I have 16 years old(Male), currently in High School.
Recently, I am feeling a constant feeling of loneliness in my social interactions/ relationships.
This enters in contradiction with my social life: I have long-term amazing friends, all belonging to a solid and stable social group that it’s very united.
However this social life doesn’t kill the feeling of loneliness. Many times, I feel like “outside” of my group of friends, not belonging to this group. I many times think that I am being annoying to them, a nuisance. When something slightly “unpleasant”(unpleasant according to me at least) happens in some social interaction, I feel guilty, thinking if I did something wrong.
With all this feelings and thoughts, I feel lonely, as an outsider of my group of friends, and thinking that I am unpleasant to them.
This feeling it’s difficult to deal, I currently writing about him in my journaling. I didn’t felt this before, it’s a recent phenomenon. And I don’t know where it’s coming from, I need to figure it out. I talked with a friend about this, he was very understanding, although he didn’t had any advice to this(something that was expected), and this helped me with this feeling.
I want now to know if there is any advice that you guys can give me to deal with this. Thank you!
3 comments
I have the same problem, but I don’t have any friends or relationships. But what’s the point of it if you are lonely, or that you are not understand people ? There’s also always this thoughts that comes to my mind, about all those things they said and that would prove they are not worth it, that i’m being used, that i’m being naive or that i will regret it later.
The solution of our problem would be to see a therapist, but I have a hard time to search for one, and don’t know how and where to start.
Buddha’s first noble truth: All of life is suffering. The second noble truth: The cause of suffering is desire. In other words, the cause of suffering is preference, deciding how you want things to be and getting upset when they’re not that way. Not surprisingly, it turns out Buddha was right. Events don’t cause mental or emotional suffering—you cause yourself mental and emotional suffering about the events. If you are not doing that, things are the way they are.
Experiences are not suffering. They are experiences. But if you decide how you want them to be, and they’re not that way, then you suffer. Suffering is caused by the contrast between what you mentally decided you wanted and the reality unfolding in front of you. To whatever degree they don’t match, you suffer.
You have set up in your mind what you like and what you don’t like based on your past impressions. Now you honestly believe the world should be that way. Obviously, that’s not a belief founded in reality. As long as you do that, you’re going to have a very hard time in life.
When we were young, we were programmed to unhappiness. They taught us that in order to be happy you need money, success, a beautiful partner in life, a good job, friendship—you name it. Unless you get these things, you’re not going to be happy, we were told. Now, that is what I call an attachment. An attachment is a belief that without something you are not going to be happy. Once you get convinced of that—and it gets into our subconscious, it gets stamped into the roots of our being—you are finished.
Contrary to what your culture and religion have taught you, nothing, but absolutely nothing can make you happy. The moment you see that, you will stop moving from one job to another, one friend to another. None of these things can give you a single minute of happiness. They can only offer you a temporary thrill, a pleasure that initially grows in intensity, then turns into pain if you lose them and into boredom if you keep them.
There are all sorts of ways that the egoic mind can insist that something needs to happen, something needs to change, in order for you to be at peace. But this is part of the dream of the mind. We’re all taught that something needs to change for us to experience true peace and freedom.
Just imagine for a moment that this isn’t true. Even though you may believe that it’s true, just imagine for a moment: What would it be like if you didn’t need to struggle, if you didn’t need to make an effort to find peace and happiness? What would that feel like now? And just take a moment to be quiet and see if peace or stillness is with you in this moment.
What you feel is VERY normal. I felt this in 1988 when I was sixteen. I played sports, had friends, decent home, and had deep feelings of alienation, isolation. Very normal