What to do if you feel lonely. Why do we feel lonely and how to deal with it? Why does a person feel lonely among people?

“Everything is fine with me, but I constantly feel lonely, although I am not alone,” is a similar phrase that most people can attribute to themselves. Where does this feeling come from and why are there so many of us?

Now we can answer these questions. Research from the UK Red Cross found that one in five Britons feel lonely. Other studies show that chronic loneliness is bad for your health and can shorten your life expectancy. Fortunately, we are now well aware of this influence.

As a psychotherapist and specialist in the problem of neglect of the emotional needs of children, I think I can at least partially answer the questions “Why?” and “What should I do?” I have observed many people whose experiences were ignored by their parents and, as a result, they felt lonely as adults. It seems to many that there is nothing particularly terrible about the fact that parents do not react to the child’s emotions. Such upbringing deprives him of important parts of the foundation on which relationships with others are built.

If it was not customary in your family to talk heart to heart and seriously discuss feelings, you may not be able to do this

The consequences of neglecting emotional needs continue into adulthood, creating feelings of alienation and other problems.

Reasons why you feel lonely:

1. In families where it is customary to ignore emotions, there are usually no heart-to-heart conversations. The client said that his family was great at discussing future plans and practical issues, but if someone was sad, hurt, or angry, family members seemed to run away. Yes, talking about painful experiences is difficult. This needs to be learned. And if it was not customary in your family to talk heart to heart and seriously discuss feelings, you may simply not be able to do this. And because this skill is so important for building meaningful relationships (both friendships and love), you find it difficult to connect with others, and as a result you suffer from loneliness.

2. If parents ignore or criticize the child's feelings, he automatically begins to isolate himself from experiences in order to survive. As a child, you adapted to living conditions in your family, learning to suppress your emotions so as not to burden your parents with them. But feelings are the glue that binds people together and allows them to build meaningful relationships. Without them, it is difficult to build those deep and lasting emotional connections that everyone needs.

3. If your parents ignored your feelings, it was as if they were sending a signal every day: “No one needs your feelings.” Since feelings are the deepest and most natural manifestation of ourselves, we hear this message differently: “You yourself are not needed by anyone.” Adults whose feelings were neglected as children deep down feel less important than others. They sacrifice feelings, wants and needs for the benefit of others. If you consider yourself worse than others, it’s as if you live in a separate world.

4. Another message that the subconscious receives: “If something is wrong with your feelings, then so is it with you.” A person who grew up in a family where his feelings were neglected feels deeply flawed from childhood. Because of this, he is afraid to open up to others, because he is afraid that they will see his inferiority. Therefore, he maintains a “safe” relationship, keeping his distance, but it does not bring satisfaction.

You can give yourself the emotional love and care that you lacked as a child.

5. You constantly tried to ask your parents for emotional help, which is completely natural, but you received no help. Now, as an adult, you are afraid to turn to others for emotional support. You are afraid of being disappointed or facing rejection, so you rely only on yourself. Your motto is “I can handle it myself.” But by being afraid to ask for help, you isolate yourself from others and again feel lonely.

6. It can be difficult to realize that your emotional needs were neglected as a child. And even when you see how this neglect affects your life, it is often difficult to explain to others. This may make you feel like you are the only one affected by the problem and no one else can understand you. But you are not alone. In fact, countless people are going through the same thing. Most of them seem to be healthy, resilient people. You meet them in the store, working in the office, sitting at the holiday table. They do not appear physically lonely, but they feel emotionally lonely. They don't need to surround themselves with a lot of people, they need to learn to relate to their feelings differently.

Scientists who periodically discover mind-boggling truths in the course of their work never cease to amaze us. New research on human loneliness breaks the boundaries of stereotypes - everything is actually not as we used to think. Claudia Hammond, who conducted a survey called the BBC Loneliness Experiment, presented the public with counterintuitive research results.

