A few days ago I saw a headline in the newspaper, “World Population is Projected to Reach 8 Billion on November 2022” -how strange, still people feel loneliness! The question should arise in mind, ‘I am alone in the crowd of so many people’?
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| Image by Grae Dickason from Pixabay |
Introduction:
Of course, this is not surprising because loneliness is entirely a matter of one’s own mind, one’s own feelings. You can feel yourself alone in a crowd of millions of people, and even with all the entertainments in front of you loneliness doesn’t want to be ended. However, being alone and feeling loneliness are completely different things. Loneliness is a complete state of mind, an empty space inside the mind that cannot be filled even if surrounded by people from the entire universe. It is an unpleasant emotional reaction and psychological process. Loneliness can be felt when there will be no balance of addition and subtraction in life. It is normal to feel loneliness when a person stays alone, feels unloved and inferiority.
Loners never want to be alone, they want to talk to others, they want to connect with others, but their mental state is at a point where they can’t get along with others, they search for emotional bonds. In fact, he who has endured the feeling of loneliness can understand its burning, its pain exactly.
What Loneliness Feel Like:-
No one can explain the feeling of loneliness to anyone, this feeling may even come to the family including married life. During this time, talking to others, watching TV, spending time on social media will feel boring. Almost everyone experiences loneliness at some point in life, but the degree and experience of it is different for everyone.
You can definitely like to stay alone and be happy without connecting with others. Being alone can often be very peaceful and constructive if you don’t feel loneliness. Loneliness is an empty space in the mind which is very difficult to understand ‘who can fill it’ or ‘with what it can be filled’. As a result, you may feel helpless and alone even in the crowd of relatives, friends and even many people. It is a scorching burn of the mind which can neither be explained to anyone, nor be endured by itself. Sometimes even with all kinds of entertainment it cannot be fulfilled or come out of it.
What causes loneliness?
No specific cause of loneliness can be explained, sometimes the feeling of loneliness can come without any reason. Our mind wants to be busy all the time and adapts to a certain flow, when our mind does not get relevant work and the flow of life is disrupted, especially when there are sudden abrupt changes in life, loneliness is more likely to occur.
The death of a beloved one or the rejection by lover, a sudden change in environment or a sudden relocation, all can lead to feelings of loneliness. Sometimes financial challenges or lack of family or social importance can also lead to feelings of loneliness.
Break-up in relationships, uncooperative colleagues at work, repeated loss of respect can also lead to feelings of loneliness.
Why Loneliness is Dangerous:
Loneliness has a negative wide impact on our mental and physical health. It robs our sleep, hunger first and from there the body and mind become weaker and so various diseases take root. Chronic Loneliness, especially if it stays for a significant period of time in a person’s life, increases the risk of stress, increases obesity, sadness, fear, anxiety, depression. Feeling loneliness can become one of the causes of high blood pressure, high cholesterol, indigestion, gas & acidity problems. Above all, chronic loneliness increases the risk of death by inducing suicide.
How Loneliness Effects on Mental health:
Loneliness and mental well-being are inextricably linked, loneliness robs mental well-being. Being alone, away from shouting, noise, avoiding crowds helps to maintain Mental Wellness, on the contrary, loneliness has a profound negative effect on mental health.
Loneliness brings forth of a terrifying believe in the mind that no one in the world cares about you, no one loves you, no one understands your heart. A strange self-doubt arises from which inferiority grows. Anxiety, depression, emotional instability, anger and resentment increase and social anxiety begins. Just as the loneliness can cause depression, the reverse is also true, i.e depression can cause loneliness also, so we can say that they influence each other.
Loneliness triggers a varieties of negative thoughts that lead to loss of self-efficacy, making it almost impossible to concentrate on any task. So if loneliness can not be overcome it will almost be impossible to maintain good mental health.
How do I stop feeling of loneliness:
No matter how negative people think about loneliness, or how horrible it may be presented to you, the best news about it is that it can never last very long and can be easily overcome without using any medicine or physical products.
3 ways to overcome loneliness:
1) Consciously divert your attention:
One of the ways to avoid loneliness is to divert attention. Whenever you feel loneliness, consciously change your thoughts. The more you think that you are lonely, unsupported, unsatisfied, the more empty your life will feel, the more empty your mind will be. When your mind remains empty it will attract all the negative thoughts, negative events quickly. Better yet, shift your thoughts to the creative, constructive thinking by taking conscious control. Always try to keep yourself busy with some work, even though it is very difficult to do this at first, you have to do it against your will with conscious control. Choose only the tasks of your choice if necessary. You will see that the feeling of loneliness fades with time.
2) Overcome the Fear of Rejection:
Though one of the reasons for feeling loneliness is being rejected or fear of being rejected. If be rejected for any reason is the cause of your loneliness, then definitely remember that one or two people may not accept you, may misunderstand you, because of their nature, characteristics do not match with yours. That doesn’t mean you will get rejection by 8 billion people. There are many who love you, there are many who are ready to come to you, only you do not or cannot place them in your heart for fear of rejection. If you open the door of the heart, there will be no shortage of generous people. If you want help or empathy, many people will respond, their answer will not only be ‘yes’, but the answer can be “no”, it does not mean that you are rejected from this society, from every human being. There are many empathetic people in this world who will accept you from their hearts.
3) Remove the image of loneliness from your mind:
I am sharing a very powerful NLP technique with which you can easily remove the feeling of loneliness and feel much more motivated. You will feel a lot of relief if you follow the technique step by step.
- Step-1: Think of an event when you were really enjoying with your friends or family or with your lover or in a social party. It may be of any of your past wonderful memory when actually you were totally associated with others. Notice all the submodalities [quality of the video/images, colours, sounds and voices] of the picture. See what you have seen, listen what you have heard, feel what you have felt. Intensify your feelings of the event. Make the picture more clear, closer and wider, re-enjoy the event.
- Step-2: Break your state and now think of your loneliness, imagine the movie of your loneliness is playing in a TV in front of you and look yourself in the movie. Imagine there is a remote control in your hand, with which make the movie black and white, mute the sound. Play it till end without colour and sound.
- Step-3: Imagine a large theater screen gradually covering the TV screen. In this theater the movie [which one was created by you in Step-1] of your enjoyment is playing. Imagine its attractive colours and sweetness of sound are attracting you more and more, involving you more and more. Feel that you are in the centre of the entire event, everyone is welcoming you, you are enjoying yourself with everyone.
- Step-4: Repeat Steps one to three for a few times and notice your feelings, definitely you will feel totally different.
Conclusion:
Loneliness is not as bad as you think. A momentary feeling of loneliness creates a vacuum in your mind which can become enjoyable if you can instill in you an urge to fill it. Find out Reason of your Loneliness. It is the characteristics of the human race that the state of mind will change in different times, there is nothing abnormal about it. Loneliness is also a mental condition, you can control it, but you need to know what is the real reason for your loneliness! If you ask yourself why you feel lonely and try to find the answer from the mind then you will definitely come to know the real reason behind it, and then it will be very easy for you to solve it because there are many ways to resolve this.
