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A practical guide to reducing loneliness

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Re: A practical guide to reducing loneliness

#111

Post by alexanderdmitri »

PrimalDual wrote: post #64
hombre_fatal wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people here could benefit from talking to everyone and honing that skill, especially single guys, instead of just lambasting it as “small talk”. When you don’t talk to people, you throw out a great amount of serendipity in life. e.g. Most of my friends right now and women I’ve dated I’ve met in lines at the coffee shop, parking my rental bike at the dock, and other unlikely places. I wasn’t always that person so…

I agree with your approach to the point I think it’s the only way to really tackle loneliness and making friends. You just have to talk to strangers, often about nothing. Unfortunately for the less socially trained, the advice in the article seems pretty daunting. It reminds me of of the quote “people won’t remember what you said but they’ll remember how you made then feel”. I am pretty sure I’ve made a few people fe…

I've found the opposite by working in a sales position.

I'm introverted, so it sometimes felt like torture getting through some days. I felt dizzy and drained after 10+ hours of talking, pitching and trying to close sometimes hundreds of strangers over one day.

People do buy based on emotion, you'll see the progression from feature to benefit to emotional benefit in most structured sales cycles. The best sales people make customers feel great and tie it to the product. You need to learn about what they're looking for and why, it's rarely 'one size fits all.'

You learn tricks and learn to have fun. I realized mental fortitude and positive socialization is really hard work, not just disposition as I wrote it off before. You can set goals for yourself and learn from having an actual point of success. And you don't eat without achievement, in my case at least. Just pick a product that you actually believe in and makes lives and the world better (and has a good commission model).

Re: A practical guide to reducing loneliness

#112

Post by grae_QED »

Leparamour wrote: post #105
hardwaregeek wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a little left-field, but have you considered therapy? One underrated benefit of therapy is that it can help you analyze social situations and build the necessary skills to be more social. Therapists are professionals at talking to people and building a rapport after all.

>This is a little left-field, but have you considered therapy? Your advice (as well-meant as it may be) is exactly as helpful as the extrovert, mentioned by the parent, who gives the advice to "just have more fun". It's not a lack of knowing what to do. It's a profound lack of "activation energy".

Completely the opposite. It's the difference between a non-medical doctor diagnosing someones medical condition and telling them to go see a real doctor. Sometimes people don't know when to go see a doctor and need some help knowing when they should go. Their advice was completely appropriate given the situation.

Re: A practical guide to reducing loneliness

#113

Post by [deleted] »

spaetzleesser wrote: post #87

This is the typical advice by extroverts: “just go out and have fun . If I can do it why can’t you do it?”. Most lonely people know already what to do in theory but for whatever reason they can’t pull it off. That’s certainly the story of my life. I know what I should do but I can’t execute it correctly. I mess up small talk all the time and for some reason never get better. It seems some of my social circuits haven’…

[deleted]

Re: A practical guide to reducing loneliness

#114

Post by [deleted] »

bhalina wrote: post #78
csdtx wrote: post #29

Loneliness comes from a lack of community and people who you can trust. You will not build a community and find people who you can trust through small talk and involving yourself in groups that are based on transient interests that can be changed in an instant. There is a reason gangs and groups have some sort of hazing and acceptance ceremony.

But can you make real connections without small talk first?

[deleted]

Re: A practical guide to reducing loneliness

#115

Post by dublinben »

blagie wrote: post #110
hardwaregeek wrote: post #89

An important realization to have is that all of the fun events in your life, all of the dinner parties and hikes and trivia nights, all of them had to be planned by somebody. And at some point, you need to start planning your own events. Yes, planning events sucks. You need to corral people, sync up schedules, negotiate different likes/dislikes. But you gotta do it if you want to see people. I have friends who don't…

And I get miserable at dinner parties. What I want is a platform where I can randomly chat with people who have common interests. Think Omegle, but without 95% of the userbase being teenage boys who, for some reason, think it's a good way to meet women and get laid. Think of hallways conversations at conferences. I like conferences -- including well-run virtual ones -- and I'd like to be able to drop in on them anyti…

Dinner parties aren't the only kind of gathering you can plan to socialize with people you know, they're just a common format.

You can meet a friend for coffee just to talk and catch up. You could even just schedule a phone call, so you don't even have to be physically together. Many people will play online multiplayer games together to have an excuse to talk with friends.

