Loneliness – top tips
Top tips to help you overcome loneliness
- Get active – do some light exercise, whether it’s tending your garden, using the stairs more regularly or joining a walking group.
- Get involved – take steps to become more engaged in your local community by visiting a lunch club or volunteering at a local scheme.
- Remember being alone is not the same as being lonely. Loneliness is a feeling, not a fact which passes.
- Comfort yourself – feeling lonely is sometimes a normal reaction to being human. Rather than dwell on the feeling, keep busy by going for a stroll, consider getting a pet to take for regular walks, telephone a friend, read a book, meditate, take a bubble bath, going to the gym.
- Connect with others – even if this is having a conversation with staff at the local shop.
- Plan ahead by making plans to meet with a friend, watch a movie together, visit the shops, attend local fares, text friends you haven’t spoken to in a while.
- Do the DIY you have been putting off for a while and enjoy the benefits of your labour of love afterwards.
- Think – learn to enjoy your time alone – look out the window and daydream.
- Selection – the solution to loneliness is not quantity but quality of relationships. This means spending time with people who have things in common with you, in order to develop meaningful connections.
- Think about what it is that is making you lonely and write it down to understand more clearly what the actual problem is, to then discuss when/if you make a self referral to MyWellbeing College.