by How do you feel being alone with yourself? Do you turn on the TV to feel accompanied, look for a quick conversation on social media to fill that void, or do you make plans that you don’t want because you think that “being alone” is for losers?
Loneliness is one of the most intense emotionsand painful, but it is also an emotion in which we can find many answers. Avoiding it will only silence the inner voices, which does not allow us to be authentic. This is what Borja Vilaseca says in his latest book. The writer, popularizer, lecturer and social entrepreneur has written love your loneliness (Ed.Vergara), a therapeutic journey that accompanies this process of social detox and that helps to face the greatest fear: the wound of abandonment.
Reviewing our childhood will help us reconcile with our wounded inner child. Only then, she says, will we discover that we are our best friends.
the false sense of company
-In your book you ask a question: Who are the brave ones who stay alone with themselves? Do you have to be brave to be alone with yourself?
-What I explain in the book is that the fear of loneliness It’s tremendous, I think It’s a universal fear., one of the most intense and painful. Unconsciously it leads us all to desperately seek that external company that we normally project onto our partner. And The reason we socialize too much nowadays It is not the love of society, but the fear of loneliness. Therefore, the brave ones who stay with themselves are those who, for whatever reasons, have the strength to sustain their loneliness, embrace it, love it, and there, as I explain in the book, is when they find an inner child. wounded, a wound of abandonment, a lack of self-esteem, a lack of self-love…
It is precisely in solitude, in the act of being alone, where one heals and transforming that, until there comes a moment when that loneliness disappears because you have found yourself. Because you have found a way to accompany yourself. And then, of course, you return to the world of relationships, but not like a beggar, from need, scarcity, dependence… but from abundance.
-And what changes that?
-Change your links, now there are no unhealthy attachments, dysfunctional relationships, there is no toxicity anymore, because you have cleansed yourself first. This is very easy to say, but it is a “trip” to put it into practice. I realize that many people who are in a relationship have not completed this process and, therefore, there are dysfunctions, codependency… That is why I say that it is for the brave.
“Knowing how to be alone is important to enjoy fuller, more functional and more authentic relationships”
-Don’t you think we have to accept that most relationships have (or should have) something dysfunctional?
-Nowadays, there is a excessive hyperrelationship and hyperattachment, but there is no perfect situation. Being alone also has its things, but to enjoy fuller relationships, more functional, more authentic, I think it is important. And I hope that one day the new generations, when they enter into sexual-affective bonds, will do so from another place. Not looking for perfection, because that is neurotic, but you have to see that There is a lot of dysfunction and much more toxicity than we imagine within relationships., especially in couples and families. What happens is that, as is the norm, and the alternative is so painful, in the end we resign ourselves and settle.
The feeling I have is that the people who have made this pathwhich usually begins with a romantic breakup, then they no longer conform with that. There are people who repeat the cycle because they have not loved their solitude, but those who have, and this is what I have been investigating, become much more demanding out of self-love. And that’s what it does, as I explain at the end of the book, that the dynamics and couple models are changing. Because more and more people realize that they need their space, their freedom.
The wound of abandonment
-Do you think we learn more being alone or as a couple?
-I think that The function of the couple is not to make you happy, but to be aware. Many fears arise in the couple due to attachments, and childhood wounds and transgenerational traumas are awakened: It is an excellent healing place.. But I think that in solitude you manage to learn something that I think is impossible to do as a couple, which is learn to be happy for yourself. When you are in a relationship, that happiness is “pseudo” because somehow the other becomes a patch. When that patch is taken from you, you realize that it was not entirely true, because it came from outside. That’s why We become so addicted and dependent.
In an ideal world, my point of view is that we should first learn to be alone and then, of course, as a couple. We have done it the other way around.
“In solitude you learn to be happy for yourself.”
-Where does the wound of abandonment come from and how is it related to the fear of being alone in adulthood?
