No comments Feeling lonely is not just sad, it’s scary. It burdens, oppresses, kills the desire to live. There are many reasons for this condition - the result is one: the person is unhappy. Even where the flashing of faces and cars is tiring, and there are hundreds of neighboring doors. What to do with this, how to overcome the sad feeling of abandonment, lack of demand? Especially if there is no family or it has broken up, the children have grown up and they are not interested in you?
Let's think together.
What is the danger of depression due to loneliness?
Often loneliness and depression become an obsession for a person. In this state, it is easy to withdraw, stop communicating even with people you know well, and withdraw into yourself.
Often in this situation, people stop taking care of themselves, become depressed, and begin to abuse alcohol.
Feelings of deep loneliness and abandonment can lead to thoughts of suicide, so at the first sign you need to start fighting this condition.
The danger of loneliness
If a person does not have close people, then he certainly suffers from this. Moreover, as a rule, he is immersed almost completely in his experiences. The feeling of loneliness comes with greater force at the moment when such a person sees people casually communicating with each other.
He also feels very uncomfortable in a situation where most of the people around him are couples - romantic or friendly. After all, spouses or close acquaintances are connected with each other by deep relationships that a single person does not have. Over time, melancholy eats away at his soul more and more. As a result, a lonely person can fall into deep depression, which can be compared to a spring - the longer and harder you squeeze it, the more painfully it can “shoot”. If such a condition drags on for a long time, then it threatens with terrible disaster. It is not for nothing that lonely people are more capable of suicide than anyone else.
How to survive loneliness, is it possible? Let's try to understand this issue.
How to cope with depression and loneliness?
To survive a difficult situation, it is important for a lonely person not to withdraw into himself, but to turn to other people for help.
Communication is the most important resource in the fight against loneliness.
Neighbours
Often, a person suffering from loneliness complains that it is difficult for him to find a true friend who can listen and understand. In this situation, psychologists advise paying attention to your immediate environment - your neighbors. Close friendships often develop between people living nearby.
It’s easy to help a young mother lift a stroller to the top floor, organize a cleanup or landscaping of the area in front of the entrance, ask the neighbors for a spoon of salt or a phone charger.
These actions do not require any effort, but then you can greet these people at the entrance, congratulate them on the holiday, or provide some kind of service. You can always visit your neighbors for a cup of tea or invite them to your place on the occasion of some celebration. Strong friendships can be born from simple actions.
Pets
One of the best ways to combat loneliness is caring for your pets. A person who has a favorite pet - no matter whether it is a dog or a cat, a hamster or fish - never feels lonely. Responsibility for the life of a small creature often fills existence with special meaning.
It is much easier for dog owners to meet other people at the dog park. In most cases, lovers of these animals willingly enter into dialogue, talk about their pets, and share tips on care and education, so psychologists advise a lonely person to get even a small dog and walk it where there is an opportunity to meet like-minded people. At dog and cat shows, it is easy to make useful contacts that can develop into friendship.
Volunteering
Volunteering and free help to other people can be no less productive in overcoming loneliness. In every city there are centers to help patients with incurable pathologies. Caring people are always welcome there.
You can volunteer at centers for the care of abandoned pets and even shelter a lonely creature. You can provide all possible assistance to employees of orphanages where there are children left by their parents in the care of the state.
At the social security service, specialists can show the addresses of elderly people who require all possible assistance. It’s easy to help a lonely grandmother clean the house, do some minor repairs, buy groceries, or take her to a doctor’s appointment in her car. In most cases, old people happily accept such care, and a person suffering from loneliness will forget about his problem forever.
Social network
Social networks often help to cope with negative emotions and loneliness. Despite the fact that communication at first occurs without direct contact, it can later lead to personal meetings. Psychologists note that more and more people meet on popular sites, and then, if they want to meet in person, they make dates. Often virtual relationships develop into strong friendships or, if communication occurs between a man and a woman, even into the creation of a family.
In a serious psychological state, if you cannot cope with the problem on your own, it is better to consult a psychologist. He will tell you how to change the situation for the better, teach the basics of self-regulation, and recommend ways to combat depression.
