Loneliness can be a difficult experience to cope with. The good news is that there are good methods for how to deal with loneliness.
Loneliness can occur for all of us at certain times or even for extended periods. Loneliness can occur after breakups, when moving to new places, when others are not around, and even when others are around.
Check out this video for research-based ways on how to deal with loneliness!
There is also a good book with research-based ways to deal with loneliness and a good book on how to boost our positive emotions for things we do have. If you feel lonely and frustrated about dating and romance, in particular, there is a good research-based book with tips for dating life.
Hi, I’m Dr. Matt B, and these are your Emotional Minutes. I was driving on what they call the loneliest highway in America: Route 50 in Nevada. As I was driving, I started thinking that this was an excellent opportunity to talk about the idea of loneliness and how to deal with loneliness.
The Effects of Loneliness
Loneliness is a challenging experience. There’s a lot of research that has found an association between loneliness and mental health issues like depression, anxiety, and substance use disorders. But it’s also connected with physical health difficulties. For example, problems with the immune system, heart and cardiovascular issues, and overall, more frequent visits to doctors’ offices.
Often researchers will distinguish between two aspects of loneliness. One is not having people around, and the other one is experiencing a sense of loneliness. Both of those can occur at the same time. However, sometimes we can experience loneliness even when there are people around. Loneliness, of course, is very difficult, but there are many ways that you can deal with loneliness.
How to Deal With Loneliness, Tips 1-2
The first is to reconnect with people in your life. Potentially people you once knew or don’t really speak with anymore to facilitate those social connections again. Sometimes there aren’t a lot of people you can contact, so you might rely on trying to form new connections.
There are a couple of ways that you can do this. One is to try to engage in activities that might have a social component—for example, going on hikes. Meetup.com is a site with several groups to get together with for these activities. Or maybe it’s taking a class on cooking or crafting. Whatever it is, make sure it is an activity that you might enjoy where other people will be present.
One thing to consider with this is that being lonely can often make us focus on not having people around and how much we want that. One of the ways to approach this is to try to get into those activities and social areas without focusing on the social aspect. Instead, do the activity for the sake of the activity. However, allow the potential for meeting new people and starting new conversations in those places to take hold.
How to Deal With Loneliness, Tip 3
Another way to deal with loneliness when you’re experiencing loneliness is to try engaging in gratitude or gratitude expression. This consists of jotting down four or five things that you’re grateful for a couple of times a week. This can be connections with people you know or you might have known, activities you enjoy, or even something as simple as nice weather. Gratitude can help take our focus away from loneliness and put it on positive things that we do have in our lives. This may be especially important because loneliness will often make us feel like we don’t have enough.
Another example of gratitude expression is writing a gratitude letter to someone you might feel grateful for. Perhaps write to someone about the impact they had on your life. It could have been a teacher many decades ago or potentially somebody you might know now even if you don’t have a lot of contact with them.
How to Deal With Loneliness, Tip 4
Another strategy is trying to engage in things that are enjoyable or meaningful for you. Loneliness tends to make us focus our attention away from things that we might enjoy and fixate on things we don’t have or lack in our lives. But some of those enjoyable activities can make it so that we are experiencing or focusing our attention much more on things that we do enjoy. This also helps boost our mood against experiences that can occur along with loneliness, like depression.
Closing
Hopefully, talking about loneliness and ways to deal with loneliness was helpful. We can all get a little bit lonely from time to time or even for extended periods of time.
If your loneliness affects your daily life or you want to improve it beyond the tips here, I suggest reaching out to a mental health professional.
I’m Dr. Matt B, and these are your Emotional Minutes. We’ll see you next time!
