The problem of loneliness: an example from the literature, an argument. The problem of human loneliness. Loneliness as a social problem Who was in the clinic with the problem of loneliness

Who do you think a lonely person is? The one who lives alone? Nothing like this. A lonely person is someone who feels lonely. Loneliness is a special form of self-awareness, in which a person feels forgotten, unnecessary, lost, deprived and abandoned. The problem of loneliness is the topic of our article.

First of all, loneliness is a feeling that is born in our soul. Indeed, in fact, we are surrounded by a large number of people - neighbors, relatives, colleagues, classmates, ordinary passers-by ... Where does that chilling chill of emptiness and isolation come from then?

The problem of loneliness: causes and solutions

Let's see why a person feels lonely.

Fear of communication. Fear of rejection is usually associated with low self-esteem. Such people are afraid of being uninteresting in communication, consider themselves unworthy of love and recognition, they do not know how to have fun in companies, they experience severe difficulties if you need to ask something or call someone.

Output. You will have to work on yourself. Force yourself to interact with people. Read books on the subject. Sign up for any sports or dance sections, gym, etc. Exchange experiences with people, look for common interesting topics. In the end, look for friends with the same interests on the Internet in thematic forums.

Alienation and unwillingness to communicate. This problem of loneliness is slightly different from the previous one in that such people can communicate normally, but, due to their personal characteristics and character, interest in communication quickly disappears. As a result, the feeling of loneliness and depression arises from the inconsistency between one's desires and the response. This is a more complicated situation, and here it is necessary to correct subconscious attitudes.

Output. You have to start with yourself. Love yourself with all my heart and stop perceiving the world as your neighbors and colleagues have decided for you. Do what you love, immerse yourself in a hobby with your head. Watch good emotional films, read classic books. Do everything for yourself. Think of future plans in a positive context. Your face should radiate positivity, and not tense up at thoughts of loneliness.

High expectations. Finding the perfect life partner can take a long time if we set our standards too high. It may be news to you, but there are no ideal people on our planet. But maybe it's you?

Output. After watching beautiful films, we break away from real life, in connection with which an ideal image of some kind of alien is formed in our minds. You have been waiting all your life for Alain Delon's husband and you cannot concentrate on someone else. Don't waste time. Broken connection with reality does not make it clear what is around good people with their pluses and minuses, but they are close and real.

If the problem of loneliness has affected you, try to work on yourself in this way.

Decomplex yourself using the "Request" exercise. Address passers-by with any request or question. If they refuse you, it's okay, because your goal is to train communication.

Go to the cinema, the theater (have you been to the theater for a long time?), to a club, to a concert or somewhere else where there is mass gathering of people. Go not as an event, but as a psychological training. The only prerequisite is a positive attitude. Ask someone for their opinion on the actors, plot, etc. Chat easily and freely!

Try to have an animal at home. The grateful and loving eyes of a cat or dog will help melt away your feelings of loneliness.

Periodically imagine a light inside yourself. It burns with a warm, clear and calm flame, whatever happens to you. Thank yourself for what you have.

The problem of loneliness will disappear if you let warmth into your soul, accept yourself with love and live for your own joy. The Land of Soviets is with you!

There is hardly a person who, at least sometimes, has not experienced a state of loneliness. Throughout life, we lose friends, loved ones, loved ones.

To get rid of loneliness, there are two ways: either learn to accept this feeling and cope with it, switching to other meaningful things, for example, find an interesting activity, hobby, hobby, go headlong into work, or learn to build relationships with people in a new way, in order not to feel your loneliness, to find new friends and a life partner.

The life of each person is one and only, and it passes surprisingly quickly. The unsolvable problem of loneliness for many people is not so much a problem as their real, only life that they want to live well, prosperously, successfully, diversely and fully. This is their right and this right must be respected.

We are all different and each of us chooses his own life path. For one, loneliness is a painful existence filled with depression and a sense of inferiority, for another, a calm, measured life for oneself, an opportunity to make a successful career or engage in creativity. Loneliness is different, not only negative emotions are associated with it, but also joy and pleasure. Many people are looking for it, tired of communication and deliberately reducing the number of their contacts with others.

Many periods of a person's life are necessarily associated with loneliness, and experiences during a period of loneliness depend not so much on isolation, but on a person's attitude towards himself.

In solitude we have the opportunity to choose what to do and, in many cases, these activities are quite useful and varied.

Loneliness allows us to comprehend our life experience and often stimulates us to actively seek interesting and meaningful communication. It is after a period of loneliness that we begin to value friendships or love relationships more, become less demanding and more tolerant of our partner. We can say that loneliness teaches us wisdom and love.

We begin to live fully and happily not only when we fight for some changes in our lives or desperately change ourselves, but also when we know how to love ourselves the way we are without any change, and accept our life as it is. what it actually turns out or develops. It is important to choose what you like - loneliness or family, to accept what you get with dignity, to have confidence in your choice, not to despair, not to experience an inferiority complex and strive for harmony in your life.

Loneliness is perceived as an acutely subjective, highly individual and often unique experience.

One of the most distinctive features of loneliness is a specific feeling of complete immersion in oneself. The feeling of loneliness is not like other experiences, it is holistic, covering absolutely everything. There is a cognitive moment in the feeling of loneliness. Loneliness is a sign of my selfhood; it tells me who I am in this life. Loneliness is a special form of self-perception, an acute form of self-consciousness. It is not necessary to fully and accurately understand all your states, but loneliness requires the most serious attention.

In the process of everyday life, we perceive ourselves only in a certain relation to the world around us. We experience our state in the context of a complex and vast web of relationships. The emergence of loneliness tells us about disturbances in this network. Often loneliness comes in the form of a need or desire to be included in a group or a need to just be in contact with someone. The fundamental moment in such cases is the awareness of the absence of something, the feeling of loss and collapse. It can be awareness of one's exclusivity and rejection of you by others. From the point of view of existential phenomenology (which is very relevant in this case), loneliness threatens to split or even break the intentional structure of the personality, especially in the intersubjective area. In less scientific terms, loneliness is a complex feeling that binds together something lost in the inner world of the individual.

Given the above, we can offer the following definition of loneliness. Loneliness is an experience that evokes a complex and acute feeling that expresses a certain form of self-consciousness, and shows a split in the main real network of relationships and connections of the inner world of the individual. The distress that this experience causes often prompts the individual to vigorously search for means to counter the disease, for loneliness acts against the person's basic expectations and hopes and is thus perceived as highly undesirable.

