No one from the comments offer a real solution. They gave advice on how to cope with it not solving the problem. Here is my two cents on a real solution, do a study abroad for a year and choose asian countries (especially china), you will find yourself very popular and will have 10x easier to make friends and girlfriend as long as you are not too weird. (note: i am asian and live in asia, foreigners (assuming from the west) have it much easier here).
Ask HN: Loneliness at 19, how to cope?
81–90 of 118 posts
Re: Ask HN: Loneliness at 19, how to cope?
#82There's a loneliness epidemic in our generation. I'm 20 and share the same situation. I've heard scattered bits of advice from older people:
- travel as much as you possibly can
- get out of the house and as much as you can
- talk to strangers more
Re: Ask HN: Loneliness at 19, how to cope?
#83take hobbies (possibly that involve multiple persons) and defocus your loneliness. your generation is kinda fucked (covid & social media) and as a group you'll all have to grow up out of it. but it's not something you can fix easily in a short time. so yeah, focus on something else for now.
Re: Ask HN: Loneliness at 19, how to cope?
#84Look, I’m 23 and had the same problem when I was 19 and entered college.
I have really good friends now. The actionable advice I would give is:
1. Be genuine and don’t fake yourself. Don’t try to behave in a way you think might impress someone, and don’t force yourself in trying to become someone else to become friends with someone. (Take this as a fundamental advice and I will reference it)
2. Put yourself out there. Try to be more of an extrovert. Approach people for help, If you wanna talk to someone, just talk. (And take advice 1 here, don’t fake yourself).
3. Look, there are definitely people out there who are your type and you’d be great friends. It’s just you have to keep putting yourself out there until you ‘find’ or ‘attract’ the right kind of people. Participate in events, be a part of communities.
It won’t happen if you consciously try. Don’t be on a lookout, just try to express yourself and take all opportunities to socialise.
Re: Ask HN: Loneliness at 19, how to cope?
#85Dale Carnegies book 'How to Win Friends and Influence People' could actually help a bit. It's a self-help book, 100 years old, but still very relevant. Nothing magical in it, but quite useful, and for somebody as young as you are it could have a big impact over the lifetime.
In any case, just know that a lot of people struggle with it - much much more than you could imagine. It's worth trying to fix it though.
Good luck !
Re: Ask HN: Loneliness at 19, how to cope?
#861. Learn to love yourself. I know it sound eye rolls but hear me out! You are trying too hard. You don't need to read books to get friends and you're neither ugly nor dumb - the friendships don't care about any of it.
Your genuineness shows in every action, look and gesture so look within. You might need to get therapy and that's okay too. Don't put so much pressure on yourself, you are fine just the way you are.
Once you have learned to love yourself / look within you will be able to be by yourself without feeling lonely and just like that you'll attract the right kind of people towards you.
I hope it helps and I hope you feel better soon!
Re: Ask HN: Loneliness at 19, how to cope?
#87What do you like to do? Do it with full intensity and seek IRL clubs/communities built around that activity.
What I love about the modern world is how for any niche activity there seems to be a community. You'll find that those that partake in the activity will have conversations beyond small talk. And when not talking you're doing this thing you like to do!
Its important to do it intensely and in a place with people IRL.
Focus on that for a while and you'll feel better and start hanging out with people.
Re: Ask HN: Loneliness at 19, how to cope?
#88As long as you are obsessed with this - you'll perpetuate the problem. The more needy you are and craving for attention the more unattractive and uninteresting you look as a person. The only solution for these types of problems (aside of usual phychotherapy/physiology that you need to rule out first with help of professionals!) - is to genuinely stop giving a single damn whether you're alone or not. Right after that…
After reading your comment, I'm left wondering. What exactly is actionable in it? How exactly does it help a person in OPs position? Apart from the part deferring to a therapist, which is more or less common knowledge in this day and age, there's nothing there thats ... helpful. Actionable.
Its actionable by doing things for yourself, not for the purpose of meeting people.
When I say doing things, I mean things out in the world.
During those you might chat to people casually.
People like people that do things and turn up, so many people do little and aren't interested in going out and turning up to things.
Do stuff and you become more interesting.
Mostly people talk about themselves so ask them what they do and be interested, when they ask you what you do you will have done a bunch of stuff.
Get out there and enrich yourself with experience, make yourself too busy to be lonely.
Re: Ask HN: Loneliness at 19, how to cope?
#89You havent mentioned whether you are doing any after school activities?
Join any club where you can interact socially, like martial arts, boxing, any group sports, dancing.. or if not into that try chess/literature/board games/music clubs.
Not 100% guaranteed it will find you good friends, but you will get social interactions and be able to practice social skills.
This is maybe a bit of boomer advice, but if you are a young man you wont have many friends unless you can provide value to others, or unless they think they can get something out you, that something can be as little as social currency or being interesting to hang around with, which comes from skills and life experience.
Re: Ask HN: Loneliness at 19, how to cope?
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
Im interested to learn more about this team building exercise. What do you mean by hug random strangers? Like on the street? I've never heard of such an exercise before.
This exercise was part of a 3-day weekend team-building workshop which was part of a voluntary work thing. This particular exercise was assigned as "homework" by the coaching staff: "You will give a hug to a minimum of 5 people who you don't know before returning to tomorrow's session (no children)". I think the goal was to 1) Step outside your comfort zone 2) Learn to take rejection less personally 3) Learn somethin…
Fascinating. I can see the usefulness in that. It seems a little bizarre to me without the context so thank you for clarifying.