How To Enjoy Your Own Company When You Feel Like You Have No One

Knowing how to enjoy your own company is something that will:

Instantly change your life and your luck.

Improves the quality of your relationships.

Rid your life of emotional vampires in a drama-free way.

Ensures that you will no longer be needy and dependent on anyone to dictate your worth, mental/physical health, and happiness.

You are only considered “needy” when you put your basic emotional needs in the hands of anyone other than yourself.

When you truly know how to enjoy your own company, you are immune to the label of “needy.”

Narcissists and other toxic types start wishing that someone like you needs them.

And those who are emotionally and empathetically available start wanting you because you are now attractive to them.

It is a role you have created and imposed on yourself. It is also the foundation of emotional entrepreneurship.

There is a big difference between being wanted and being needed; between truly wanting someone and needing their physical presence (even if they are emotionally absent) like you need oxygen to survive.

You’re still reading this post because, with the best of intentions, you voluntarily handed over the keys to a unique, priceless vehicle that is meant to be driven only by you.

Maybe you’ve been moved to the passenger seat or demoted to the back seat.

Maybe you’ve been held hostage in the trunk.

Maybe you’ve been kicked out of your iconic vehicle altogether and now find yourself wandering the road of life; always talking like Uncle Rico in Napoleon Dynamite about the “good old days” when you had a priceless vehicle that could take you anywhere.

And yet, here you are. Stuck.

It’s always everyone’s fault. Ask me how I know (I have a PhD in emotional and relational wandering).

Maybe you’ve convinced yourself that you don’t know how to drive; that you can only rev the engine to attract the driver, and then surrender the passenger seat to your own life’s journey.

It’s time to get in the driver’s seat. Whether it’s your first time or you vow that this will be your last time being displaced.

Learning how to enjoy your own company after a breakup, without friends, at school, or even at home starts with taking a look at your past.

As I always say, no one had the perfect parent and no one will ever have the perfect parent.

Your parents did the best they could.

If your parents were toxic and unavailable all the time, if they threw money at problems instead of their emotional attention and availability; if they made you feel like you had to work for their love…that was the best they had.

It had nothing to do with you or your lack of worth.

As a defenseless, voiceless child, you deserved their unconditional love, but instead, you were willing to perform for crumbs of approval.

Now, as an adult, you feel like you don’t deserve unconditional love from the one person who will matter more than all others: yourself.

I was internalizing my parent’s ability to be everything I wanted them to be to me, but only to everyone else. And that hurt me. As an adult, my solution was triangulation—in my relationships with family, friends, and lovers. It was the only way I could numb the pain of not being “good enough” to get a cookie crumb.

This was my birthright.

So what did I end up doing?

I made good people feel like they had to compete for my respect, loyalty, love, time, and attention.
I lied compulsively.
I lived in constant drama and denial.
I contradicted everything I believed in and copied everyone around me because I had no sense of who I was without the physical companionship, influence, and approval of others.
I was unfaithful to people I was loyal to.
I constantly had to show off (through social media and other means) how many friends I had.
Admitting all of this is very embarrassing for me, but things like relationships with men, the number of “close friends” I could have, social status, and material purchases (which I couldn’t afford) were what I used to measure how “unlonely” I was.

I couldn’t stand being alone because I didn’t know how to enjoy my own company.

What I didn’t realize was that all of the above were coping mechanisms for trauma. They were simply ways to evade the truth and perpetuate denial. It was a small (and very destructive) bandage I put on the metastatic cancer of not being able to be alone, with myself and my thoughts.

I think the answers to the questions we have about ongoing emotional pain, self-sabotage, low self-esteem, bad luck in relationships, etc., in adulthood can almost always be found by looking back at our childhoods.

Related : Am I Emotionally Unavailable? How To Tell & What To Do

It’s about looking back at our traumas and the abandonment we felt with the curiosity and passionate inquiry of an archaeologist (and the result of empowerment). Instead of the impulsive habit of disempowering ourselves and reducing ourselves to a helpless victim we can then shame, punish, and pigeonhole ourselves into an inescapable prison of mediocrity.

I grew up with a lot of anxious attachment. Because of this, I wasted my life trying to avoid my own company—with friends, and activities, engaging in stupid, time-wasting drama, bragging, using phones and technology; the list goes on and on.

When it comes to knowing how to enjoy your own company, the truth is that you may be surrounded by countless family and friends. You may be the most popular person in school, in your community, or at work.

You may have no one in your life to call or have dinner with. There is no one to check in with you to make sure you are okay or even to reciprocate a small part of what you give them with all the love in your heart.

The point is that you may have no family and no friends. Or you may have a very large and loving family, or maybe a toxic and fake family. Either way, if the loneliness of your illness and pain is your loneliness, you will feel paralyzed for the person who has everything you wish you had as you do.

