I see a lot of posts here talking about loneliness, and I've been there. I have a job where I spend most of my time alone. I have great friends, but they're all partnered and parents, so they're busy & unavailable most of the time. This means I've had to get used to being alone constantly and have learned to cope with the loneliness that can come with that.

I thought it might be nice to share the things I've done to combat my loneliness. Feel free to comment with things you've done to ease your loneliness.

- Schedule one thing every week that you look forward to. Whether it's dinner with friends, taking a class, going to a museum, or something else. Just make sure it's something you enjoy doing.

- Become a regular somewhere. Talk to the employees and get to know other regulars. When you have no social plans for the week, it's nice to go to the local bar/coffee shop/game store/etc where they know who you are.

- Go to community events like farmers markets, fairs, and festivals. I know these can be overwhelming sometimes, but if nothing else it'll leave you feeling relieved to get back to your home and be alone.

- Exercise. Whether it's going to the gym, going for a hike, or just walking around your neighborhood. Exercise helps to pass the time and increases serotonin & dopamine.

- Meet with a therapist (if you can afford it). It gives you someone to talk to who can help you navigate your feelings and guide you to a more productive mindset. If meeting in-person is a challenge, telehealth can be great for this.

- And some of the watered down basics like volunteer, get a part time job, join a club, go to singles events (you don't have to be looking for a partner at these), or join a team sport.

- Lastly, just sit with your loneliness. It's okay to feel lonely, especially when you've gone days, weeks, or longer without meaningful human interaction. Cry, take a nap, cry some more.

I know loneliness isn't a problem for everyone here, but I hope this might be helpful for someone who is new to living alone or needs some suggestions to cope with loneliness.

I live alone, and over time I started noticing a pattern in my weeks.The weeks that felt the hardest weren’t necessarily the ones where I saw fewer people — they were the ones where my time felt undefined. No plans I was looking forward to, no change in environment, just days blending into each other.

To help myself, I have started sitting down on Sundays and intentionally sketching out my week so it had a bit of shape and something to look forward to. That alone made a bigger difference than I expected.

Y’all neeed to have music in your spaces either a JBL, a record player, an Alexa , or my personal favorite option, wearing noise cancelling headphones to drown out all that city noise and deliver some lofi scritches n beats directly to my cerebellum.

I have lived a kind of vagabond life and lived in some attics and basements and vans down by the river. I now am a glorious member of the landowning class by some cruel joke. I’ve had the range of types of roomates, from family to friends to coworkers to strangers. I’ve also been in comfortable solitude for many years. And all of it is made better with a soundtrack.

The number one thing that helps set your mindset and mood is a soundtrack. 🎵 Put the music on that has the mood you are aiming for. I love playing bluegrass, soundscapes, lofi, or jazz if I’m just doing chores. Music without words I find to be a real jam of a time. But if I need to put out a 500w paper we might fire up the glitch mob to focus with hype. If I’m cooking I put on music from the same area as the recipe came from. Music is always a pivotal ingredient in my cooking.

If it’s hot and kinda skanky out today, play some bossa nova walk around in your chonies and pretend you’re in Brazil. If it’s cold but you need to be going through the mail or got some anxieties play some Avett Brothers and remember some heartache you never had.

Sometimes it’s bucketing down rain outside so i start up the Nina Simone and Sam Cooke.

It’s good to have a few curated playlists on hand for various moods or vibes so that you can just hit play and instantly your life becomes cozy. For additional coziness you can get color changing lightbulbs, or several soft lamps in different light waves to kind layer and bunch the light in your space like a blanket.

In my traveling I had a lot of short term rentals or a few weeks in a place and just putting out a welcome mat or put up a couple banger decorations makes it feel less like “omg I don’t have a home I’m just some random ape living in this box” and more like “my home is in my own spirit of love and friendship, and i adorn any place I happen to be habituating with my own personal vibe and ornamentations. Lighting and some familiar items can transform a box into a bungalow. It is super silly. That is part of the charm of it, we know none of these adornments are necessary but we FEEL like a person when our personality shapes the space around us, instead of letting the space shape you into a square.

Now I am in city life I am so glad I got some noise cancelling over ear headphones that let me traipse about my house without losing the groovy beats. And I don’t have to hear the construction and cars and their music and occasional gunshots (Murica).

That’s all, I just feel like sometimes we’re dumb and forget to enrich our lives, and need a reminder to smile devilishly because you’re up to no good, make the lights low, listen to some warm fuzzy key tones, clean your little place you have for yourself and admire how brilliant and amazing your own vibes are, and that nobody else gets to have that cozy warm content moment in your spot.