The experiment is based on an online survey of 55,000 people from around the world. It was developed by scientists from three British universities in collaboration with the Wellcome Collection.

When you imagine someone who is lonely, the stereotype paints pictures of an elderly person who lives alone and hardly sees or communicates with anyone. Indeed, in the BBC Loneliness experiment, 27% of people over 75 said they often or very often felt lonely. This figure was higher than some other surveys, but perhaps because the survey was conducted online, many of those who were lonely wanted to take part.

What is loneliness?

Sometimes you really want to be alone. However, if you need communication and you don't have the opportunity to spend time with people who understand you, you feel abandoned and neglected. Loneliness is a disconnection from the world around you, a feeling that no one around you understands you, and that there are no real, meaningful relationships with people. You can feel lonely in a crowd, and vice versa, you can be absolutely happy when there is no one around.

Young people feel more lonely than older people

Incredibly, but true: the highest degree of loneliness was recorded in the group of 16-24-year-old respondents, with 40% of them saying that they often or very often feel lonely.

The question inevitably arises: why does this happen? Perhaps young people simply honestly admit this, while older people find it more difficult to admit their loneliness and uselessness; older people often “show off”, trying to emphasize their independence. But the trend is this: when people were asked at what point in their lives they felt most lonely, the answer was the same - when they were young.

It’s not just our modern life, which immerses people in gadgets and “cuts them off” from the rest of the world, that makes young people feel lonely, they can feel this way for a number of other reasons. Many people think of the age from 16 to 24 as a new freedom away from their parents, when they can finally take everything from life, because school is behind them, and You are already the master of your life when you start working and earning money. But in reality, a different picture emerges: all this distances us from the friends with whom you grew up and are accustomed to being together and communicating. At the same time, a person at this age is trying to take his place in life, solving the difficult task of finding himself.

Everything in the world passes, we need to take care of business!

In addition to this, young people are not used to the feeling of loneliness, and have not yet realized that this sometimes terrible feeling is also passing, like everything else in the world. It often happens that young people do not have enough strength and opportunity to find a way to cope with these feelings - to get distracted, find something they like, or make new acquaintances.

41% of people think being alone is a big plus

This discovery supports the idea of ​​people like the late neuroscientist John Casciopo, who believed that we have evolved to experience loneliness, and that it can be a healthy, if unpleasant, sensation. People survived thanks to collective life. If they are ostracized from a group, feelings of loneliness may force them to interact with people, make new friends, or rekindle old relationships.

The truth is that this feeling can become chronic and have a serious impact on well-being, as well as significantly undermine a person's health.

The fact is that the negativity from constant loneliness leads to a person’s risk of developing depression within a year. Although 41% of all survey participants said that loneliness could be a big plus for them, only 31% of those who complained about feeling lonely too often considered it a plus for themselves. A lonely person feels pitiful and very unhappy; it is unlikely that if this feeling lasts for a long time, anyone will say that this is good.

Lonely people are as good as others at connecting with other people.

Some believe that people feel isolated because it is difficult for them to establish relationships with others, but the results of the study refute this relationship. When you know how to communicate, it means that you are able to penetrate the soul of another person, understand his feelings, so that when communicating with him you do not offend him or hurt him. One way to measure this skill (understanding people) is to have a person look at several faces or pairs of eyes and try to determine what emotions those faces are experiencing. And when performing such a task in the survey, it was revealed that there is no difference in the assessments of lonely people and those who do not experience this feeling. The respondents assessed differently only the degree of concern of the persons shown to them. So it's possible that anxiety caused by various social situations may be more likely to worsen your feelings of loneliness than your social skills.

Winter is not a time for loneliness

It turns out that people don't feel any more lonely in winter than in other seasons. In the run-up to Christmas, you often see campaigns from charities to help older people stay sane during the busy family festivities. It seems that if you live in the Northern Hemisphere, then Christmas falls in the middle of winter, when the days are shorter and people find themselves more isolated and therefore feel even lonelier. But as a result of the study, it turned out that for many of these “hermits” winter turned out to be no worse than any other time of the year. The survey asked people to indicate the time of year and day when they felt most lonely. More than two thirds of people said they felt no more abandoned in winter than at any other time of year. The rest called it winter, and some even called it a cheerful, warm summer.

