There’s really two main ingredients to loneliness:
1) We don’t meet others in a way that sparks relationships.
2) We have personal issues that interfere with our ability to have relationships.
#1 is fairly straightforward. We have the ability to make friends; but lack the opportunity. If we can meet and interact with others, we’ll make friends, and mitigate our isolation. We need to “get out more.” We can join organizations, go places, right-swipe on apps, and we’ll eventually break our isolation. I’ve found that a key is to get together with others, over shared interests or goals.
#2 is a different beast. We need to work on ourselves, first and foremost. We may often need help, like therapy or guided self-help. Usually, there’s a lot of pretty humbling work involved. If we don’t treat the root cause (our own issues), then we can meet as many people as possible, and we’ll still be lonely.
Lots of potential reasons for our problems. Could be trauma, neurodivergence, addiction, mental health problems, personal insecurity, or simply lack of experience. Often, a combination of these.
The good news is, is that if we get serious about treating our own issues, we will absolutely end the isolation. Almost every treatment involves a lot of interaction with others, and relationship-building.
For myself, I was definitely in the #2 category. I’m “on the spectrum,” and I had an addiction problem. Intervention was required, and I needed to stop running, turn around, and face my demons. I needed to learn to ask for, and, even more importantly, accept, help. I had to develop a taste for crow and humble pie. Doing this, changed everything.
That was 45 years ago, when I was 18. The road has been anything but smooth, but it’s always been onward and upward. Today, I have close relationships all over the world, with an enormous variety of people, and have done work that affects thousands of lives in a positive manner.
I’ve also found that helping others to deal with their own issues has been effective.
From my perspective and the people I'm trying to reach out to, they basically need someone to help them see that they are cared about and valued, someone to ask them how their day is over coffee with no strings attached, and not because they're trying to earn brownie points with God, or trying to increase their internal virtue signal, but because they genuinely care about the other person.
Your #1 is great for after this connection with another human being has been made. Your #2 is why it hasn't been made yet. I'm trying to find solutions for the middle, to solve #2 for random strangers on the street, in order to get them both able and motivated to do #1. Those strangers are people who sit alone at home, all day, every day, and you only see them on the way to the grocery store and back.
I'm glad you got the help you needed to bootstrap your ability to find and form meaningful relationships. If only there was a reproducible way to help countless others get past that initial hump, and begin the same process. I believe it must be possible somehow.
I've been trying my surveys in Chicago as a first step. I need to do more, though, somehow. Now that I'm known as the "sign guy" by many people who pass me by every time I'm there, I think I can get more creative than surveys, and try signs that are more interactive to reach out to those people. I've been brainstorming throughout this thread on a few different ways to do this. If you or anyone has concrete ideas, I'd be very glad to hear it.
The “#1.5,” is that we have often developed “loneliness-inducing habits,” that need to be broken. We don’t necessarily have any real “issues,” other than we’ve just gotten used to “hanging out with ourselves.”
Breaking habits isn’t easy. It’s nearly impossible, if we have a compulsive disorder, but, then, we’d be #2.
The key to anything is willingness. If we don’t actually want to do something, then it ain’t happening.
But there’s a hell of a lot more #2, than folks are willing to admit.
There’s really two main ingredients to loneliness:
1) We don’t meet others in a way that sparks relationships.
2) We have personal issues that interfere with our ability to have relationships.
#1 is fairly straightforward. We have the ability to make friends; but lack the opportunity. If we can meet and interact with others, we’ll make friends, and mitigate our isolation. We need to “get out more.” We can join organizations, go places, right-swipe on apps, and we’ll eventually break our isolation. I’ve found that a key is to get together with others, over shared interests or goals.
#2 is a different beast. We need to work on ourselves, first and foremost. We may often need help, like therapy or guided self-help. Usually, there’s a lot of pretty humbling work involved. If we don’t treat the root cause (our own issues), then we can meet as many people as possible, and we’ll still be lonely.
Lots of potential reasons for our problems. Could be trauma, neurodivergence, addiction, mental health problems, personal insecurity, or simply lack of experience. Often, a combination of these.
The good news is, is that if we get serious about treating our own issues, we will absolutely end the isolation. Almost every treatment involves a lot of interaction with others, and relationship-building.
For myself, I was definitely in the #2 category. I’m “on the spectrum,” and I had an addiction problem. Intervention was required, and I needed to stop running, turn around, and face my demons. I needed to learn to ask for, and, even more importantly, accept, help. I had to develop a taste for crow and humble pie. Doing this, changed everything.
That was 45 years ago, when I was 18. The road has been anything but smooth, but it’s always been onward and upward. Today, I have close relationships all over the world, with an enormous variety of people, and have done work that affects thousands of lives in a positive manner.
I’ve also found that helping others to deal with their own issues has been effective.