Symptoms of the Chronic Loneliness

Every person expects understanding and acknowledgement of his personality, feels need to be loved.

If it doesn’t happen, he realizes his estrangement from the surroundings and considers it a feeling of loneliness.

Having objective and real connections with others, people may experience the symptoms of loneliness (e.g. in the family), if they notice that they aren’t loved or no one understands them.

Loneliness is an occasionally appearing feeling with symptoms of anxiety or tension, connected with the unsatisfied desire for having friendly or intimate relations with a person.

Loneliness may bear temporary or chronic character.

For example, we stay alone not by our wish, but due to the definite circumstances – moving to another city we part with our friends, etc.

Some time passes and we are surrounded by the friends again.

A difficult case is the chronic loneliness.

In most cases it’s not the circumstances anymore, but person’s character.

Then the symptoms of the chronic loneliness appear.

If they are spotted in time, they may be eliminated.

What is loneliness?

Loneliness is a constant emotional state, when the person experiences isolation and devastation.

He understands that nobody needs him or his company.

It’s the diffused opinion about the feeling of loneliness.

Generally, it’s true; but the thing is that there is a difference between loneliness and loneliness.

It’s different for everybody:

• Some people experience loneliness in relations with the definite people.
• Somebody feels lonely in the crowd.
• People may be lonely, because they failed to find love.
• Others feel lonely, because they suffer from depression (in such case the first was the depression and then the symptoms of loneliness appeared, not vice verse), anxiety and other illnesses.

Loneliness appears to be a wide term and everybody has a different concept.

However, there is something that unites these feelings – this is lack of connection with other people or a definite person.

What is a chronic loneliness?

One of the major aspects of solitude is the frequency of its appearance in the person’s life.

Some people are lonely very seldom and if it happens, it happens in some certain situations.

Such kind of solitude the psychologists call “situational state of solitude”, because the feeling takes place only in the definite concurrence of circumstances.

A full opposition is a more resistant kind of loneliness, when the symptoms of solitude feeling stay regardless of the situation.

In this case it’s not the circumstances that made a person feel inner discomfort, but his personal choice.

Solitude for such people is a key quality of the personality.

Here you can speak about the chronic loneliness.

Chronic loneliness is, as a rule, a more complicated phenomenon, and contradicting, too.

Chronic loneliness appears when a person fails to maintain satisfactory relationships for a long period of time with people he considers to be important.

Men are more subject to the chronic loneliness than women, because they find it more difficult to express their feelings.

Women have closer emotional connections, because they can frankly speak about their feelings and share them with one another.

Most men don’t dare to do it or don’t find it necessary to speak about the symptoms they experience.

Moreover, the role of the best friend often plays his wife of girlfriend.

Consequently, those who don’t have a second half or are unhappy in marriage are likely to experience symptoms of solitude.

Main symptoms of chronic loneliness

1. The inability to bear the forced loneliness.
2. Low self-esteem (like “nobody loves me”, “I’m a bore”).
3. Social anxiety (fear of mockery, judgment, sensitiveness to the people’s views).
4. Awkwardness or clumsiness of communication.
5. Distrust to people (isolation, disappointment).
6. Inner constraint (inability to open to others).
7. Behavior component (constant choice of bad partners).
8. Fear of the rival, fear to be discarded.
9. Sexual anxiety (inability to relax, the feeling of shame or uneasiness).
10. Fear of emotional proximity.
11. Lack of initiative, uncertainty in own desires.
12. Unrealistic aspirations (all or nothing, matching-from-sample).

Types of people who suffer from the chronic loneliness

1. The first type is people, who refuse to make efforts to solve their problems of chronic loneliness and eventually use the passive strategy of “survival”.

   These strategies are more like the attempts to be distracted from the pain of solitude than the attempts to actually fix the problem.

   Such lonely people, soothing the depression, start to “eat” it or start drinking, sleeping too much or spend all free time in front of the TV – there are many options. Surely, it only makes the situation worse.

   Psychological researches show that such human condition may be somehow connected to the problems from the past.

   This is the most severe form of chronic loneliness and such people, as a rule, require the professional help to treat the symptoms.

