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5 of the Best Cures for Feeling Less Lonely

By Danielle Dahl | Published February 6, 2023 | 8 min read

An American journalist, Norman Cousins, once said, “The eternal quest of the individual human being is to shatter his loneliness.”

This statement creates a visceral response if you have suffered from loneliness.

Loneliness is a complex emotion because it is specific to the individual and has no root cause.

There is also no universal cure-all for loneliness, which makes it difficult to treat.

So what can you do when loneliness sets in?

This article will help give you some tips, but first, it is important to understand what loneliness is (and is not).

According to Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D.:

“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 distance between the social contact and intimacy you currently have and how much you crave can do much more than make you feel lonely.

It can also have damaging effects on your mental and physical health.

Oliver Hämmig lists some negative effects that can happen to people when they are lonely in his article, Health Risks Associated With Social Isolation in General and Young, Middle, and Old Age.

A person suffering from loneliness might have the following:

decreased memory and learning ability
increased stress levels
poor decision-making tendencies
depression and suicidal thoughts

Physically, they suffer from altered brain functions, cardiovascular disease, stroke, and even faster Alzheimer’s disease progression.

These five tips can give you a way to combat loneliness and live your life to the fullest.

1. Get Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy from a professional

Since there is no one cause for loneliness, there is no one size fits all therapeutic technique either.

However, suppose your loneliness stems from social anxiety.

In that case, a therapist will help you work on breathing techniques and calming tactics you can use to help you navigate social settings more easily.

If your reasons for being lonely stem from fear caused by trauma, then your therapist will help you deal with the pre-cognitive effects of pattern matching and trauma resolution.

Fear can cause us to be in flight or fight mode, and these heightened states of emotions can make managing other emotions more difficult.

It is the opposite of calm, which removes us from an all-or-nothing state, and lets us use logic.

A statement like, “No one wants to spend time with me,” which is my go-to thought caused by trauma, is absolute and can create a web of maladaptive thoughts that a therapist can help you unravel.

“If you go deeper and deeper into your own heart, you’ll be living in a world with less fear, isolation, and loneliness.” — Sharon Salzberg

2. Nurture the relationships with people who are already in your life to combat loneliness

You can be in a room full of people and still feel lonely.

It is about the quality of the relationships and increasing the level of intimacy with the surrounding people that reduce the feeling of loneliness.

You can also feel lonely within a committed romantic relationship if intimacy is lacking.

So instead of worrying about meeting new people, spend that energy on your current relationships and build more intimacy.

Here are a few excellent ways to build intimacy within your friendships:

Talk and listen more
Do things together that build trust
Tackle a project together
Be a consistent friend

Those are brilliant suggestions for your romantic relationships, but you will also want to grow your physical and emotional intimacy level.

We can do this by:

Sharing your thoughts and secrets
Practice empathy
Engage in sex regularly (experts recommend at least once a week)
Spice up your love life by trying new things in the bedroom

Feeling lonely in our friendships and relationships can be a disheartening feeling.

Still, you can use those feelings to motivate yourself to invest more (or communicate what you need the other person to do).

Conversations like that will be challenging, but the improvement is worthwhile.

Kristen Roman, Psy.D., reminds us that loneliness is an emotional state that serves a function for us, just like all other emotions.

The function of loneliness can be to increase awareness of the absence of others and to motivate us to change this.

While the emotion can be painful, it ultimately helps motivate us to socialize with others and benefit from connections and shared resources.

“Friendship needs no words – it is solitude delivered from the anguish of loneliness.” — Dag Hammarskjold

3. Practice positive self-talk and use positive affirmations

We can also feel lonely in our skin, even with healthy relationships with others.

Low self-esteem can cause this, and a simple way to combat that is to practice positive self-talk and positive affirmations.

My therapist always tells me that our brains can only believe what we tell them.

Ask yourself what you are telling yours.

Do you say things like “no one likes me,” or “I can’t do that,” or worse?

If you tell yourself you are ugly or stupid, your brain will believe it.

Tell yourself that you are capable, that you are beautiful, that you are worthy of love, or that you are a good person.

Whenever negative self-thought worms its way inside, replace it with a positive one.

Kimberly Holland claims (in an article Medically reviewed by Timothy J. Legg, Ph.D., CRNP) that:

“research suggests people with positive self-talk may have mental skills that allow them to solve problems, think differently, and be more efficient at coping with hardships or challenges.”

Those skills will also help you overcome loneliness as you reconnect with who you are and become the best version of yourself.

You can practice affirmations like sticking post-it notes on your mirror every morning!

You can put one up every morning and leave it there, rereading the old ones as you add new ones.

At the end of the month, the mirror will be full of messages you have repeatedly been reading.

You could try writing affirmations in a journal!

Whatever method you choose, just start telling your brain some new things.

“At the innermost core of all loneliness is a deep and powerful yearning for union with one’s lost self.” — Brendan Behan

4. Eliminate boredom and find a new hobby

You might also feel lonely because you are bored.

One of the best ways to combat loneliness is to start a new hobby.

It can be anything!

Bird watching, music, writing, or a subscription box where you solve a mystery.

You could play a sport or join a pool league.

Find something that awakens a piece of you, whether it involves other people, and you can push back on the feelings of loneliness.

“Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.” — Maya Angelou

5. Live a life driven by purpose and chase away the loneliness

Boredom isn’t the only thing that can manifest in feelings of loneliness.

Being on the wrong life path is another thing that chips away at your happiness and makes you feel lonely.

That disconnected feeling, or the feeling like everything is always going wrong, could show that you are going down the wrong road.

What brings you the most joy?

What part of your job do you enjoy the most?

Are you doing what you dreamed you would do?

Asking yourself these questions can be hard, but look at your life.

I spent years working in the corporate and non-profit world and got a Master’s in leadership, and the only part of any job I liked was helping people.

The rest of it drove me mad.

Two years ago, I began a journey of self-discovery, which included walking around a lake near my house.

I would go every day regardless of what time I could, the weather, or being tired.

It didn’t take a few months to realize I had let go of my dream of being a writer decades ago.

I started by joining a monthly writer’s group, publishing on Medium, and then working my way to clients.

I quit my job eight months ago to write full-time.

When I started walking around that lake, I cried the whole time.

I felt so lonely and lost, but I found myself along the way and added purpose to my life.

So, what should you do today?

Anything that gives you a sense of purpose!

“What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.” — Kurt Vonnegut