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What do you do when you feel lonely and does it work?

Suzanne

Suzanne

Well-Known Member
V.I.P Member
I have never felt lonely and even at one point, someone asked if I was lonely and I said with happy surprise and shock from the person asking, no, not at all.

And all 9 year's of being where we used to live, not once did I feel lonely, which is a surprise, since I have always felt I could not cope.

We move and loneliness is my companion.

I try to have happy music on, but there is a sense of echoing.

Thankfully, not a constant companion and when hubby comes home from work, relief.
 
I have always wondered what it feels like be lonely, so maybe I haven't either? But usually I only know whether I feel good or bad and don't know the name of what I'm feeling so maybe I have felt it. I feel something slightly bad right now and have no clue why or what it is!
 
Fino said:
I have always wondered what it feels like be lonely, so maybe I haven't either? But usually I only know whether I feel good or bad and don't know the name of what I'm feeling so maybe I have felt it. I feel something slightly bad right now and have no clue why or what it is!
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When it hit me, as it were, I had no idea what it was and so, did a bit of research and loneliness came back.

The only way I can describe it is like an echo around me.

I have felt very lonely in a crowd, but it is not the same sensation. Both are nasty in equal quantities.
 
You know, as I think about it - I feel lonely in groups but not when I'm alone. When I lived in Montana. Alaska, Utah, Wyoming, Michigan, Texas - I never made a single friend. I never met a neighbor. My husband was gone on the truck 2 months then home for 1 or 2 nights and gone again. I never felt lonely. But when I was in a group of people I thought I was supposed to be close to, I'd feel left out and that made me feel lonely. Maybe being around people reminds me that I'm not like them or makes me feel left out and not important? I just know that when I'm by myself and the less I hear from anyone, the better I feel.
 
I have felt lonely the majority of my life. Depending on how I'm feeling besides that I may be analytical and ask myself questions about why I'm feeling that way to possibly get to the root of the issue and deal with it.

If it's a reason I already know, then I try to think of other things and distract myself. I stay busy and do things that I enjoy or even don't always enjoy to get my mind focused on other things. Sometimes, just letting myself feel the loneliness and at times cry because it's not always something that will change just because I know what it is. Just kind of let it come and roll through instead of take up residence. I would say that yes, it works but not always in the time frame I want it to.
 
I feel lonely basically all of the time so I suppose my answer has to be "everything" lol.
I like to have happy music on, too. I sometimes play a game on my phone to distract myself from thinking too much, but actually that's a recent thing. I have some DVDs but I save them for the special lonely occasions such as around my birthday and Christmas. I have ordered a bunch of DVD anime sets for Christmas actually.
I will be self medicating with natural and legal "dietary supplements" to raise my seratonin to help avoid depression.
I'll also be consuming a large quantity of "herbal material vapour" over the Christmas period, too. That tends to help me to shut out and postpone lonely feelings while I focus on something distracting like the fictional stories or a special interest.

No, sorry, nothing works. You can't really escape from loneliness, in my experience, except by having people who want to spend their time with you and do. Loneliness always catches up sooner or later.
 
Fino said:
I have always wondered what it feels like be lonely, so maybe I haven't either? But usually I only know whether I feel good or bad and don't know the name of what I'm feeling so maybe I have felt it. I feel something slightly bad right now and have no clue why or what it is!
Click to expand...
I can relate to that.
Loneliness is not what I can identify directly.
Most of the time I feel some sort of tension in my chest. Sometimes it's colored (rainbow-colored, red, yellow, orange, black and so on) sometimes not.
I think when I feel sort of what I would call sharp sadness, this might be connected to loneliness. And I observed, when I eat more than usual and can't feel having had enough (do you say this?) than I'm probably lonely.
 
Annanda said:
I can relate to that.
Loneliness is not what I can identify directly.
Most of the time I feel some sort of tension in my chest. Sometimes it's colored (rainbow-colored, red, yellow, orange, black and so on) sometimes not.
I think when I feel sort of what I would call sharp sadness, this might be connected to loneliness. And I observed, when I eat more than usual and can't feel having had enough (do you say this?) than I'm probably lonely.
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Is "do you say this?" referring to the grammar?

"...when I eat more than usual and can't feel like I've had enough, then I'm probably lonely."