Re: A practical guide to reducing loneliness

#116

Post by plandis »

Maybe I’m crazy but if you’re really lonely I don’t know how planning an event nobody will show up to because you have nobody to invite helps.

That just seems like bad advice. Or even if you do have people to invite if you’re not super close it’s likely nobody will show up, or at least that’s been my experience.

Re: A practical guide to reducing loneliness

#117

Post by anand-bala »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #90
spaetzleesser wrote: post #87

This is the typical advice by extroverts: “just go out and have fun . If I can do it why can’t you do it?”. Most lonely people know already what to do in theory but for whatever reason they can’t pull it off. That’s certainly the story of my life. I know what I should do but I can’t execute it correctly. I mess up small talk all the time and for some reason never get better. It seems some of my social circuits haven’…

This is a little left-field, but have you considered therapy? One underrated benefit of therapy is that it can help you analyze social situations and build the necessary skills to be more social. Therapists are professionals at talking to people and building a rapport after all.

I suffer from severe depression in general and social anxiety around more than a handful of people, and have talked to therapists regarding this. One huge benefit of therapy is that I was quite quickly able to answer the question of __why__ I feel the way I do, especially around new people I meet. But it is a whole another thing to actually being able to "fix" it. The way I think about it is that I know what the problem is _in theory_, but have no idea how to come up with a _practical_ fix for it.

When I was less depressed, I was able to join a local D&D group, go for bar trivia nights, etc. but as I became more depressed/anxious/stressed (coz of personal and professional situations), it became harder to push myself to become sociable and not get anxious around crowds.

So I think the main point that the parent comment is trying to say is that people need to recognize that problems that may seem to have simple and straightforward "solutions" (like "have you considered therapy") are significantly harder for some individuals purely due to other mental health issues.

I am not trying to fault you, but it is a thing I see in a lot of my friends/peers/relatives is that it gets harder to understand how different mental health issues affect different people in incredibly different ways.

Re: A practical guide to reducing loneliness

#118

Post by selestify »

imbnwa wrote: post #102
selestify wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is why work friendships in my experience are quite easy, even for an introverted hermit like myself. Often common interests between people, and _tons_ of time bonding. Really depends on your team, in my experience. Nothing wrong at all with being a middle-aged parent who's too busy to do things with coworkers outside of work, of course. It's a workplace, and we're here to do work, not hang out. But my friendsh…

Unfortunately it feels like a lot of "culture fit" is actually "do I want to hang out with you"

Yes, that is really quite unfortunate.

Re: A practical guide to reducing loneliness

#119

Post by nicbou »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #89

An important realization to have is that all of the fun events in your life, all of the dinner parties and hikes and trivia nights, all of them had to be planned by somebody. And at some point, you need to start planning your own events. Yes, planning events sucks. You need to corral people, sync up schedules, negotiate different likes/dislikes. But you gotta do it if you want to see people. I have friends who don't…

I find it easier to plan for myself, then invite people. Otherwise I feel like I spend my life waiting for others to make up their mind.

Over time, you have different people for different activities: the athletes, the stoners, the foodies, the geeks, the gamers and so on. It becomes a lot easier to plan.

Re: A practical guide to reducing loneliness

#120

Post by spaetzleesser »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #90
spaetzleesser wrote: post #87

This is the typical advice by extroverts: “just go out and have fun . If I can do it why can’t you do it?”. Most lonely people know already what to do in theory but for whatever reason they can’t pull it off. That’s certainly the story of my life. I know what I should do but I can’t execute it correctly. I mess up small talk all the time and for some reason never get better. It seems some of my social circuits haven’…

This is a little left-field, but have you considered therapy? One underrated benefit of therapy is that it can help you analyze social situations and build the necessary skills to be more social. Therapists are professionals at talking to people and building a rapport after all.

I have done therapy and also CBT. Part of it was in a group setting. It was pretty successful for some in the group but for others like me it did nothing. I have come more and more to the conclusion that some people are naturally not good at math and others aren’t good in social situations. I am sure there are therapists who could help me do better but finding therapists and working with them is by itself a very energy draining and exhausting process. If I had infinite money and time it may be easier but repeatedly investing a lot of trust, time, energy and money into a therapist that doesn’t work out is exhausting and depressing.

Over the years I have found a way to live my life in an OK manner. There are some things in life that aren’t accessible to me but there are plenty of other things I can experience that are rewarding too. I am lucky that my social anxiety and autistic traits aren’t extreme and I have enough intelligence to understand things. Other people have it way worse.

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