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I’ve had the privilege of working with many different types of people-addicts, veterans, couples, singles and even a few kids. Although they each had individual issues, they each grappled, in some way, with loneliness.

At it’s core, loneliness is about a lack of connection. That connection could have been broken by the death of a loved one or the end of a relationship. Another type of loneliness can occur when a person makes a whole change of environment. Perhaps you moved to a new state for a job or fresh start. Making new friends can take time and that might lead to some lonely days. Loneliness can be weakened or strengthened depending on one’s perspective. Let’s focus on three types of loneliness and take a look at strategies to overcome these types of loneliness.

Loneliness in relationships:

Most of my work is with couples. Couples can lead a lonely existence in a relationship when they don’t feel listened to. Being lonely in a relationship seems odd because we’re with somebody. We share space with that person. But if key ingredients are missing then the feelings of loneliness can and most likely will occur. Communication is a main “relationship” ingredient and if BOTH sides of the couple aren’t willing to work on this skills, that loneliness of not being heard and listened to can lead a spouse or significant other to another person or the end of the relationship.

Typically after an initial session, I email all my couples worksheets on reflective listening skills and creating fair fighting rules in handling disagreements. Bad listening is a learned behavior that perhaps we learned from our parents. We can learn new behaviors to improve our listening abilities. Having fair fighting rules, if you use them, can move a couple from an adversarial relationship (Me, you, win, lose) to learning to fight the problem together and not against each other. These are building blocks in becoming less lonely in a relationship and more connected.

Loneliness in singleness:

Are you single? Do you struggle with loneliness? Maybe not every day, but sometimes? I can relate. I didn’t get married until I was 41 years old. I spent most of my young adult life in single groups and dating sites on the internet hoping to find that one connection that would cure my feeling lonely. When I was 30, I watched a lot of friends get married. I kept asking God when was it going to be my turn to start a family.  I wasn’t a hunk, but I’ve always been a nice guy. “Nice guys finish last.“ I felt like that and my loneliness led me to have some incredible pity parties. Me, myself and I showed up and all three of us never made the party better. It wasn’t until I started working on myself and focusing on personal growth areas that I began to change and that brought about a different perspective shift.

My focus took a change to where it wasn’t all about me. My identity wasn’t rooted in desperation to be with someone any more. I found my security as a single person was rooted in my faith and having healthy friendships. I could be independent and happy and still be single. One day I was listening to a guest speaker at my church and he had experienced incredible loss in his life. He had lost his whole family in a massive flash flooding accident? He was the only one that survived. Google: Robert Rogers family and learned how he coped;  had appeared on many of the morning talk shows and people asked him how he could go on and survive such a tragic event. He said it was the peace of God that was getting him through it and quoted this verse that changed my life:

Philippians 4:6-7: Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Right then the light bulb turned on in my brain. I wanted that peace in my love life. So, at 38 years old, this scripture set me on a new path. I trusted all of my hopes, my dreams and my expectations of being with someone over to God’s care. I had to be at peace whether I married someday or never dated again. What about you? If you’re single, how have you coped with feeling lonely in your singleness? Moping about it and having endless pity parties won’t help. Remember, if you do nothing, nothing changes. Focus on others. Volunteer at your church or a community group. Find social groups that align to your interests and hobbies so you can meet other people. If you need more ideas, reach out to me. I can help because I’ve been there. I would love to help you take the first few steps of finding happiness in being single.

Loneliness in children:

One little documentary was released this summer that captivated the nation if not the world. Won’t You Be My Neighbor? is about Fred Rogers and his passion for making connections. He connected with kids like almost nobody else. He showed them that no matter who they were, they had value. They mattered, and they are loved. He also listened to the children he interacted with. He was genuinely interested in what they had to say. That told them that they had a voice. Most of us have seen Mr. Rogers Neighborhood on PBS when we were younger. The message of Mr. Rogers needs to be repeated over and over. Because many of today’s kids feel like they don’t have a voice except on social media and sometimes that’s a scary place to be. Research continues to show that kids and teens that are constantly on social media and not interacting in person are more prone to loneliness and self esteem issues.

The ills of society have left our kids feeling lonely. Divorce has caused kids pain and hurt and even damaged their thoughts. Often, their hopes are drowned out by the roar of their parent’s anger. Some children become pawns in a game of power play that parents create to get their kids to side with them.

What can we do about this growing epidemic?? Here are a couple of suggestions.

1. Interact with your children. Make time to take them on parent-child dates. Trips in the car are valuable for conversation. Listen to them. Get to know you kids interests, hopes and fears. Find out who their friends are and get to know their parents. Have fun with your kids and let them know it’s ok to have feelings, good and bad.
2. Be consistent in your own behavior. Follow through with what you say you will do. Model appropriate behavior around your children. Your kids are watching you and they look to you for moral, emotional, structure, and spiritual guidance. If you’re not providing these, the child that gets older can become more susceptible to listening to those voices and examples that do not have their best interests in mind.

