Thoughts, feelings and behaviours 

Thoughts  How we think about ourselves, other people, our future and how we interpret different events in our life affects how we feel and what we do. Thoughts can be helpful and reasonable, but they can also be unhelpful and exaggerated. It can become tricky when unbalanced and negative thoughts affect your state of mind, make your life situation feel hopeless, and lead you to withdraw. Typical thoughts associated with loneliness can be “No one likes me, there’s no point in trying", “I’m uninteresting” or "It will never get better". When surrounded by such thoughts, it’s natural to feel unmotivated and to lose faith that change is possible.  

Feelings  are messengers that convey information to us. Their function is to help us by signalling different things. In situations that trigger discomfort, the message is to get away. If you’ve been lonely for a long time and have thoughts that others don’t like you, you’re likely to feel discomfort in the form of, for example, worry and anxiety in social situations. These feelings can in turn reinforce the negative thoughts and make them feel even more true. Together, they increase the risk that we withdraw from social situations to protect ourselves from failures and setbacks.    

Behaviours  A common consequence of loneliness is increased passivity in taking the initiative to socialise and in other social activities, and increased avoidance when opportunities for social interaction arise from elsewhere. Avoidance can mean declining an invitation or keeping your distance from others on a course or at a social event, reducing the chance of contact. There can be several reasons for this. For example, it may feel too painful to approach others if you’ve previously had disappointments and setbacks. As mentioned, it can be hard to feel motivated to increase social activity when you have very negative thoughts, low social confidence and feelings of hopelessness. 

Many people who feel lonely are also more vigilant and tend to interpret social situations negatively. For example, a glance from someone else may be interpreted as disapproving or judgemental, or a conversation may be judged as a total failure even if the other person didn’t experience anything going wrong. It also makes it difficult to change our social behaviour.  

To get a picture of the thoughts and feelings that arise for you in social situations, and how they affect your actions, it can be a good idea to gather observations for a few weeks based on these questions:

• What thoughts do you have when you’re in social situations or thinking about taking the initiative for a social activity?  

• What feelings do you notice in these situations?   

• What do you do in these situations?   

For 1–2 weeks, try and write down examples of different situations you find yourself in that involve other people, and any thoughts about making contact with someone. Then note the thoughts and feelings that you have in the moment, and what you do.  

Example:

Fill in yourself: