10 Ways to Feel Less Lonely

We’ve all experienced feelings of loneliness at one time or another, whether it be from boredom, moving to a new school and not knowing anyone or due to a variety of other changes within your life. Unfortunately, those of us dealing with depression feel alone on a regular basis. We could be in a room surrounded by all of our closest friends, laughing and having a good time or we could be having a quiet evening at home with our family, but despite being surrounded by people we love and people who love us, inside we feel empty, like we’re the only one in the room.

Despite these feelings, it is important to try and not let your loneliness define you, to not let it take over your life or keep you from having a good time. Instead of wallowing in your loneliness, allow yourself to appreciate your alone time. This is a good time to discover who you truly are, to find new passions, to work on a project that you keep putting off. Alone time doesn’t have to be lonely if you look at it in a positive way. Below are 10 tips of things you can do when you feel alone to help you centre yourself and calm your mind so you can appreciate the time you have to yourself.

1. Go for a walk in the woods. This allows you to escape the busyness and stress of daily life and to experience the world as it was truly meant to be before us humans destroyed most of its beauty. The fresh air and the sounds of nature are peaceful and refreshing. Reconnecting with the earth can ground you and make you feel a part of something special.

2. Spend some time in the sun. Sunlight is a natural treatment for depression. It lifts our spirits and helps us enjoy our day

3. Meditate. Meditation has been proven to relieve stress and help with depression. Set aside some time each day to sit in a comfortable spot, erase the thoughts from your mind, enjoy the pure silence and concentrate on your breathing. It takes some practice to do this successfully, but with time you will be calm, you will feel all your anxieties drift away and you will feel connected to yourself in a way that you have never experienced before.

4. Practice Yoga. Like meditation, yoga helps you to calm your mind, to be in control of your body and allows good energy to flow through your body while flushing out all the negative thoughts that are weighing you down. Exercise keeps you healthy, triggers your feel good hormones, and if you take yoga at a public class, you can meet lots of like minded people and hopefully develop some new friendships.

5. Write a journal. This is my go-to when I’m feeling lonely. I find that getting all my thoughts and emotions out of my head and onto paper really reduces my anxiety and allows me to process how I’m feeling in a more logical way.

6. Play with your pet. Being around animals has been proven to reduce stress and make us happier. Playing with a furry companion who will love you unconditionally will really give you a purpose and make you feel less lonely. If you don’t have a pet of your own, check out your local animal shelter and if you can, consider adopting one of the animals (they need our love and companionship just as much as we need theirs).

7. Watch TED Talks. There are literally hundreds of talks all filled with inspiration and creativity. There is truly something for everyone and I promise you you’ll feel more in touch with yourself and the rest of humanity after watching. Sometimes watching TED Talks is just what I need to inspire me to be the best me I can be and to give me the motivation to get off the couch and enjoy my day.

8. Read a book. If you enjoy reading then you don’t need me to explain how amazing it feels to get lost in a fictional world for a little while. More often than not I get so immersed in a book that I completely forget about the real world. The characters become my friends, the plot becomes my life, and for however long it takes me to finish the book, I’m truly not alone.

9. Pamper yourself. Appreciate your alone time and indulge in an at home spa day. Light a candle. Put on some relaxing music. Enjoy a soothing bath. Give yourself a hair treatment. Exfoliate your skin. Give yourself a facial. Paint your nails. Just love yourself.

10. Call your friends or family. Sometimes we just need to hear the voice of someone we love to calm us down and reminds us that we’re not alone in this world, that even though we may feel lonely, there’s people out there who truly care about us. Instead of picking up the phone, why not use Skype or Face Time? Seeing the person you’re talking to will give you a boost of happiness because instead of feeling like you’re just talking to a distant voice, you’ll feel like that person is really with you. 

RAW Emotion

The following is an exert from a journal entry I wrote on Friday May 16, 2014. As you can tell from the entry, I was in a dark spot at the time and was really struggling to understand my life.

