WHY WE MIGHT FEEL LONELY AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT.
Posted on October 29, 2017 by Sydney Ceruto, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.
Lonely is not being alone, its the feeling that no one cares.
Just the other day one of my dearest friends called me and said she was feeling so lonely. Her voice was weepy and I felt her pain through the phone. I did my best to assure her she was not alone and that this wave of emotion was transitory, and that just like everything else, it would pass. We hung up and I started to muse over the idea of loneliness.
Two days later, I get a text from another friend. The text read “Hey Syd, I’m so overwhelmed with feelings of loneliness I just can’t bare my life anymore.” I became immediately saddened by his distress. I spent the entire day in a state of depressive rumination, trying to find something clever or poignant to say to him and my other friend to somehow assuage their pain.
So all week long, I have been reading all I could find on loneliness. Searching for something I hadn’t learned in school, a bit of sage information I might have overlooked in my studies……..I didn’t find anything I didn’t already know, except that this unpleasant and upsetting state is way more pervasive than I ever thought and it afflicts every single demographic in this country and around the world.
Definition of loneliness: A complex and usually unpleasant emotional response to isolation. Loneliness typically includes anxious feelings about a lack of connection or communication with other beings, both in the present and extending into the future.
Okay, but what causes a person to experience loneliness? If feeling lonely has a cause then we must be able to address that stimulus and either mitigate it or eradicate it altogether . Well, there is no simple answer. Seems the causes of loneliness are quite varied and include social, mental and physical factors.
More perplexing is the fact that both my friends have a pretty large extended family who they are in regular contact with, both have successful careers and my guy friend is married to his high school sweetheart!
For me, an only child, no living parents or grandparents and absolutely no extended family, aside from my husband of 25 years and our adult son of 19, I often find it very difficult to comprehend when people with so many familial connections, say they are soooooo alone.
What I know. What I can help both my friends understand is this. Loneliness is not measurable by numbers, not by a questionnaire or by the size of ones family. Feeling lonely is the perpetual sate of searching or seeking that which you so desire, that which you crave. Loneliness appears when you settle for less than you know you deserve. It is simply incurable by company, it can wax in the presence of family and friends and it grips you relentlessly from within.
However bleak the last few sentences may seem, the bright side is that like any other emotion we feel as human beings, we hold the power to maintain or change them. What I tell my clients is that there are 3 steps to apply to loneliness or another emotion you find distressing.
So………here we go!
Step 1 – Admit to yourself your true feelings. Remember that ANY feeling is just that, a feeling. Like thoughts, they come and go and only the thoughts, feelings or emotions we act on define us. So let yourself really “feel”.
Step 2 – Disallow negative self talk. Not an easy thing to do I know. Once you gain awareness of your negative or disparaging self talk, you might just be surprised at how inaccurate or aggrandized
your thoughts are.
Step 3 – Practice self compassion. Regularly remind yourself that everyone experiences feelings of being alone or disconnected from friends, colleagues or family. It is part of our human experience to suffer from loneliness at some point or another throughout our lives.
Most importantly, remember that our emotional states fluctuate and change many, many times throughout the day. Allow yourself to move through, then past any negative feelings. There is light at the end of the tunnel.
