07/26/2025
Existential loneliness lives in the space where belonging and rejection collide.
This space is an extremely individual experience, but a very common theme for those living with complex trauma.
It happens when we have been through experiences where we’ve been we are too much, too loud, too emotional, too sensitive, too worried, while also exposed to narratives that we are not enough. This fractures our sense of self, our ability to trust intuition or our emotions, leaves us gaslighting our own emotions, thoughts, and feelings. We become disconnected from who we really are.
This lends to being stuck craving belonging but fearing rejection, wanting to be fully seen and heard but guarded behind the barbed wire fence around our heart.
Complex trauma amplifies existential loneliness by making it unsafe to trust others with our true selves, and unsafe to trust our selves. We adapt to these experiences, to protect those parts of us that are rejected, silencing our truth to belong, only to feel more invisible and alone.
Healing means reclaiming our right to exist exactly as we are and finding or creating spaces where we unapologetically belong without needing to shrink or perform. This is accepting ourselves, which is a radical act of self-love.
When we accept ourselves without conditions, we return home to our truth and reject the narratives of self hatred that we adapted to survive.
You deserve to be yourself. Unscripted.
