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Do you feel part of a group of friends? If you answer no, you are not alone.. Nearly 30% of Australians over 18 years of age reported that they rarely or never felt part of a group of friends. Loneliness is not just caused by not having enough friends. Hence the saying that you can feel lonely in a crowd. Feelings of loneliness are to a large extent caused by our perception of our social connectedness. It is related to how connected we feel. The good news is by working on your thinking about social situations you can change how lonely you feel.  Photo by Fabrizio Verrecchia on Unsplash It's one thing to know that changing our thinking can help reduce our feelings of loneliness. But how do you change your thinking? No-one is pretending that this is an easy process (particularly if you are trying to do it by yourself!). That inner voice inside of us that says there's something wrong with us if we don't have friends, if we feel lonely is really strong. And when we hear this voice ridiculing us the last thing we want is to out and be with people! And therefore we avoid social situations because we are scared of this judgement. And you can see we now have a loneliness loop happening. But you can learn thinking strategies to break this loop. There is always more than one way of seeing things. How about you try and look at things from another perspective. What if those people aren't laughing at you, but are sharing a funny story....? What if that person wasn’t ignoring you, but they were trying to work out a problem in their mind and were distracted...?. What if your friend didn't mean to upset you when they forget your name when they introduced you, maybe they weren't concentrating....? What if those people aren't laughing at you, but are sharing a funny story....? If you need some help with the 'what if's...', or with other strategies to help change your thinking, we are here to help.
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Disclaimer* My aim is for these posts is meant to useful, interesting and/or inspiring. They are not designed to be used for therapy.. If you are experiencing stress please contact your GP or mental health professional.
AuthorKim Ross is a Child Psychologist and Founder of Positive Young Minds. |
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