-The wound of abandonment has to do with the wound of separation. We are in the womb, we are fused with the mother, with God, with the universe… And during childbirth they cut our umbilical cord, and separate us. The navel reminds us of that birth wound, of separation. The baby develops the mind, language and the concept of self, our thoughts and beliefs. We identify with that self and we realize that this self is separated from the mother, from life… We learn to be dissociated with life. We feel alone, disconnected from that umbilical cord, which is our true essence. In the ego mental cagesince we are not connected with the spirit and with the being, we are governed by very ignorant beliefswe believe that the cure for our loneliness is external company. Therefore, we search excessively outside.
The wound of abandonment is forged from birth, because you start to disconnect from yourself, you feel separated from yourself and you start to believe in that character. We unconsciously seek love and affection from dad and mom, because we cannot provide ourselves with the necessary self-esteem, but dad and mom also have their egos and are narcissistic people… they cannot shower us with affection and we enter adulthood alienated and disconnected.
Find yourself
-We have abandoned each other, then?
-Within every adult, there is a scared, abandoned girl or boy… Loneliness is an abandonment of your adult part to your child part. That is the great therapeutic journey that the book proposes. It’s, hey, you abandoned yourself, how much time do you spend with yourself? What relationship do you have with you? Why do you socialize? When you realize that you are addicted to others, that’s where the journey begins. That wound of abandonment can be transcended, but it requires deep work with your body and mind.
“When you feel alone, you think the solution is to connect with the outside, but the
The solution is to connect with you.”
-How do you get it?
-Every day I have my mind, body and spirit routineand I realize that no matter what happens outside, what matters is if you are connected inside. Society is so deeply disconnected from itself that all the emotions that wander within it are believed to come from outside. That’s why, when you feel aloneyou think that the solution is to connect with what is outside, but it is not true, the solution is to connect with you. This therapeutic work is painful, which is why many people avoid it.
-What is it like to be alone with yourself in a healthy way?
-The feeling that, regardless of what your decor is right now, you know that you have yourself, that you count on yourself, that you actually haveYou are your best friend, and you are the love of your life. You are your support, your guru, your guide…You give yourself what you need. They don’t teach us this, we have no references. In that we are self-taught. And that is learned by being alone with yourself.
That doesn’t mean you can’t count on therapists and people to help you, but no one can solve this existential problem more than you. For me the great enemy of self-knowledge It is the pharmaceutical industry, religion, etc., they are all kinds of bandages that do not help to do this work alone.
-What are the indicators that we are not okay alone?
-When you are alone you get bored, you pick up your cell phone, you make plans…That is the addiction to social nicotine which I talk about in the book. Since you have abandoned yourself, you do not know yourself. There comes a time when the feeling of loneliness disappears, that is very powerful because it makes you free, it makes you decide who you connect with and how. When you are a slave, you don’t choose. Sociodependence is an addiction. Solitude is self-knowledge, spirituality and creativity. People who have a hobby, regardless of whether you professionalize it or not, are guaranteed half a life.
“Being bored is necessary: it is allowing yourself to feel emptiness and repressed emotions”
-Being bored is also necessary, don’t you think?
-Getting bored is necessary and In this society we do not allow it for even a moment.. The problem is when it becomes chronic, it generates a lot of neurosis, it leads you to compulsive attitudes to escape that boredom. Being bored is allowing yourself to feel emptiness and repressed emotions.
-There is a concept that you extract from Stoicism which is “amor fati”. What is this concept? Do you always have to suffer to achieve peace of mind?
-Stoicism has marked me a lot. In solitude you discover your true essence, it changes your way of perceiving life and everything that happens to you. There is a way of interpreting life that for me is very intelligent, which is to see life as a journey, as an evolutionary process, from the wound of separation, the ego, to the consciousness of unity. How is that? That is amor fati, no matter what happens, No matter how painful or adverse it is, it is always an opportunity for healing.. The problem is that today we are governed by the victim archetype: Instead of taking advantage of the tools that life offers us, we fight against them. One thing that the wise have taught us is that We must take advantage of destiny for our own spiritual growth.
