Below is a
reduce version of an interesting article I pulled from Huffington Post on
loneliness. I know from my own experience as well as articles like the one
posted below that there are many teens who feel the pain of loneliness. Fortunately
there are reasons why we feel lonely that can be identified and resolved and we
can break free from the chains of that loneliness. No one says it will be easy
to do, or that the sadness will clear up overnight but it is surprising what
just a little bit of effort can accomplish. Loneliness has the ability to sap
the strength and energy from a person and because of that, I believe one of the
hardest parts of loneliness is mustering the effort and the willpower one needs
to pull out of that downward spiral in order to make a change. The article
below is not the answer to everything but it has got some valuable content to
consider.
Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D.
Motivational
psychologist and author, 'Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals'
Can We Really 'Cure' Loneliness?
Posted:
07/13/11 09:32 AM ET
Loneliness is
not the same thing as being a private person, or a "loner," because
some of us actually both need and enjoy a lot of time to ourselves. Loneliness,
instead, refers to the difference between the amount of social contact and
intimacy you have and the amount you want. It's about feeling
isolated, like an outcast. That said, the opposite of loneliness isn't
popularity, either -- you can have dozens of friends and still feel lonely.
Persistent loneliness is not only emotionally painful but
can be more damaging to our physical and mental health than many psychiatric
illnesses. Not surprisingly, psychologists have created dozens of interventions
designed to try to tackle this epidemic of loneliness. The approaches taken are
varied but can be broken up, roughly speaking, into four different categories.
There are
interventions aimed at:
- Improving social skills. Some researchers argue loneliness is primarily the result of lacking the interpersonal skills required to create and maintain relationships. Typically, these interventions involve teaching people how to be less socially awkward
- Enhancing social support. Many lonely people are victims of changing circumstances.
- Increasing opportunities for social interaction. With this approach, the logic is simple: If people are lonely, give them opportunities to meet other people.
- Changing maladaptive thinking. This approach might seem surprising, and its rationale less obvious than the other approaches. But recent research reveals that over time, chronic loneliness makes us increasingly sensitive to, and on the lookout for, rejection and hostility. In ambiguous social situations, lonely people immediately think the worst.
Lonely people
pay more attention to negative social information, like disagreement or
criticism. They remember more of the negative things that happened during an
encounter with another person and fewer positive things. All of this leads, as
you might imagine, to more negative expectations about future interactions with
others -- lonely people don't expect things to go well for them, and
consequently, they often don't. Whenever they feel anxious about a social
encounter, find themselves focusing on everything that went wrong or wonder if
they've made a bad impression, a red flag is raised.
It is important
to consider other possibilities: maybe everything will go smoothly, maybe it
wasn't all bad, perhaps everyone liked me after all. Practice trying to see
things from the perspective of others and interpret their actions more
benignly. Once the negative thoughts are banished, lonely people can approach
new relationships with a positive and optimistic outlook, see the best in
others and learn to feel more confident about themselves.
What works? The answer is clear. Interventions
aimed at changing maladaptive thinking
patterns were, on average, four times
more effective than other interventions in reducing loneliness. In fact,
the other three approaches weren't particularly effective at all.
It turns out
that fundamentally, long-term loneliness isn't about being awkward, or the
victim of circumstance, or lacking opportunities to meet people. Each can be
the reason for relatively short-term loneliness -- anyone who has ever moved to
a new town or a new school and had to start building a network of friends from
scratch certainly knows what it's like to be lonely. But this kind of
loneliness needn't last long, and new relationships usually are formed unless
you've fallen into a way of thinking that keeps relationships from forming.
More than anything else, the cure for persistent
loneliness lies in breaking the negative cycle of thinking that created it in
the first place.
Excerpts Retrieved
Nov 30th 2012, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/heidi-grant-halvorson-phd/loneliness-cure_b_889407.html