If a person is lonely, then most likely all year round

At Christmas, many people make great efforts to be in some company rather than be left alone. And in the summer, when everyone around them goes on vacation, people, perhaps, therefore feel abandoned. Therefore, probably someone feels abandoned all year round, and not just during the Christmas holidays.

Lonely people have higher levels of empathy

The survey measured two types of empathy. One of them was sympathy for the physical pain of people: it turned out how sorry the respondent was for a person who had been burned on a hot frying pan, had his hand pinched by a door, or been stung by a wasp. The second type: they found out how much people are able to sympathize with those who experience mental pain from moral humiliation, when they are bullied at school, are not invited to a party, or when their lover leaves them. The results are surprising: there was no difference in empathy for physical pain among all respondents. But people who said they felt lonely often or very often showed more empathy for those who were hurt by social humiliation. After all, probably, only when one’s own soul is “wounded” and wounded can one feel with all one’s skin the inner suffering of another person.

Even though most of us live surrounded by many other people, we still often experience a feeling of loneliness that robs us of the joy of life. Loneliness eats away our soul and makes our life meaningless, sometimes turning it into complete torture. Many of you will probably agree with me that loneliness is bad, very bad and sad. Meanwhile, there are so many people around us that it would seem that loneliness is out of the question, but it nevertheless exists and we feel it. Why do we feel lonely and why is loneliness so painful for us? And most importantly, what should we do with loneliness, how to get rid of it? We, dear readers, will talk about this in this article. And if you feel like a lonely person, I will help you solve this problem.

Loneliness is a special emotional state of a person in which he feels useless and does not feel himself. A lonely person loses his sense of himself due to lack of contact with other people; he falls into a void in which he, as an individual, does not exist. This emotional state occurs at a time when a person does not receive full attention from other people, when he does not feel a positive emotional connection with people or is afraid of losing it. At the same time, there may be a lot of people around him and they can even communicate with him. It's all about the form of this communication - a person may simply not be listened to, heard or understood. Often, when communicating with people, we feel that they simply do not hear us, and therefore do not understand, and therefore we begin to feel lonely. It turns out that we seem to be able to communicate with people, but it is reminiscent of communicating with a wall, which is of little use. So it is not at all necessary to live on a desert island and be isolated from society in order to feel lonely; you can, surrounded by a huge number of people, not only feel, but actually be a lonely person - if no one cares about you.

But why don’t we ourselves give a damn about those who don’t care about us? And because we are social creatures, we all depend on each other, because we are parts of a single whole, not to mention the fact that each of us needs a partner for a full life. This is how nature intended for a person to strive to continue his family and maintain life on earth and to take care not only of himself, but also of the people around him, since this increases his survival. Together, people are capable of much, they were able to build a civilization and together they can solve any problems that arise, but individually they will simply die out. Therefore, such a socio-psychological phenomenon as loneliness is understandable. We feel lonely because we make ourselves that way - we alienate ourselves, move away from each other, we emphasize our individuality, forgetting about the need to fit into the society around us, noticing other people in it and becoming noticeable ourselves. And we will never be comfortable as long as we are objectively alone, until we learn to be not only ourselves, but also part of the society in which we live, and preferably, part of all humanity. So we cannot be indifferent to other people, especially in cases where we lack attention, communication, understanding, respect and love. However, if we receive too much attention from other people, we inevitably begin to neglect it, we begin to choose who is interesting and beneficial for us to communicate with, and who is not. If you have no friends, no suitable partner, you will of course feel lonely. But it is quite possible, friends, that you yourself, too, at the moment do not notice anyone who notices you. Think about it.

