Meg Van Deusen

The Power of Eye Contact: A Free and Easy Stress-Reducer

In a world of screens, a moment of warm eye contact can offer something easily overlooked: the feeling of being seen. I explore the links between compassionate attention, social connection, and relief from stress.

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Loving Kindness Meditation: A Response to Loneliness

How can sitting quietly with yourself help you feel less alone? Loving-kindness meditation offers a way to notice self-judgment, practice compassion, and approach both yourself and others with greater warmth and connection.

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Five Things To Do When Feeling Defeated and Overwhelmed

When life feels like an endless treadmill, pushing harder may leave you more depleted. These five steps begin with a pause and lead toward understanding your needs, clarifying what matters, and taking one small step forward.

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Help Relieve Stress by Cultivating Hope

Chronic stress can narrow our view until problems seem like all there is. I explore how noticing what is good, treating ourselves kindly, and creating a practical path toward meaningful goals can help restore hope.

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Meditation Benefits

Stress can make it difficult to focus, regulate emotions, and think through decisions. I look at how mindfulness meditation may help us pause, steady our attention, and respond from a calmer place.

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Reducing Stress In The Classroom

What changes when a teacher asks what a student has been through before judging their behavior? A conversation with an experienced educator explores how understanding trauma, collaborative learning, and restorative justice can build trust and reduce classroom stress.

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Social Media (for better or worse?)

We often reach for social media to feel connected, yet leave feeling lonelier or less satisfied. I examine that tension and share ways families, schools, and communities can support healthier habits and more time together in person.

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Could Your Gut Be Causing Your Anxiety and Stress?

Stress can unsettle the gut, but could the gut also influence how we feel? I explore the two-way relationship between the microbiome and the brain, including the promise and limitations of early research on probiotics.

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Coping with Holiday Stress

The gap between an ideal holiday and the one we actually experience can bring disappointment and tension. Through one family’s story, I explore how compassion, flexible expectations, and intentional choices can make room for a more meaningful celebration.

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Anxiety Self Help Tips

Worry can keep us circling problems we cannot control. Through one father’s experience, I explore how compassionate engagement with the people we love can interrupt anxious rumination and strengthen our sense of connection.

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Living in a World of Information Overload

Constant messages, notifications, and news can leave little room to hear ourselves think. I explore the pull of always being available and how stepping away from our devices can create space for calm, curiosity, and genuine connection.

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Feeling Lonely

Why can someone surrounded by people feel lonely while someone living alone feels deeply connected? I explore the role of perception and self-judgment, and how hope, compassion, and openness can help us feel a greater sense of belonging.

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All writing

Loving Kindness Meditation: A Response to Loneliness

How can sitting quietly with yourself help you feel less alone? Loving-kindness meditation offers a way to notice self-judgment, practice compassion, and approach both yourself and others with greater warmth and connection.

Loving kindness meditation is a response to loneliness. Loneliness is a common phenomenon these days, affecting somewhere between 30 and 50 percent of Americans.

Those of you struggling with it may wonder how in the world sitting alone and meditating can help you feel less lonely. The instinctive cure to loneliness is to be with other people, which can, indeed, help. But if you aren’t connected to yourself, being around others may not penetrate your loneliness.

We learn to be less lonely by first learning to be with ourselves. And one of the ways to practice being with ourselves is to meditate. Meditation helps you focus on your aliveness—your very existence. By bringing your attention to your breath, sensations in your body, your emotions or your thoughts, you become of aware of you.

Meditation elicits an observational stance instead of a reactive one. Instead of being embedded in your lonely feelings or self-deprecating thoughts, you compassionately observe them and begin to differentiate from them.

Meditation can increase secure attachment

Research shows that meditation facilitates an internal connection with yourself as it raises your awareness of your thoughts, feelings and physical existence.

In meditation, you learn the art and science of meta cognition, that is, the ability to watch your mind. And when you watch your mind with compassion and non-judgment (two key components of mindfulness meditation), you increase confidence or what psychologists call secure attachment to the self.

When you have a secure attachment you are sturdier in your sense of self, you don’t take others personally, you believe in yourself and support yourself with kindness and consideration. With a secure attachment, you value yourself and, therefore, take better care of yourself. This more secure relationship with yourself helps you believe in yourself and have optimism about your life.

Loving kindness meditation promotes well-being and connection

Loving-kindness meditation in which you practice compassion for yourself and others has shown to have powerful benefits on the psyche. In particular, LKM increases positive emotion (usually the antithesis of loneliness), increases social connection (which helps you with relationships) and increases empathy for others (which, releases you from ruminating about yourself).

Because lonely people often assume that there is something wrong with them, they tend to isolate more. If loving-kindness meditation can break through the myth that you are flawed and unwanted, not only will it increase your sense of well-being, but it will help you be in the world with presence and compassion.

Conclusion

Taking the time each day to sit quietly and meditate can increase your awareness of yourself without judgment. This allows you more clarity of mind as the negative thinking about yourself gets observed instead of believed.

When you aren’t held hostage by your own judgments and ruminations, you are freer to be you, more likely to feel connected to yourself, and more likely to interact with others confidently. In particular, loving-kindness meditation in which you practice compassion for yourself and others, will increase positive emotions and empathy—antidotes for loneliness. For one of my recorded loving-kindness meditations, click below:

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