Lastly if a child is lonely, we have an incredible opportunity to help them form healthy connections? Do they have someone they can talk to and spend time with like a teacher, friend, relative, mentor or parent? We all need healthy connections and children are not different. This article has just scratched the surface to what some face. Counselors at Armstrong Family Counseling have a wealth of experience to help adults and children cope with loneliness.

Connecting with others is a big way to overcome the stigma of loneliness. If you are lonely and need to talk, contact us today.

Living With the Past  and Freedom From It?

Our past is host to many memories and stories. Past moments of our lives can bring about a plethora of thoughts and feelings. Some of my most favorite memories are of the many adventures my wife and I have done together.  Although I’m grateful that I have a lot of fond memories from my past, I have other memories that are difficult to look at. These memories serve as reminders of my bad choices, disappointment, my sin, and failure.  I’m sure that if you’re reading this, there’s a chance that you too have struggled with past moments and situations in your life.

People put on a front and cover up those less than pleasing things when interacting with others. I see these personas when I am at church or out eating and in front of others. We put on our best clothes and our biggest smiles acting like we have it all together. Sometimes we overcompensate by being overly joyful or talking too much. Most people can see right through it, yet we continue the charade of keeping the mask on that tells the world that everything is ok in our life.

I see it when I meet with clients. But a few sessions in, that’s when the mask starts to drop and they begin to reveal that on the inside, they don’t have it all together. Most of their feelings of insecurity, sadness, guilt or shame were rooted in the past. Past behavior, past hurts, and pain. They struggle to live in the present because they are stuck, living in the history of their life. It could be about anything. Perhaps they were fired from a job for making a mistake. Maybe they hid a family secret or even a secret of their own like an addiction or bad relationship.

I recall when I was in college; I attended a support group called Adult Children of Alcoholics. There were people in attendance that were 60 years or older. For the first time in their life, they were dealing with things that impacted them from 30-40 years before. Some of them had been carrying their past on their backs like a heavy bag of boulders that represented their most painful and difficult memories. They became prisoners of those things that preceded their present. There was no freedom to live in the here and now and look forward to the future as long as they were shackled to their heavy load. I had my own heavy bag of memories but when I observed the struggle those people went through, I knew I had to let go of that heavy bag before it became heavier or buried me under the weight. The chains had to drop and I had to find my freedom.

The question then becomes how? How do we let it go? Sometimes we don’t even know what bothers us. Often, the answer is buried under years of repressing and concealment. All we know is that something is causing us pain or emotional insanity. We get to the point of being sick and tired of what we are going through. That might lead us in seeking out extra help like a counselor or a support group. Counseling often stirs things up and one of the consequences of that is that we may feel pain. That’s difficult for most of us. We don’t like to feel pain.

However, it is through the pain that we begin to find a way out. Finding that freedom from our past comes from 2 essential building blocks: Acceptance and forgiveness. We’ll tackle these one at a time.

Acceptance

One the biggest stumbling blocks to moving forward are denial. We deny the reality to what occurred. We make excuses or we self-medicate to avoid acknowledging the truth. Once we can find acceptance, then there is a measure of peace that gives us strength in saying, this happened. Or I did this. There can be no moving forward without this. I have worked with clients that struggled with addiction, PTSD, and were perpetrators to abuse or were victims of someone else’s violence. The first step to their healing began with bravely confronting the past and saying, I will face this, no matter what! What things in your past do you need courage to face?

Michael J. Fox is best known for his role as Alex Keaton on the 80s sitcom Family Ties and the Back to The Future trilogy however in his personal life, he has battled with Parkinson’s disease. He was diagnosed in 1991 and he had to face that his life would never be the same. He had this great thought on acceptance. Acceptance doesn’t mean resignation; it means understanding that something is what it is and that there’s got to be a way through it. For many of us, after acceptance, the way through to finding freedom from the past points to forgiveness.

Forgiveness:

There are two kinds of forgiveness:  Self-forgiveness and forgiving others. In acceptance, we face reality and what happened. In self-forgiveness, we own the responsibility of what the flaw or mistake was that we committed. I was fired from my first counseling job because I made a mistake. After about 6 weeks of struggling with guilt, self-condemnation and the shame over my actions, I was at my lowest. I had to be broken. In my brokenness, I found some scripture that allowed to me work through that difficult time. They gave me hope for the future. God wasn’t done with me. Perhaps they can help you.

Jeremiah 8:4: Jeremiah, say this to the people of Judah: This is what the Lord says: You know if a man falls down, he gets up again. And if a man goes the wrong way, he turns around and comes back.

Philippians 3:13-14: Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself to have attained this. Instead, I am single-minded: Forgetting the things that are behind and reaching out for the things that are ahead, with this goal in mind, I strive toward the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Self-forgiveness and accepting Gods forgiveness didn’t take away the action or the consequence. But it allowed me to live with what happened. Now when I look back, it is merely an event in my life. I no longer have feelings of guilt and failure. I’ve learned and moved on from it. It no longer holds me as a prisoner.