You don’t know how to enjoy your own company because every time you tried to develop this skill as a child, you felt helpless in some way. You were so hungry for approval and validation that without it, the loneliness was consuming and painful. Maybe you felt worthless to someone you respected and trusted.

This has led to the need to find others to save you from yourself.

Now that we’ve identified the root cause of why you don’t know how to enjoy your own company, let’s move on to how to improve the quality of the one relationship you can never afford to lose.

How do you learn to enjoy your own company? Is there a way to learn how to enjoy your own company without friends or after a breakup?

If you do a simple internet search for “how to enjoy your own company,” you’ll find many of the same suggestions.

“Talk to yourself.”

“Take yourself on a date!”

“Clear your mind.”

“Appreciate the little things.”

“Plan a trip and go it alone.”

“Accept and let go of the past.”

“Forgive yourself.”

“Get a weighted blanket and make yourself a nutritious meal.”

These are all great suggestions. I didn’t want to waste time going through suggestions like these because they’re all over the internet.

Recently, I read some Tom Hardy quotes and they were much more accessible. They spoke to me more than any of the suggestions above. I may not agree with everything Tom says, but at least these quotes got things going. After reading each one, I was like, “Yes!!” or “Amen!”

“Vulnerable people always have to be in a relationship to feel important and loved. “Once you know how to enjoy your own company, being single becomes a privilege.” – Tom Hardy I’m not going to make a blanket statement that someone who always has to be in a relationship is weak. It’s certainly unhealthy and a red flag, but who am I to call anyone weak? I chose to include this quote regardless because I can say that for me personally when I always had to be in a relationship of some sort to feel important, it was because I was weak. I let my past define me (and then it drained and broke me; I wasn’t strong). When you know how to enjoy your own company, being single becomes a privilege because you get back in the driver’s seat. You’re calm, you never rush or go crazy, because you know what you will and won’t accept. As I’ve always said, the first symptom of setting standards is loneliness. But when you get back in the driver’s seat and know how to enjoy your own company, you can still feel lonely without defining yourself as worthless and unworthy of quality company. You know what to do when loneliness strikes because you’re your own best friend. And you’ve stopped settling because you know you can never “settle” your way into being and experiencing and getting everything you want and deserve.

Related : 7 warning signs your partner is emotionally manipulating you

“Being alone for a while is dangerous. It’s addictive. Once you see how peaceful it is, you don’t want to deal with people anymore.” – Tom Hardy. I would change that to, “You don’t want to waste your time with toxic people anymore.” Toxic people get their validation by exploiting your hunger for their hunger. When you realize that you feel more alone in relationships with toxic people than you would when you were physically alone, you begin to prioritize your peace. When peace is prioritized, it becomes protected. And when it is protected, you begin to build self-esteem; you realize that you were with your best friend all along (you).

“People don’t understand that sitting in your house alone in peace, eating snacks and minding your own business is priceless.” – Tom Hardy. Yep. I couldn’t agree more or say it better.

You’re here because you want to know how to enjoy your own company; I’ll tell you how. You have to realize that no one person on this entire planet has been with you through everything.

No one person knows every detail, secret, failure, embarrassing habit, success, rejection, pain, trauma, and shame of it all.

The only person who knows it all and is still able to keep your heart beating despite all the abuse, stress, and living with a restrictive label that you never had the right to adopt is you.

Don’t you deserve some self-respect? Don’t you deserve to take care of yourself and love yourself – instead of waiting for others to do it for you?

No one is going to save you from yourself. No one is going to fix your past for you because no one has walked in your shoes but you.

The moment you realize that you are your leader, your savior, your own best friend, your therapist, your own “driver,” your protector, and your own greatest love, then and only then can you begin to enjoy your own company and be more selective about who gets time with you (because you love your time with you).

I think knowing how to enjoy your own company is an art. It took me years, but I’m finally no longer at odds with myself. It’s made it easier to realize how much my “self” has done for me all those years when I did nothing but abuse, sabotage, undermine, and limit myself.

Now, I have this weighted blanket. I love taking myself on dates. It’s not hard anymore, it’s nice to treat myself to little indulgences and nourish my body with delicious food. There’s no way I’m going to skip these things. Things like the weighted blanket, taking yourself on dates, etc., are what comes naturally when you do the work and build on the right foundation.

Now, if I go out to dinner by myself, I don’t have to talk on my phone or squirm because I feel uncomfortable.

I am my own best friend, first and foremost.

We choose family for ourselves our partner and our friends. If you feel like you want to start choosing more wisely, it’s time to start treating yourself with more respect.

I was tolerating disrespect because I was degrading and belittling myself at every turn. When you stop trying to educate people into being what your ego needs them to be and start giving yourself everything that only you know you need, you won’t feel guilty about walking away from users because you no longer tolerate anyone who treats you less than you consistently treat yourself.