The emotional states of a lonely person are despair (panic, vulnerability, helplessness, isolation, self-pity), boredom (impatience, desire to change everything, stiffness, irritability), self-abasement (feeling of one's own unattractiveness, stupidity, worthlessness, shyness). A lonely person seems to say: "I am helpless and unhappy, love me, caress me." Against the background of a strong desire for such communication, the phenomenon of “mental moratorium” (E. Erickson’s term) arises:

- a return to the childish level of behavior and the desire to delay the acquisition of adult status as long as possible;

- a vague but persistent state of anxiety;

– feeling of isolation and emptiness;

- constant stay in a state of something such that something will happen, affect emotionally and life will change dramatically;

- fear of intimate communication and inability to emotionally influence persons of the opposite sex;

- hostility and contempt for all recognized social roles, up to male and female roles;

- contempt for everything national and an unrealistic reassessment of everything foreign (well, where we are not).

Most often, the reaction to loneliness can be defined as "sad passivity" (K. Rubinstein and F. Shaver). What is this reaction? Cry, sleep, do nothing, eat, watch TV, get drunk or “pass out”, lie on the couch and think, fantasize. Of course, such methods only exacerbate loneliness.

Better "active privacy". Start writing something, do something you love, go to the cinema or theater, read, play music, exercise, listen to music and dance, sit down to study or start doing some work, go to the store and spend the money you saved.

We must not run away from loneliness, but think about what can be done to overcome our loneliness. Remind yourself what you really have good relationship with other people. Think about what you have good qualities (soulfulness, depth of feelings, responsiveness, etc.). Tell yourself that loneliness is not forever and that things will get better. Think about the activities in which you have always excelled in life (sports, studies, housework, art, etc.). Tell yourself that most people are lonely at one time or another. Take your mind off feelings of loneliness by thinking seriously about something else. Think about the possible benefits of the loneliness you experienced (tell yourself that you have learned to be self-confident, understood your new goals for relationships with society, friends, loved ones - with those with whom there was a breakup).

Even better if you try to change your life. Try to be more friendly with other people (say, make an effort to talk to your parents, classmates). Do something useful for someone (help a classmate complete homework, volunteer to carry out a public assignment, etc.). Try to find new ways to meet people (join a club, section, debate, discussion, evening, etc.). Do something that will make you more attractive to others (change your hair, buy or make new clothes, go on a diet, exercise). Do something to improve your social skills (learn to dance, learn to be more self-confident, learn to regulate, do all the exercises in the book, etc.).

Using these methods, you will overcome one of the most dangerous qualities of the "psychological moratorium" - the search for a negative identity ("I want to become nothing", the tendency to commit suicide).

All researchers agree that loneliness is associated with a person's experience of his isolation from the community of people, history, family, nature, culture. Moreover, a modern person feels loneliness most acutely in situations of intense forced communication (“lonely crowd”, lonely and distant, like planets in the Universe, family members, classmates, meeting friends every day), when a person feels painful discord with himself, suffering and a crisis of his “I”, isolation and deprivation of the meaning of the world (“the connection of times broke up” - remember Hamlet?). Forced communication, mass production of the same T-shirts, trousers, clip-on earrings, hairstyles, facial expressions, phrases, tastes, assessments, behavioral styles, habits, feelings, thoughts, desires destroy our uniqueness and uniqueness, erases the idea of ourselves as self-worth.

And communication comes with diversity. Two absolutely identical people will be interesting to each other, because communication is created as a community of diversity. One atom will never combine into a molecule with a similar atom. In order for a molecule to appear, the valences of atoms, their diversity, are needed, then there will be an opportunity for the transition of electrons, for the formation of common electronic fields. So the communication of people appears only with the corresponding uniqueness of people. And this variety of differences creates a human community, solidarity and merging of people. And the uniformity of the barracks only masks the complete indifference of people to each other (like bugs in a jar or grains of sand in a pile of sand). Only the acceptance and cultivation of one's own uniqueness and the uniqueness of the other can counter the growing loneliness in the modern world.

Loneliness plays a positive and negative role in a person's life. The benefits of loneliness are felt by those who consciously choose this state for themselves. As well as the shortcomings are felt by those who are burdened by their loneliness.

The state of loneliness was not always perceived by the individual as a personal problem, for example, in ancient times, when the very existence of people was purely communal, we find three main forms of loneliness.

Rites and rituals, the so-called education of loneliness. Loneliness here is a necessary condition for the formation of a personality and does not carry a tragic connotation.

The punishment of loneliness is exile. Actually, at all levels of the development of society, there was no greater punishment than forced social isolation. The reason for the special gravity of the punishment is that “not just this or that act of the individual is subjected to alienation, but he himself as such, his personality” .

Voluntary solitude - hermitage. The purpose of such solitude is self-improvement, overcoming the carnal beginning with the spiritual one. Hermitage assumed inner concentration, attention to one's problems.

Currently, loneliness gives a person the following opportunities:

Rapid promotion up the career ladder (since a person devotes more time to work);

Ability to travel frequently

Helps to relax from everyday bustle;

The opportunity to be alone with yourself, the opportunity to know yourself;

Opportunity to develop creativity;

Self improvement;

The ability to stabilize the psychophysical state.

But the main purpose of solitude is to be alone with yourself. It's a cure for exhaustion that's often needed modern people. Even in the old days, loneliness was also used for prediction purposes, as a way to listen to the inner self, to ask for advice from your intuition or higher powers that cannot be heard in the noise and bustle Everyday life. And then there is an opportunity to know yourself - to understand that I am a part of the infinite Nature. As soon as a person comes face to face with his loneliness, accepts it, then it changes color, quality, taste. It becomes one. And then it is not isolation, it is solitude. Isolation brings unhappiness; solitude contains a fullness of joy and happiness.

In the scientific and business world, the time we devote to being alone with ourselves is somehow considered wasted, although in fact this time is the most fruitful, helps us maintain our inner life. Indeed, it is in a state of loneliness that the soul supplies ideas to our imagination, and only then we sort them in order to decide which ones to adopt, which are the most acceptable and promising.

However, in a state of loneliness, there are also disadvantages, for example, tact as:

Bulimia (a person drowns out his loneliness with food);

anarexia;

Alcoholism (a person often meets with companies of friends);

Antisocial behavior (a person breaks the rules to attract attention, uses drugs to be included in any group);

Workaholism (a person, due to the absence of a loved one, devotes a lot of time to work).

Loneliness affects the life expectancy of single people. It has been established that the life expectancy of single people is six years less than that of people who are married.