Loneliness, meanwhile, has a positive side - privacy. Some people do not need constant and abundant communication with other people, they can conduct a full-fledged internal dialogue with themselves, they can think, read books, do some favorite things and they will be quite comfortable. Loneliness for such people is not a punishment, but a grace, albeit in moderation, because as was said above, we all need contacts with people and their attention to us. But to a certain extent, we all need solitude, another thing is that because of this we should not close ourselves off from the outside world, otherwise we will become outcasts, loners, closed-in people. And this will not benefit us, rest assured. Therefore, do not try to replace communication with people with communication with yourself; this will not save you from loneliness. Supplement communication with people with communication with yourself - supplement, but do not replace it with them, live a full life - look for suitable interlocutors and communicate with them.

But back to the negative side of loneliness, in the end, for most people, loneliness is a problem, not a blessing, which they somehow need to solve so as not to suffer because of it. How can it be solved? First, friends, you need to find out what is causing this problem. Pay attention to the way you live and how you treat other people. If you lead an alienated lifestyle, if for some reason you are isolated from other people, then you need to correct this situation - you need to go out to people in order to be able to communicate with them. If you communicate with people, but at the same time you do not understand them, and they do not understand you, because of which you have conflicts during communication, forcing you to distance yourself from them or them to distance themselves from you, then you definitely need to work on your manner of communication. In most cases, we are deprived of attention from other people because of our lack of understanding of them, which we interpret as their lack of understanding of us. But blaming other people for not wanting to communicate with us or not wanting to understand us is simply pointless. People behave with us the way they want and how they are forced to behave, and most importantly, they behave with us the way we allow them to behave with us. So if we do not want to hear each other, then our communication will be so meaningless that it can be compared to communication with a wall, and therefore, there can be no talk of any mutual understanding with such dead communication. So why do we spit on each other, why don’t we notice each other, don’t hear each other and don’t want to understand each other? Is it all about our upbringing? Yes, and in it too, many people are selfish and therefore indifferent to other people, and they, in turn, are indifferent to them. So we all feel lonely, even in large cities full of people, and even with the Internet at hand, where you can communicate with anyone and on any topic. But selfishness is selfishness, and the main problem for a person who makes other people, and at the same time himself, lonely is his lack of need for other people. We don't need each other enough to want to understand each other. Or rather, we believe that we do not need each other, and we often see in other people more enemies than friends and therefore we try to distance ourselves from them or simply not notice them. Because of this, as I said above, we make ourselves lonely. We must have a need for those around us, then we will be more open and friendly towards them, and if we do not feel this need, then other people will only interfere with us.

How often do we complain that we lack attention, love, respect, understanding? What have we personally done to ensure that we have all this? Do we accept the love that other people who truly love us offer us, do we respect their attention to us, do we try to understand other people when we communicate with them? Alas, friends, in most cases we do nothing of this, at least most of us do not properly appreciate the attention, love, understanding and respect for ourselves from other people. And as a result, some of us come to proud loneliness, in which some people, because of their pride and perseverance, remain throughout their lives. But all you need to do is try to understand other people, try to hear them and find a common language with them. But people are too selfish for this, they are mainly guided by their own feelings, by their own desires, by their own interests, and they do not care about others. Sometimes this is justified, sometimes it is not, but in most cases, by not feeling the need for attention from some people, we deprive ourselves of the opportunity to live a rich and fulfilling life in which we will have many friends and fans. People don’t just become lonely; this is necessarily preceded by certain actions on the part of the person that force people to distance themselves from him. Sometimes friends, you really have to be simpler so that people will start to gravitate towards you.