** Update: Since I wrote this journal entry I have stopped going to work completely as I found it too hard to focus on myself and getting better while also trying to force myself to work a 9-5 job where other people depended on me. How could I be there for others when I couldn't even depend on myself? I decided I needed some time to just figure out me. I also feel like my medication is starting to work a little better. It's taken a long time to truly start altering my brain chemistry, but I can say that within the past month or so I have noticed a bit of a difference. Remember, I started my medication in March and it wasn't until July that I really felt a significant change. That's five months! So medication isn't a quick fix option, this process takes time. I'm still by no means feeling fixed or better, but it is very encouraging to recognize some progress, no matter how small. 

RAW Emotion

"I really don't feel very much like myself anymore. I look like me, but that's really the only thing about myself that I recognize. Some days are better than others. Some days I know that the real me is hiding just beneath the surface, other days I feel like I'll never see her again. It's hard to look at myself in the mirror every day and to not really know who the person is staring back at me. It's upsetting. I act different than I used to, my mind thinks in a way that feels so foreign to me, everything I used to identify myself with, my education, my career choice, are gone; vanished, replaced by what, I do not know. Everything I used to enjoy feels distant; out of reach.

It's hard to tell whether I'm getting better. I suppose I am. I don't cry or break down as much as I used to, I can spend a night alone without panicking, I've been able to force myself out of bed in the morning and go to work more often than not - those are all good signs. But I'm not really sure that the medication is working. It certainly didn't last time Although I'm on a different type of medication this time, it seems to be the same story. I feel like it worked a bit at the beginning, my brain got a nice spike of serotonin and then it stabilized me a little, just enough that I was no longer going crazy, and then it plateaued, leaving me here, in limbo, stuck. 

Stuck. Not getting worse but also not getting any better, just staying the same. This 'sameness' is starting to agitate me, it's hard to push myself each day when I don't notice any improvements. I will never give up on myself, if there's one thing I am, it's determined. But the longer I stay in this one place, without seeing a meaningful change, the harder it is to conjure up the motivation I need to push myself forward. Why keep working so hard and get nothing in return? But I will, because I know otherwise I'll be swallowed up in a vicious circle - every time I miss work, every time I don't do something I had my heart set on, it'll make me feel worse and just continue to bring me down. 

Going to work seems to be the thing that stresses me out the most. I don't know why. I honestly enjoy my job, it's the type of work I've always dreamed of doing - working in an office, researching, writing reports - the old me would think I hit the jackpot, that I was given the opportunity of a life-time, and yet the new me isn't quite content. Again, I feel stuck in limbo, confused between the life I always wanted, which is the life I have now, and the life I now keep dreaming of. I'm not sure which path to take, which life I want more, I'm at a crossroads and I think that's really contributing to my depression. I always wanted the office lifestyle - the 9-5, the suits and briefcases, the desk, the business meetings, that was so appealing to me. Now, after living in England and travelling around Europe (especially Portugal) I'm confused. I want a more laid back lifestyle, more relaxing, I want to be in control. 

Matt asked me why Portugal was so special and as I told him, it's just because the people there live such a carefree way of life. It was a turning point for me, it was there that I realized that I needed to take life less seriously. It was there that I realized that there is so much more to life than all these daily hassles and work and stress. Life is an adventure, it is my adventure, mine to create, mine to live the way I want. Just because I have grown up in an uptight, serious society does not mean I have to continue to live my life that way. North American society has created these rules, these boundaries that we are to live within, these expectations that we are to live by. Everything is focused around who gets the best grades, who has the best career, who makes the most money. That's how I used to identify myself as well. But life doesn't have to be that serious, it can be so much simpler. I don't want to live within these confines that someone else created for me, that someone else decided was the way that we should all live. I want to be in control of my own life, to do what I want to do, when I want to do it, without having to answer to anybody. Other societies have adopted this more relaxed version of life and the people just seem so less stressed, so much happier. I want to live a life that makes me happy. 

