Feeling Alone? You're Not the Only One: Breaking Free from Loneliness
Loneliness is a complex emotional state that goes beyond mere social isolation.
In this article, we will dive deeper into this concept and will explore its types, causes, and the impact it can have on both physical and mental well-being.
This article will help you in discovering coping mechanisms, from building social connections to self-care practices, aiming to provide a detailed guide on dealing with the challenges of loneliness.
Understanding Loneliness
Loneliness or being alone is a common trait that is observed in today's generation, generally the and millennials.
Now this thing has really become a serious issue like people can't handle their loneliness, they need someone literally a person who must stay with them for the whole 24 hrs.
This generation is in search of partners who can fill those empty gaps and at the end they fall in love that's not love actually.
So this is how things work.
Let's assume that you are alone and you are lonely, you are lacking love and support in your life and when you meet someone who shows some care and support for you.
Your mind starts assuming that he/she is in love with you. This generally happens because your mind wants that care and support that you were lacking in your life till now.
I hope that you may have observed once in life that someone's care and support creates a feeling of love and affection in your head and then you constantly start craving for that attention.
See the idea is you have to start dealing with the feeling of being lonely.
Types of Loneliness
1. Emotional Loneliness
Emotional loneliness generally occurs when a person lacks emotional bond.
This type of loneliness is keenly observed in today's generation where youth is blindly following social media and has no skill to make new friends.
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2. Social Loneliness
Focuses on the absence of a satisfying social network.
Social loneliness occurs when you are all alone. No friends, no special person to share your feelings with.
3. Existential Loneliness
Existential loneliness is slightly different from the first two. In this type of loneliness you are well supported by your friends.
You are emotionally strong but your inner self is lacking something.
That lack of space, that feeling of being alone is termed as existential loneliness and existential loneliness doesn't need building new friends but you have to seek for yourself.
You have to find yourself, spending time alone in nature and figuring out about yourself is something that can surely help you in coping with existential loneliness.
The Impact of Loneliness
A. Physical Health
1. Increased Risk of Chronic Diseases
Loneliness is one reason why we say that a healthy body requires a healthy mind.
See, your words and thoughts are so powerful that they can change your life and being lonely or doing an act of loneliness indirectly indicates your subconscious mind.
Your subconscious mind can't differentiate between reality and imagination, for your mind everything is reality and when you're lonely then it impacts your mind in a bad way.
Results in decrease in physical health. Loneliness can lead you to many chronic diseases such as dementia.
2. Weakened Immune System
Loneliness can also reduce your immunity and that's valid because when your mind is weak how can your body be strong enough to deal with diseases.
3. Sleep Problems
It's general and you may have noticed once in your life that whenever you think much, whenever you are stressed then generally your sleeping hours reduces and you tend to wake more at night.
B. Mental Health
Apart from physical health, loneliness has a very big impact on our mental health.
Some common trait that we feel when we are lonely are depression, anxiety, suicidal indentation and so on.
See, you must have noted that when you are lonely you start hating things, you start getting bored and feel doing nothing.
This is very common and as per reports of 2021, 6.4% of adults face depression due to loneliness.
Not just that sometimes these things exceed and then suicidal thoughts starts popping in head and that stage one needs to be very careful because your one wrong action can put a dot on your happy life.
Therefore it's important to consider these things normal and instead of taking stress and depression one must try to overcome stress and anxiety, opt the following ways to deal with these problems.
Coping with Loneliness
Building Social Connections
1. Join Clubs or Groups
The best way to cope with loneliness is to involve yourself in groups and clubs, so these clubs can be your college clubs or may be a friends group.
Try interacting with them, come out from the virtual reality and go in public and talk with people.
You can't eliminate your loneliness by just sitting inside your home and talking with yourself, instead you have to start building a connection.
2. Volunteer Your Time
So you have two ways here: either you go on a trip, it can be solo or with your friends and family members. This will help you a lot and will boost your mind, you can collect new memories.
Second thing you can do is invest your time for others, like needy people who need your help. Helping people gives the biggest satisfaction.
Donating a pizza to someone else who is in need will give you more satisfaction rather than eating yourself.
So please don't isolate yourself.
3. Reach Out to Friends and Family
Another thing that you can do is reach out to your friends and family members.
In case you are facing existential loneliness where you are feeling lonely from inside you can share all your feelings with your close friends and family members.
The art of sharing feelings, Read this article to better understand about sharing your feelings !
I suggest you share them with your mom and dad. I know it's hard but believe me it will give you relief for sure.
Self-Care Practices
1. Maintain a Healthy Lifestyle
A healthy mind lives in a healthy body so do exercise, go to gym, do proper workout and eat healthy food.
When you will maintain a proper healthy lifestyle for sure you will feel refreshed and you will get a new way to live your life.
2. Engage in Hobbies and Activities
Hobbies are also another way to revive yourself, see don't make loneliness such a big issue the more you will think about it the more it will haunt you.
Instead say it to yourself that it's normal. When the thoughts start getting heavy on your mind then one thing that you can do is following your hobbies.
Now it's up to you, your hobbies can be anything like what you love to do. Singing, writing, listening to podcasts and music or just having a cup of coffee.
Do what you love.
3. Practice Mindfulness and Relaxation Techniques
Last but not the least the best way with which you can eliminate your loneliness is by practising mindfulness.
Mindfulness is one of the best ways of calming your mind, making it more relaxed.
There are various mindfulness meditation and relaxation techniques that for sure will help you in achieving a control over your mind.
So try practising mindfulness meditation. As nothing is more effective than practising mindfulness meditation.
You can start by doing it for 3-5 minutes and then you can increase the time for 10 minutes and then to an hour.
Conclusion
So my friend that is all, that was the article on loneliness and I believe that you may have learnt something new and for sure you will learn new ways to cope with loneliness.
Also you can share your views about this post in the comment section and please put out your opinions and questions in the comment section.
Lastly I believe that everything lies in your head, whatever you think, whatever you feel, impacts your life.
So think positive and live a positive life. That's all for now. See you in the next one.
May The God Watch Over You
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