Interesting way to alleviate feelings of loneliness

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Nethic

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Hi guys, so I thought I'd post this up on this forum - see what kind of results this gets for other people this forum.

The backstory:
This long weekend I felt extremely lonely. No friends, weekend depression, very tired to move, etc.

Today, the loneliness peaked. I was looking for anything and everything that I could find to cure it. Went from video games, to porn sites, to sending people PMs on the forum asking them to talk to me, to dating sites, to craigslist, to watching TV shows. Everything I did, only got rid of the pain for a short bit of time, but it kept coming back. The loneliness feelings kept coming back, and I wanted to escape from them even more.

And then I had an idea. What if I just sat with my feelings of loneliness. What if I just stopped running from them, and trying to fill that void with anything that I can, and just sit there.

I gave loneliness the stage. If loneliness was an opera singer - she was on stage today singing (or screaming) her heart out. I sat there with the pain, with the cravings, with the wanting (wanting for anything to get rid of the pain).

After about 10-15 minutes of sitting there and just giving this feeling the floor - these feelings started to go away. Or at the very least, they became less burdensome. The intense desire to fill the void started to go away. I felt less under the control of this terrible feeling. I started to feel normal again. I'm pretty sure if I continue to do this every time I get lonely from now on - it will let me step over this horrible feeling.

So yea, I thought I'd share this with you. The next time you guys are feeling lonely - don't try to make it go away. Don't try to run away from these negative feelings, or try to drown them out. Instead, give the emotion the floor. Really feel it. See what it does to your body. What does it feel like? Listen to it. Give it the stage. Let it sing it's song.

Tell me if it does anything for you. I'm eager to know your reactions / opinions / experiences.
 
Well yea. Sometimes I have to throw a fit to make myself feel better.
 
A therapist I had many years ago told me that the key to defeating loneliness and depression was to face them head on and make the feelings your own. It was the best piece of advice I've ever received and even now, over a decade later, it's still getting me through life.
 
Basically you were meditating, I think? I try to recommend this to people who are unable to deal with their emotions, like you were before.
It's one of the things I did a long time ago to help me deal with my own problems. I won't say it works to completely get rid of your loneliness/depression, but it does allow you to handle it and deal with it in a more practical manner.

Another thing that helps is to focus those emotions into a creative hobby that you enjoy, like writing, drawing, painting, or really just anything that allows you to 'create' something. Put your emotions into that, draw them out (literally or figuratively), and you will feel much better. Not to mention you might also end up with a cool piece of art, or at least some practice and new skills.

lifestream said:
A therapist I had many years ago told me that the key to defeating loneliness and depression was to face them head on and make the feelings your own. It was the best piece of advice I've ever received and even now, over a decade later, it's still getting me through life.
I've never seen a therapist but that's basically how I've always dealt with my own issues, as well. If you aren't facing your problems then you are just running away and living in fear. But what is the point in that?
These things are just a part of who I am. To accept them as they are is the only way to move forward.
 
I often face loneliness when i have the time to sit still and stare at a ceiling. I also occasionally vape for nicotine (im not addicted) to dull emotional response. Obviously i don't recommend this since some people ARE addicted.

I also agree with what Despicable Me said. I vent my loneliness through poetry and drawing the most.
 
Nethic said:
Hi guys, so I thought I'd post this up on this forum - see what kind of results this gets for other people this forum.

The backstory:
This long weekend I felt extremely lonely. No friends, weekend depression, very tired to move, etc.

Today, the loneliness peaked. I was looking for anything and everything that I could find to cure it. Went from video games, to porn sites, to sending people PMs on the forum asking them to talk to me, to dating sites, to craigslist, to watching TV shows. Everything I did, only got rid of the pain for a short bit of time, but it kept coming back. The loneliness feelings kept coming back, and I wanted to escape from them even more.

And then I had an idea. What if I just sat with my feelings of loneliness. What if I just stopped running from them, and trying to fill that void with anything that I can, and just sit there.

