How to Stop Feeling Lonely All the Time

Loneliness is an unpleasant emotional condition that most people experience from time to time. It is a problem of the modern day society that affects both young and old, men and women alike. Here's how you can stop feeling lonely.

Loneliness is an unpleasant emotional condition that most people experience from time to time. It is a problem of the modern day society that affects both young and old, men and women alike. Here’s how you can stop feeling lonely.

Dealing with loneliness can be difficult as it is often accompanied by feelings of emptiness, disconnection, and sadness. If not dealt with properly, loneliness can sometimes cause more serious psychological conditions such as extreme unhappiness, depression and anxiety and lead to unwanted social isolation.

Fortunately, there are many ways to overcome loneliness, reconnect with life, and finally stop feeling lonely in the middle of the crowd. It may seem hard at the beginning, but it’s worth the effort.

Feeling Lonely is not the Same as Being Alone

Many people experience feelings of extreme loneliness even when surrounded by other people.

Loneliness is, in fact, often described as a feeling of isolation, not belonging, and not being able to connect with others.

What Kind of Relationships Do You Have?

couple holding hands 3

You may know thousands of people and have many friends, but it’s the quality of your relationships that matters. If your relationships are superficial and lacking in depth or intimacy, you will feel lonely despite being in the company of others.

Having meaningful relationships and being surrounded by people who you can share your thoughts and feelings with is what truly matters in life.

Start Overcoming Loneliness Today

Loneliness is a passive state that leads to apathy, drains us of energy, and deprives us of an enjoyable life.

Start dealing with loneliness today. Stop being passive and take action now. Stop feeling lonely all the time.

Change Your Approach to Loneliness – Accept It

Loneliness is a perfectly natural feeling that all human beings experience. It is not necessarily something negative. Don’t be scared of it and don’t try to deny it or ignore it. Once you have recognized and accepted your loneliness, only then will you be able to change it or turn it into something positive.

The first step is telling yourself that you are the only one responsible for your life and for your choices. You can make your life better, fuller and richer or leave it as it is.

Accepting loneliness and understanding how it affects your life is the best way to start changing things.

Identify the Cause of Your Loneliness

beautiful lonely girl on the street

Try to discover the true cause of your loneliness.

If you don’t do it, you won’t be able to handle it and you won’t know how deal with other problems associated with it.

Examine your life, write down your feelings, analyze them, or talk to someone. Pinpointing the reason of your loneliness will help you decide what steps to take to overcome it.

Learn to Be Alone

If you are constantly hanging out with people in order to suppress feelings of emptiness and loneliness, you should stop for a moment.

The key to overcoming loneliness is not to avoid it, but to accept it and learn to be alone with yourself. Once you understand this and once you manage to spend time alone and focus on your inner being, you will feel a lot better. Facing your emotions, fears and desires will help you get to know yourself better and this will greatly improve your relationships with other people. You will feel more relaxed and self-confident and other people will feel it and respond to it.

Learn to Enjoy Your Own Company

Don’t get stuck in routines and don’t let apathy keep you from being active. Transform loneliness into something positive and learn to enjoy your own company. Loneliness can have many advantages. It can bring out your creativity and help you find your true self.

Choose to look at your being lonely in a positive light. There are so many solitary activities that can lift up your spirit, activate your mind and ease your loneliness. Reading, painting, cooking, or gardening, are just some of them. Find something that suits your interests and focus on it. Stop thinking about the past or worrying about the future and start appreciating the present moment.

Loneliness can also help you make constructive changes in your life. When you learn to be happy and comfortable with yourself, you will also find out what you really want from life. And you won’t be feeling lonely any more.

Pamper Yourself

When you are alone, you can pamper yourself without one ounce of guilt because you don’t have to sideline anyone else’s request for your time. You simply immerse yourself in whatever makes you feel good and to heck with the rest of the world. So, take a bath, give yourself a mani, or sit on the porch and get some sun – it’s all about you at this point.

Here are our top ten ways to pamper yourself so you can re-emerge into regular life as a groomed, coiffed and spoiled goddess.

Strengthen Your Existing Relationships

Reconnect with people you already know. Call them, go see them more often, or write to them if they are not in the same city. Try to deepen your contacts and make your relationships more meaningful.

Reach out to People and Create New Relationships

Girlfriends eating ice cream

In order to stop feeling lonely, you can create new social relationships. Without human interaction, loneliness can turn into complete solitude. Sharing opinions and life experiences with other people is what all human beings need – we are not meant to live life alone.