A long stay of a person in a state of loneliness can lead to serious consequences. For example, unsatisfied social needs can cause personality degradation and even various physical ailments. A person can no longer be as purposeful as before. His life priorities are changing, not for the better.

There is a simultaneous negative impact on the functioning of the brain and on the state of the body. Some effects are barely perceptible and are due to elevated levels of stress hormones in the blood. The consequences of these small impacts, which also affect the passage of time. Thus, unmet social needs have a serious impact on health, eating away at arteries, setting the stage for high blood pressure, and even harming the quality of learning and memory.

As a result of the absence of close friends or deprivation of the usual, wider social circle, people feel very uncomfortable and prone to nervous breakdowns.

A lonely person is sad and feels empty, longing for communication with at least someone. He feels isolated, distant from others and deprecated. These feelings greatly undermine our emotional health.

The person may also experience antisocial behavior. By breaking the rules, a person wants to attract attention to himself or simply joins antisocial groups in order to have at least some communication with other people.

But the worst thing is when loneliness leads to the collapse of hopes and this can lead to the fact that a person can commit suicide. A person cannot endure this painful longing, isolation and sees no reason to live on.

Loneliness also affects the emotional state of a person. Impressive list emotional states that a chronically lonely person experiences from time to time. These are despair, fear, longing, impatience, feeling unattractive, loss of hope, isolation, self-pity, and so on.

Lonely people are deeply unhappy, they cannot establish the relationships they need, they cannot really have fun in companies, they experience difficulties when they need to call someone, agree on something, solve any personal issue. They consider themselves less competent, tend to attribute their failures in establishing interpersonal contacts to a lack of ability, and the tasks associated with establishing intimate relationships cause them increased anxiety. Lonely people react sharply to offers and refusals to establish personal contacts with others. They hardly accept compliments addressed to them, behave more insecurely in communication and are more careful.

A person's preferred way of responding to loneliness—depression or aggression—depends on how the person explains their own loneliness. If people blame their loneliness not on themselves, but on others, they may experience feelings of anger and bitterness, which stimulates the emergence of an attitude of enmity. If people are convinced that they themselves are to blame for their loneliness, and do not believe that they can change themselves, then they are likely to be saddened and condemn themselves. If a person is convinced that loneliness challenges him, then he will actively fight against it, make efforts to get rid of loneliness.

Thus, depending on how a person reacts to loneliness, it plays a dual role in a person's life. On the one hand, loneliness is a state of isolation in which a person is very unhappy. He experiences a wide variety of feelings: despair, fear, longing, impatience, a sense of his own unattractiveness, isolation, self-pity, and so on. All this prevents him from establishing the contacts he needs with others. On the other hand, loneliness can be used by a person as a time to reflect on his life, his actions. In solitude, a person experiences peace and tranquility, a person comprehends the essence of his personal existence.

We are born alone and leave alone. Is it really necessary to live like this, without understanding at least one person out of the millions that surround us? I would like to acquire some kind of immunity, become absolutely self-sufficient and not become attached to the search for kindred spirits who can brighten up our sometimes difficult path. By the way, this is also an option, someone really chooses the path of a hermit, goes into an ascetic, and sits in meditation for hours in the wilderness of the forest. However, man is a social being. Hermitage is not suitable for everyone, and therefore the problem of loneliness often requires other solutions.

Cause of loneliness

Sometimes, I myself wonder: how people generally understand each other. Each of us walks our own, completely unique path. On the way, each individual has an individual set of qualities that determines the way the world is perceived. At the same time, we experience different states, get completely different life experiences, and from this we draw completely different conclusions about who we are, what the world is and how to live in it correctly.

As a result, when we meet others on the way, we suddenly realize that their ideas about the world can be radically different from ours. Half the trouble when we are talking about material things. Here we were able to agree with relative accuracy on what we would call a window, a table, or a pen. But the farther away from the material, the greater the gap in the views. What is love, how to convey irritation, how to define justice? This is where things get much more complicated.

One of the main problems of loneliness is different understanding fundamental phenomena such as: love, honor, justice…

Your concept of, say, love will be formed within the limits of your experience. The moral norms of the society with which you interact will form the skeleton of understanding. And personal experiences in this area, positive or negative, will turn into arms, legs, horns, tails and hooves of your chimera of love. This gives rise to such illusory beliefs that, for example, love has something in common with passion, attachment, desire.

Such chimeras can be formed indefinitely. As a result, they will turn into a kind of average result - your personal concept of what love is. Chimeras of other people will be very different from your own. And often you will conflict with them on this basis. Perhaps some kind of chimera will cause admiration in you, some kind of contempt. Or maybe you will like the hoof of some chimera so much that you will attach the same one to yours. There can be a lot of options. But while your understanding of love is ephemeral, you will never find someone who would understand you one hundred percent.

That's why people are lonely. All these "horns and hooves" only distort the true concepts of such important things as love. Love lies beyond any moral "skeleton of society" and "hooves of the individual." Moreover, one who experiences a true feeling of love does not need any artificial moral restrictions, since this feeling in itself implies complete bestowal and self-sacrifice. Morality, on the other hand, judges by the external: by deeds and words, but not by the true motives of what was said and done.

Love is a state unknowable and within the mind. And therefore it is impossible to explain it. No matter how hard you try to explain to someone what love is, you will never find someone who fully agrees with your vision.

Loneliness ends where judgments and reasoning end.

True, no matter how different people's personalities are, the experiences are the same for everyone. Some have brighter experiences, some have deeper ones, but in general, these are the same experiences for everyone. And all our differences are the result of personal history, a reflection of the original, common.

Yes, love cannot be explained in words, but at the level of the soul, everyone has knowledge of it. That is, loneliness ends where judgments and reasoning end. The reason for loneliness is that people are not looking where they can be found. But turn your gaze inward. There lies the answer.

Why are people lonely

We feel lonely if we lack spiritual exchange with those around us. But our physical body, our personality and our intellect are only instruments of the soul. The soul does not think and does not experience emotions and sensations. The soul experiences states, which is why it is so difficult for us to understand each other with the help of words.

Our soul does not understand words, but understands the symbols and images that cause states. That is, we cannot explain what love is, but using the language of symbols, we can awaken memories of love in the soul of another.

The state is nothing but the frequency or vibration of the soul. Vibration can be rough, mundane, or it can be sublime, subtle. Hatred, sadness, happiness, joy are all vibrations of the soul. And anyone who has experienced this will be able to understand you in your state.

