How to stop feeling lonely

It is particularly relevant in relation to that article that surfaced here, about mapping out emotions arising from a large sampling of people.

I will say though, that thoughts do not simply arise from emotions in introverted people -- it arises like that in pretty much everyone. Some extraverts are just that in tuned with their bodies, emotions, and intuitions; others use talking as a way to avoid getting in touch with feelings, much that same many thinkers use thoughts to avoid getting in touch with feelings.

Lastly, loneliness tends to be a particular feeling lodged in the chest (for a lot of people). Regardless of whether you label that sensation as loneliness or not, there are physical exercises that can work with it directly. The main thing is to relax the muscles and tissues surrounding the chest cavity and give those sensations an opportunity to move and flow. It is best done when your arms are (physically) wide open.

Loneliness comes from a feeling of not getting sufficient emotional connection from others. There are lots of configurations that can lead to that. One of the main ones is that, the very act of connecting to someone else requires opening up, and opening up usually leads people to feeling the vulnerability that they don't want. Physically opening up the arms and the body helps you get used to feeling open, and being so, it becomes easier to connect with others.

Hope this help some of you folks -- good times :-)

In my previous job (with others from India) at a North European company which ran out of one of their towns. The loneliness of a beautiful North European town (100% conservative white population with a sprinkling of chinese immigrants, we were the first brown people to be seen there) (during short biz visits) was a striking contrast to our lives in India. So much so that in weekends, we rushed to get up and catch morning trains to the nearest city, just to be around a crowd of people (even in the city, we could find what we needed only in their excellent railway stations cum malls)

The same experience in San Jose, US but worse still as you practically good as dead without your own car. We (a female colleague and I) tried the fledgling (2001) train service there and ended up wishing we were wiser. Public transport in US West seemed to be used only by the socially discarded. I had to coax our hosts to get a car rented by a US colleague with me as a secondary driver (due to my foreign car license!) and then only it was FREEDOM! :-)

New York on the other hand, I felt at home. Get down from your hotel and you are into a sea of walking people Yay!

So an additional point can be being in a place with substantial amount of people, even if they are strangers gives you a relief from loneliness.

What struck me most was point "2. Find people who give you time to speak".

I find myself often surrounded by those people who don't have any of the empathy to realize I need to let me thoughts work their way to the surface. It has created a lot of failed attempts to reach out to other people. I get frustrated, because it leads me to feel like the other person just isn't listening, because as soon as I do start saying something the other person will usually jump to a(n incorrect) conclusion about what I'm starting to say, and interject based on what thought just entered their mind. As a result, I've spent years with those types never getting to know me, and my attempts to open up becoming more curt and infrequent.

Conversely, maybe this empathy is why so many people tell me I'm a good listener. I don't jump to conclusions about what another person is saying. I rarely even try to work out my response while the other person is still talking. I let them think, speak, and reason all before reacting. Of course, with real Type-A personalities this means they will tend to go on forever, and I don't know how to get them to shut up. Ha. But, they still come away feeling like I get them. And the effect is quite magnified with anyone who is less than 100% Type-A.

And perhaps validating this article, taking the time to let these "feelings" and "thoughts" rise up, I'm finding myself in much greater agreement (and understanding of self) and will recommit to attempting to surround myself (most of the time, thought not all of the time) with people who can help me work in my strengths. The great challenge that will prove while living with my brother.

I said earlier i am a loner by definition. However, I don't consider myself one. A few years ago I decided to change things. I pushed myself to do something outside of my comfort zone. In an attempt to lift my confidence I decided to fly out to France and walk all the way across Spain to the Atlantic coast on the trail of El Camino de Santiago. After a little over a month of walking in all kinds of ungodly conditions with nothing but a backpack full of essentials and meeting and hearing amazing people and their stories, i came back with an entirely different outlook on life. I came back with my life priorities figured out. I stopped worrying about life. But most important of all, i gained my confidence back and i knew that no matter where i am tomorrow - i will be okay. As a result of all this, i started traveling more and soaking in as much of the world around me as i could. I decided to live healthy and entirely transformed my body. Recently, I picked up paragliding and I'm now working on a paraglider pilot license and hopefully start flying solo this summer. I wouldn't have dreamed about any of this a few years back.

