How not to suffer from loneliness

Stop being ashamed of being alone

It is dangerous to be silent about your feelings

It so happened that loneliness is perceived by society as something shameful. And many are afraid of what others will say about them: they will call them uncharacteristic, losers, or strange. Therefore, they prefer not to talk at all about the feeling that they are useless and cut off from society.

Sometimes lonely people experience difficulties because they consider themselves to be somehow wrong or unworthy of communication. After all, "if you have no friends, then, most likely, something is wrong with you." Therefore, they prefer not to share their real self with anyone.

This insecurity prevents you from establishing relationships with others. However, if no one finds out who you really are, most likely you will have to remain lonely.

The inability to talk openly about your loneliness only exacerbates the problem. If you judge yourself for your own feelings, it becomes even more difficult to take any steps to change the situation. Because on top of everything else, you begin to judge yourself for not taking any action to solve the main problem.

Loneliness is not always right for us

This feeling doesn't really depend on how many friends you have. It does not mean at all the absence of a soul mate or acquaintances with whom you can spend the weekend. This is an inner feeling. Someone may just rarely communicate with others, while someone is constantly surrounded by people, but experiences the same.

Hundreds and thousands of "friends" on social networks are not at all the same as a person with whom it is pleasant to watch a movie or have a cup of coffee. You can experience a deep sense of loneliness, being in the company of acquaintances, with a significant other, or with an old friend, realizing that you do not feel absolutely any connection with these people.

At the same time, you need to remember that loneliness is not solitude, when you want to be alone with yourself and get pleasure from it.

Being lonely means not feeling meaningful connection with other people and the world around you.

Psychologist John Cacioppo and science popularizer William Patrick in their study identified three factors that influence how lonely a person feels.

1. Vulnerability to lack of communication. Everyone has a genetically determined need for social integration, so your level of necessary socialization will be different from anyone else. That is, the greater the need for communication you feel, the more difficult it is to satisfy it and the higher the risk of starting to feel lonely.

2. Ability to manage emotions. And not only externally, but also internally. Any person suffers when his need for communication is not satisfied. And if loneliness continues for too long, it can develop into real depression.

How well you deal with your feelings affects your emotional state. Constantly being depressed can begin to misinterpret other people's intentions. It starts to seem like they are trying to avoid communicating with you, although in reality this is not always the case.

You need to learn to accept your own feeling of loneliness, without judging yourself or others for it. And constantly looking for a way to deal with it.

3. Expectations and perceptions of others. If you feel unwanted by anyone, that doesn't mean you don't have the ability to communicate. Although, of course, in this case both the desire and the opportunity to use them will be small.

Lonely people often feel like they are doing everything they can to make friends and connect with someone. It's just that no one reciprocates them.

In the end, such self-deception only makes it worse - dissatisfaction begins to manifest. People who suffer from loneliness become prone to blame and negative reactions to criticism. Their feelings are expressed in resentment and anger. And this is what most often becomes the reason that people stop communicating with them.

Some single people develop social fears. They see danger in others, they begin to fear criticism and condemnation from outside. Their body language betrays the insecurity and suffering they are experiencing, and their facial expressions seem repulsive to others. At the same time, in fact, they may crave communication, but not notice that their body is broadcasting the opposite.

Everybody feels lonely sometimes

Often people think that their situation is special and that the feelings they are experiencing are abnormal. But everyone has to experience loneliness at least once: the usual move, graduation from school, or other life changes.

An unhappy person often focuses not on those people who are in a similar situation with him, but on those who are not currently suffering from it. A temporary feeling of loneliness can be called a part of our life. This is because people are social beings. And most of us value love, closeness, and social connections more than, for example, wealth and fame.

Loneliness Can Be Good

A study using functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has shown that when you suffer from a lack of communication, the same area of the brain that is responsible for the emotional signals it receives during physical pain is activated.

Just as physical pain protects people from danger, loneliness - social pain - protects against the risk of separation from society. She suggests that it's time to somehow change your behavior or start paying more attention to relationships with people who are important to you.

If this pain persists for a long time, it can become chronic. And simple communication will no longer help here.

Don't judge yourself

1. Stop judging your feelings. This is the main thing. Blaming and berating yourself for them is ineffective and wrong. It's okay to feel lonely without having a serious and meaningful relationship.

2. Realize that your problem is not exclusive. Today's mobile society is in constant flux and this makes it difficult to establish and maintain relationships. The very acceptance that loneliness is part of the human condition will help to find the energy to overcome it.

3. Remember that being alone is not always your communication skill to blame. Even if you are great at communicating, sometimes the very thought of crawling out of your hole to meet people can be unbearable. Loneliness leads to depression and isolation.

4. Analyze your childhood. The loneliness we experienced in school or kindergarten is closely related to what we experience in adulthood and how we relate to it.

We may feel unnecessary because we received little love as a child. Sometimes the problem is exacerbated by discrimination and negativity from other people due to some physical or psychological condition.

Often, loneliness begins with the struggle for friends at school, ridicule, with the fact that there was simply no one to chat with at lunch or play on the playground. Even differences in interests - for example, everyone loved video games, and you loved football - also lead to separation from the group. Or maybe as a child you had one single best friend who left, or you had a fight with him.

There is no single correct way to quickly get rid of loneliness. But these general rules work. And the main one is to accept yourself and your feelings.