Art is the result of humanity's desire for spiritual exchange. Listening to the same melody, contemplating a picture or reading a story, we experience the state conveyed by the author, each is the same, with a difference in depth and brightness.

Have you noticed how easy it is to be with a friend in silence? At the same time, with an unfamiliar person, we experience discomfort if the conversation does not flow in a stream. The fact is that with close people we move on to spiritual, deeper communication than with strangers. We are able to read each other's states without words and tune in. While the path to our soul is still closed to the unfamiliar. And we try to compensate for this by interaction at the mental level, that is, with the help of words.

But words alone are never enough. Therefore, it is impossible to get rid of loneliness even while constantly being in noisy fun campaigns. In general, the more people around, the more acute the problem of loneliness is felt.

How to get rid of loneliness

So, loneliness is the result of a lack of spiritual exchange, which cannot be filled with words alone. And so we want to find someone who understands the state of our soul. Creativity is what the soul manifests itself in. And it is through creativity that we are able to touch the depths of our worlds. He who knows how to create and see the beautiful will never be alone. To create beauty means to give fortunes, and to see beauty means to recognize oneself in beauty. Create and contemplate - and you will never be lonely again!

Creation

We put a part of our soul into the objects of our creation. And everyone who comes into contact with our creativity comes into contact with our soul. This is why handmade gifts are so valued. That is why it is so nice to give them. Learn to draw, sew, knit, grow violets, cook... And give your creations to people. So you will never feel alone.

Contemplating the masterpieces of art, we touch something that touches the finest strings of the human soul. Music, poetry, great paintings evoke the same state in all contemplators. We cannot explain it in words, but we all know how goosebumps sometimes run through the body from something sincere, touching. We all experienced a state of eventfulness, a holiday, expressed in loud solemn sounds, or a feeling of piercing melancholy in the lingering sound of a violin. Art allows us to get in touch with the souls of the great masters of mankind, as well as all those who recognize themselves in their creations.

Spirituality

Be sincere, and then there will be someone who will understand you in your condition. But you cannot demand understanding from people. After all, only someone who has experienced something similar to yours can understand you. Don't judge others by their actions. try to see the soul in them. Behind an unseemly act is often pain and suffering. In our own suffering, we feel alone and want understanding. To get understanding, you need to give it to others.

It is possible to fill the emptiness inside oneself only by filling it with something real, true. And the truth is silent, and it cannot live in our perishable body, or in transient emotions, or in a restless mind. It is all changeable and impermanent. Only our soul is immortal.

A person who separates himself from other people deprives himself of happiness, because the more he separates himself, the worse his life is.

I chose loneliness as the theme of my work. The problem of loneliness is one of the most serious problems of mankind, when relationships do not develop, without giving rise to either friendship, or love, or enmity, leaving people indifferent towards each other. Loneliness is hard mental condition, usually accompanied by a bad mood and painful emotional experiences. A man comes into this life alone and he leaves this world alone. Deeply lonely people tend to be very unhappy, they have little social contact, their personal ties with other people are either limited or completely severed.

Loneliness is one of the most difficult for a modern person. psychological problems. It happens that an outwardly prosperous person, who has realized himself both in professional activity and in his social relations, nevertheless feels lonely and useless. It feels - this feeling does not necessarily reflect the real situation - but this does not make it easier. Some try to hide from him in a cheerful noisy company, others hope to be saved in the family, a feeling of love for their loved ones. But it turns out that even all-consuming love saves only temporarily and “you shouldn’t have the illusion that from loneliness to which a person is sentenced ... you can be cured by love” - wrote E. Fromm

Not so much time has passed since matchmakers and acquaintances through relatives were replaced by dating services that offer their customers electronic databases that allow you to choose potential "partners" by almost any parameter - hair color, height, weight, interests, level of intelligence, etc. Clubs "For those over thirty" were supplemented by nightclubs for young people. The computer becomes not just a printing machine with a screen, but sometimes the only “interlocutor” that helps to forget or change, entering “chats”, changing names.

The changes that have taken place over the past two decades in our country indicate that the problem of loneliness still worries people. Of course, sometimes it is difficult to see the faces of loneliness behind the black windows of foreign cars and “open relationships”. However, no matter what form it takes, a person, remaining alone with himself, as many years ago, thinks what to do with his loneliness. To paraphrase T. Williams, we can say that a person thinks about how to live on, being doomed to life imprisonment in solitary confinement of his "I".

The problem of loneliness is not only minds ordinary people. Philosophers, theologians, scientists and writers have been studying it for centuries. Despite the relatively short period of existence of psychology as a separate science, in almost every of its areas one can find concepts of theory and research associated with loneliness. Identify the causes of loneliness and suggest effective methods combating this feeling is a big step towards establishing the normal interpersonal relationships. In our research, we relied on the statements and assumptions of the following scientists, who, one way or another, touched upon the problem of loneliness: Mudrik A.V.; Kon I.S.; Nemov R.S.; Zimbardo F.; Young J.; Freud Z.; Fromm E.; Miyuskovich B.

Loneliness is one of the main problems in ensuring psychological well-being. It is an acute inner, subjective experience. The fear of loneliness has ancient roots: the entire initial period of history, numbering more than one thousand years, a person left alone could not survive. In primitive society, the heaviest punishment was not the death penalty, and exile, i.e. the punishment of loneliness. This tradition has been preserved in modern society. Moreover, modern exile is not necessarily removal from society. Exist various ways psychological alienation: refusal to communicate, boycott, obstruction, etc.

External social isolation is not loneliness, it can only contribute to its appearance or increase the main symptoms. Loneliness is usually experienced on two levels:

1. emotional: a feeling of complete self-absorption, abandonment, doom, uselessness, confusion, emptiness, feelings of loss, sometimes horror;

Loneliness is not just an experience. This is a special form of self-perception, acute self-awareness. In everyday self-awareness, we experience our state in the context of relationships. Loneliness just speaks of the destruction of this network. Loneliness is a feeling that manifests itself in the form of a need to be included in a group or a need to contact someone. The feeling of absence, loss, collapse is fundamental; awareness of one's exclusion and misunderstanding by others. Lonely people feel abandoned, doomed, lost, unnecessary. All of these feelings are excruciating. Loneliness is the breaking of ties, while our expectations are focused on maintaining these ties. A lonely person feels a separation from the past, as well as his uselessness in the future. Thus, to summarize, loneliness is an experience that causes a complex and acute feeling that expresses a certain form of self-consciousness and shows a split in the main, real network of relationships and connections of the inner world of the individual. This definition allows you to breed loneliness, sadness, depression, a sense of fear.

