Verified by 
Loneliness
Taking Steps to Be Less Lonely
Loneliness is painful. It's also epidemic. For some, it's a challenge to change.
Posted July 13, 2021 Reviewed by Jessica Schrader
Key points
- Loneliness can often be at the root of depression, rather than a side effect.
- For some, just finding people to be around is not the answer.
- It is possible to be lonely even in a large group of people.
Loneliness is one of the biggest problems of our times. It’s easy to become isolated by living alone, working alone, and doing errands and chores alone. Some can go for days and even weeks without talking with anyone in person. Elderly, youth, and all ages can suffer from loneliness. The most successful people can feel very alone just as much as people who struggle with their goals. And it doesn’t even matter if you are around big crowds of people every day. You can still feel lonely, often mainly because you don’t feel connected to anyone.
The pain of loneliness is felt in the brain in the same location as physical pain. Loneliness hurts. When people talk about loneliness, it’s clear it can drain any pleasure they might have in life and often leads to depression and hopelessness. Having a true relationship, even with just one other person, can make a difference in your ability to enjoy your life.
“Make friends” is often the advice given to those who are lonely. “Join a club or a class and find people to build relationships with.” That advice may work for some. But maybe it doesn’t work for you? There’s a group of people, and maybe that includes you, who are likely to only feel lonelier when they try to socialize. As lonely as you feel, the problem is that you don’t enjoy being around other people. When you venture into social situations, you feel anxious and tense. You put on a mask of some sort. You may pretend to agree with whoever you talk with, or you may argue with other people’s points of view and refuse to participate in activities. You may try to impress others, or you may come across as intimidating. Perhaps you try to hide, to be invisible. None of these masks allows you to truly connect—you can’t connect if the other person doesn’t know who you really are. When you don’t enjoy being in social situations, they can be exhausting.
It’s a real bind when you feel so lonely and at the same time you are unable to enjoy connections with others. No wonder so many lonely people experience a sense of hopelessness and feel so misunderstood when offered simple solutions that just highlight their problems with connecting. For some people who suffer from loneliness, the solution isn’t fast nor is it simple. And the solution can be different for different people. But part of the solution includes learning to enjoy interactions with others, to be able to experience pleasure in being with other people.
When your body is tense, others sense your tension, and they push away. That can feel like rejection, even when it’s not. Even if it’s subconscious, hints of rejection will not be pleasant. You may feel so ashamed of your lack of friends that it's very hard to be around people—you anticipate that you're different and you won't fit in.
When you’re tense, you can’t engage in friendship behaviors such as the cooperative smile and chit-chat. Your voice doesn’t have a friendly tone and you can’t genuinely smile when you’re tense. You also can’t pick up on the social signals or cues of others. You may misinterpret the behavior of others as being about you or even against you, when it’s not. It’s difficult (perhaps not even possible) to experience pleasure when you’re tense.
Perhaps you experience self-conscious emotions when you’re around others, emotions such as embarrassment, shame, or guilt. These emotions can create tension. With self-conscious emotions, you often feel uncomfortable with people looking at you and have a sense of being the object of judgments and perhaps score or being made fun of. You’ll want to get out of that situation as soon as you can. To cope with self-conscious emotions, look at what you’re feeling. Is it shame? Perhaps you feel less than others or have thoughts that others are judging your harshly. These experiences can lead you to behave in ways that you are sending messages to others to stay away.
Be honest with yourself. Is there a reason for you to feel shame? Are you doing something that would cause others to want to banish you from the group? Many times, the feelings of shame that you may experience are not truly justified. The feeling may be your discomfort in being with people and you attribute the cause of that discomfort to shame and rejection by others. If shame isn’t justified then, and here’s another hard part, you may need to face those feelings and not let them stop you from being in a social group. The more you avoid being social, the stronger the feelings can become. Waiting for the feelings to go away is not likely to work.
If what you’re feeling is embarrassment, then push yourself to be social anyway. Others are drawn to people who are embarrassed. There is a sense of genuineness about you when you are embarrassed, as that emotion is very difficult to fake. Being open and genuine is a path to connecting with others.
To enjoy social interactions, the first step is to relax your body and let go of tension. Learn to let go of tension in social situations, in particular. You can practice relaxing your body by imagining that you are in a social situation and going to where groups of people gather. Then consciously relax your muscles and breathe deeply and slowly. Drinking and eating can help too. As you practice, pay attention to how your body feels when you are tense and when you relax. For some, you may be tense so often that you are no longer aware of it.
You will likely need to practice many times so that you can do it almost automatically and learn what strategies work for you. It's not magical or fast. When you’ve learned to let go of tension around people, then you can practice the next steps. This comfort will allow you to engage in friendship behaviors. More about that next time.
