LONELINESS AND FEAR

Fr Jim Cogley

Loneliness

A lady who had been through a separation and divorce said to her counsellor that she never believed that the years following could be so difficult. She experienced dreadful loneliness and isolation. Her phone seldom rang, her emails and letters were few, and a lot of time was spent stuck at home. Before, she was often invited to events but now it seldom happened, and she suspected that many of her married friends regarded her as a potential threat. Her self-diagnosis was that she needed to go out and start meeting people again, and this was the advice she expected from her counsellor. He surprised her by saying that she first needed to understand and befriend her loneliness. ‘As long as you are afraid to be alone’, he told her she would ‘end up feeling lonely and this neediness would keep everyone away’.

Fear

A lady worked as a secretary to a high-powered CEO. She was terrified of her boss’s angry outbursts when she made even a small mistake. She explained that every time he lost his temper, she went speechless and felt paralyzed. This then caused her to make even more mistakes. Every outburst made her feel ‘small’ and it was this word, when she reflected on it, that helped her to see that in her mind he was similar to her father, and here was where her fear was rooted. In relation to her boss, she was like a child again. She began to accept and love that part of her that was causing her grief and came to see that this belligerent boss only had as much power over her as she had been giving him. As she changed her thinking, what she began to see in him was a scared little mouse whereas before she saw a roaring lion.