Feeling like you are the only person that you have to depend on can be a very pressing emotion to deal with. When you go through rough patches in life, it can sometimes seem like you can only tread alone because there's no one in your corner. I am no stranger to finding that I have been my own greatest rock. Speaking from experience and my own current reality, I probably have about one or two people whom I can absolutely depend on when times get rough, and you might be surprised just how many people find themselves in the same predicament.
Sometimes in life we go through purges where it seems that the number of people we can count on in our lives dwindles down to just you! There are many reasons that this happens, and they are just as internal as they are external. Read on to learn how to navigate experiencing an extended period of having to "go it alone."
Ground & Center
When feeling like you are holding the weight of the world all on your own, there is no space for you to crumble under the pressure. If you find yourself in a space where you literally only have yourself to depend on, you need to ensure that your emotional, mental, and energetic space is stable. This incorporates the importance of having your mental health in check.
When going at it alone for an extended period of time in your life, you must build a strong sense of self, resilience, and emotional security. You need to be aligned within yourself, and be operating at a level of your best self. In order to do this, you must ground your energy and center your emotions.
Remember that nothing outside of yourself makes you whole.
This means that you could be surrounded by a whole slew of supporters and still be lost in the sauce. Ground yourself by meditating on the daily. Set time aside every day to find your inner peace. Go within, mentally calm every nerve ending and balance every chakra. In your heart space, make sure that your emotional health is aligned. This means that you might have to bring down some feelings of resentment, and balance them with feelings of accountability. Go through every emotional checkpoint in your life, where one emotion reflects the other. By balancing each emotion, you can better handle the responsibility of taking care of yourself.
Related: How to Ground Yourself Spiritually
Take A Break From Social Media
Taking a break from social media is crucial for you to get back into your own head and understand what's happening in your own reality uninfluenced by the superficial happiness of other people. Sometimes we get so caught up in other people's lives on social media, that we either start projecting disdain for our own lives or we start living vicariously through others.
We become voyeurs instead of attracting a new team and building a real tribe in our lives.
There are better ways of making new connections with people that can lead to long-lasting relationships. It is not healthy to be so ingrained with the status of other people's lives, and how supported they seem. We start to lose the foundation of our own experiences, and on a subconscious level, begin wishing we were who we constantly scroll through on Instagram. Learning to disconnect from what is being portrayed by people living their best lives on the internet, helps us get in touch with living our own - regardless of how many followers or supporters we have.
Personally, I've taken a break from my Instagram page. In doing so, I realized just how many people I actually have to connect with outside of my social media. This means that I was not making real life connections. It opened my eyes to how much work I have to do with fostering real genuine friendships that extend past the DMs and comment sections.
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Realize That It's Not Always Personal
It's easy when we go through these periods of depending on ourselves, to consciously bash the people that we expect to be there. I can admit to speaking ill of those who I feel just fell off the edge of the map when it came to being a support system or friend to me. I had to stop and realize that though I was emotionally affected by the absence of key players in my life, I had to understand that they are a whole person too. They go through internal chaos and are also on their own soul evolutions. It all hit me that maybe they are not in the best emotional, mental, or energetic space to even be able to be there for me because they can barely be there for themselves.
Related: How I Overcame the Hurt of Losing My Best Female Friend
This realization was a huge reality check for me and it also put my ego in its place. Sometimes it is just the natural law and order of energy and frequency that pulls people out of our spheres. Soul contracts with people in your life can end on a dime, and it's always in divinely orchestrated purpose. If someone in your life just magically disappears, it might be because it was meant to happen. Use this truth to understand that people aren't taken away, they are displaced, which means the universe will put something else that is meant to be there in its place.
Self-Actualize
It's easy to fall into a negative, downward spiral of thinking, or emotions when it comes to why there is no one in your corner. It's natural to beat yourself up as to why you find yourself in this position. During these moments of weakness, you must remember all of the times that you pulled through solo. You must give yourself credit for the strength that you have built within your own spirit to survive. Instead of going back in time to all of your failures, go back in time to all of your personal successes.
Think about that time you were able to move out of your space on your own because you had no one else there to help.
