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How To Conquer Loneliness

This article is more than 9 years old.

One of the hardest parts of being a 20 or 30-something (or just a person) today is loneliness.

If you are an entrepreneur you can feel it at work, with no one quite understanding what you have to do to keep moving forward and succeed.

If you are single it you can feel it on weekends when you see couples roaming the streets laughing or when you start imagining your future and have no idea who might build it with you.

Those in relationships can also feel isolated if things aren’t going right. Lying next to the wrong person in bed can be the worst type of loneliness. Or being with a family who doesn’t always understand you. Or even being a single dog owner (And I can only imagine how single parents must feel) where everyone loves your puppy but no one can take on the responsibility you hold.

Even Dr. Seuss tried to teach kids that these feelings are part of life, something they will have to reckon with often. “I’m afraid sometimes you’ll play lonely games too, games you can’t win because you’ll play against you,” he wrote. And, “You can get help from teachers, but you are going to have to learn a lot by yourself, sitting alone in a room.”

But this article is not meant to rehash all the ways millennials experience loneliness. I have a trusted advisor - Karen Mason Riss, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, in Memphis, Tennessee (my hometown) - whom I asked to share notions on why people feel lonely and what they can do to feel more at peace. Here are her thoughts:

Connect with yourself. “Loneliness can be a spiritual problem,” says Riss. “Often times people say they are lonely because they don’t have a spouse or they don’t have a social network, but really they feel disconnected. They don’t feel a part of something.” One of the key ways to address this is to connect with yourself. Take a walk but don’t just look around - notice how you walk, how you breathe, what excites you, how your mind thinks, what makes you you. You can also write in your diary, meditate, or keep a record of your dreams. “When I felt lonely,” said Riss. “I would allow myself to get guided to a movie or book that might speak to me. I let my inner self lead me.”  Do anything that makes you less of a stranger to yourself. That way no matter who else is around, you are anchored.

Stop telling yourself stories. I am guilty of this habit - I go outside on a beautiful summer day and see stunning couples reading books on the grass or laughing over wine at cafes. And then my mind starts on the same track: “Everybody is in a relationship but me, and everybody is happy but me, and I have to find somebody to be like them.” Riss calls this story telling, something that can be very detrimental. “You write stories and you believe these stories are real. You see the couples and you focus on lack and what you need to do is zero in on what you have." The solution: Surround yourself with opportunities available to you. Maybe you don’t have a boyfriend, but you have a close group of friends. Arrange a picnic with them. Maybe you are an excellent volleyball player. So go play volleyball. And along the way you will surprise yourself by connecting with others who possess the same opportunities as you.

Fill a hole in other people’s lives. In addition to connecting with yourself, it is also key to find ways to forge bond with others. And the best way to do that, says Riss, is to find others in need (maybe they are lonely too) and help them. “When you get past yourself and get connected to someone else, you stop thinking about you and how you feel and start thinking about someone else’s hole. Then you aren’t lonely anymore.” Yes, you can do standard volunteer work - visit the elderly, work at a homeless shelter, mentor a teenager - but you can also connect with people closer to home. Once on a lonely night when I was living in London I reached out to a friend who I had a falling out with years before. In my new state of loneliness I was able to have greater empathy for her than I could in the past. We soon rekindled our friendship, and I attended her wedding last year.

Put your energies towards something productive. I’ll never forget a story Helen Gurley Brown told in Sex and the Single Girl, the explosive 1962 book that encouraged women to be independent. There was a night when all her colleagues were invited to a party from which she was excluded. At first she was angry, mad at the host for not inviting her and sad that she had nothing to do. But then she decided to spend her evening writing an essay for a writing contest, a competition she won and that launched her writing career.

One of the best ways to overcome loneliness, says Riss, is to invest your energy in something you care about. She tells a story of a girl who was given a few months to live. When she started building a rock garden, she ended up living for five years. We all need to have purpose - something we are working on - or else our lives are meaningless. So next time you find yourself feeling sad and isolated start working on something - any project that makes you excited. You don’t know where it will lead, and how it will help you connect with the world around you. And that is the key to not being lonely.