1. Initial event. Loneliness usually comes as a sudden realization. The impetus for this realization is usually some event.

2. Experience of own uselessness, failure, inability to establish social contacts.

3. The subject is also able to identify the causes of loneliness. They can be both external and internal. As internal permanent causes, one can single out the corresponding character traits, for example, shyness. Any situation can be named as an external reason, for example, a company of strangers.

The concept of loneliness is closely related to the experience of situations that are subjectively perceived as undesirable, personally unacceptable for a person, lack of communication and positive intimate relationships with people around. Loneliness is not always accompanied by the social isolation of the individual. You can constantly be among people, contact with them and at the same time feel your psychological isolation from them, i.e. loneliness.

The degree of loneliness experienced is also unrelated to the number of years a person has spent without human contact. People who live alone all their lives sometimes feel less lonely than those who often have to communicate with others. Lonely cannot be called a person who, interacting little with others, does not show either psychological or behavioral reactions of loneliness. In addition, people may not realize that there are discrepancies between their actual and desired relationships with others.

Genuine, subjective states of loneliness usually accompany the symptoms of mental disorders, which take the form of affects with a clearly negative emotional coloring, and at different people affective reactions to loneliness are different. Some lonely people complain, for example, of feeling sad and depressed, others say that they feel fear and anxiety, and others report bitterness and anger.

The experience of loneliness is influenced not so much by real relationships, but by the ideal idea of \u200b\u200bwhat they should be. A person who has a strong need for communication will feel lonely even if his contacts are limited to one or two people, and he would like to communicate with many; at the same time, those who do not feel such a need may not feel their loneliness at all, even in the absence of communication with other people.

Loneliness is accompanied by some typical symptoms. Usually lonely people feel psychologically isolated from other people, incapable of normal interpersonal communication, of establishing intimate interpersonal relationships with others such as friendship or love. A lonely person is a depressive or depressed person who experiences, among other things, a lack of communication skills.

A lonely person feels different from everyone else, and considers himself an unattractive person. He claims that no one loves or respects him. Such features of a lonely person's attitude towards himself are often accompanied by specific negative affects, including a feeling of anger, sadness, and deep unhappiness. A lonely person avoids social contacts, he isolates himself from other people. He, more than other people, is characterized by the so-called paranoid feeling, which includes increased suspicion, impulsiveness, excessive irritability, fear, feeling overwhelmed and frustrated.

Lonely people are more pessimistic than non-lonely people, they experience an exaggerated feeling of self-pity, they expect only trouble from others, and only the worst from the future. They also see their own lives and the lives of others as meaningless. Lonely people are not talkative, behave quietly, try to be inconspicuous, most often they look sad. They often have a tired look and increased drowsiness. When a gap is found between real and actual relationships, which is characteristic of the state of loneliness, then different people react to this in different ways. Helplessness as one of the possible reactions to this situation is accompanied by an increase in anxiety. If people blame their loneliness not on themselves, but on others, they may experience feelings of anger and bitterness, which stimulates the emergence of an attitude of enmity. If people are convinced that they are responsible for their own loneliness, and do not believe that they can change themselves, then they are likely to be saddened and condemn themselves. Over time, this condition can develop into chronic depression. If, finally, a person is convinced that loneliness challenges him, then he will actively fight against it, make efforts to get rid of loneliness. A lonely person is characterized by an exceptional focus on himself, on his personal problems and inner experiences. He is characterized by increased anxiety and fear of the catastrophic consequences of an unfavorable set of circumstances in the future. When communicating with other people, lonely people talk more about themselves and change the topic of conversation more often than others. They are also slower to respond to the statements of a communication partner. Such people are characterized by specific interpersonal problems. They are easily irritated in the presence of other people, highly aggressive, prone to excessive, not always justified criticism of others, and often exert psychological pressure on other people. Lonely people have little trust in people, hide their opinions, are often hypocritical, insufficiently controlled in their own actions. Lonely people cannot really have fun in companies, they experience difficulties when they need to call someone, agree on something, solve any personal or business issue. Such people are highly suggestible or overly stubborn in resolving interpersonal conflicts. The feeling of loneliness can increase or decrease depending on dynamic changes in individually accepted standards of normal intensity. interpersonal communication or the breadth of contacts with people to which a person should go. At the same time, such standards are relative, they are always set by comparison with past communication experience. A slight decrease in the number of friends or human contacts in someone who previously had a large number of them can be perceived as an increase in loneliness, while a similar change in the nature of interpersonal relationships in a person who previously had almost no contact with anyone and had limited circle of friends (that is, their increase to the same level as that of the first person) will probably be perceived as a decrease in loneliness, that is, in the opposite way.

Loneliness first arises in adolescence, when the need for intimacy (which operates throughout life) is expressed in the need for a friend, a friend. If communication skills are not developed in a child due to relationships with parents, the child becomes unable to satisfy this need for intimacy. And her frustration just leads to loneliness. The loneliness experienced at this age is often fixed and becomes a characteristic feeling for this person.

It is extremely difficult to classify loneliness, since it is an individual experience, qualitatively and quantitatively different for different people. Therefore, the traditional classification looks extremely poor.

2. Pathological loneliness (clinical cases; accompanied by depression, apathy, outbursts of anger, there is a motive of self-torture).

Chronic loneliness occurs when an individual cannot establish satisfactory relationships with significant people for a long period in his life.

Situational loneliness usually appears as a result of some stressful events in a person's life, such as the death of a loved one or the breakup of intimate relationships, such as marriage. After a short time of distress, the situationally lonely individual comes to terms with his loss and partially or completely overcomes the feeling of loneliness that has arisen.

Transient loneliness is expressed in short-term bouts of feeling of loneliness, which completely and without a trace pass, leaving no traces behind.

Sadler proposed an interesting classification of types of loneliness. He singled out the elementary phenomenon underlying all experiences and called it the personal world. It has four main directions, in accordance with which a person realizes his abilities:

In accordance with these criteria, four types of loneliness are distinguished: existential, or cosmic loneliness; cultural loneliness; social loneliness; interpersonal loneliness.

Loneliness becomes especially unbearable if it is a complex of these four types. Let's take a closer look at this classification:

It is connected, firstly, with the comprehension of oneself as an integral reality, correlation of oneself with nature. If this need is not satisfied, then there is a feeling of loneliness in the form of homesickness, communion with nature. In communication with other people, this kind of loneliness cannot disappear (it can only be muffled for a while), since its causes lie outside the sphere of human communications. This experience does not occur in everyone, but only in people of certain professions, closely connected with nature, etc.

