Dear Anne
I am 45 years old and I have one very dear friend. The problem is he lives in America. Another very close friend of mine died nearly three years ago. As I am female I would love to have a female friend or friends. I feel very lonely. My phone never rings. I have started classes that finish at the end of May. I haven't met any one there. I also started work in a refuge for women. I work one or two days a week and as yet haven't found a friend. I am a friendly person who enjoys a laugh. I am begining to think I am meant to be without friends. When I look back at my life I never had a lot of friends. Please can you give me some advice as I am finding life very hard at the moment. Eva
Dear Eva
I'm sorry you're finding life hard right now, but the good news is that doesn't mean life is always going to be tough. There's a word for loneliness in every language because it's a common problem and can strike everyone. However, there are plenty of things you can do to cure it. Here are just some of them.
Part of the problem with loneliness is that when we are alone with our thoughts, we can become self-critical and negative, thinking that just because something unpleasant is happening, it will always be that way. You are obviously a person with great initiative so please don't discount your possibilities for doing something different!
For starters you could keep a mood/thought journal, which allows you to see how most of the time our thoughts create our moods (not the other way about, as it can sometimes appear!) When you come across one of your automatic negative thoughts, such as I'm not meant to have friends, counter it with logic: you have had two very good friends, so you know how to be a friend, you are a friend and can have more friends. Another such thought might be My phone never rings. What, never ever? Not even sometimes? And what about the possibility of you ringing someone else?
What about the possibility of you inviting some of your co-workers or clients round to tea or to the pub? Maybe they're not the people you would most on earth want to know, but they're who you do know, so why not make the best of that? As Stephen Stills said in his song, If you can't be with the ones you love, love the ones you're with. What about joining a social club, such as IVC or Spice? You can find websites for both of these, or look for other things in your area through your local paper, library bulletin boards or What's On magazines. The door out of loneliness opens from the inside!
Meantime you can congratulate yourself on your successes. You have organised some outlets for yourself and are doing something valuable for the community. You are, as you say, friendly and fun to be with. You have the gumption to make new opportunities and to ask for help when you need it. The more you dwell on the positive things about you, the more you'll drown out the negatives. The more you come to value yourself, the more other people will value you too.
It can also help to set yourself small, achievable social targets. One of these might be to start striking up conversations in queues The buses are awful, aren't they? or I wish they'd have more people on the checkouts, don't you? are easy ice-breakers. Said with a warm but rueful smile, about 7-8 times out of ten you'll get a positive response (and the other people are either having a bad day or aren't people you'd want to talk to anyway!) You can make this a target once a week at first, and as you begin to value others positive responses to you, you'll almost certainly feel better about your courage and yourself! Assertiveness courses or books like Leil LowndesHow to talk to anyone could be beneficial too.
In the meantime, learning to be a good, supportive companion for yourself can enrich your time on your own. Self-help material, working out how to make the best of each moment of your time, doing rewarding hobbies and making your home your comfortable refuge and a welcome place for others are all good ways of doing just that.
I wish you the friendship and sense of belonging that you deserve. Good luck!
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