However, some people, no matter how hard they want, are unable to establish positive contacts with other people; they are either uncommunicative themselves, or have become so due to negative experiences in the past. Also, very often difficulties with communication arise in people with low self-esteem, because of which they are simply afraid to communicate, afraid of being unheard, misunderstood, and unaccepted. There are other psychological factors that contribute to loneliness. So, if it is difficult for you to establish contacts with people, because of low self-esteem, because of fear of them, because of your lack of communication or for some other reason, then start working on yourself, either on your own or with the help of a specialist . Otherwise, you will create a vicious circle when your inability and unwillingness to communicate with people will lead you to the fact that your self-esteem will fall even lower and your fear of people will become even greater. And then you may develop depression, with all its inherent “charms,” which can completely poison our lives. You definitely need to develop your communication skills in order to be able to make acquaintances with people you are interested in. And if you are already quite sociable, but there are few people around you with whom you could communicate and who could understand you, then you urgently need to pay attention to your behavior in order to understand what exactly you need to change in it . Loneliness always has reasons that lie primarily in ourselves. When we feel the loneliness of the soul, when it seems to us that the whole world is against us, that no one needs us and our whole life is a complete misunderstanding, rest assured that at this moment we do not understand something, we are losing sight of something and something. then we don’t attach any importance.

I am absolutely sure that many people need each of us, just as we ourselves need many of them. We all need each other in one way or another. Once we realize this, we will certainly open up to each other and become closer to each other, and not physically closer, there seems to be no problem with that today, but spiritually. It’s time for us to abandon the consumer attitude towards people and move to a new level of perception of this world, in which our relationships with each other will take on a qualitatively new form. People must grow and develop so that such primitive and meaningless problems as loneliness stop bothering them. I also recommend that you engage in some creative activity that will more than compensate for the lack of attention to you from other people. Sometimes we just feel lonely, but we really are not, we simply do not have the opportunity to express ourselves and therefore it seems to us that no one understands us. Express yourself in some work that interests you, because every person, without exception, has some kind of talent, by identifying and developing which he is able to surprise the world with his wonderful creation and express himself with this. Then you will be guaranteed attention, recognition, respect, and love. People can't help but notice a person who created something beautiful.

And don't be afraid of people, friends. They, of course, are not ideal, and sometimes even dangerous, but still, none of us can live a full life without them. You don’t have to communicate with all people, communicate only with those of them who are closer to you in spirit and character, this will be quite enough so that you do not feel lonely. Try to study people, understand them, study their interests, goals, desires, and then you will be able to join their picture of the world and help them understand you. Draw their attention to yourself with the help of your activity and energy, because active and energetic people are hard to miss. Keep in mind that many people simply do not understand what their life should be like, what kind of people they should surround themselves with in this life, and who needs them in it. Therefore, try to convince them that they need you, show them yourself in all your glory. And you will be accepted. People are confused in a world they have created, in which there is so much information that you can drown in it. Therefore, they often find it difficult to focus their attention even on themselves, let alone anyone else who surrounds them. There are people around, but the person does not notice them, does not fully communicate with them, and therefore feels lonely. Loneliness is a problem we have invented; in reality it does not exist. There is only people’s misunderstanding of each other and their inattention to each other, because of which this difficult feeling arises.

Knowing yourself.

One of the reasons for loneliness is condemnation and hostility towards others.

Many, many people in the world suffer from loneliness. And most of them think that loneliness comes from unfortunate life circumstances.

However, what makes a person lonely is, of course, his sins and passions. Any sin is like a thick board covering the window of the soul. And when we feel lonely, when we have thoughts: “No one loves me, no one understands me,” then we will not blame anyone for this. All the reasons why we feel loneliness lie in our own hearts. With our own sins, we have closed the windows of our souls for people. And getting rid of loneliness is easy. The more we strive against sin, the more our heart is cleansed of passions, the less alone we feel.

One of the most common causes of loneliness is JUDGMENT.

We can say that loneliness and condemnation are similar ailments of the soul. A judgmental person, wherever he finds himself, is always dissatisfied with his surroundings. He wants to see neighbors next to him who would not have shortcomings, but he will never find such people. Elder Emilian discusses this interestingly: “We want our neighbors to renounce themselves, surpass themselves, overcome their weaknesses, and become successful and holy. And then we, together with them, will become successful and holy. But this cannot happen."