Johnny Cash once said this about our failures of the past: You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don’t try to forget the mistakes, but you don’t dwell on it. You don’t let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space.

We have talked about self-forgiveness but what about forgiving others. When someone has wronged us, forgiveness can be one of the most difficult things we do. For some, it seems impossible and creates a paralysis in even thinking about it and for others; they have tasted a freedom and release of bitterness and hate.

Carolyn Holderread Heggen wrote the book Sexual Abuse: in Christian Homes and Churches. While the book focuses on abuse in the church and home, you can apply her words to your own journey of forgiving others. She writes that offering the offenders forgiveness is not forgetting and it’s not about letting them off the hook. She said that while extending forgiveness is a profoundly spiritual act and can bring spiritual growth, it is not a way of avoiding the pain. It is not done quickly or flippantly to avoid the terror of woundedness.”

So if you’re struggling to come to the point of forgiveness, there is no timetable when such a thing should occur. Talking to a counselor can help to begin this. The author notes that forgiveness “is a process that allows the victim to let go of the intense emotional pain associated with the abuse/offense and replace it with inner resolution and peace.” She indicates that sometimes the abuser may not be repentant and then forgiveness becomes the process of letting go of the pain and bitterness to God’s care.

We must choose forgiveness–either live with it as it begins to burn bitterness and resentment onto our heart or be willing to give our burden over to a higher power. That requires actively exercising our faith by asking God to help us to work through that struggle to forgive. Al-Anon has a saying, “Let go and let God.” When we let go of this burden and place it into Gods care, the transformation begins and like spring bringing new life to the land, so too does God brings us a new life and peace to our heart.

If you are struggling to find freedom and relief from where you are currently at in life or from your past, I can help. Perhaps you are struggling to forgive or maybe you have been in denial on certain things. Contact Armstrong Family Counseling and let us help you begin the road to recovery and independence.

In my life I have had the great privilege to walk alongside people who are going through hell. Be it suicidal thoughts, abuse, neglect, gender dysphoria, divorce, or addiction. I have seen people who have gone through difficult things and often they ask where was God when this was happening? Or ?how could God allow this to happen?? Often these are asked with tears in their eyes rather than with an upraised fist; they genuinely want to know.

When I was in college I had my world rocked by two couple with whom I was good friends with first divorcing and then the two wives marrying. Soon after, one began transitioning to male. It was at this point for me a theoretical issue became a concrete one. I asked God, ?what do I do with this?? The same is true of many Christians who seek counseling.

It is hard?so hard, to hold true to what you have been taught about a certain subject and then to walk through it yourself. It?s hard when you have always believed divorce is wrong yet you find yourself contemplating it. Or when your child says they have gender dysphoria, are cutting, or suicidal.

Christ told us ?In this world you will have trouble?

This world is not a Christian?s home. It is in this life that your faith grows. Once you get to heaven your faith stops growing as God is there and can be seen. It is in the brief time upon the earth that God will grow and strengthen the faith of his children. Yet how does our faith grow? Peter had the right of it when he said in 2 Peter 3:18 that we ought to ?grow in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.? But how does one do this?

To grow in grace is accomplished first and foremost by failure.

Failure will teach you far more than success ever will. Proverb 24 :16 says that a righteous person falls down 7 times yet gets back up. The most gracious people I have ever met are those who have failed in life. When I was going through my divorce I found far more sympathy and grace from others who had gone through divorce then those who had not. This doesn?t mean that those who had never divorced were in the wrong it just means they haven?t grown in grace in this area.

Many Christians that I have counseled hate coming to a counselor. In fact, many times I have debated even advertising that I am a Christian counselor because of the pre-conceived notion people have about Christian Counselors. They feel that I will try to make them feel bad in order to motivate change. When the opposite is true. People are much more motivated to change when the guilt and shame is lightened instead of increasing it. The same is true of our walk as Christians! Christ once told a woman caught in adultery to go and sin no more. However, He told her only after letting her know that He did not condemn her behavior.

That is what it means to grow in your faith! It means truly understanding that God does not condemn you! Yes, even if you are having an affair! Yes, even if you are contemplating suicide! Yes, even if you are transitioning to another gender!

If you don?t believe me that?s okay, not everyone does. That?s why growing in faith is a journey. If you are reading this today and honestly don?t believe that God doesn?t condemn your actions then your God is too small and you need to grow in grace.

To grow in knowledge means to take in as much as you can about Jesus.

Growing in knowledge first and foremost one must read His word. I encourage my clients to download the YouVersion app on their phones and find a devotional plan to read each day.

It also means finding out what godly men and women have to say about Christ. This can be a pastor, an online blog or a wiser man or woman you know.

It?s also trying new things as a Christian. Donate your time to a cause, go on a mission trip, take risks!

Finally, growing in knowledge includes talking to God and seeking His input on the decisions of your life. James told us that if you lack knowledge of God then ask Him!