Loneliness is something that we all experience from time to time and can be hard to navigate through. Being the social creatures that we are, we thrive on connecting with and having relationships with each other.
Experiences and feelings of loneliness can approach us even if we are surrounded by people. We know that this time of year can be a challenging time for many, and can contribute to feelings of loneliness. If you need some end of year support, you can access it here.
If you find that you often feel lonely, there are things you can do to take care of yourself, connect better with the people around you, find new friends or reconnect with old ones.
We have put together a collection of resources that may be helpful when feeling lonely. Remember that you are never alone on the Online Community and can always reach out when you do feel lonely or want to connect with others. If you need some extra support, you can find a list of trusted services here.
If you have any tips, strategies or things that you found helpful while experiencing loneliness, and think it could help other members, we would love for you to share this with us in the comments below.
Ask Me Almost Anything: Loneliness
If you haven’t seen our Ask Me Almost Anything event on loneliness, where we spoke with our guest psychologist Rashida about loneliness, you can check it out here.
We have also included a little snapshot of some of the questions and answered asked at the bottom of this post.
Resources:
🎥 Video & Article
Ask a therapist: What to do if you’re feeling lonely
🔉 Audio
📚 Articles on loneliness
11 things to do if you’re feeling lonely
How to deal with isolation if you live in a rural or remote area
What to do if you’re feeling lonely in a relationship
The Mate Breakup: 6 ways to make sure you’re okay when a friendship ends
Ask Me Almost Anything: Loneliness
If you want to view more questions and answers, you can see access it here.
Why do people feel lonely?
- People can feel lonely for a whole variety of reason. They can feel lonely due to physical and emotional isolation or distance from family and friends, ageing out of services, moving away from people they are close with, leaving school or university or work places.
- Some life transitions can also cause loneliness.
- If we are more aware of the experiences that may bring about loneliness we can be better prepared to know how to manage it when it comes. Loneliness is a devastating experience to have, however there are many ways of gaining and leaning on support out there.
I’m feeling really isolated but I don’t want to bother people or annoy them. How do I ask friends to hang out more without seeming needy?
- I would say that if you're feeling this way, it is very, very likely that others in your friend’s circle are also feeling this way. This could open up a great conversation on finding a time to meet up and hang out.
- Remember there is nothing needy at all about wanting to hang out with friends or have a catch up. We are social beings, we are made to be in social groups and engaging with each other. If we label this as needy we are going against our basic biology and what we need to survive!
How can you learn to enjoy your own company?
- We can learn to enjoy our own company by practicing to be in our own company.
- Spend small amounts of time alone to build yourself up to becoming more familiar with it and then increase that time; You don't have to sit and do nothing either, you can engage in anything you want whilst you're exposing yourself to it.
- Maybe try something that gets you into a 'flow state' which means the time and hours sort of slip by because you are immersed and enjoying the activity.
Is it normal to feel lonely even though you have friends and people who care about you?
- Sometimes the feeling of loneliness can come about through a changing of values between yourself and your friends, a distance or drifting apart due to varying interests and passions. This may make you feel isolated.
- Another experience could be cultural differences or differences in how you're going with your mental health, amongst you and the people you are close to could cause a feeling of internal loneliness and a feeling that nobody 'gets' your experiences.
What do you do if you have no motivation to meet new people?
- It is super hard, not going to pretend motivation doesn't take a hit when feeling lonely which can then cause a vicious cycle of wanting to withdraw even further. Research shows that when we withdraw we become more and more wary of others, causing us to want to withdraw even more which takes a toll on the motivation it takes to start to change that behaviour.
- I would start really slowly and with small, incremental steps. Start by just engaging in some micro interactions with those around you, even just looking at the people you might come across in a day and smiling at them can break through the de-motivation. Then building off of that to start saying hi to people in your life like the barista or someone walking past.
- Eventually through these steps, you will become more practiced, and hopefully have some positive experiences from these interactions which could then lend to finding more motivation to meet new people.
Me and my friends' work schedules all clash and I feel like we're all drifting apart. I don't get along with people from work and it's making me feel really depressed.
- As we get older and various new responsibilities start to fill our lives, things such as drifting apart from friends can really take a toll on our mental health. Some of the things I would encourage:
- Organise a group chat: if you don't already have one - this will allow for connection at any time outside of the times you can get together physically.
- Explore setting a monthly catch up in advance that may suit people’s schedules and even if not everyone can make it, you can have a few alternate dates or monthly catch ups.
- Consider joining a hobby group or community with a shared interest to have various groups of friends that don't have to be from work but allow you to have a social interaction.
I'm lonely but I get really anxious in social situations (possibly been made worse by Covid). How do I stop feeling stressed when I'm in social situations?
- An experience like this would be something great to work on with a therapist, possibly doing some gradual exposure work; However, if therapy is not an option for you, I would reflect on what your mind is telling you the worst case scenario would be if you interacted with others in a social situation, then i would challenge that and check into all the other likely possibilities.
- Usually when we are feeling anxious in social situations it's because we are fearing being judged/ not liked/ not good enough/ worried about how we will come across and be perceived.
- This would then lend to the idea that as much as we try to, we cannot control people’s perception of us and if we allow what we think that THEY think about us to dictate our actions, we may end up making ourselves and our lives very small and find it difficult to live out a life that we value, enjoy and love.
Remember to reach out for support if you are feeling lonely.
We would love for you to share any tips, strategies or things that you found/find helpful when feeling lonely in the comments below.