Alone? Fuck alone! Look at the world around you!! Do something crazy for once and discover how many doors this opens and what you'll learn about yourself that's currently hiding behind 10 layers of self-pity.

Being alone is another and much more fundamental. For what I've learned, accepting the fact that you're here, in this life, alone is the precursor to any meaningful relationships. Connections with other people are limited, you've got some things together with one friend and some other things together with another friend. You probably have lots of things together with your spouse but there's nobody just like you, and there's no missing half of you out there that would make you whole.

Everything you need on this journey is within yourself.

And in the end, being alone in this whole world is something that you need to accept first before integrating other people in your life in any meaningful (i.e. non-superficial) way. If you know you can handle it: if you know you can deal with yourself and your life even if you never meet anyone who can give you all, or at least most of what you need then you're probably set for a good life -- a life where you have something to give to others too, and where you have people who give to you as well.

The author was a senior when I was a freshman in college. He was one of the upperclassmen that I looked up to. He was very smart, good looking and we hung out sometimes when he would give me good advice. It never occurred to me that he's introverted and that he should have a reason to feel lonely. Quite a strange feeling when I saw this post from twitter. I feel guilty for not understanding him enough but it's nice to see this useful and positive post.

If you are confident from inside, ultimately you can overcome the negative feeling, but enjoy the peaceful feeling for being lonely. At least there is no hurt from other people.

I agree that you have to give them time to surface. Actually frequently practicing meditation will help you clear up your mind and let the feeling surface. Make ourselves strong psychologically will keep us away from feeling lonely. Of course, always having goal to pursue, you don't have time to feel lonely.

I haven't felt that soul crushing loneliness that cripples you in about a year now, and I like to think that that only happened because of lowered expectations (over time as you interact less intensely with people you'll naturally come to expect less of them) and because of learning how to be alone (being alone and being lonely are not the same thing). The article states you should be around people you know every day and I find that pretty weird. I think the best way to learn how to not feel lonely is to learn to be content with yourself, otherwise you'll always rely on other people and so your feelings of loneliness will fail to go away as soon as other people fail you.

Kinda related: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HbYScltf1c&hd=1

1. What one needs: ideally, you have a significant other (SO) -- I know it's damn hard to get one but let's first understand why a SO is the number one fix for loneliness. The SO is somebody no one else can replace, even not your best friends. Why? There are many reasons but the most important is that we all require a lot of communication and interaction with like-minded people to be happy -- this is one of our core needs and if this is lacking just one (!) day we get depressed. A SO fulfills those communication and interaction needs much better than any other person because the quantity of communication with your SO can be very high while the quality can be low. So, what does it mean? You can call your SO anytime and tell her really minor stuff like 'they have awesome apples in the store, shall I get some?' or when going to bed you can talk about how the day went, that traffic today was a pain or you show her some funny posts on Reddit. Just imagine how many words of unimportant communication you exchange with an SO in a week vacation. All this sounds nitty-gritty and totally irrelevant, but the SO is 'always-on', will listen to any crap and this is something we terribly need. And you can't call or text your best friend or close co-workers before going to bed to tell them that today's apples were really juicy. Moreover, we get other amenities like sex or endearment.

2. If no SO is present then the next thing you need to not feel lonely are good or very good friends or let's call them best friends, people who you really connect to. To find those is as hard as finding your SO and usually you don't get that a person is about to be your best friend before meeting him/her over a long period of time. But 'best friends' won't stay -- it doesn't take too long and the connection you had with them loosens up but you still stick to them (because they 'are' your best friends), so don't spend too much time on finding the 'best' friend, any friend will do. However, best friends are important but can not replace a SO.

3. The next level of people you need or are rather nice to have are close or like-minded co-workers. But this is something you shouldn't aspire for and those connections are very fragile/dynamic because work and life sometimes doesn't play well together and disappointment is hard-wired. Still, best friends can be won from co-workers.

So, we know now what we need, let's now find an answer to the question how to get there.

Finding a SO is very hard and the best way is to go out and create as many leads as possible -- very helpful is the PUA literature, just google it and find tons of wisdoms. A lot of stuff is crappy but you will find as much excellent advice there. And don't think that good looks is the key to find your SO, it makes life a bit easier but it's definitely not the key.

