Compassion

Loneliness often comes from a sense of being an outsider and feeling different from most people you meet. But what’s often at the root of this feeling of isolation is a default mindset of self-criticism. After all, if you carry around a regularly updated mental inventory of your mistakes, or have a list of things that you struggle to accept about yourself, it makes sense that you may also struggle to truly accept that other people are also flawed.

Even when you work hard to be as kind and open-minded as you can, it can be frustrating when you find yourself being inwardly critical, judging people on their appearances, choices and behaviour, or just telling yourself they’re different from you. Protecting yourself is a natural instinct when you feel continually undermined by a bully, including the one in your head, so it’s not surprising that you feel on unsafe ground when you’re meeting new people or those you don’t know well. And focusing on people’s differences gives you the perfect excuse not to take the risk of connecting more closely. Compassion for yourself and others is the key to combating loneliness for you. And the first step is changing the lens through which you view people, from ‘How is this person different to me?’ to ‘What do we have in common?’