This life I'm living now seems lonely, hallow. I feel like I'm living the same thing from day to day. In fact, I don't really feel like I'm 'living' at all. It is all so mundane, I'm just doing what I need to get by. I feel alone. I have no one to share this life with. I have my family, I have Matt, but they can't be my everything. I love my independence until I realize how constricting it is, how much I'm missing out on since that's really all I have. It's hard though, for me to carry on friendships. The friends I did have treated me so badly in the past. I was bullied, I was walked all over, I was used. How can I trust that that won't happen again? I lost touch with so many people because I focused 100% of my time on school work, I had no personal life. Or I felt too depressed to do anything so I never saw my friends and they eventually just faded away. Then there's the few friends I thought I could trust with my secret, that I have depression, only to find out that some of them didn't want to be friends with someone who was 'broken'. I had to watch them walk away, ignorant to what I was really going through. I had to watch, helpless, as this illness defined the limits of my life..." 

My Experience: Part II - The Suffering That Depression Has Caused Me To Endure

It’s really hard to put into words how I feel when I’m depressed. There’s no words strong enough to do my feelings justice and if you’ve never experienced depression yourself, you can only try to imagine how terrible it really feels. No one can understand the true horror of depression unless they’ve felt it first-hand. If you’ve never been clinically depressed your body just isn’t programmed to feel such strong negative emotions, to hit a low that reaches deeper than any low you have ever experienced. Lucky you.

I have panic attacks, anxiety attacks, full on mental breakdowns that all occur just out of the blue. I can literally be perfectly happy and not have a worry in the world one minute and then all of a sudden this rush washes over me and I feel scared, although I don’t know of what, my mind is blank yet racing with thoughts at the same time, I forget everything I was doing, everything I should be doing, everything I am and I just become overwhelmed with negativity – it’s like I’m under water, drowning, being tossed around by a giant wave with no way of knowing when it’ll stop, if it’ll stop, if I’ll ever get the chance to come up for air. My chest feels tight, it’s hard to breath. I start shaking and crying, gasping and hyperventilating. I need to get somewhere safe immediately – my bed, the arms of my boyfriend, my mom or my sister. It goes on for hours like this. Every time I start to feel a little calmer and the tears have managed to stop flowing then another rush comes over me. There’s no trying to stop it, to get a hold of myself, my brain can’t even fathom how to go about doing that. All I have to do is wait; endure the pain of it all until it comes to its natural end. Needless to say, I feel off for the rest of the day. I can’t shake the feeling of what happened. I feel sad, down, lonely, tired. I just want to fall asleep and hope I sleep right through until the next day.

I cry a lot. I’ve heard that crying may mean you’re not dealing with depression but simply grief because as I explained in a previous post (Depression vs. Sadness), your mood produces emotional symptoms, whereas the symptoms of depression are more physical. But I’ve always been a very emotional person, I’ve always turned to crying as a way to release the feelings built up inside me and so I think my excessive crying now is due not to the temporary mood of grief, but to grieving for the loss of myself that depression has caused. I don’t recognize myself any more, and sometimes no matter how hard I try, I can’t get back to the way I used to be and this scares me. So whenever people ask me how I’m doing, whenever I’m forced to talk about my depression, I get a lump in my throat and the tears start swelling up behind my eyes and no matter how hard I try, it eventually becomes too much and I break down crying.

Sometimes I’ll be sitting by myself and I just start crying out of nowhere. All of a sudden this feeling of frustration over takes me and I can’t escape it. I bring my knees to my chest, put my forehead on my knees, and grab at my hair with both hands, pulling on my hair because I feel so overwhelmed, so frustrated, so broken.

I get irritated a lot and lose my temper. When people do things that I used to find funny and playful, I now have no patience for them and they cause me to be annoyed. The littlest things set me off and I argue a lot more than I used to. I also can’t concentrate – my mind either feels overwhelmed and jumps from one idea to the next, making it impossible for me to make up my mind or I stare blankly ahead while my mind is off in la-la land, thinking of absolutely nothing, just wasting time away.

