Video Transcription

Ask a therapist: What to do if you’re feeling lonely

My name’s Rashida Dungarwalla. I am a Registered Psychologist, and I’m going to be answering some questions today about loneliness. So let’s get into it.

Some people will feel lonely because they’re disconnected from family and friends and people around them. Other people might feel lonely because they’re disconnected from their personal values and activities that they do for their own enjoyment. Many other people might feel lonely because of life transitions, especially younger people. They’re going through many transitions from high school to uni or to work, or from uni onto careers. This causes a lot of disruption to your social circles.

Research shows us that a lot of younger people feel a lot of pressure to be constantly socializing, to be surrounded by others all the time. It’s really important to also have your alone time, and it’s normal to have that alone time. More importantly, it’s what we’re doing with that alone time. We all know that we can often find ourselves in a bit of a rabbit hole, scrolling on social media, which can often make us feel even more lonely.

I think if we are spending time alone, just to reconnect with our values, activities that we do for our enjoyment, and see how that feels. We want to be not afraid of micro interactions with others and small talk. This can look like saying hi to your barista in the morning, or smiling at the person you’re walking next to on your walk. So don’t shy away from being your authentic self. That can help build some of these connections and make them more authentic.

If you’re not used to doing it, you know it’s going to feel probably a little bit awkward. But once you get into the practice of it, like anything, it’ll become more normalized and it’ll feel more familiar. Breathwork is really helpful to help calm us and take us out of fight or flight into a more grounded state. This helps with starting these micro interactions and small talk, as well as making us feel grounded in the feeling of loneliness.

Now, when we do our breathwork, we want to make sure that the inhale, the breath in, is slightly shorter than the exhale, the breath out. When we do our breath in, we want to try and do it from our belly, and we want to imagine that we’re feeling like a balloon inflating on the inhale, and the balloon is deflating on our exhale. So you could do a breath in to the count of four, and a breath out to the count of six or eight. So it’s slightly longer.

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