Causes of depression amid loneliness
Anyone can face depression of this origin, even those people who at first glance do not seem lonely.
The main factors influencing the development of such an emotional state are:
- Psychological trauma. This reason may be associated with the loss of a loved one. Often such mental trauma is experienced by people who have experienced a divorce, or by children whose parents have separated. The reason may be moving to another place of residence. A serious argument with friends can also cause such emotional distress.
- Life in big cities. A similar feeling is often found among residents of cities with a population of millions, where people, due to constant employment, often experience a lack of communication that is not related to their professional activities.
- Low self-esteem. People with low self-esteem sometimes find it very difficult to overcome their fear of communicating with people. Such individuals are insecure, overly closed and modest, which is why they suffer.
- Isolation. By protecting yourself from society, you can fall into a trap you set yourself. It happens that isolation is due to limited contacts in real life. In the era of digital technology, virtual communication is eradicating live communication. At the moment, this problem is acute for teenagers. Spending a lot of time online, boys and girls lose the skills of live communication and often fail in real society.
Anyone can fall into a depressed state, and many people don’t even realize how close they are to this state. People call loneliness mental emptiness, because you can feel useless even in your family and circle of friends; it can overtake a person at any moment in his life. If a person understands that he is experiencing mental pain due to loneliness and wants to change the situation, this is already the first step towards psychological balance.
Preventive measures
To prevent loneliness from feeling too strong, experts advise setting a long-term goal that requires the investment of great effort and the participation of other people. Realizing your dreams will require constant communication, and this is the main guarantee that a busy person will not experience loneliness.
It is advisable not to stay alone for a long time so that difficult thoughts do not arise. You need to leave the house more often, visit exhibitions, go to the cinema and theater, and get to know each other on social networks. Constant communication with different people will help you avoid living alone.
What is depression?
Depression is a fairly common mental illness today. Doctors often equate it to a cold, since according to statistics, in percentage terms, these diseases are much more common than others.
You can often hear the phrase “I’m depressed” from an absolutely healthy person. Basically, this is how people who feel like they have failed in any life endeavors express themselves this way.
Melancholy is a human mental disorder that is accompanied by a number of characteristic symptoms.
These include: the inability to experience joyful events, a certain degree of decreased thinking, lack of a good mood, and a decrease in an active life position.
People with this disease lose any interest in their work, they have no appetite, and their self-esteem is low. (We already wrote about how to increase your self-esteem in the article - “How to increase self-esteem and self-confidence?”)
Quite often, this category of citizens consumes alcoholic beverages and other psychotropic substances that contribute to an imaginary increase in mood.
Loneliness is one of these terrible forces. And if, as you sometimes think, you can somehow cope with fear and hatred, then how can you cope with loneliness? You may think: after all, this is not an emotion, which are the first two destructive forces.
Here you cannot pull yourself together, you cannot switch your attention to something more pleasant - these are external circumstances that do not depend on us. And if you really think so, then you are very mistaken.
Loneliness is a state of mind, not a measure of how many people you interact with. You may be overwhelmed by feelings of loneliness while in a noisy restaurant or movie theater, during a business meeting or at a family reunion, and even during sex. Or you can feel happy, full of harmony and peace in the middle of a dense forest, far from people.
Loneliness is a very complex and multidimensional phenomenon. This is why there is no single “cure” for loneliness, and that there are many different types of this condition.
The loneliness of a widow who has recently lost her husband is different from the loneliness of a boy who, due to illness, is forced to lie in bed and cannot go to school or go out into the yard to see his friends.
And just as there is no one type of loneliness, there is no one solution to how to cope with loneliness. Different problems require different solutions.
One important aspect of this condition is the frequency with which a person feels lonely. Some people very rarely, if ever, feel somewhat isolated.
Most often, such people experience this feeling in some special situations that affect their emotions in this way. For example, some people feel sad on a cold rainy day, or when they are going on a long train on business for their company, leaving family and friends for a while.
Psychologists call this type of loneliness situational, because this state appears only under a certain set of circumstances, in certain situations.
