Loneliness, a bad and emotional mindset that everyone has to go through at some moment in their life. It is not the time we spend alone but it is how and what we feel about our alone time. Psychologists described it as social suffering which makes individuals look for a relationship that they don’t have, simply looking for such things that are not with them.
What does ‘feel alone’ mean?
When someone feels alone, in most cases, and maybe you are because an individual does not get what is imagined by them or their imaginable world does not seem them turning into reality. Feeling alone for a greater extent has the potential to damage the active state of mind. Sometimes it is just sitting alone and being sad about it. It’s important to look for a good talk with the good person at such times and obviously when someone feels alone, then they are mostly not in the mood to talk with anyone. As we go through the next sections you will find amazing ways to diminish your loneliness feeling if you have !!!!
What causes loneliness?
Loneliness makes the human scold himself and thinks that they are not fit in society generally, something is bad with them. When humans feel alone, they start getting thoughts like they are being neglected by others. Living alone with such thoughts is more dangerous, as they develop our “critical inner voice (CIV),” a kind of internal voice that generates negative thoughts and behaviors. CIV puts us in a lonely mood, cheering us to avoid others and remain in that state only.
CIV is just a fake thing and makes us misunderstand that we feel alone because we are introverts or do not have social skills. It has been observed that lonely people are good at social skills but when they are exposed to “social pressure”, their feeling of loneliness steepens. In short, the self-limiting thoughts or CIV stand in the way of their social skills, making them feel alone. This is the most common reason for humans to feel alone.
There are other factors also that make individuals feel alone and it varies also!!
- Environment – Feeling alone is also determined by the environment in which individuals reside. It is not the natural environment. Going to a new place with cultural and language barriers can trigger loneliness.
- Life conditions – Many incidents of life make one feel alone. For example, loss of important ones, divorce increase the chances of loneliness.
- Thoughts and Attitudes – These determine a person’s personality, life perspective. What someone feels about himself has the potential to cause loneliness. Comparing ourselves with others and having thoughts like that person have more social skills than you are just satisfying your CIV that in reality does not even exist. Most of our limitations which we believe are not even real.
- Genes- Seems illogical that loneliness is heritable, but in 2016 first genome-wide association study of loneliness observed that loneliness is heritable about 14-27%, up to 55% in some earlier studies. This is only a factor that humans experience. Here heredity is the pain one feels during loneliness. Thus depending on the gene, some feel pain with greater intensity or assume themselves more alone when not in someone’s contact.
Is it normal to always feel alone?
A feeling of loneliness for a temporary time is common and everyone feels it. The reasons for such are temporary and that’s why it also passes quickly. However, if an individual feels alone all the time it might be a chronic condition that has serious effects on physical as well as mental health. Longer duration’s loneliness causes a decrease in sleep quality, bad health, it even increases the chances of death. Affecting mental health includes depression, not remembering things, timidity. It requires serious checking.
Studies showed that the brain of a lonely person is different biochemically than the normal one. Neural responses of such a person get suppressed and that person has only a negative perspective for everything. We also feel hopeless during loneliness which makes it more difficult to gather courage and energy for happiness and change.
How to not feel alone all the time?
Our thoughts make us and so the loneliness feeling emerges if we have those kinds of thoughts. Let’s get rid of that feeling.
- Accept it
Accept it if you feel alone. “Human” definition itself says one who is mortal, vulnerable, imperfect. Once you accept it you will not get stuck in a cycle of feeling alone. Ponder upon your thoughts why are you feeling such? because when you ask yourself why?? The answer to that why is your way to get rid of it. Once you get the way, the only thing you need now is to walk on it or simply execute those thoughts, by defeating your CIV.
- Don’t get deceived by your CIV
The critical inner voice is the main cause of loneliness even if what it signifies is fake. Psychologists found the misconception alone people have is that they accept themselves as “isolated from society and different from others”. Believing in self-limitations like having no social skills, introverted behavior made individuals remain in a circle of loneliness. CIV always makes a person doubt themselves, their decisions, actions. It is not just about feeling alone. So whenever you feel that CIV is limiting you, then not allow it to do so. Accept that you feel alone right now and use positive affirmations like, “I won’t fall for civ’ and prove it wrong”.
Challenge the critic inside you. It won’t be done early but once you master to defeat your inner critic voice, you will never have to feel alone again. You can conquer CIV by doing self-compassion, looking over thoughts, most important by positive affirmations.
- Do interactions wisely
Just talking with someone does not release you from loneliness, the quality of that interaction matters the most. Thus you often feel alone in a large group but interact from your heart with your closest friends. How you spend time during interaction is also important, listen to others with eye contact (you might feel it is difficult and embarrassing but will master it soon), and express yourself. Sometimes just because not getting the company of a specific person makes us feel alone, and the only way to get rid of such feelings is to interact with them wisely in the right way and at the right place.
- Break from social media
Social media is considered as connecting with friends but it ends up making you feel unconscious about yourself. You start comparing yourselves, start assuming that you have zero friends and others have a lot, such thoughts make you feel alone more. If you want to connect with someone, close those apps and connect with a simple call, text message if possible. Or if you just go into loneliness by comparing yourself it is better to shut those apps and take a break.
- Remember it’s not permanent
The end of anything in this world is decided when that thing emerges. Loneliness can be because of some life conditions, incidents, thoughts that are going to end soon, similarly loneliness.
If you are feeling very low it’s better to talk with close ones. If you are able to talk to your parents it’s best, they care about you the most and will surely help you out.