If you weren't referring to grammar, then I apologize! :eek:
 
I have the opposite problem usually. I share a house with 2 (sometimes 3) other people right now and spend most of my time trying to shut out the noise and interruptions while I try to work!
 
Maybe another way to think of "loneliness" is - "disconnectedness".

I might not have much in the way of human relationships, but that doesn't mean I don't have relationships and connections to "others" (meaning: all that is not oneself. regardless what physical form the other takes, how they communicate, ....) that are meaningful and reciprocative.

Disconnectedness sucks, but it's confusing mostly because for "most people" it is all about connections (or the lack of) with other humans but I don't share that experience. Humans, animals, plants, objects, something else.... they all have an equal shot at being close with me.

I find myself going through periods of more or less connectedness and isolation. It comes and goes. It will always come again, and it will always go again. I'm grateful when connectedness comes, and patient when it goes.
 
I don't feel lonely very often but when I do I usually try to find something to distract me from my loneliness such as video games or a funny movie. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and feel very lonely and spend an hour thinking about all the friend I have had in the past. Then I go back to sleep and when I wake back up I am no longer feeling lonely.
 
I am like GrownupGirl, I mainly feel lonely when I am around people, especially at school, because everyone is with their friends and laughing and happy and having a good time and I have none.

I usually go to the library during breaktime, which is not as crowded as outside, and it is my favourite place, and curl up in the technology free zone, because literally no one uses it, and read a book. I feel way less lonely if I am distracted by a good book. If I'm not reading, I am usually working on schoolwork, which distracts me too, especially if it is something interesting, for example, the Emmett Till case, which is my topic I've chosen in history for an assignment to do a Multimodal Presentation (ugh) on. The Emmett Till case is basically about this 14 year old African American boy in 1955 (when black people were often murdered and attacked and lynched in America for no good reason), who was tortured and murdered just for allegedly wolf whistling at a white woman in a shop, which was probably as a joke, because his friends were outside the store. Anyway, it is really interesting (though horrible and outrageous to even think about) and I think I have done a good job on it, although I haven't presented my PowerPoint yet. SORRY, I have just gone completely off topic (that happens very often!), I hope you don't mind :eek:

But yeah, reading, SketchUp (a program we use in graphics at school), and assignments are my go to strategies for when I feel lonely at school. Though, I do have some not too good strategies too, but I won't go into that.
 
I used to have feelings of lonliness when I was younger when I was still trying to be 'normal' - bored, restless and looking for stimulation but not having the social skills or emotional maturity to handle it - but not anymore. I think it's a sign that I'm happier with myself and accept who I am, I don't feel I need to have lots of friends and a social life as most people do. The internet has helped with this.
 
man-in-a-bubble.jpg
Lonliness is like being in a bubble to me.
The bubble is like something that prevents emotional feelings of connectedness to the people in the
world around me. This leaves an emptiness and desire to be able to turn to another for a feeling of
comfort/trust/love.
Having other people around can sometimes distract me from boredom for a while, but, inside there
is no closeness. Always lived that way. Only my parents that I knew from birth were inside the bubble
with me and it kept me from feeling alone.

I don't like being unable to feel emotionally connected, but, don't know how to change it.
Distraction doing something I like quietly alone feels better than having people around me.
 
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I can feel rejection, I can feel isolation, but I don't feel lonely.

What sometimes helps is watching saccharine movies like "The Princess Switch", "The Parent Trap", and Disney princess movies. "Mamma Mia" and "Mamma Mia – Here We Go Again" too, with the latter the soundtrack is enough because they actually learned to sing for that one.

Going for a walk can help. Just avoid getting marooned into smalltalk exchanges. At this point I'm not sure I even care if my neighbors realize I try to avoid them, although I worry about longterm consequences.

Reading textbooks because they are not as patronizing as pop-sci, nor as prone to imply I'm a loser as novels.

Reading plays because you can't very well write perfect people into plays, at least not classic ones. The whole thing is dialogue.

Drawing how I feel.
 
Progster said:
I used to have feelings of lonliness when I was younger when I was still trying to be 'normal' - bored, restless and looking for stimulation but not having the social skills or emotional maturity to handle it - but not anymore. I think it's a sign that I'm happier with myself and accept who I am, I don't feel I need to have lots of friends and a social life as most people do. The internet has helped with this.
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Interesting, I only started feeling lonely regularly while I already stopped trying to be normal, after getting a little taste of what it means to be close with somebody
 
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