Don’t expect that people will approach you and ask you to be their friend. You should make an effort to approach them first. If you never talk or take any initiative, they will assume that you want to be alone.

Want to meet new friends but not sure how? Here are some suggestions that will help you widen your circle.

But remember to be patient and take it slowly. Social relationships and friendships are not built overnight. It takes time to get to know another person, build rapport and develop mutual trust.

Stop Waiting and Looking – Get Involved in Activities

To avoid feeling lonely, you must keep yourself busy and engage in an activity that will make you feel happy and satisfied. When you change yourself, the world around you will change also.

Joining a class or a club, or participating in a team project such as volunteering, can have numerous advantages.

Getting involved in an activity will not only stimulate your curiosity and make you learn a new skill, but it will also help you meet new people and give you a sense of belonging to a group.

Volunteer: Helping Someone Who is Lonelier than You Will Make You Feel More Connected to Life

There are plenty of opportunities. Homeless shelters, soup kitchens, care homes for disabled people, hospitals, and nursing homes are just a few.

The act of doing something useful for someone who really needs your help, will give you happiness and satisfaction. Your feelings of emptiness and loneliness will quickly dissipate and you will start feeling more connected to life.

Volunteering will also make you meet many other valuable people who are trying to do something good for others without expecting anything in return. This is a good way to develop meaningful friendships.

Join an Internet Community and Find Support Online

young woman with laptop relaxing in the park

Loneliness is widespread in modern society. There are far more lonely people in this world than you might imagine and many of them are in search of friends to talk to. Join an internet community and find them.

Sharing thoughts, secrets, worries, and experiences with other persons who feel the same way will help you feel less lonely and less isolated. Creating friendly connections online can be as valuable as forming them in real life. Just remember to be a careful internet user. Not everyone online is who they say they are.

You may also join loneliness support groups online. Sometimes they can be very helpful.

Learn to Be with Other People

Social relationships and friendships are based on mutual respect. This means that instead of just talking, you must also learn to listen to other people and show that you are interested in what they have to say.

In other words, you must respect their need to express their opinions and feelings, just like you would want them to respect yours.

Don’t Be a Burden

When you meet someone, don’t exhaust him or her with your problems and don’t try to quickly create an intense relationship. Nobody likes someone who is too insistent or too desperate. You must let a new relationship take its natural course and give it time and space to develop.

However, just by starting to create new social contacts, you will already feel less lonely.

Love Yourself and Others will Love You Too

Are you afraid that you can not measure up to other people? Do you feel insecure about yourself? Do you think that nobody cares for you?

If your fear of being rejected prevents you from establishing relationships with other people, then you have a self-confidence problem.

We should take care of ourselves the way we would take care of our best friend. Self-care involves three main things, Learn how to accept and love yourself.

Try focusing on your good qualities instead of only the negative ones. Reaching deep inside yourself, overcoming your fears and learning to accept yourself for who you truly are will help you become more self-confident, more socially relaxed, and thereby less lonely. Once you learn to live with yourself, other people will enjoy your company too.

Loneliness doesn’t Last Forever

Stay positive and always look on the bright side of life. Negative emotions don’t last for ever. Loneliness, sadness, or depression, are just temporary feelings that are part of everybody’s life.

Avoid despair, don’t allow yourself to wallow, take action and things will change.

Hopefully this post has helped you feel a little better. If you have any other suggestions or tips on how to stop feeling lonely, please write in the comments below and don’t forget to share this post with others!

About the author

Jessica

Jessica is a translator who has lived for many years in Asia and South America. She now lives and works in Europe, while preparing her new journeys. She enjoys traveling, meeting new people, exploring different cultures and foods, and being in love.

18 Comments

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  • I like it when people express their feeling of being lonely. I can really relate to whatever’s on their mind and not trying to hide it. Although being lonely forever really sucks because people are either laughing at you, talking trash behind your back and provoking you all the time. All I have to say is that this is part of everyday life, and people just need to deal with it.

  • i am a good straight down to earth man looking to meet a good woman for me this time around, especially after my wife of 15 years cheated on me which i was a very caring and loving husband that was very much committed to her as well. now it is very hard for me since there are so many very nasty women that have a very serious attitude problem, which they play hard to get as well. loneliness certainly sucks today, and many of us really hate to be alone to begin with. there are not that good women to meet out there anymore, unlike the women of years ago that were very committed to their men and accepted them for who they were which they did not have a lot of money either to be loved.