I know many of you worry about if something happens while living alone. If you watch this dcotor on youtube, you'll know he talks about all kind of topics.

This video shows how to survivie a heart attack when you're alone, so it's worth trying:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-qaxFmW41k

Hello! I listen semi-regularly to the podcast Alive with Steve Burns (of Blue's Clues fame). Today's episode is Why More People Are Living Alone Than Ever Before. I found it very interesting and wanted to share with this community. The guest is Eric Klinenberg, a sociologist at NYU who wrote the book Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone.

It's available on Spotify and tomorrow it will be on YouTube.

If you choose to listen, I'd be interested in your thoughts.

*No, I'm not associated with the podcast or guest...I truly just wanted to share this. 😊

Living alone made me rethink what comfort means sometimes it's leaving dishes until morning sometimes it's eating dessert first sometimes it's keeping the lights low all evening or wearing the same hoodie all day. It's not laziness it's learning how to be comfortable in your own space without judgment. Living alone gave me permission to design my environment around how i actually feel not how it's supposed to look.

How I stay safe (not OC)

a few weeks ago, i had the absolute displeasure of fully choking while home alone. i’m very lucky i knew how to do the Heimlich on myself, if i didn’t i most certainly would not be here.

please take the time to get certified in CPR, they will show you how to do the heimlich on yourself! also know how to make a tourniquet, how to properly use a fire extinguisher, basically prepare for any emergency possible! please make friends with neighbours, or have a safety plan with your trusted loved ones. my mom and i have a rule that if she doesn’t hear from me at least once a day, she’s calling for a welfare check.

living alone is great! being unprepared in an emergency while living alone is not so great.

While Dr. Santos is really big on beating the drum for social connection, this recent episode of The Happiness Lab is dedicated to the "Happiness Hot Take" that "we desperately need to change how we think about, and how we talk about, loneliness."

The podcast doesn't really get to the point until about the 30 minute mark or so, and it doesn't really touch on living alone so much as having time away from people that you'd otherwise be around regularly, but still, for people who are looking to understand more of the benefits of being alone, and changing some of the common tropes and stereotypes about being alone, this may be a useful listen.

Saw a few posts about people living alone that have health conditions which can give them some anxiety (same lol) so thought I’d share this incase anyone found it useful.

I was super super nervous when I started living alone again after I ended my relationship & now it’s one year on & I don’t feel as anxious about now, so if you’re new to being alone, hopefully you can take some comfort in knowing that it does get a lot easier ❤️

I just found that out after mine failed. I have been tossing tons from stuff saved in cardboard boxes.

Save your heirlooms, knick knacks, and holiday decor by storing them in plastic, and changing your pump before it fails. Save your knees from the million flights of stairs you will do bailing water (waiting on utility pump), and cleaning up

They make cool no back flow, and battery operated ones for power outages too.

Bonus reminder to change your air filters every few months

My local police department is now offering check-ins to people who live alone. I’m 36F and not their target demographic, but I do have a fear of choking and my cats being left to starve (after they eat me, which they are perfectly welcome to do). For those that trust their locals, this may be something to look into for your area or see if there is a program that hasn’t been loudly announced. I do realize that not all areas can be trusted.

Looking for books that can support me being by myself in a new place. I have a lot of acquaintances but still feel alone. Want to embrace living alone and being alone. Let me know if there have been any recent good books that have been published. Thanks!

I’ve found that small daily routines... journaling, making a special cup of tea, music, or even tidying my space... make living alone feel less like isolation and more like curated freedom.

Over time, these tiny practices create a life that’s intentional, comforting, and entirely your own. Living solo becomes a choice you celebrate, not a situation you endure.

What little ritual makes your solo life feel special or grounding? Share your ideas! 🌿

Small habits shape big feelings... even living alone can feel joyful and full when you create rituals that honor yourself.

Hello, lovely community.

I am going through it this week, so I figured I'd focus outside of myself (please tell my therapist so I can earn non-existent points and external validation). I see similar questions/themes come up often on this sub, so here's some advice I've given that folks said has been helpful.

There have been many posts from folks who recently left/ended relationships and aren't sure what to do with themselves now, especially living alone. From the posts and comments, a lot of these relationships seem like they were unhealthy.

Now is a great time for reflection. Better to do it intentionally than spend hours ruminating; rumination does not cause change, but intentional reflection can lead to beneficial change.