Secondly, some individuals have a strongly developed need for involvement in God, the mystical. With her frustration, a specific experience of loneliness arises. This is the strongest motivating factor leading to the formation of sects, generating religious fanaticism. Thirdly, a person may remain unsatisfied with the strongest need for awareness of his own uniqueness.

A person experiencing self-alienation realizes that the development of one side of the “I” nullifies the development of the rest and feels discomfort. This kind of loneliness is also expressed in the form of a desire for the “true Self”.

2. Cultural loneliness - the experience of separation from the cultural heritage, which was an essential part of life. Mostly experienced as a break with old values, which is an important element in the life of young people.

3. Social loneliness is much more common. Associated with the relationship between the individual and the group. Sources of social loneliness can be: exile, rejection by the group, rejection.

The person feels pushed away, excluded, unappreciated, and so on. The feeling of exile, that a person is superfluous, is often observed in people with unsteady social roles. These people tend to worry about their own social status, anxiety about social identity.

Suffering from such loneliness is mainly people who need socially significant inclusion: the elderly, low-income, eccentric people, teenagers, women. According to many authors, it is precisely because of the fear of social loneliness that people are so actively involved in social activities, in a team, in communication.

Another kind of social loneliness can arise when a person is perceived only as a role.

4. Interpersonal loneliness usually acts in close connection with social loneliness, but is associated with rejection or misunderstanding, rejection by any particular person. People who experience all four types of loneliness suffer from anomia (a personality disorder). Anomic people have common features: rejection of themselves and others, or attraction to actions under external control. They also write off all responsibility to fate or something else. An anomic person often has the feeling that he lives in an empty space without reference points. People get tired of this existence. Life loses its value, suicide attempts are frequent. Such people are not able to deal with their experiences of loneliness on their own.

From the point of view of adolescents, the main cause of loneliness is social exclusion. About 44% of the surveyed high school students answered that other people are to blame for their loneliness: parents and friends. It was the others who did not understand, rejected, forgot this person (“no one to help”, “in a quarrel with parents”, “relatives do not understand”, “no support”, “no one shares interests”, “no one to turn to in difficult situation”, “betrayed”, etc.)

Lack of social circle, close friends, loved ones as the reason for loneliness was indicated by 30% of students. The absence of “one’s own” social circle may be associated with moving to a new place of residence - 3%, changing school - 11%, loss of a close friend - 18%, etc.

The next reason named by students is character traits (selfishness, narcissism, arrogance) - 10%. Such reasons as shyness, self-doubt, fear of communication, inability to communicate, “not like everyone else” are indicated in 10% of the questionnaires. About 6% of high school students found it difficult to name the reasons why one can become lonely in adolescence.

It is noteworthy that the majority of boys and girls (76%) consider themselves quite sociable, pleasant to talk to and popular among classmates, and also have a sufficient number of friendships. They are not characterized by a negative attitude towards themselves, the fear of losing communication or being rejected by their peers.

Students were asked to describe a lonely peer. 38% of the students got the following portrait: closed, immersed in themselves, not communicating well; 35% - quiet, inconspicuous, unable to make acquaintances; 15% described: sad, unhappy, “not like everyone else”, whom no one likes, and from whom everyone turned away. In the remaining questionnaires, there were such options as: “loser”, “nervous”, “stupid”, “outcast”, etc.

When determining the type of loneliness, it turned out that 15% of high school students with a chronic type of loneliness (and these are people with both high and low self-esteem); 28% - situational, 57% - transient. The list of emotional states described by schoolchildren, which from time to time cover a lonely person, is impressive. These are despair, longing, impatience, helplessness, panic fear, depression, inner emptiness, boredom, loss of hope, self-compassion, irritability, insecurity, melancholy, depression.

According to high school students, lonely people tend to dislike others, especially sociable and happy ones, so they often behave aggressively towards other people (8%). This is their defensive reaction, which in turn prevents them from establishing good relations with people themselves. Unable to establish contacts with others, some lonely boys and girls demonstrate feigned indifference (20%) to their problem, bravado (9%), cry, think about suicide (13%), take alcohol (9%).

Youth is a time of awareness and mastery of loneliness. Almost everyone goes through the experience of loneliness in their youth. A tragic sense of self-knowledge grows out of it.

Loneliness in youth is a yearning for solitude, so incomprehensible to the preceding adolescence. Solitude allows you to prepare for future feelings of infatuation and love, which can be perceived alone with yourself.

He who has not experienced loneliness in his youth does not become an adult. He remains an eternal teenager and carries himself like an aging teenager through all the steps of life. When asked when loneliness is more often experienced in adolescence or adulthood: 48% of high school students answered - in their youth (children abandoned by their parents), 22% - in adulthood (life is more difficult), 30% - the state of loneliness does not depend on age, it is subject to all.

It follows from the questionnaire that for 80% of girls and boys, parents are a strong support, despite being very busy. 20% of students said that they can only rely on themselves.

Although the majority of respondents (56%) do not like to be alone themselves, nevertheless they consider such a pastime acceptable and do not experience fear or depression while in this state (“you can engage in reflection”, “you begin to understand yourself at such moments”, “ you think about life when there is no company nearby”). 27% of boys and girls panic, being in a state of loneliness ("communication with oneself gives little pleasure", "what harmony? I'm not a psychopath", "I'm not in a state of "quiet with myself").

Loneliness is the transition from teenage asexual existence to the life of a boy and a girl. Thanks to loneliness, there is an awareness of gender, an attempt to find the style of a woman and a man.

A woman is always harder than a man to endure loneliness. However, in youth - in the era of natural loneliness - it is the loneliness of a young man that seems more obvious. This can be explained by the fact that the girl matures much earlier and to a greater extent bears the features of a self-sufficient personality in her youth. A young man achieves self-sufficiency thanks to an individual strong-willed impulse. Such an impulse to a much greater extent presupposes loneliness, requires it.

The dreams of a young man are fundamentally different from those that girls indulge in. These are dreams of one's exclusivity, which should be realized outside of family well-being, or at least not thanks to it.

A young man is a teenager who has realized himself as the will to power, or the will to contemplate. Both are the will to solitude. The young man masters the element of loneliness, transforms it into solitude. All this allows us to distinguish between a lonely and secluded youth. The first one accidentally falls into the element of loneliness and, suffering, seeks to return back. The secluded one consciously comes into it, striving to find a new fullness of life.