Similar to before you should go out and meet many, many people -- very good for this are meet-ups.

But the most important thing: you should NEVER go out and look for the SO or the best friend. This doesn't work and makes you ultra needy and people will find you awkward. Simultaneously, you will be disappointed because everybody you meet seems to be a douche, so start slowly and don't expect wonders. Connect to MANY people and try to keep relationships superficial, slowly intense those relationship which look promising but look that you still connect to MANY people because most people won't match (for being a SO or best friend). A hint: good matches are usually your close peers, people who are in similar situations, contexts and/or face same challenges. However, to have a good evening often you do not need a best friend (of course it's better and more convenient to have one) but sometimes just some random people work out too. What can also help: find a personal mission you pursue which is NOT 'finding best friends', starting a startup, a meetup, whatever -- to create a relationship you need always some hook.

And then after few months everything will come by itself. It's definitely some work involved but everybody can master it, even the introverts (which is just often a weak excuse).

To survive the lonely times before -> exercise every day, eat and live well and most important, stop any kind of drugs, they make your lonely times even worse.

A side note regarding founders, when starting their business entrepreneurs have a hard time but this struggle will be rewarded in future and feeling lonely is often part of the job.

As I got closer to them, no matter what personality or lifestyle they had, loneliness was a common feeling. This often led to intense unhappiness and even outright depression, and some of these friends eventually returned to their home cities or college cities because they missed their friends.

Over time I started thinking more and more about this issue, as it clearly seems to be a problem, and a big one at that. I thought about the causes, but most importantly I tried to think of solutions.

When it comes to causes, one tentative conclusion I have come to is that the (post-?) modern Western European lifestyle basically sets us up to be lonely. We compartmentalize our lives to a degree that I haven't experienced as much in developing nations. Our work is separate from our 'personal' life, as are our variety of relationships. Our spouses might have never met our colleagues, our colleagues never met our friends, our friends might never meet our parents, and so on. The result is a fragmented life where you aren't automatically part of some community, but where you actively have to maintain individual and group relationships.

Another effect is that we can (and might have to) be so many different people in so many different situations, and that we often have to start from scratch because we move, change jobs, break up, and so on. On top of that, we often live alone, and put a big emphasis on our individual goals and happiness.

Contrast this with a more 'traditional' society with many family-run shops, often inside or near the house, huge families that often live in proximity, and a strong sense of responsibility for these family ties. It's hard to be lonely in such a situation (although it does exist, and when it does it can be quite severe).

I've reached a point where I sometimes wonder if our individualism and emphasis on freedom is worth the drawbacks, of which loneliness is a big one.

In my surroundings at least, loneliness needs to be actively fought. And one could argue that the pressure resting on a partnership or starting a family is sometimes too much of a burden, precisely because it is, at least in my world, one of the few remaining approaches (or at least 'convenient' approaches) to not be alone.

I've been thinking a lot about experimenting with different ways of living together and creating new forms of community. I've seen successful neighbourhood initiatives, for example, where people start interacting more on a local level. I've seen many flatshares that play a part in keeping loneliness away. And I've spent much of my life living in 'communal' environments that were wonderful, especially growing up.

The odd thing about all this is that I am quite solitary and don't generally feel lonely. I can easily spend days, even weeks, mostly by myself. And yet this problem bothers me tremendously.

I've been rambling and my apologies for any lack of coherence or over-generalizing. Let me end with a quote that hopefully does contribute something. It prescribes what I've personally experienced to be a surefire way to avoid loneliness, and to foster real connections (and fast, often!):

"We waste so much energy trying to cover up who we are when beneath every attitude is the want to be loved, and beneath every anger is a wound to be healed and beneath every sadness is the fear that there will not be enough time.

When we hesitate in being direct, we unknowingly slip something on, some added layer of protection that keeps us from feeling the world, and often that thin covering is the beginning of a loneliness which, if not put down, diminishes our chances of joy.

It’s like wearing gloves every time we touch something, and then, forgetting we chose to put them on, we complain that nothing feels quite real. Our challenge each day is not to get dressed to face the world but to unglove ourselves so that the doorknob feels cold and the car handle feels wet and the kiss goodbye feels like the lips of another being, soft and unrepeatable."