Most of the time I have zero motivation to do anything. There’s lots of things I’d like to do, and often I’ll sit there staring at things, willing myself to just pick them up and start doing something, but I just can’t. There’s no explanation for it. There’s just this force within me that is holding me back. It’s terrible, because I’m so bored, but no matter how strong the boredom, I can’t bring myself to do anything. Sometimes I can’t even read or watch TV or do mindless tasks. I just sit there, staring off in the distance. Sometimes I go days without showering because it just seems like such a huge chore. I love to cook but I barely eat decent meals anymore because I just don’t feel like making them. I live for nature and the outdoors but most of the time I can’t bring myself to get dressed let alone leave the house, even to just go sit in my back yard for a bit. It takes me hours to fall asleep at night, usually I’m not asleep until 4am and then I never want to wake up and get out of bed in the morning. By the time I’m up it’s almost lunch time and I’ve wasted half my day just lying in bed. I used to be extremely active (sports, gym, yoga, zumba) but now I do none of that; it’s just too much effort. I’ve become lazy, but not a kind of laziness I can control. It’s not like I don’t want to do these things and rather sit around doing nothing, definitely not! I would love to be my active self again, but I just can’t. Again, there’s that imaginary force holding me back.

Most days I get out of bed and go sit in my recliner, I drink a tea and spend the whole day reading. I only get up to go to the bathroom, snack on something that doesn’t require time to make or to refill my tea. I feel like each day just blends right into the next one, it’s all a blur. My life is passing me by. Days have turned into weeks, into months and now into years of me doing absolutely nothing with my life. It saddens me that I’m missing out on so much, that I’m missing out on being a regular 24 year old girl, that I can’t hold on to a job and don’t even have enough money to live off of let alone go out and have a good time with my friends doing all the activities I dream of one day doing again. I try to get things done each day to change my situation, even if just a little, but it’s terribly hard to notice any progress. I’m determined to turn all this around and be my happy self again but sometimes I just feel stuck. 

Feelings You May Experience If You're Dealing With Depression

Below is a list I created for myself of how I feel on a regular basis. I experience most of these feelings daily, although the severity of the feelings varies from day-to-day. I found it helpful to write all my feelings down – getting everything out of my head and on to paper made me feel less overwhelmed. It’s also great to be able to look at this list from time to time and remind myself that even though I’m struggling, there’s nothing wrong with that, the feelings I’m experiencing are normal for the situation I’m in, and I think recognizing that is an important step in recovery.

I encourage you to make your own list to help yourself better understand the different sensations your body is dealing with. For some of you, creating this list may be easy. Personally, I struggled with it because it was hard for me to accept that this is what I was going through (normally I’d just sweep all my emotions under a rug and forget about them) so this was definitely a good reflection exercise for me. Just remember that there may be things on my list that don’t apply to you and likewise you may be dealing with certain feelings that I haven’t experienced. That’s okay. We’re individuals and that means even though we’re in the same situation we may have slightly different experiences, that’s what makes me, me and you, you. We’re all unique, and you should be proud of who you are.

How I Feel (in no particular order)

• Anxious
• Stressed
• Sore (all my muscles feel heavy and are in physical pain)
• Sad
• Down
• Lonely / alone (even though I know I’m not)
• Like no one understands (even though I know that’s not true)
• Irritable
• Upset
• Indecisive
• Unable to concentrate / distracted
• Like I’m letting people down who are depending on me
• Guilty
• Depressed
• Nervous
• Tired / exhausted
• Burned out
• Unconfident
• Not like myself
• Confused
• Lazy / lethargic
• Overwhelmed
• Unable to sleep at night but then can’t wake up in the mornings
• Restless
• Shy / timid / soft spoken
• Vulnerable
• Easily frustrated
• Scared of conflict
• Emotionally unstable
• Scared
• Lost
• Like my mind is fighting against me every step of the way
• Angry (at other people and at the fact that I struggle so hard at everyday tasks that come so easily to others)
• Trapped

Symptoms of Depression

In most of my other posts I have listed many of the symptoms of depression, what symptoms go with what type of depression, and how long these symptoms must be present for. However, for ease of reference, I decided to make a post listing all of the symptoms of depression in one place.

When I was reading up on depression I actually came across this article from the Public Health Agency of Canada that I thought summed up the different symptoms very well. The following list is copied from their website.

