Loneliness

“You can be surrounded by people yet feel alone”

“You can be alone yet not feel lonely.”

Are several phrases I have heard around this subject.

I think it comes down to where do you feel comfortable or where do you have a sense of purpose.

Someone who has no sense of purpose or feeling of belonging will feel alone in most situations. They may be present at events but likely just drifting through not understanding why they are there.

Loneliness takes a lot of the joy out of life.

Most good experiences or memories are when other people are there as the memories can be shared and re-lived, yet when the event is lonely it has less impact and can be forgotten easily.

Even when you do have a good experience and enjoy something it brings with it the knowledge that it will end and you will return to the loneliness. This can usually take several days or weeks to get over.

Which leads to question is something worth doing if it will lead to another episode of depression.

For someone who has been alone and lonely for a long time now, I do not know how to break the cycle. How do I become comfortable again and not feel lonely? How can I regain a sense of purpose in life?

Being alone brings with it a lot of self-doubt

– Am I alone because people don’t like me?
-Am I lonely because I don’t like myself?

This reoccurs a lot for me, also the nagging question of why do people even talk to me?

Which generally leads to a lot of negative self-conscious thoughts. 

I am better off alone as I cannot annoy people or mess up. I am better being lonely than making other people’s lives worse.

A therapist would ask what proof I have that this is true, but my brain just accepts that loneliness is better than annoying people.

Fear of drawing attention to myself means I do not have the confidence to do or say things.

Not understanding social situations means I avoid them in fear of getting them wrong or being embarrassed. 

I don’t necessarily help myself when it comes to loneliness. It is tricky to meet people when you don’t leave the house. Getting out the front door is hard as I find less reasons to leave each day and before I know it several days have gone by without being outside or having on contact. Then when I do finally go somewhere I avoid interactions with people, generally out of fear and embarrassment and the unknown.

I recently joined a running club, which gets me out the house and is an activity I am comfortable doing. Due to many years of running on my own. However I treat the runs as just that, a run, I never stop and chat and usually arrive just in enough time to turn round and start running. Then when they are over I disappear as quickly as I can.

Anxiety stops me from doing things I want to or need to do.

This leads to Depression because I am not doing anything.
Then because I am depressed I become more anxious that this will come across in social situations so avoid them. 

This vicious cycle continues and the longer I am in it the harder it is to escape.

Being shy makes you assume everyone around you is confident. I know this is not true all the time but you generally compare others to yourself, so in my eyes everyone is confident.

I saw a quote recently which really hit home
“You’re not going to wish you cuddled less at the end of your life.” 

As the only people I hug are my family maybe a few times year. This is generally the only human interaction or physical contact I have. Which is probably not healthy, studies suggest it is a good way to produce oxytocin in the body, but I feel very awkward trying to figure out when and how to hug people so have just avoided it all my life. Maybe I should try to hug more but this would mean actually seeing people and being brave enough to ask them for a hug.

The problem with lonliness is once a thought or problem gets stuck in your head it is very hard to get rid of it, as there is no one else to rationalise the thought or fear. So it just keeps going round and round.
Even small things can get very large and overwhelming in my head simply because there is no outlet.

I realise this is written very poorly and incoherant but felt I needed an outlet for my thoughts and maybe other people can realate to some of my ramblings.