Hi, Selkie.
I think we are trained in many cultures to hide/run/find ways to fix any pain. Thus we tend to avoid learning from it.
I am lumping loneliness into the larger title of pain here.
I learned quite a bit about pain (including loneliness) and healing for me was to really look at it, instead of try to get away from it, fill it up, or otherwise change how I felt. It IS how I felt. It's not BAD. I stopped labeling things as BAD or GOOD. It just IS. When I take away the judgement, even of my own feelings, then I can step away, become an observer of myself, if you will, and it becomes less volatile, or toxic. It just becomes interesting. It's not that I stop FEELING the emotion, I just stop trying to get out of it, maybe just for one little moment at a time....then more and more. Have you ever heard "that which you resist, persists"?
My experience with traditional counseling is that it tends to focus on what has gone wrong and healing that place by first uncovering every little piece of grit that makes it up. I understand why this kind of therapy seems overwhemingly painful. Although I think it's important, I don't think I would be healing so well if that's all I did.
I have another counselor/mentor who has helped me with a different approach, not so much to get me to understand WHY I hurt, (which she also did, but not endlessly) but to help me to create what I do want from life, and how that really happens.
I also read a million books, but there are two books that, although I didn't (and probably still don't) understand completely, led me to a fresh perspective on things.
One is: "The Power of Now" by Ekhart Tolle.
The other is "When things Fall Apart" by Pema Chodron.
Pema in particular (I would read anything she writes because she is a wonderful writer and very funny and compassionate) helped me to see how useful pain is, and how getting away from pain, as had been my pattern, did not allow me to analyze why it was there, and how to learn from it. So what I see happened was that by getting away from my pain so quickly (although it felt like an enormously LONG period of time while I was in it).....I never learned what it was there to tell me.....so it kept coming back. And I kept trying to get away from it. And traditional counseling, although we LOOKED at the pain, seemed to never move into any options....just digging the scabs off time after time...seeing mistakes, and pathology, instead of acceptance of a divine plan or path.....and how the pain could be part of that.
It's only when I stopped running and accepted that I HURT! It's PART of me and my path in life....and that it's ok. I actually embraced the pain.........that I started to see why it was there.
Pain is inevitable. We are human. I feel it with great regularity, but I am getting better and better at figuring out WHY I feel it and how I get to USE it to claim my power of CHOICE. Because I have a choice in my MIND as to how I view pain and happiness, I get to master it, not the other way around. Tolle has an interesting way of expressing this "other self" we tend to see... this choice of every moment we have. Actually, I would recommmend reading the little abridged version of "the Power of Now" first...it's not so difficult to navigate.
Pain exists where we are attached to something (that is or that isn't) but it isn't meant to be habitual or a lifestyle......... When I really GOT INTO the MUCK of it all....and just accepted that this pain IS, then I almost without effort started to see choices. When we think we have no options, that when loneliness or pain seems overwheming. But FEEL it, stay still in it a bit, maybe stop trying to fill the void....just feel it and be patient. The sky will open, the sun will shine, you will see a choice.
And with a choice, you will find your way.
And your way may well be medication, therapy, artistic expression or any combination of things. There is not just one way. But just be sure it's not what you've always done....because we all know what doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is........
As far as the artist connection....I do agree (as an artist) that FEELING life, very deeply, is something we do. But I think we have as much choice as anyone to make a choice as to our feelings. My husband feels and expresses sadness so deeply, and he is a brilliant musician as well, but he is still the happiest person I know.... does that make sense? I am still learning from him how to embrace what I had labeled "bad" emotions (scary stuff for me), but he is fearless. He feels it fully and moves on... I still tend to want to "think happy" (denial) instantly. I am still learning.
I DO think Van Gogh would have been just as wonderful a painter without having been so tormented.....he just may have sold some paintings while he was alive.