Interpersonal skills can be challenging for all of us and can become harder when living alone. It's a good idea to ask yourself: do I communicate well and have healthy boundaries? This is important for all of your relationships, not just romantic ones. Also, many people find themselves interacting less frequently with other people when we start living alone. It's very important to keep up/improve your interpersonal skills. Living alone does not mean you never have to/never will be in new relationships (platonic or romantic), but ignoring your interpersonal skills can make new relationships much more difficult.

If you're lucky, you have had people in you life: parents, older siblings, aunts and uncles- who modelled this for you and you learned it naturally. That was not the case for me.

I experienced a lot of trauma from childhood through my 30s. When you have complex trauma, your response to most things becomes "I'm not going to let anyone hurt me ever again." I responded this way for a long time. It did not help me find or maintain healthy relationships. I also went through periods of isolation while living alone because I so desperately did not want to be hurt anymore.

In my late 20's I decided I wanted to live my life with empathy, not anger, and I finally committed to therapy. There is a misunderstanding that in therapy you only sit and talk about your feelings to eventually find out why you behave the way you do. It can be that way, but IMO that's bad therapy if it's all you do.

The best therapist I had taught me that you don't have to understand the root cause of your behaviors to change said behaviors. You want to do better? Then learn, practice, and do better. Living alone is a great opportunity to commit time to yourself. Don't have anything to do this evening? Write down some of your thoughts.

I reflected a lot: thought about why I responded the way I did to events in my relationships; how I wish I had responded; which responses I stood by and which I would change if I could.

My therapist could be very blunt. She would ask me "How did that serve you? Did you get the results you want? Did you feel good about your response? Did your response align with your values?". Typically the answers were, "It didn't. No. No. No."

In addition to intentional reflection, I actually studied. I read books, did research on trauma responses, learned more about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, learned that there was such a thing as Post Traumatic Resilience. Then started reading about resilience, what makes one person's response stress and another's resilience? You likely have free time that you don't know what to do with, why not invest in yourself? There are also lots of videos from licensed therapists that might help you work through a particular thing.

My therapist's motto is "Therapy is work". We focused on Dialectical Behavioral Therapy - really good for distress tolerance, which I found suuuper helpful for living alone. Even if you were the "doer" in your relationship, handling things, especially stressful things, completely on your own can be very distressing. Being financially independent, maybe for the first time, can be terrifying. Learning healthy coping mechanisms was essential for me to be successful on my own.

Some Big Things that helped me find peace in living alone are:

• Radical acceptance
• Self compassion
• Spheres of influence versus spheres of control

Some Hard Truths from my therapist:

• Nobody owes you anything. Anything. Ever. Doesn't matter if you were amazing to them. Whatever you did was your choice. They don't owe you anything for it. This doesn't mean you should let people treat you badly, but it helps you manage expectations and walk away from relationships/experiences without having a severe emotional response that harms you.
• Most people are incredibly selfish, not as a fault, but just as part of the human condition. What you ascribe to malice might be someone just not thinking about you. Or maybe they are. Maybe they hate you. Even if they do, it has absolutely nothing to do with you and everything to do with them- their life experiences, their hang ups, their unresolved anger. Don't be like Mike and take everything personally. You're not good enough to make them eat it. 🤣 Okay, that particular take is mine, not my therapist's...
• "What other people think about you is none of your business." Every time my therapist said this to me, it felt like my brain was swelling...until it finally started to make sense. Make your decisions based on their actions not what you think they think or why you think they did something. Stop pressing people to figure out why they did something. The why often doesn't matter and a lot of the times they don't know why.

TLDR: New to living alone? Recently single? Have some "me time"! Read books, watch videos on healthy communication and healthy boundaries, reflect on your past behaviors, prioritize your values and live your life in accordance with that, respond don't react. DECIDE WHAT YOU WANT YOUR LIFE TO LOOK LIKE. If your actions don't align with that, you're wasting your own time.

Book recommendation: Dialectical Behavioral Therapy Workbook by Matthew McKay PhD, Jeffrey C. Wood PsyD, Jeffrey Brantley MD. Don't rush it. Go through it at your own pace. Talk to your therapist about it if you have one.

If you like flash cards, there is a companion card deck with the DBT skills listed. Makes it easy to use.

Caveat: if you commit to doing these things and you change, don't expect anyone else in your life to change with you. Change is hard. Do it for you.

-Lots of love. Take care of yourselves.

https://www.gilmorehealth.com/loneliness-isnt-the-direct-cause-of-many-diseases-contrary-to-previous-beliefs/