Loneliness - Building a Defense

I don't suffer from this problem. I can feel helpless at times (comes with the newly at-home-motherhood description), but I connect with people around me and work on projects aimed to better the community I have the best connection with (right now, that is only the Jedi Community, with some time I hope to extend that to being more active around Clarksville). If you are living the Jedi path in it's entirety, you find lonliness is merely a choice we make because we feel as though there is nothing left to do.

I can't really explain it better, which means you may need to meditate on my words to make full sense of what I'm getting at.

SeanChing wrote: Am I in a social situation that won't work for me? Am I hanging out with people who don't "stimulate" me and my interests? Is it realistically possible for me to feel lonely sitting on a table with a lot of people I have come to consider my "friends"? I'm thinking of answering "yes" to all of these questions...

I've suffered from loneliness my whole life. Even when I hang out with people who I consider to be friends (i.e. people who stimulate me and my interests, as you put it). So yes, I would completely agree that it is possible to be lonely whilst sitting on a table with a group of friends.

The loneliness that I have experienced in these sorts of situations comes from deep within...a yearning to find someone, or a number of people, who I can connect with on a deeper level than that which is experienced through dialogue. I find that having friends who you enjoy chatting to does not necessarily fill this kind of inner lonely emptiness.

But I have learnt that there really are people who we can connect with on that level. I'd liken it to when you have a romantic partner and you are content to just sit with them in silence, because you can still feel that connection or bond with them without anything needing to be said or done. But I don't think that this kind of bond is restricted to romantic relationships. Occasionally in life, you will meet someone who just makes you feel happy and fulfilled - I'm not sure what my thoughts are on soulmates, but for want of a better word, they are like non-romantic soulmates.

Of course, that doesn't exactly answer your question of how to build a defence against loneliness, but it is my answer to your question about why we can feel lonely in the presence of friends. It is because we are still searching for something more.

As to building a defence...I would suggest that sitting around in a group of people wondering why we are still feeling lonely only makes it worse. Loneliness causes us to reflect on our loneliness, causing us to feel even more lonely! Or loneliness breeds loneliness...something along those lines. I think that that recognising that there is nothing wrong with feeling lonely in a crowd is a good first step. If you imagine that all of the other members of the group are not feeling lonely, you feel like the odd one out...the lonely outsider. But if you remember that they probably all feel the same to an extent, then oddly I find that I feel more united with them, or less lonely. Or like loneliness is okay...not something to be miserable about.

My other advice would be along the same lines as what Ace said - loneliness partly comes from not being happy with ourselves. It's something that takes time to overcome, and there is no particular way of doing it. But if you think, for example, about when you are in a deep meditative state (assuming you have experienced this before) - you can become so at peace with yourself and the world around you that thoughts of loneliness do not even cross your mind. If you can manage to retain a degree of the effects of meditation in your everyday life, you will hopefully find that it is harder for loneliness to take hold.

I'm not sure if any of that made any sense...but I hope it did!

I definitely suffer from loneliness and have for some time. I've reduced it in the last few years through dedication, but it's still there, hovering in the background. I believe to some extent that this is not due to lack of social interaction, but rather to ones perception of oneself. I think that people who are lonely don't have to be socially restricted to feel alone, they can mere;y have an innate distaste for their own being which leads to a general sense of unhappiness in life. Psychologically loneliness and depression feel very similar as well, so many people who feel lonely may simply be depressed. There's also the issue of social anxiety, which can create feels similar to loneliness - worse social anxiety creates a cycle of depression that can lead to extreme self-doubt, more depression, less friends... and the cycle repeats.