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Ask HN: How do you cope with loneliness?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you cope with loneliness?

#61

Post by lief79 »

edburgess wrote: post #8

You're a programmer right? You build web apps and stuff? When you build one and launch it out into the world, do you expect everyone to drop everything and flock to your website? I hope not. You need to reach out, as uncomfortable as it might be, and engage people. It's hard work. Now let's take your personal life. When you're at your computer most of the day, do you expect people to magically gravitate to you and be…

As an alternative to rejection therapy, or possibly a compliment, on a college campus it's usually easy to approach anyone who happens to be by themselves. I made a habit of looking around the dining hall, and asking anyone solo (of both sexes) if they'd mind having some company. A few people will be busy cramming, but most people will be game.

Then you just follow the standard freshman approach to getting to know someone ... major, where are they from, etc. Keep asking questions and you'll stand a very good chance of meeting someone. No pressure, no risk, and in practice it's usually a very low miss percentage.

In practice, I think I ended up with two or three girls interested in me from this approach, but I think I was dating someone already each time. I also brought in a large number of people who joined my existing group of friends.

Re: Ask HN: How do you cope with loneliness?

#62

Post by berntb »

sizzla wrote: post #59
berntb wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good thinking; you are often wrong when generating hypotheses about yourself and they are hard to test. But I've seen it in myself at other times over the last decades, too. (I didn't know introspection was harder for introverted? Reference?)

I wouldn't say introspection was harder for introverted and I definitely would have no reference for that. It's just that introversion is a personality trait whose meaning was overloaded by pop-culture and pop-psychology. Stuff by Freud, Jung, Eyesenck, Myers-Briggs, etc. is useful to know as much as it is useful to know about the work done at Xerox in the 70s and 80s. Informative and a foundation for later work, but…

I was trying to use the term "introverted", which isn't exclusive to Myers-Briggs. Sorry for the confusion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introverted

Re: Ask HN: How do you cope with loneliness?

#63

Post by lief79 »

hexadecimator wrote: post #4

I went through 14 years of Catholic schools before going to university. When I started out, I realised that everyone else was new like me so I took initiative and introduced people to each other, etc. At the time I was very excited about going there because I would meet new people, people like me. People kinda picked up on that vibe when I started I guess. To be honest, I normally wasn't like that. But anyway, I real…

Focus on creating a coed group of friends, it makes it far easier to get feedback from both sexes, as well as expand it from both sides. If you're capable of being a friend with a girl, it makes it much easier to sustain a more complicated relationship. Then again I had an odd group of friends where exs tended to stay friends. (I had 4 exs as guests at my wedding.)

Re: Ask HN: How do you cope with loneliness?

#64

Post by ericmsimons »

Being lonely is easily one of the best things that has ever happened to me. When I was in high school I was quite social, never found myself alone.

Since high school I have become an entrepreneur. I can count the number of friends I have on one hand (not including acquaintances) - and I'm 100% fine with that. The more relationships you actively participate in, the less time you have to code, work, and change the world.

Just make sure you have enough really close friends to count on one hand and you're fine :) I'm always glad to be your friend too! eric@esft.com

Re: Ask HN: How do you cope with loneliness?

#65

Post by sizzla »

berntb wrote: post #62
sizzla wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say introspection was harder for introverted and I definitely would have no reference for that. It's just that introversion is a personality trait whose meaning was overloaded by pop-culture and pop-psychology. Stuff by Freud, Jung, Eyesenck, Myers-Briggs, etc. is useful to know as much as it is useful to know about the work done at Xerox in the 70s and 80s. Informative and a foundation for later work, but…

I was trying to use the term "introverted", which isn't exclusive to Myers-Briggs. Sorry for the confusion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introverted

Cool, understood. Just keep in mind that most psychologists will tell you that you are (or you can be) by and large in full control of your personality traits and that these things can change dramatically through your life, either through your conscious decision or through environmental influences.

So to make a determination over why you are the way you are based on how you perceive yourself in terms of a personality trait category that (Jung or not) is related to the Psychology of Types is doing a bit of that self-fulfilling prophecy.

There's nothing wrong with preferring to keep to yourself and socialize less frequently, but perhaps it would be wise to rule out other hypotheses (like, really really convince yourself that there's not something else bothering you in life). That's as far as I can speculate, because although I might claim you might not be consciously aware of the whole story, I am even less aware, it's just a pattern that I noticed with some friends and some of them, years later, refer to those periods as periods of depression, some of them even talked to a good psychologist about it.

Re: Ask HN: How do you cope with loneliness?

#66

Post by sizzla »

checker659 wrote: post #3

I have the exact same problem in my CS class. I cope with the issue by coming to HN or more recently, by reading up stuff on programming related sub-reddits (/r/programming, /r/python etc.).

I am ill and bed-ridden right now otherwise I wouldn't have time to comment so much on HN or read reddit.

I am not sure your "real-world" social skills will improve through reading reddit. It takes real time investment and accepting that you will fumble, fail and make a lot of mistakes. HN people often talk about how domain expertise rarely transfer easily into another domain and here's a perfect example.

Re: Ask HN: How do you cope with loneliness?

#67

Post by sizzla »

JofArnold wrote: post #17
edburgess wrote: post #8

You're a programmer right? You build web apps and stuff? When you build one and launch it out into the world, do you expect everyone to drop everything and flock to your website? I hope not. You need to reach out, as uncomfortable as it might be, and engage people. It's hard work. Now let's take your personal life. When you're at your computer most of the day, do you expect people to magically gravitate to you and be…

Absolutely agree with this. And I'll add to it also, if I may (it might seem slightly off-topic at first, but there is a point) I used to be very shy (I still am in some specific ways) and one of the consequences I didn't realise at the time is that I had no idea where my true boundaries were. So I challenged myself to discover them with initially small tasks; stuff as basic as "keeping eye contact when handing over…

The little tasks you assigned to yourself to try and tackle at least the low hanging fruit are in a way core to the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. CBT is the most often used form of psychotherapy not in small part due to its reported effectiveness. It's great to hear your story, thanks.

Re: Ask HN: How do you cope with loneliness?

#69

Post by davidw »

lief79 wrote: post #60
davidw wrote: post #13

Here's something that worked for me: salsa dancing. It's fun, and good music, and it's a great way to meet lots of women in a brief span of time, if you go to the right sort of places (avoid the ones where it's all about seasoned couples showing off their repertoire of crazy moves). Also, you learn to shrug off the 'no thanks' that you'll of course receive. I should also add that it's an acquired skill, and very much…

I've done salsa, but always preferred swing. At least in Philly, the salsa crowd takes it self far more seriously, and the swing dancing crowd seems to attract more of an intellectual crowd. On the same note, the salsa events tend to be at nightclubs/bars, while the swing events are at dance floors. I suspect I just prefer the environment.

Yeah, I suspect finding the right environment is the important thing. In Padova, a friend and I found a really great bar where they do salsa, which was full of people having a good time rather than people showing just how awesome their talents were.

Re: Ask HN: How do you cope with loneliness?

#70

Post by joshhart »

I had this problem 4 years ago. I joined a fraternity. It was awesome. Was it juvenile sometimes? Yes. Was it one of the best decisions I've ever made? Yes. It greatly widened my social circle and introduced me to people I'd never have met otherwise. Plus, I met my soon to be wife from a function there. I never would have met her slogging through engineering.

Also, I've been in the work force about a year and a half, and I think the social skills I learned were probably more important in the long run than the technical ones.

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