“Each person is different and will have unique symptoms, but here are some of the more common symptoms of depression:

• feelings of sadness and loss
• feelings of guilt and worthlessness
• feelings of extreme impatience, irritability, or a short temper
• loss of interest or pleasure in usually-enjoyed activities
• changes in weight or appetite
• changes in sleeping patterns like insomnia
• reduced ability to think clearly or make decisions
• difficulties in concentrating or with short term memory loss
• constantly feeling tired
• noticeable lack of motivation
• anxiety and restlessness, sometimes leading to panic attacks
• muscle and joint pain
• constipation or other intestinal problems
• frequent headaches
• lack of interest in sex
• recurring thoughts of suicide or self-harm
• withdrawal from friends and family.”

These symptoms aren’t to be taken lightly. If you find you are dealing with at least five of these symptoms and they have lasted for at least two weeks, please make an appointment with your doctor to discuss what you’re going through. Ultimately, the choice of treatment is up to you, but your doctor is your first point of contact for discussing your options and figuring out the right path for you to take. 

Depression vs. Sadness

As I mentioned in my last post, there seems to be a misunderstanding within our culture as to the difference between being sad and being depressed, and this misunderstanding creates a disconnect between those suffering from depression and the people they interact with on a daily basis (family members, friends, employers, teachers, etc). This disconnect is troublesome because it can create more stress for the depressed person since they find themselves constantly having to explain to people that what they’re feeling is not just sadness, it’s not something they can just snap out of. And if people don’t understand this it can have a negative impact on the depressed person, for example by ruining relationships or resulting in job loss and this just reinforces the person’s depression, digging them even deeper into their hole.

Depression is NOT sadness.

Unfortunately, when people feel really sad, they often say they feel depressed and this makes it confusing to differentiate between the two. Sadness is a temporary state of mind; a temporary mood. You may feel sad for a period of time, but the feeling eventually passes and you forget about it or it isn’t strong enough to affect your daily routine. Sadness is an emotional state. When you’re sad, for instance, if you’re experiencing the death of a loved one, you may cry a lot and feel grief, you may spend more time in bed, you may take a break from your normal rituals and just allow yourself to mourn for a few days, but even then, you can still function as a human being, it may be uncomfortable to go to work or cook your meals or socialize with others, but you have the ability to do so, you can still bring yourself to do these things if you have to.

Depression differs from sadness in that depression produces physical symptoms. People dealing with depression may experience heavy shoulders and other body aches and pains, they feel extremely fatigued, they have a loss of appetite, a loss of interest in activities once enjoyed, an inability to sleep or excessive sleeping or they may have a hard time concentrating no matter how hard they try. They have an extremely difficult time dealing with the minute details of daily life. It’s almost like having a cold or the flu but the symptoms never go away. And since these symptoms are constantly present, the person feels worse day after day. The depression prevents them from being themselves. Everything they used to take for granted now becomes a chore. The littlest of activities, such as showering or walking to get the mail become stressful and overwhelming and can cause a panic attack or mental breakdown in the depressed person because they are so frustrated that they can no longer perform these simple tasks. Depression is just a vicious cycle. People experience the physical symptoms and since they never let up the person starts to feel worse because they get frustrated with the way they’re feeling or they feel like a failure because they can’t function as they feel they should be able to. This causes them to just avoid socializing or going to work or participating in activities altogether because they’re so tired from the lack of sleep that they have no energy to do things or it’s easier for them to just not do them than it is for them to try and not succeed, thus reinforcing the feeling of failure.

It is important to recognize the difference between depression and sadness so people can understand that the depressed person is not just lazy, that it’s not their fault that they can’t do certain things that come so naturally to other people. Without this understanding, people may make comments such as “it’s not that hard, you can do it, you just have to try harder” or “you’d feel better if you just got up and did things”. Although the intentions behind these types of comments may be harmless, they only serve to reinforce the depression by making the depressed person feel inadequate or guilty that they’re not able to do things or cause them to give up trying because they’re told they should be able to control the symptoms but no matter what they do they can’t reduce the feelings of depression.

Depression is a medical condition. People may not feel like they can control the symptoms associated with depression, but with the support from people who understand and with a willingness to make changes in their lifestyle, the person does have the ability to make an impact on their way of life by reducing or eliminating symptoms and finding routines and solutions that work for them. Each approach is individual, you just have to go through the process of trial and error until you find what works best for you.