The girl does not need loneliness, as the young man. Her maturation is due to the logic of the spread of the human race on the planet. A girl and then a girl is preparing to become a mother, and this leaves a seal on her personality. The idea of a future birth and motherhood is suggested to a girl with early age and therefore loneliness is seen as a harbinger of tragedy.

Only a strange girl who overcomes the instinctive opposition of the family can strive for loneliness. In loneliness, there may also be an outcast girl who has not been able to fit into the community of her peers and suffers from this.

The solitude and detachment of the girl, as well as the boys, are manifested through dreams. The girl expects love in her dreams, as an absolute overcoming of loneliness. This expectation makes her related to the young man, and this expectation is realized in the feeling of falling in love.

Differences are observed in the answers of girls and boys: girls react more emotionally, openly write about their feelings.

AT public consciousness loneliness is usually associated with maturity and old age. However, there are studies proving that this problem is most acute in youth, and for the first time loneliness is realized by a person in adolescence.

From the point of view of adults (65%), the main causes of loneliness are social factors: social exclusion, lack of social circle, close friends, situational reasons (“separated from loved ones”, “away from family”, “left relatives”, “lack of attention ”, “indifference of others”, “I come to an empty house”, “change of residence”, “dreams collapse”, “no like-minded people”).

Another good reason is character traits (35%): aggressiveness, arrogance, high conceit. Hence - "discord in the family", "quarreled with everyone", etc. The types of loneliness among adults were distributed as follows:

The description by adults of a portrait of a lonely person differs little from the description of high school students. In the list of experienced emotional states are added: longing for a particular person, vulnerability, pain, humility, hopelessness.

According to adults, lonely people withdraw into themselves (34%), look for negativity in others, complain, envy, cry (33%), behave very aggressively (17%) towards others, wanting to punish them for their loneliness, accept alcohol and tranquilizers (23%), try to get out of this state in different ways (13%).

On the other hand, anyone, even the most sociable person, seeks solitude. Most of us have an ambivalent attitude towards solitude: on the one hand, it is a symbol of independence and autonomy, on the other hand, it is a symbol of social failure. When analyzing the attitude of the subjects to solitude, it was found that they quite accurately determine the boundary between loneliness and the desire for solitude. The opinion about the usefulness of solitude and communication alone is shared by 50% of adults (“you make the greatest discoveries in yourself”, “almost always in harmony with yourself”, “I get great satisfaction from communicating with myself”). 32% do not see the need for solitude and do not believe that it can bring satisfaction to a person. Therefore, they try to avoid such situations by occupying themselves with any business. 9% - do not see the difference between loneliness and solitude and believe that this is one and the same.

Each of the surveyed groups believes that it is they who experience the state of loneliness more often. It is difficult to unequivocally answer this question, however, the reasons for the loneliness of adults are more serious, hence the greater range of emotions they experience. This forces some people to abuse alcohol, tranquilizers, drugs, even if adults themselves do not recognize themselves as lonely. Thus, as it was assumed at the beginning, the perception of the feeling of loneliness by different age categories has significant differences.

In addition, despite the fact that women experience loneliness more acutely than men, nevertheless, they find more constructive ways out of such a situation and are less aggressive towards others, and are also more prone to reflection. In addition, women's thoughts are occupied with household chores, caring for children, and family problems.

There is hardly a person who, at least sometimes, has not experienced a state of loneliness. Throughout life, we lose friends, loved ones, loved ones.

The life of each person is one and only, and it passes amazingly quickly. The unsolvable problem of loneliness for many people is not so much a problem as their real, only life that they want to live well, prosperously, successfully, diversely and fully. This is their right and this right must be respected. We are all different and each of us chooses our own path in life. For one, loneliness is a painful existence filled with depression and a sense of inferiority, for another it is a calm, measured life for oneself, an opportunity to make a successful career or engage in creativity. Loneliness is different, not only negative emotions are associated with it, but also joy and pleasure. Many people are looking for it, tired of communication and deliberately reducing the number of their contacts with others.

Many periods of a person's life are necessarily associated with loneliness, and experiences during a period of loneliness depend not so much on isolation, but on a person's attitude towards himself.

In solitude we have the opportunity to choose what to do and, in many cases, these activities are quite useful and varied.

Loneliness is perceived as an acutely subjective, highly individual and often unique experience. One of the most distinctive features of loneliness is a specific feeling of complete immersion in oneself. The feeling of loneliness is not like other experiences, it is holistic, covering absolutely everything. There is a cognitive moment in the feeling of loneliness. Loneliness is a sign of my selfhood; it tells me who I am in this life. Loneliness is a special form of self-perception, an acute form of self-consciousness. It is not necessary to fully and accurately understand all your states, but loneliness requires the most serious attention.

In the process of everyday life, a person perceives himself only in a certain relation to the world around him. He experiences his state in the context of a complex and extensive network of relationships. The emergence of loneliness tells him about disturbances in this network. Often loneliness comes in the form of a need or desire to be included in a group or a need to just be in contact with someone. The fundamental moment in such cases is the awareness of the absence of something, the feeling of loss and collapse. It can be awareness of one's exclusivity and rejection of you by others. From the point of view of existential phenomenology (which is very relevant in this case), loneliness threatens to split or even break the intentional structure of the personality, especially in the intersubjective area. In less scientific terms, loneliness is a complex feeling that binds together something lost in the inner world of the individual.

Loneliness is an experience that evokes a complex and acute feeling that expresses a certain form of self-consciousness, and shows a split in the main real network of relationships and connections of the inner world of the individual. The distress that this experience causes often prompts the person to vigorously seek means to resist the disease, for loneliness acts against the person's basic expectations and hopes and is thus perceived as highly undesirable. The emotional states of a lonely person are despair (panic, vulnerability, helplessness, isolation, self-pity), boredom (impatience, desire to change everything, stiffness, irritability), self-abasement (feeling of one's own unattractiveness, stupidity, worthlessness, shyness). A lonely person seems to say: "I am helpless and unhappy, love me, caress me." Against the background of a strong desire for such communication, the phenomenon of “mental moratorium” (E. Erickson’s term) arises:

Return to the childish level of behavior and the desire to delay the acquisition of adult status as long as possible;

Constantly being in a state of something such that something will happen, affect emotionally and life will change dramatically;

Hostility and contempt for all recognized social roles, down to male and female roles;

Contempt for everything national and an unrealistic overestimation of everything foreign (well, where we are not).