  • Nah.. i love loneliness and i adore it.. but i don’t know what’s missing in my life !.. i don’t want love either ! uhh i’m damn confusing !

  • loneliness hurt but its in your head…time is a great healer. you may use music as a therapy to get away from blues. you may visit Muzikool.com and select a mood map and draw a playlist that sets the direction from blues to calm to pleasant to happy …nothing is instant….everyone needs time to get over….music too can be designed like this way.how cool!

  • I tried a lot to figure out why it hurts to be lonely.. is it that we r dependent on others for our happiness.. or that when we see around people enjoying with family friends we feel that we dont have such relation in life so we feel lonely… just what make it so hard too feel lonely with our ownsel.. is it that we seem boring to our ownsel that we need somebody to fill for it… high powers sent us on earth alone and when we die it will still b alone… den why not jst love ourself. Get engaged in our self. In every moment there is always something or the other to do…

  • I even gave a thought that is d reason universe gv us birth as a human to keep feeling lonely or else is there sm other reason which we cannot see… there has to be some reason y v r born.. may be dvreason v r here for needed our lonely attitude… may be feeling lonely is a way we can find secrets to life or our great potential… so I thnk its better to keep moving on… do work to make ourselves useful to us nd people around.. spend a good time with nature… keep asking for directions to lead towards your higher potential… with ful faith that universe loves us nd we r not lonely bcz some invisible power is alwaz with us

  • I’m not even sure I’m lonely, but sometimes I have moments where it all seems wrong and I just cry for no reason and mostly always by myself. Here’s the kicker…I’m successful, big home, 2 great kids, healthy, and married to a great person. But I still feel empty, been trying yoga and other things and they’ve been helping somewhat, but not ton. My wife thinks I’m crazy and she always gets defensive like I’m attacking her when I try to talk about it, which I do poorly :(. She’s busy growing her business which is great but I’m just so far down anyone’s priority list now that I guess I just don’t feel like there’s anyone there for me. I’m pretty much ready to just give up.

  • Do not give up,u mst sit down n tel her how u feel be open to her,u have come along way,why the lonelyness now or maybe she putting most of her time on bussiness

  • My name is Michelle and im 24 ive lost both my parents. Nothing ever goes right and im depressed all the time and i often lash out at friends or feel anger toward them even when i know they havent done anything. i dont know whats wrong with me, i feel like the odd one out and that i cant connect with anyone but my son, who is 6 and sometimes he is the only one i can be around.

    • I am also 23year old and exactly like u but my parents alive and give me very limited life

  • I feel lonely all the time no matter what.
    Even when my mom is talking to me, even when I’m surrounded by tons of people, even when my fiance is cuddling me and telling me how much he loves me. I’m so desperate for help. I recently got myself my fourth therapist and I’m seriously considering medication, which disturbs my fiance greatly. I always feel like a burden. No one wants to help me. No one can relate. I was diagnosed with chronic depression and anxiety at 13 years of age. I can try to open up and try to be social and pretend to love myself and I’ve been to every damn website that claims to be able to help you through feeling lonely. I’ve never been truly helped. I was the little girl who sat alone on the benches at recess, never had any friends except for her imaginary friends, and never participated in group activities. So many years later and I’m still stuck in my head. Last time I tried to be social? I was sexually assaulted by a woman. Such is my luck every time I leave my house… Getting harassed by passersby for my gothic attire. Getting disrespected by every kind of person for whatever reason (usually for being too quiet.) And then everyone sits around and wonders why I don’t have friends and why I don’t go outside. Whether I’m ever truly alone or not, I can’t rid this feeling. I wonder why I even try anymore, because it’s not like this is ever gonna go away. As Ryan says here in this comment section, people like me are just gonna have to deal with it…

  • Well if many women today weren’t very high maintenance, independent, selfish, spoiled, and very greedy, then many of us good single men would’ve been able to meet a good woman that could Accept us for who we really are since there are so many Career women out there now that want the best and won’t settle for less. And most women today are looking for men with lots of money which is the real reason why many of us good men are still single and lonely.

  • Wow. No, loneliness doesn’t last forever. We eventually die. This whole article basically just made this worse for me. Sorry I read it.