Think about any time where you needed help and ended up getting whatever had to be done on your own because of your resilience, strength, and determination.
Think about any time you were fearful of something but because you pulled it together, you made it through.
Obviously these are hypothetical situations, but no doubt you can relate this to something you've experienced. Pat yourself on the back for all that you have faced, gone through, and surpassed - all alone.
Self-love and self-care is highly important during these times! Going forward, you must remember to build a stronger backbone in order to face the moments when you must do life alone. There will be times when you don't have the support that you need, and that should not stop you. You have all the willpower you need to forge ahead and when you get to where you're going, you will have higher standards for those trying to jump onto your bandwagon.
Affirm A Brighter Future
Finally, use this time when all you have is yourself to depend on, to set your intentions on gaining closer and stronger relationships.
Like attracts Like.
If you have been living through certain karmic occurrences in your life that have forced you to become stronger, and a better version of yourself, that energy is like a magnet to people who are living the same testimonies. If you are climbing a mountain that someone who belongs in your future is also climbing, you will find them at the top.
Use the law of attraction to draw like-minded, or like-souled people, into your life. Affirm what kind of person that you want as a friend in your life and how they will mirror what you have been through. Visualize and meditate on what a healthy bond looks like between you and someone that has your best interest at heart, and vice versa. Think about how your next closest friend will feel energetically, and how they will be a positive influence in your life.
Related: How to Manifest the Life of Your Dreams in 5 Steps
By keeping all of these points in mind, as you continue to flourish as a powerful individual who is whole all by themselves, you can gain strength in doing life alone - until you don't have to.
How have you pulled through during moments of aloneness in your life? Share your stories with us below!
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Anyway, I personally think that the less shallow folks out here may contemplate calling things “quits” or they at least distance themselves a bit from their partner (and what I’m referring to is serious relationships) due to all of the stress and strain that oftentimes comes with the holidays whether it be financial, familial, due to their tight schedules or something else.
Listen, I would hate for you and your man to miss the fun and happiness of experiencing this time of year, all because you are so overwhelmed or irritated that you can’t really enjoy it. That’s why I have a few practical tips for how to avoid allowing the typical holiday season stress from INFECTING your relationship.
Manage Your Expectations
GiphyUnmanaged expectations. If there is a main reason why the holiday season tends to be so stress-filled for so many people, I’d bet good money that this is the cause. And when you’re in a long-term relationship, expectations can manifest themselves in all sorts of cryptic and/or unexpected ways. You might have relatives who assume that you are going to be with them for Thanksgiving or Christmas when you have other plans in mind. You might be thinking that you are going to spend one amount for presents while your man is thinking something totally different. When it comes to scheduling, your signals may be crossed.
And you know what? To all of these scenarios, this is where clear and consistent communication come in. Don’t assume anything. Don’t dictate anything either. From now until New Year’s, mutually decide to check in once a week, just to make sure that you are both on the same page as it relates to the holidays and what you both are thinking will come along with it. The less blindsided you both feel, the less stressed out you will be. Trust me on this.
Set (and Keep) a Budget
GiphyOkay, so I read that last year, 36 percent of Americans incurred some type of holiday-related debt. Hmph. Last year, there was still some sense of normalcy in this country, chile, so I can only imagine what finances are gonna look like over the next several weeks. That said, since I don’t know a lot of people who don’t find being broke stressful, make sure that you and your bae set a budget and then stick to it this year — no ifs, ands or buts.
Because really, y’all — it doesn’t make sense to deplete savings and/or max out credit cards for a few days of giggles only to be damn near losing your mind because you don’t know how to make ends meet come Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
And by the way, this tip doesn’t just speak to things like food and gifts; I also mean travel. If it doesn’t make a ton of sense (or cents) to be all over the place this year — DON’T BE.
Keep Matthew 5:37 at the Forefront
GiphyIf off the top of your head, you don’t know what Matthew 5:37 says, no worries, here ya go: “But let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No.’ For whatever is more than these is from the evil one.” That verse right there? Oh, it’s a boundaries lifesaver! I say that because do you see “maybe” or “I’ll think about it” in there? Nope. LOL. It says that you should tell people “yes” or “no” and leave it at that — and that complements Anne Lamott’s quote, “’No’ is a complete sentence” impeccably well. Yeah, you’ve got to remember that anything beyond a yes or no to a request is privileged information; you don’t owe anyone details or an explanation.
