Are you alone or lonely?

Lonely is not being alone. it’s the feeling that no one cares.

Have you ever felt lonely, even when you are with people? Being alone and feeling lonely are two different worlds altogether, though sound similar. Being alone is quite natural if you are staying/living by yourself. Many times, people living with family or friends would like to be alone to find themselves, set priorities for their life or get some space to breathe without interruptions. But loneliness is a strange situation to handle whether you alone or with family.

Many of us would have faced lonely moments even when staying with family, hanging out with friends, working with colleagues. The loneliness is more than those moments. It makes you hungry for attention, affection, validation, and look for ways to feel complete and enough. In such times, the number of people around us may not count. The feeling of togetherness, contented, comfort to express oneself would matter most, and it could influence how we feel inside.

How is it possible? While people are around, how one could experience the loneliness? It is a complex human emotion unless noticed and taken care of, which could potentially damage one’s health or state of mind too. It causes people to feel empty, alone, and unwanted. Lonely ones often crave human contact and attention, but may not express as they find it tough to connect with other people due to state of mind. It could result in negative thoughts like, not enough, do not deserve, or not productive.

Prolonged self-pity, victimized thoughts, and anger against others could harm the mind and body, may direct the person towards unwanted paths. Self-awareness and frequent introspection on self could avoid these situations.

Having someone with whom you can open up and talk to would protect you from such messy situations. Many a time, Ego could come in a way to share the pain, which one has to overcome to help themselves.

Taking more responsibilities, adding some self-satisfying work may help to a certain extent. Change of place, new surroundings, new hobbies, open conversations, writing, or reading that could lead to new thoughts or any possible changes you could think of may help you out of loneliness if it is not severe. Otherwise, one may need to take the help of the counselor to understand and be better.

The prevailing situation is troubling more people as there are lesser options to go out or meet people or explore new places and experience. Being observant could enable us to protect ourselves and help the people around us to make the world better.

—Anitha KC

Picture: Google Images