The most correct way for us is to renounce ourselves, to surpass ourselves, to overcome our weaknesses.

It has been noticed that it is precisely those who condemn who have not themselves gone through the path of fulfilling the Gospel commandments and who have not experienced this work. And in order to overcome condemnation, we need to acquire the following attitude: God’s law was created for me personally.

Another remedy against condemnation is to never think about your neighbor. Our heart, our mind are darkened by passions, and if we allow ourselves to think, then we inevitably have sinful thoughts, including thoughts of condemnation.

Elder Emilian (Vafidis) very accurately describes how this happens:
“Usually, when a person reasons, he considers everyone to be worthless. This one works poorly, this one does not pray, has no faith, the other one has no love, no hope, he does not love God. In the slightest time of reflection, our mind can become a place full of ruins, because it is impossible, if we begin to reason, not to consider others worthless. And even if I myself don’t know all the bad sides of a person, Satan will find them for me.”

The thought of our neighbor becomes the starting point of our removal from him. The more we talk about a person, the more and more we move away from him. What can bring us closer? If we do not allow ourselves a single thought about our neighbor, if we replace every thought with prayer, then reverence for our neighbor naturally appears in our soul.

Our neighbor becomes a shrine for us. A shrine can be worshiped, admired and kissed with the fear of God, but a shrine cannot be roughly grabbed and examined from all sides. Likewise, we do not consider our neighbor, do not evaluate him, do not bring his merits and demerits to judgment, but only reverently bow before him as before the image of God.

There is only one thought about our neighbor that we can allow ourselves. It goes like this: What does my neighbor want? Does he need anything? And such reflection is not only allowed to us, but even commanded. In any situation where we are around our neighbors, we must think about their needs. Abba Isaiah has, for example, this teaching: “When you walk along the road together, listen in every way to the thoughts of the weakest among you, whether he needs to rest a little.”

See how he says: “Listen in everything to the thoughts of the weakest among you.” That is, be sensitive, be attentive, try to understand, feel what the other person is feeling. Especially if this person is weaker than you in some way.

No matter who we find ourselves next to, we will try to forget about ourselves and focus on our neighbor: how is he feeling? What does he want? We will try to catch and fulfill his desire before he asks for it himself. When we force ourselves to do this, our heart softens, we stop judging. We sympathize with our neighbors, and they all become family to us.

It is very important to fight condemnation at the very beginning, to cut off the very first thoughts. If we succumb to condemnation and do not fight it, then our hearts are filled with HATE for our neighbors.

And this passion becomes another reason for loneliness. Many people think that hostility arises for objective reasons - because the neighbor is ugly or not smart enough, or has a bad character. In fact, our neighbor is never to blame for our hostility. If we feel hostility, it means that our heart is sick, we have an incorrect, distorted view of our neighbor.

This is how Elder Emilian describes this state: “When someone else comes into our lives, we begin to fuss and worry. On the one hand, we want someone to come to us, talk to us, love us, fill our loneliness. But when a neighbor actually appears in our lives, we are immediately ready to drive him away, condemn him, scold him, tell him “no” and demonstrate with all our appearance that his presence burdens us.”

I remember one incident, seemingly insignificant at first glance, but it made a great impression on me. This happened when we went to see Father Nikolai Guryanov. Father Nikolai always had a lot of visitors and among them were a variety of people. And then one day an old man came to him, with a very homely appearance. It was clear that he was from the village, very simple, poorly dressed, with some kind of basket over his shoulders. When he was walking to Father Nikolai, the priest saw him from afar - and he beamed with joy and began shouting to him: “Come, come here quickly!” - although this old man was not even familiar to him. Father Nikolai's heart was filled with love for his neighbors, and behind the simplest appearance he saw the image of God in man.