I gave loneliness the stage. If loneliness was an opera singer - she was on stage today singing (or screaming) her heart out. I sat there with the pain, with the cravings, with the wanting (wanting for anything to get rid of the pain).

After about 10-15 minutes of sitting there and just giving this feeling the floor - these feelings started to go away. Or at the very least, they became less burdensome. The intense desire to fill the void started to go away. I felt less under the control of this terrible feeling. I started to feel normal again. I'm pretty sure if I continue to do this every time I get lonely from now on - it will let me step over this horrible feeling.

So yea, I thought I'd share this with you. The next time you guys are feeling lonely - don't try to make it go away. Don't try to run away from these negative feelings, or try to drown them out. Instead, give the emotion the floor. Really feel it. See what it does to your body. What does it feel like? Listen to it. Give it the stage. Let it sing it's song.

Tell me if it does anything for you. I'm eager to know your reactions / opinions / experiences.

That sounds pretty cool! It also sounds hard to sit still for. But I will try it.
 
Scary thing to accept it but it does work it peaks and troughs. Accepting it is a weird thing. I sometimes have lucid moments when I'm out and about where I feel like I've got it, how to stop feeling awful and alone and be happier it's a fleeting moment and then I lose it. Facing loneliness head on is hard because you end up looking at the roots of loneliness and unearth some unpleasant memories, for me anyway. Or I reminisce about times long past and how I feel like I want to be in those moments again but I realise it's escapism and the real problems are still there. I'll try and let it have it's moment but I just don't want to cry and become a whimpering mess I get mad at myself when I do that because it solves nothing.
 
I'll try and let it have it's moment but I just don't want to cry and become a whimpering mess I get mad at myself when I do that because it solves nothing.

I feel this way but the reality of being alone can hurt so I just try and busy myself with other stuff. Like coming here. I just have a hard time opening up to people and I hardly make friends. So it comes and goes....
 
Yeah rings a bell. I got really excited when someone posted a thread bout solitude a bit ago cos I think basically that's what i did a long time ago.
I think I hit some breakthrough where I realised that bascially I could be miserable with it or could accept it as part of who I am and enjoy the world as pure experience, I now have some friends but the lonely bit of me makes me love solitude cos of the world - I walked home from work instead of getting the bus yesterday and was getting entranced by leaves and dandelion fluff I'm not convinced I'd do stuff like that regularly if I hadn't been lonely in the past and I wouldn't trade it for anything.
 
I think meditation/mindfulness can be very helpful, but I think we have to consider it just one of many tools. I'm facing another weekend of depression (no plans / no friends) and there are so many hours I have to account for. I can only meditate for a half hour, I can only go to the museum by myself for a couple of hours, etc.

Personally, I think my loneliness is tied up with my death anxiety. One helpful thing I read is that for certain people, death anxiety can't be fully resolved, it can only be used as inspiration to live a fuller life. I think it might be the same way with loneliness. Unless I can mind control another person so that they'll always be there when I want, I'm always going to deal with feelings of loneliness. So maybe we just have to use those feelings of loneliness to live a fuller life. When I think of what's made me happy in life, it hasn't been my accomplishments or material things, it's been those rare moments I've made an interpersonal connection, even if they later turn out to be painful. And so I hope to use my feelings of loneliness to inspire me to get out there and seek those connections even though I've faced so much rejection and disappointment in the past. And I wonder if we might be better off than most people, because honestly, perhaps the reason why they don't feel as lonely is that they're numb.
 
I think that's a good idea, OP. I have felt the same way as you many times, constantly trying to fill the void. Watching the same YouTube clips over and over, checking email and Facebook countless times a day, and so on. I was trying to distract myself from just sitting down and confronting my issues. I felt, and still often feel, like a tangled, jumbled mess. Sometimes, when I sit here in my chair, I just let my problems take center stage and then I experience a little bit of clarity. I think being mindful of them is the first step to a solution.
 

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