We must not run away from loneliness, but think about what can be done to overcome our loneliness. Remind yourself that you actually have good relationships with other people. Think about what you have good qualities (soulfulness, depth of feelings, responsiveness, etc.). Tell yourself that loneliness is not forever and that things will get better. Think about the activities in which you have always excelled in life (sports, studies, housework, art, etc.). Tell yourself that most people are lonely at one time or another. Take your mind off feelings of loneliness by thinking seriously about something else. Think about the possible benefits of the loneliness you experienced (tell yourself that you have learned to be self-confident, understood your new goals for relationships with society, friends, loved ones - with those with whom there was a breakup).

Even better if you try to change your life. Try to be friendlier with other people, do something useful for someone, try to find new ways to meet people. Do something that will make you more attractive to others, do something to improve your social skills.

Using these methods, one can overcome one of the most dangerous qualities of the "psychological moratorium" - the search for a negative identity ("I want to become nothing", a tendency to commit suicide).

All researchers agree that loneliness is associated with a person's experience of his isolation from the community of people, history, family, nature, culture. Moreover, a modern person feels loneliness most acutely in situations of intense forced communication, when a person feels painful discord with himself, suffering and a crisis of his “I”, isolation and deprivation of the meaning of the world (“the connection of times has broken up” - remember Hamlet?). Forced communication, mass production of the same T-shirts, trousers, clip-on earrings, hairstyles, facial expressions, phrases, tastes, assessments, behavioral styles, habits, feelings, thoughts, desires destroy our uniqueness and uniqueness, erases the idea of ourselves as self-worth.

And communication comes with diversity. Two absolutely identical people will be interesting to each other, because communication is created as a community of diversity. One atom will never combine into a molecule with a similar atom. In order for a molecule to appear, the valences of atoms, their diversity, are needed, then there will be an opportunity for the transition of electrons, for the formation of common electronic fields. So the communication of people appears only with the corresponding uniqueness of people. And this variety of differences creates a human community, solidarity and merging of people. And the uniformity of the barracks only masks the complete indifference of people to each other. Only the acceptance and cultivation of one's own uniqueness and the uniqueness of the other can counter the growing loneliness in the modern world.

It is necessary to distinguish between loneliness as a product of "full despair" of city life and solitude as a person's concentration on his internal spiritual problems, on protecting his "I" from this "complete despair". A person is constantly trying to go beyond the limits of his "I", to open the bounds of loneliness that bind him, to create a community with the Other. By creating this community, the Other extracts from me the innermost, intimate, and thereby deepens me, makes my "I" go deeper, leaving our common "knot", "ensemble" of relationships that which was my intimate, hidden from everyone. Parts of my "I" lose my uniqueness and become our uniqueness, turn into a subject of joint ownership. And “I” again go into my depth and look for a new uniqueness. This is the unity of the uniqueness of me (and my loneliness) and the uniqueness of us, who created a community, gave each other their unique parts for common possession (just as atoms give each other their valency and become a molecule, so people become a unique community, since they gave each other friend its uniqueness). And “we”, the unique ones, in turn give our uniqueness to other “we” in common possession and become a community of a higher order ... Otherwise, our unique “we” give other “we” ... And so on ... Until the very last “we” - Humanity? Intelligence? Absolute Idea?

Loneliness is a special form of experiencing and realizing oneself as abandoned, torn off, forgotten, deprived, lost, unnecessary, homeless. This is a split in our relations and ties with the outside world. Our oceanic "I" can split. The “reflexive “I” can also split. Our “social”, interpersonal “I” can split.

To share loneliness means: to listen to a person when he wants to talk about his pain; understand and accept his feelings;

To transform into a positive experience means to be ready to change the situation by analyzing it and begin to build relationships with others by considering alternative possibilities, such as increasing your communicative competence, changing one's behavior and attitude towards oneself and people, development of reflection and communication skills. Regardless of age, people suffering from loneliness use a variety of ways to improve their social life.

The problem of loneliness has always worried mankind, occupying the minds of scientists, writers, philosophers. Recently, more and more new works have been devoted to this problem, exploring the essence of loneliness, its causes, characteristic manifestations and influence on different categories of people in different periods of life.

However, at present there is no consensus on what loneliness is: trouble or happiness, norm or pathology. Various philosophical currents and psychological schools consider loneliness either as the only possible basis for human existence, or as an unnatural state for a person, a pathology and a manifestation of a person’s weak adaptability, or as a social problem, a consequence of the development of modern social forces.

For some, loneliness is the result of a person’s awareness of isolation and the finiteness of his existence, accompanied by despair and loss of hope, for others, it is an active creative state, a favorable opportunity to communicate with oneself and a source of strength.

However, common in various psychological and philosophical approaches is the understanding of loneliness as a state of a person who is aware of the fact of his detachment and alienation from the world of other people. Alienation of a person from other people can be the result of a real lack of a social circle and significant connections, and a person's perception of his social contacts as unsatisfactory.

In the public mind, loneliness is usually associated with maturity and old age. However, there are studies proving that this problem is most acute in youth, and for the first time loneliness is realized by a person in adolescence. This is due, first of all, to the development of reflection at this age and the transition to a new level of self-awareness, with increased needs for self-knowledge, acceptance and recognition, communication and isolation, with a crisis of self-esteem. In addition, the reorientation of communication from parents and significant adults to peers makes the problem of relationships with the latter very burning, and sometimes very painful. If a teenager in communication with friends and classmates does not receive acceptance, recognition and emotional response, if his needs for social unity and self-affirmation are not satisfied, then he has a feeling of loneliness.

Is loneliness our inevitable lot? A modern person feels it most acutely in situations of intense and even forced communication - in a city crowd, in the circle of his own family and sometimes among friends. But is it possible to consider that the only alternative to loneliness is unlimited communication that absorbs the spiritual life of a person? If by communication we mean the exchange of information that is not accompanied by its intimate meaning, then, on the contrary, it gives rise to loneliness. The streams of information falling on a person, forced communication, devoid of reasonable limits, only exacerbate the feeling of loneliness (for example, a monster - television, a computer, capturing a person, taking away an abyss of time from him, does not give either love or warmth in return.) An alternative to loneliness can be be the ability and desire of a person to look into himself, the desire to learn how to communicate with himself, and therefore - the desire for self-improvement (when it is not boring with oneself). A person can try to understand the nature of loneliness, "tame" his loneliness, making it more constructive and less destructive.

Thus, it is impossible to completely overcome loneliness, and this, probably, is not necessary: loneliness to a certain extent is necessary for growth, development of creative forces, independence; but when it comes to existential loneliness, we should learn to accept it as a natural part of our being.

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