And when we force ourselves not to pay attention to the minor shortcomings of our neighbors, then their virtues and the beauty of their souls are revealed to us. We notice how many wonderful, worthy people are around us
Sometimes we dislike people because they seem to treat us badly. “This man always looks at me with a frown. And this one never says hello to me,” that’s what we think. But let's look into our soul. The reason why a person is cold towards us most likely lies in the fact that we were the first to show coldness towards him or think poorly of him, and he felt it.

Here is how righteous John of Kronstadt writes about this: “Our spiritual dispositions, even not expressed by external signs, have a strong effect on the spiritual disposition of others. This happens all the time, although not everyone notices it. I get angry or have unfavorable thoughts about another: and he feels this and equally begins to have unfavorable thoughts about me. There is some means of communicating our souls with each other.”

The hostility of people towards each other is a kind of ghost consisting of random thoughts. As a rule, there are no serious reasons for hostility. It’s just that one person accidentally looked at the other gloomily, and he answered him with a cold look - and now they are both afraid and avoid each other. And they do not know what closeness there is between their souls, how deeply they could love each other if they did not pay attention to random words and glances.

And how many such cases have there been: two people look at each other with hostility, but then one decides to overcome this quiet enmity. He fights thoughts of hostility and actively shows his love - in a smile, in a kind word, in some kind of help. And then the other one also responds, softens, and they become close and dear people.

I would like to read one touching example from the works of St. Nicholas of Serbia: “One peasant said: “Between me and my neighbor, enmity grew like thorns: they could not look each other in the eyes. One winter night, my little son was reading the New Testament aloud to me, and when he read the words of the Savior: “do good to those who hate you,” I shouted to the child: “Enough!” I couldn't sleep all night, I kept thinking and thinking. How can I fulfill this commandment of God? How can I do a good deed for my neighbor?

And one day I heard loud crying from a neighbor’s house. After asking around, I learned that the tax authorities had stolen all of my neighbor’s livestock in order to sell them for debts. The thought pierced me like lightning: behold, the Lord has given you the opportunity to do good to your neighbor! I ran to court, paid taxes for the man who hated me more than anything in the world, and gave his cattle back. When he found out about this, he walked around his house for a long time, thoughtfully. When it got dark, he called me by name. I walked up to the fence. - Why did you call me? – I asked him. He burst into tears in response to me and, unable to utter a word, cried and cried. And since then we have lived in greater love than siblings.”

It is natural for all people to love each other. This is how God created us - loving. And if thoughts of rejection arise between us, then we must understand that this is unnatural, this is an alien interference in our life, full of love and peace. The enemy puts barriers between us, but these barriers are very easy to remove. They disappear like smoke when we fulfill the gospel commandments in relation to each other.

In general, there cannot be loneliness where the Gospel is fulfilled. No matter what happens, no matter what misunderstandings occur between people, no matter what their characters are, even the most incompatible ones - if they try to keep the commandments of Christ, then there will be unity and love between them. Let's think about what the Savior's words mean: “Where two or three are gathered in My name, there I am in the midst of them”? They can be understood this way: when people, gathered together, communicate in the spirit of the Gospel, then Christ blesses and sanctifies their community, and Himself dwells in their hearts.

And vice versa, even if people are very close in character and interests, but they communicate not in a Christian way, are guided not by commandments, but by passions, then there will never be true agreement between them, because there is no Christ among them. And each of them will remain lonely.

And I wish for all of us that we strive in love for each other, that we lavish ourselves for each other, and then our hearts will expand and God Himself will dwell in each of us, according to the words of the Apostle: “No one has ever seen God. If we love each other, then God abides in us, and His love is perfect in us.”

From the conversations of Abbess Dominica

A person always expects recognition of his personality from others. If this does not happen, then a feeling of alienation arises, which is called loneliness.

Feelings of loneliness can occur even when you have real connections with other people. A person may feel unwanted and unloved in a large family or rejected in a team. The feeling of loneliness can occur sporadically, like a flash, or it can take root in a person’s mind as an obsessive state.

Loneliness is always accompanied by tension and anxiety associated with dissatisfaction with communication or intimate relationships.

Types of feelings of loneliness

People with a state of loneliness differ from each other in their own activity and degree of experience.

There are several types of feelings of loneliness:

1. Hopelessly lonely people: dissatisfied with their relationships, having a feeling of abandonment and emptiness.

3. Persistently single people are passive people who have come to terms with their condition.

4. People are not lonely, whose social isolation is voluntary, temporary, and does not cause a feeling of oppression.

In psychiatry, there are two types of loneliness:

• The first type of loneliness is associated with a person’s alienation from himself: his past, experience, from the functioning of his own body. Loneliness is associated with problems of perception and assimilation of the mechanisms of development and self-preservation of the body.
• The second type of loneliness is associated with the quality of relationships with other people, acceptance, evaluation of this quality and a person’s acceptance of himself as an individual.

The feeling of loneliness is defined as a painful experience of isolation. This experience becomes obsessive and takes over all the person’s thoughts and actions. Loneliness is experienced as depression, melancholy, boredom, sadness, despair. A person may worry about lost connections, lack of self-acceptance, and lack of awareness of oneself as an accomplished person.

Situational, transient loneliness can appear after certain unpleasant events: divorce, death of loved ones, job loss, serious injury or illness. After some time, the person comes to terms with the loss and completely or partially overcomes his condition. The situational feeling of loneliness is expressed in short-term attacks, which, as a rule, pass without a trace.

Sometimes this condition does not go away, but turns into chronic loneliness. This occurs if, in the event of loss, a person cannot cope with his emotional state and does not find strength and opportunity in establishing relationships with significant people. At the same time, there is a loss of interaction mechanisms.

Chronic loneliness can accompany a person from childhood. This usually occurs when there is a lack of emotional attachment between children and parents. It is possible that this is an unwanted child, or a child who does not meet the parents' expectations. From childhood, the child is forced to avoid contact with his parents, or he is simply deprived of them. The habit of loneliness also persists in communication with a group of peers, where the child independently alienates himself from others. This produces a persistent, chronic feeling of loneliness.

However, it should be noted that in some cases people are quite comfortable in their isolated state. In this case, we are talking about personality traits bordering on pathology.

We can talk about loneliness only if a person clearly understands the inferiority of his relationships with the people around him. In other words, a person experiences his loneliness in the literal sense of the word. At the same time, the feeling of loneliness is influenced not so much by the relationship itself, but by a person’s idea of ​​what they should be like. Due to this discrepancy, a person who constantly communicates with one or two individuals may experience an acute lack of communication and feel loneliness.

The feeling of loneliness is understood as a difficult emotional state caused by the unsatisfaction of the need for interpersonal relationships.

Some psychologists believe that a person is inherently born, lives and dies alone. Others believe that man is a social being and should be surrounded by his own kind.

The first signs of an increased feeling of loneliness appear in adolescence. In this case, the frequency and number of contacts does not matter; satisfaction with communication is more important.

The experience of loneliness can be caused by a number of reasons:

• A person's inability to tolerate solitude.
• Low self-esteem projected onto others: “I’m scary, worthless, no one can love me.”
• Anxiety and social fears: other people's opinions, ridicule, being different from everyone else.
• Lack of communication.
• Distrust of people.
• Tightness and stiffness.
• Constantly making the wrong choice of partners.
• Fear of being rejected by your partner.
• Fear and anxiety regarding intimacy.
• Unrealistic claims and desires.
• Lack of initiative, communicative passivity.

The feeling of loneliness largely depends on self-esteem. Lonely people often feel worthless, incompetent, and second-rate. This perception of oneself justifies the absence of regular communication partners. Lonely people do not trust others. They are often hypocritical, stubborn, and cautious.