2. Second type is people, whose main problem is “the absence of the object to share the calamity”.

   Don’t be afraid of such complicated formulation, actually it’s easy to understand.

   From the moment we are born, we form our attachments.

   For a child the objects of attachment become, first of all, those people, who care about him – parents.

   Care makes a baby feel safe and comfortable and together with this feeling he’ll associate any affection in the future.

   Have you ever seen a child, who got lost in a crowded place?

   There are lots of people around, but he is crying and looking for his mother.

   Her absence seems a catastrophe for him, because he cannot trust anybody in the world like he trusts her. A baby thinks he is all alone in the hostile world.

   Something like this happens to some lonely people. They are looking for an affectionate object, but fail to find a person they could love and fully trust.

   Why do they fail to do it?

   There are several possible reasons.
   

   • Firstly, it happens that a person had the object of affection, but he lost it – this may be death, divorce, moving to another place of living and so on.
   • Sometimes it happens that having experienced sufferings in the past, such person doesn’t want to open to another love lest he is hurt again.Luckily, with the lapse of time most of those “conscious” single people start to weaken the all-round defense and understand that time and patience will reduce their pain and openness to the new relationships will lead to new love and happiness.
   • One more reason can consist in the lack of social skills to create new connections – friendship, love, acquaintanceship.Such people may be shy or too anxious and alerted.
   • Besides, the reason to some extent may be the modern society.Nowadays, individuality and freedom of personality values most.

     However, all successful interpersonal relations require compromise.

     And the need of compromise may be considered as invasion of private space and people can’t find common language…

3. One more type is people who try to seclude themselves, finding happiness in their chronic solitude.

   Secluding themselves from the external world helps to rest from the noise and fuss, allows being all alone with the thoughts and calmly figure out some problems or focus on the favorite business.

   Such state of being is especially typical for the creative people.

   They accept loneliness in order to get rid of the external irritants and express their thoughts and emotions in poetry, paintings, created images.

   More often than not they feel renewed after the period of voluntary solitude.

   Surely, such condition cannot be considered as unhealthy, because symptoms of loneliness bring such type of people the satisfaction and can be interrupted without any efforts from their side.

Ways to Cope With Loneliness

Few steps to get rid of the symptoms of chronic loneliness

• Try to analyze its reasons and all problems it has created.

  If you analyze regularly all your thoughts and actions, later you’ll understand that loneliness deprives you of many possibilities.

  It makes you begin to see clearly and you’ll realize there are so many things that are able to fill your emptiness.

• Widen the communication circle.

  The bigger is the circle of communication, the more various are the types of people you talk to.

  It’s easier to find the like-minded person among a hundred of people than among ten of them.

  Besides, you’ll have more chances to acquire new habits and views, and this will give you an opportunity for personal growth and will substantially broaden the circle of people, whose opinion and aspiration coincides with your stand in life.

• Let others know how lonely you feel.

  You can talk about the feeling and how to get rid of it.

  Surely, you’d better speak not with a half-drunk fellow traveler next to you on the bus, but with a person, who you love and trust, or talk to the trained specialist.

• Try something new.

  There are plenty of options.

  The main thing is that you like what you do.

  Occupy yourself with the things you like and you’ll find people, who like the same things.

  Meeting people, who are opposite of you, may become also nice experience!

• Get yourself a pet.

  A small dog or a funny kitten helped many people cope with symptoms of loneliness.

  No one can feel lonely together with such a loving creature!

  Besides, walking over your dog you can meet other dog owners.

  If you are able to cope with the pet, a dog or a cat may brighten up your life.

As you see, symptoms of loneliness may come from the whole chain of reasons.

A person may be lonely because of the unhealthy experience, uncertainty, personal preferences or just because of the desire to contradict to the generally accepted norms.

One thing is clear – regardless of the reasons why the person has symptoms of loneliness, these conditions are actually his own choice.

He can fully get rid of the loneliness’s consequences, if only he wishes for it.

The real problem this person may face is unreadiness to notice the symptoms of the chronic loneliness and leave the protective “coat” of loneliness, which is like the invisible cap hides him from the external world.