in Creative Living ©. I prefer not to talk in terms of therapy. You do not need therapy when you are lonely! 

I adapted the programme and made it available to individuals via the internet, through this website. People are really enthusiastic when they are following the programme. 

In 2007 it is time for some adjustments. Not everybody is helped by the 'web-course'. It would seem that people that have suffered from loneliness from early childhood on need at least some personal therapy. NLP timeline intervention has proved to be very helpful in these cases.

Patterns and loneliness

My patterns theory was triggered by the finding that people described loneliness in similar terms. 'A void' is the description most people use (Rubenstein & Shaver). Researchers found they needed to distinguish between different kinds of loneliness. Weiss, 1978. There seemed to be a difference between loneliness caused by lack of social contacts and loneliness caused by lack of intimacy. Some people distinguish between functional and non-functional loneliness... Functional loneliness being the experience after a major life event.

Furthermore researchers found a range of causes for the onset of loneliness and another set of causes for the sustaining of that loneliness. The initial causes where in general found to be life events, the sustaining causes were mostly related to characteristics of the individual. Again I thought this to be strange. Why would somebody have a happy life for maybe decades, being the shy (or non-assertive, or anxious etc.) individual she is, and why would then suddenly that shyness cause a problem because it prevents a person from ending a period of loneliness? Finally there seemed to be a group of people who felt they had 'always' been lonely.

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Patterns disturbed

There is a pattern. Life events will cause the patterns in our lives to change. These changes in patterns will create a void. If people are not able, through whatever cause, to create new patterns in their lives, to create patterns that will ensure their lives to be fulfilling, they will suffer from loneliness. If you are a shy person, or not really as assertive as one could be, or HSP, or ... yes, then you may experience extra trouble in creating new patterns. But I state that in most cases these personal features are not the main inhibiting factor in overcoming loneliness. What prevents people from changing their lives is the fact that they do not recognize the importance of patterns in their lives.

People who feel they are 'lonely people' may have had their patterns disturbed very early in life and as a result never had a set of patterns to give them al life without loneliness. Their life may have been a constant search for feelings of safety in behavioural patterns that were not meeting their needs.

To identify the patterns that bring happiness and to learn how to integrate these into your life is the first thing that is needed in the healing of loneliness. And maybe even the only thing needed.