And there is also a more persistent feeling of loneliness, which persists regardless of the situation. A person is unable to establish the necessary connections with the people around him, and perceives this either with bitterness, while blaming anyone for his situation, but not himself, or resignedly, believing that this is how it has always been and will always be, and nothing can be done about it .
Get a pet
Animals can help save a person from loneliness, especially those that were picked up on the street or taken from a shelter. For example, a cat is capable of giving so much warmth and love that it will certainly heal all the emotional wounds of its owner. A dog, in addition, will teach a person to a healthy lifestyle. In addition, it will give you the chance to meet fellow animal lovers. Among the dog breeders there may well be a person who in the future will become a reliable life partner, if there is not one yet.
Testing something new
As you know, nature “takes away” from a person what it believes he no longer needs. For example, if you don’t walk for a long time, your knees will not bend over time. The same thing happens with communication. If a person hides in his dark corner and stays in it for a long time, then he may completely lose contact skills. How to prevent this? You will need to plan your day in such a way that it includes as much communication as possible.
At the same time, you shouldn’t be afraid to meet people on the street, become one of the members of any hobby club, go to study courses or purchase a swimming pool membership. The list of options is simply huge. The most important thing is that the new business that a person takes up is to his liking. Only in this case will he be able to meet people who are different from him, which will be a wonderful life experience.
How to bring back the joy of life?
How to survive loneliness and get rid of this negative and depressing feeling? The approach to solving this problem may differ depending on the character and worldview of the person. For example, some people overcome feelings of isolation by becoming proactive. They focus on finding the root of the problem and eliminating the very cause of their feeling. At the same time, they use a kind of active survival strategy, doing what they love, listening to music and doing physical exercise. This move allows them to use time positively and take their mind off loneliness.
And sometimes a person begins to realize that there are no people around him who think the same way as he does. This is what leads to refusal of communication and new unfamiliar situations. However, anyone who wants to get rid of loneliness must not act as usual. You need to get up and walk towards the light. And this will need to be done even if you have a strong desire to sit and cry in the dark.
Analysis of the situation
How can a man or woman survive loneliness? In order to get out of this state as soon as possible, it is necessary to analyze the problems and reasons that caused it. To begin with, a person can write down everything that, in his opinion, contributed to loneliness. After compiling such a list, each of its points should be re-read and analyzed again.
If at first it is difficult to be unbiased about such entries, then you should assume for yourself that this list was compiled by another person. To anyone who regularly analyzes his thoughts and actions, the fact will soon become obvious that loneliness deprives him of many opportunities. Such awareness makes a person see the light and fill the resulting void.
Is this condition a problem?
You can often hear or read in the media that the problem of loneliness in the modern world is extremely acute. But is it? And if so, what is the problem?
Of course, the first thing that comes to mind is the visible, personal loneliness of a person, that is, the absence of family, loved ones, close friends. But if this is a problem, then why are there so many divorces in the world? Abandoned children? Why do people who declare their loneliness do not strive to communicate with others, do not make friends?
It is in the ambiguity and complexity of this emotional state that psychologists see the main problem that needs to be solved. People suffering from loneliness, as a rule, are looking for a way to get rid of it, but in practice they do nothing about it.
The problem of loneliness, once appearing in a person’s life, becomes his everyday reality. Loneliness literally sprouts in the soul, becoming a nature, a shadow, a double of personality. That is, people understand that somewhere and someone lives differently, but they themselves do not try to change anything, although they talk about it. Moreover, lonely people often protect, groom and nurture their own emotional problem. And it is precisely in overcoming this “habit of loneliness” that lies the greatest difficulty that psychologists face when helping people get rid of this condition.
How to get rid of feelings of loneliness: get a pet
Social research shows that the presence of pets can reduce feelings of loneliness. Get a dog: this way you will not only find a good friend, but also go for walks with your pet. There is a chance to meet other dog owners and make friends. Help to overcome loneliness:
- cats;
- hamsters;
- Guinea pigs.
Any living creature will bring variety and positivity to your life. Imagine: you open the door and a pet greets you. Immediately my soul feels joyful and good.
