Loneliness can cause depression, anxiety and lead to suicidal thoughts and feelings.  I myself have sat at home crying, curled up in a ball on the floor because I felt so alone.  Medication, counselling and a lot of work on myself has helped me to see that being alone can be a good thing.  Embracing that shitty feeling was one of the hardest things I had to do.

Through personal experiences I have learned why loneliness is good. If you can sit with that horrible feeling and understand it, believe it or not – loneliness can be a very powerful. Here are three things that I have learned about loneliness.  May my stories help you to find some good in this bad feeling.

I know that if you found this post, you have, or still are experiencing loneliness.  When the feeling hit me, I spent hours on google trying to figure out what was wrong with me.  On more than one occasion, sitting alone in my house listening to the emptiness.  Nothing but my thoughts and the sound of traffic outside to fill my head.  Knowing that I was surrounded by hundreds, thousands of people.  Yet, somehow, I still felt very alone.  These long moments of loneliness pushed me into a deep depression.  I knew I had to reach out for help.

I was alone.  Physically, mentally and emotionally.  Feeling like an outsider in my own skin.  As a celebrity and public figure, this is not something that I have an easy time admitting.  Put on my make up, do my hair and show up with a smile on my face.  That  is the essences of my job.  Nobody wants to know that I cried myself to sleep last night.  They want to see happy and positive Lacey.

What ever job you go to every day, it is the same thing.  You need to show up at work and leave your personal shit at home.  No one wants to hear about our struggles.

You step into the world today and that is all people want to know.  How are you?  This question is asked on just about every introduction in todays society.  Can you imagine how you would be met if you responded, “I am feeling incredibly lonely today.  No one understands me.  I am desperate to feel connection to another human.  I just want to break down and cry.”

I released two podcasts with the theme of loneliness VS solitude.  You can listen them here  episode 12 Loneliness  and Episode 13 Solitude or you can find me on iTunes – The All Points Road Trip Podcast.

I have been through my own personal hell.  And zero judgement from me, because I am pretty that if you are still reading – you have, too.  You are still here.  And I applaud you for moving forward no matter how hard it has been for you.

More than one person told me to stop throwing myself a pity party, put my big girl panties on and stop crying.  Stop thinking about all the bad stuff and just choose to be happy.  This one hurt me the most.  Anyone who thinks I was ‘choosing’ to feel this way can go fuck themselves.   I wish that life were just that simple.  I couldn’t get out of this funk on my own.  Finding a therapist to guide me through this rough time was imperative for my personal healing.

These comments from people made things worse.  They made me feel even more isolated.  Why couldn’t I just be happy?  What was wrong with me?   It is from thoughts like this that loneliness comes from.  Being alone and being lonely are not the same. Loneliness feels draining, distracting, and upsetting and completely soul sucking.  I felt like no body understood me.

We all have bad days.  Somedays life is filled with rainbows, roses and all things wonderful!  In fact, I would say that MOST days for most people the world is a joyous place to live.  We have more things to be grateful for than most of us realize.  But we all have bad days, too.

There is no magic cure for loneliness.  It effects us all at some moment in our lives.  It hits some of us a lot harder than others.  Feeling alone is one of the prominent feelings that lead to suicidal thoughts.

If you are having these types of thoughts, you don’t have to struggle alone.  Below are direct links to suicide prevention services.  They all have a toll free number that you can call 24/7 and just talk to someone.  I have called on serval occasions and it felt good to just have some who could listen and offer support.  CANADA www.crisisservicescanada.ca      USA www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org

If you are not feeling suicidal but just need someone to talk to- the above resources are great, too.  It is when we feel helpless and alone that depression creeps in.  Stop it before it is too late.

Let me share with you three reasons that I have learned why loneliness is good.

#1 – IT MAKES YOU THINK.

For me, this was a viscous circle for a long time.  The more lonely I felt, the more I was alone with my thoughts.  And the more alone I was with my thoughts, the lonelier I became. I was my own worst enemy and being alone gave me the space to rip myself apart even more.

One day, in one moment of sadness, something changed.  My therapist helped me to remember a time when I didn’t feel like this.  We talked about times when I didn’t feel lonely.  What had changed? Is this really how I wanted to live the rest of my life?  We spoke about this in a session, but during this time it didn’t register.  It sat in the back of my mind and forgot about it.

Suddenly, one day while I was all alone, something clicked.  The voices in my head started to scream at me.  As if they had been sleeping the last few year.

“I USED TO BE HAPPY, I USED TO LOVE MY ALONE TIME.  THIS IS NOT HOW I WANT TO LIVE THE REST OF MY LIFE.”

The voice in my head started to process my feelings in a more productive way.   Just like we go to the gym and working on our physical strength, a lone time can be the time we work on our mental state.

The only way I was able to really hear these thoughts; was when I was alone.  These were the times that I had no interruptions.  No one to influence me and how I was feeling.  It was hard at first.  Hard because the negative self talk was louder in the beginning.  Just like going to the gym to get physically stronger, it took a lot of work to build my physiological strength

#2 – LONELINESS IS PART OF THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE.

It has taken me a while to really understand this.  And more importantly, to fully accept this.  Social media makes this hard.  Before social media it was TV and before TV it was magazines.  We are bombarded with images of happy, strong people.  With perfect lives and perfect families.  Well dressed, healthy and usually surrounded by other perfect people.  Most of us know that this is not real life.  However, when you are surrounded by it, it gets hard to ignore.

I am a strong and independent women.  Most days.  However, some moments and some days I am also lonely and insecure.  These are not mutually exclusive.  Feeling all of these feelings is just part of being human.  I do something amazing and feel on top the world.  Not soon after an amazing day, some other task comes along that I fuck up majorly.  Suddenly, that top of the world feeling goes and feel like a bag of shit.  Do you know what I mean?

When I get mad, I yell.  Loud.  And sometimes I say things that are not very nice.  When I am happy, I sing in my kitchen and dance around baking cookies.  Someone will make nasty comments on my blog about a major insecurity that they don’t know that I have.  After crying and yelling profanities in my head to the online troll.  I would never stoop so low as to tell them how I really felt.   I wolf down the last dozen cookies that I just baked four days ago without blinking an eye.  And then, I beat myself up for allowing someone else to make me feel so shitty that I ate them!

Life.  It is good, bad, colourful, scary, exciting and a million other words for every person on this planet.  We need to stop thinking that life is ‘supposed to be’ anything at all.  And just live our lives!

#3 – NO ONE WILL EVERY REALLY UNDERSTAND YOU. EVER.

When you figure this out, it is like a huge weight gets lifted off your shoulders.  We all have different perspectives and experiences that shape who we are and how we see the world.  Just like a snowflake and fingerprints, each human experience is unique.  Even surrounded by family and friends, we will still be alone.  They can support you, love you and be there for you.  But they can only do that to the extent of who they are.  They can only give advice and support  based on how they have been brought up, what they think is right and wrong.

Take some time to let this sink in.  Accept the idea that our uniqueness’s will always separate us.  That no matter who we have in our lives, we take this journey alone.  Loneliness can empty you.  But you have the power to stop it.

As I said before, there is no magic cure of loneliness.  But the next time you are alone, stop and think about these three things.  Over time, I am confident that you will start to see the power that can be found in being alone.  And, you will understand why loneliness is good.

Lacey Lee Elliott