Besides, if you are really honest with yourself, when someone asks you something and you give a “Umm, let me think about it” kind of reply, more times than not, you already know what your answer is going to be — so why not let you both off of the hook? Give your response. Commit to that. And let everyone (including yourself) get on with their lives and schedules.
I promise you that when it comes to those holiday parties, you are pissing more folks off by not RSVP’ing or doing so and not showing up than just saying, “Thank you but not this year” off the rip.
Remember That Your Personal Space Is Privilege Not a Right
GiphyA friend of mine recently bought a new house and invited me over to come see it. He’s a single man with no children, so as I was taking in all of the space that he had, especially as I walked through his finished basement, I joked about relatives coming to live with him. “Hell no” and “absolutely not” were pretty much his immediate responses as he went on to say that some folks even had the nerve to be offended when he told them that he had no intentions on taking DNA in.
Ain’t it wild how people think that your stuff is their right? And yes, that brings me to my next point. Your home is your sanctuary space. If you want to host folks this year — cool. If not, ALSO COOL. Please don’t let folks (family included) guilt you into how they want you to act or even into what they would do if the shoe was on the other foot. You are not them — and as one of my favorite quotes states, “If two people were exactly alike, one of them would be unnecessary.” (A man by the name Larry Dixon said that.)
Hell, my friends? They know that I am good for sending them random things that they need or even want all throughout the year. Coming over to hang out at my pace, though. Uh-uh. Chalk it up to being a card-carrying member of the ambivert club yet I like keeping my living space personal — and I sleep like a baby, each and every night, for feeling that way.
Always remember that your space, your time, your resources, your energy and shoot, yourself period (including your relationship), are all things that are your own. You get to choose how, when and why you want to share them. The holiday season is certainly no exception.
Cultivate Some “You Two Only” Traditions
GiphyIt’s not uncommon for some couples to hit me up after the holiday season to “detox.” Sometimes it’s due to the financial drama (and sometimes trauma) that they experienced. Sometimes it’s because they allowed their relatives (especially in-laws) to get more into their personal business than they should’ve. More than anything, though, it tends to be because they didn’t get enough quality time together and so ended up feeling “disconnected.”
Please don’t let that happen. Listen, I’m not even a holidays kind of woman and yet, I will absolutely sit myself down with some hot chocolate and chocolate chip cookies to enjoy a Hallmark holiday film or two. Aside from the fact that most of them are lighthearted and sweet, I also like that they usually focus on couples loving on each other amidst all of the holiday beauty and ambiance — which is something that all couples should set aside some time to do.
Maybe it’s a vacation. Maybe it’s a staycation. Or maybe it’s my personal favorite, A SEXCATION. Whether it’s for a few days, the weekend or even overnight — don’t you let the holidays go by without setting aside time for you and your man to celebrate one another. Don’t you dare (check out “Are You Ready To Have Some Very Merry 'Christmas Sex'?”).
GET. SOME. REST.
GiphyI once read that 8 out of 10 people get stressed out over the holidays and 3 out of 10 lose sleep during to it — and when you’re stress-filled and sleep-deprived, that can absolutely lead to hypersensitivity, making mountains out of molehills and even not being in the mood for sex.
Your relationship can’t afford to go through any of this, so definitely make sure to prioritize rest. I don’t care how unrealistic it might seem during this time, sleep should never be seen as a luxury; it will always and forever be a great necessity.
That said, try to get no less than six hours of shut-eye in (check out “6 Fascinating Ways Sex And Sleep Definitely Go Hand In Hand”) and even ask your bae to take a nap with you sometimes (check out “Wanna Have Some Next-Level Sex? Take A Nap, Sis.”). Not only will sleep help to restore your mind, body and spirit but, when it’s with your partner, it’s an act of intimacy that can make you both feel super connected, even in the midst of what might feel like chaos.
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Holiday season stress is real. Still, never give it the permission or power to throw your relationship off. Put you and your man first and let the holidays be what they are gonna be, chile.
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